Soon after moving to NYC metro in 1998 I found Democracy Now!, the world's largest independent media collaboration. The equity-focused stories from local, city, state, national and international sources, and the work of Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, and their team shape my teaching, writing, scholarship, and advocacy in assisting K-16 students, families, educators, and other stakeholders focus on equity including: closing achievement/opportunity/attainment gaps, anti-violence, civil rights, human rights, freedom of expression, freedom from surveillance, participatory democracy, and social justice for all. Progressive, independent, noncorporate journalists report the inequities and provide opportunities for all of us to solve them. Many of the 950+ quotes below, are often from persons/issues featured on Democracy Now!, The Guardian, and The Intercept:



1. "As police hit protesters with tear gas yet again, remember that it's a chemical weapon banned in war—including by US."-Trevor Timm, J.D., USA, Executive Director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
2. "On Monday, several of us gathered downtown, and then we marched to the Wainwright Building, where the office of Governor Nixon is. And we wanted to speak to him and ask him to de-escalate the violence that’s going on in Ferguson. And there were police and security people in front of the building, and they would not let us in. There is a large plaza in front of the building, and so we congregated there. There were some people speaking about their experiences. And at one point, a police lieutenant informed us that the governor is not there—I just learned that he was at the fair—and that his staff is not there, and asked us to disperse. And when we didn’t disperse, within seconds almost, the police arrested those of us who refused to disperse. There were nine of us. I was one of them. We were handcuffed, taken to the paddy wagon and to the nearest police substation....The ongoing violence and the ongoing oppression that has been taking place in Ferguson of the African-American community. And that has to end. The whole structure of oppression there has to end. And right now, that’s the long-range problem. But at present now, the violence has to de-escalate. Instead of it, it’s being escalated. And the police chief of Ferguson has been trained in Israel how to mishandle, I’m sorry to have to say—Right, how to mishandle a large group of people. And this is what he’s doing. And it’s the same kind of violence that I’ve observed when I was in the Israeli-occupied Palestine. It’s just abominable, what’s happening....I know what it feels like to be discriminated against, to be oppressed, and I can’t stand idly by when I see there are problems. I can’t solve every problem, I probably can’t solve any problem, but I have to do whatever it is possible for me to do. I just cannot stand idly by, because if I did—and anyone that stand idly by becomes complicit in what is going on....(My message for Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu is) stop the violence. Go to the table and honestly discuss what might happen, that it’s—if peace ever can be there in that area. That violence there has to end. I mean, it’s terrible, what’s been going on there. Not just now, but it’s been an ongoing thing. But Netanyahu has no intention, really. He talks about peace, but he doesn’t really want peace....(My message for President Obama is) I know he’s on vacation right now, but come here to Ferguson. Show your face. Talk to the people here. Talk to the young people here. They need you."-Hedy Epstein,  USA, Holocaust survivor, co-founder, St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and St. Louis branch, Jewish Voice for Peace, USA 
3. "There have been increasingly vocal calls for Twitter, Facebook and other Silicon Valley corporations to more aggressively police what their users are permitted to see and read....The question posed by Twitter’s announcement is not whether you think it’s a good idea for people to see the Foley video. Instead, the relevant question is whether you want Twitter, Facebook and Google executives exercising vast power over what can be seen and read....But as a prudential matter, the private/public dichotomy is not as clean when it comes to tech giants that now control previously unthinkable amounts of global communications. There are now close to 300 million active Twitter users in the world – roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. population – and those numbers continue to grow rapidly and dramatically. At the end of 2013, Facebook boasted of 1.23 billion active users: or 1 out of every 7 human beings on the planet. YouTube, owned by Google, recently said that 'the number of unique users visiting the video-sharing website every month has reached 1 billion' and 'nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.'These are far more than just ordinary private companies from whose services you can easily abstain if you dislike their policies. Their sheer vastness makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to avoid them, particularly for certain work. They wield power over what we know, read and see far greater than anything previously possible – or conceivable – for ordinary companies.....In the digital age, we are nearing the point where an idea banished by Twitter, Facebook and Google all but vanishes from public discourse entirely, and that is only going to become more true as those companies grow even further. Whatever else is true, the implications of having those companies make lists of permitted and prohibited ideas are far more significant than when ordinary private companies do the same thing.....Whatever one’s views are on all of these questions, do you really want Silicon Valley executives – driven by profit motive, drawn from narrow socioeconomic and national backgrounds, shaped by homogeneous ideological views, devoted to nationalistic agendas, and collaborative with and dependent on the U.S. government in all sorts of ways – making these decisions? Perhaps you don’t want the ISIS video circulating, and that leads you to support yesterday’s decision by Twitter. But it’s quite likely you’ll object to the next decision about what should be banned, or the one after that, which is why the much more relevant question is whether you really want these companies’ managers to be making such consequential decisions about what billions of people around the world can — and cannot – see, hear, read, watch and learn."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA,living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept,International 
4. "The concern is that money used to repay student loans are not going into building one's assets....If you're graduating at 22, it's not as much of a concern. But if you're graduating at 35, that's money that instead could be going to your retirement....Will we have a generation of people who hit age 65 or 70 without any assets?" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/20/student-debt-distress_n_5682736.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592-Robert Kelchen, Ph.D., USA professor of higher education, USA
5. "Well, the demands that have been placed through the Organization for Black Struggle and other allies, they want the immediate firing of the police chief. Certainly we want an indictment of this officer. They’re asking for the governor to appoint a special prosecutor. They’re asking for the president and other folks to begin to investigate every unarmed killing of an American citizen, by the federal government, and not leave it to local jurisdictions, because local jurisdictions are proving that they are unable to do the work in an expedient manner. They have a number of demands that are very, very powerful, some of which is the demilitarizing the police force. Standing behind me is a Humvee that I’ve only seen in the movies. And I’m a citizen of this country. I pay taxes. I teach our kids to be nonviolent. And yet they are with soldiers running up and down the street because they’re protesting. We raise the kids to be Martin Luther King. We show them all of the videos of the civil rights movement, and they are practicing the legacy of civil rights and resistance in this country. And they are being met with tactics that are only shown on TV in other countries who are struggling to become a democracy. It is outrageous. And the president should be ashamed it’s happening on his watch. Eric Holder should be ashamed it’s happening on his watch. This governor should be ashamed it’s happening on his watch. This mayor should be ashamed it’s happening on his watch. Every adult in this country should be ashamed that African-American children are being terrorized by adults in the United States of America that claims to be the land of the free and the home of the brave....I’m glad he’s (Attorney General Eric Holder) coming, but I’m more interested in what he’s going to do when he comes. All right? We work with the Department of Justice. We work with a number of them regularly to talk about community building, to talk about a number of different things. So I’m glad he’s coming, but he needs to come with an indictment. He needs to come with an investigation of this police department. The young people tell us that for most of their lives they have been racially profiled in this community. The adults tell us, for decades, they have been terrorized in this community. So, this is just not a singular incident, according to the residents who live here in this area. Just yesterday, a mentally ill African-American man was killed in St. Louis with a knife in his hand. Now, you would think that given all that’s happening, that why won’t they—why won’t they shoot the folk in the legs? What is the excessive force? What are the kill shots about? It is not acceptable in a civilized society. So, we’re modeling behavior for young people. They’re killing their own people in the city. We’re telling people to come from outside the city. They’ve killed two African-American men in the last week in this city. These are supposed to be professional, trained law enforcement. They are not acting professional. They take target practice. The weapons that they use only kill individuals if you hit them in the head. They have levels of engagement. They can use their hands. They can use their batons. They can use their tasers. A gun should be a last resort. If someone is running toward you, pop their kneecap. What is the face? Why are you aiming for the face? It is an irrational fear of black men. And if you’re that scared of black men, you should not police black communities. God is going to judge us for what we’re doing to our children. And I’m not going to sit on the sideline. The clergy are not going to sit on the sideline. The parents are not going to sit on the sideline. People wondering why folks are so outraged? Because we have children. What parent would not be outraged that their children are being killed by people who we pay with our tax dollars?-Pastor Michael McBride, USA, The Way Christian Center; national director,  Lifelines for Healing Communities Campaign, part of People Improving [Communities] through Organizing, on the scene in Ferguson, MO, USA
6. "
   • "End accountability based on standards and high-stakes testing: A growing body of research has shown that the accountability era has failed: “As the absence or presence of rigorous or national standards says nothing about equity, educational quality, or the provision of adequate educational services, there is no reason to expect CCSS or any other standards initiative to be an effective educational reform by itself"  (Mathis, 2012). A first and essential step to a new vision of education reform is to end the accountability era by shifting away from focusing on outcomes and toward attending to the conditions of teaching and learning—with an emphasis on equity of opportunity.
   • Implement a small and robust measurement system: As Stephen Krashen and others have argued, the existing Natinoal Assessment of Educational Progrress (NAEP)  assessment system in the U.S. provides a more than adequate foundation upon which the U.S. can develop a systematic and limited process for administering tests to random samples of students in all states and gathering descriptive data on the effectiveness of schools. This new system must be low-stakes and should dramatically reduce the funding committed to testing in the U.S.
   • Scale back and eventually end tracking: The most accurate criticism of U.S. education is that it has historically perpetuated and currently perpetuates social inequity. Tracking remains grounded in data that reflect out-of-school influences and tends to funnel impoverished students into narrow academic settings and affluent children into rich educational experiences.
   • Focus on equitable teacher assignments: The focus on teacher quality within the accountability movement has tended to mislead the public about the importance of teacher quality connected to measurable outcomes while ignoring that impoverished, minority, and special needs students along with English language learners disproportionately are assigned to inexperienced and un-/under-certified teachers. Education reform committed to equity must monitor teacher assignments so that no students experience inequitable access to high-quality, experienced teachers.
   • Decrease bureaucracy of teacher licensing and increase academic quality of education degrees: Another legitimate criticism of traditional education is that teacher licensing has many flaws built into the bureaucracy of attaining a teaching certificate. Certification and accreditation mandates and systems tend to fail educators, and thus students. However, as in other fields, the quality of education degree programs still offer a tremendous promise for preparing teachers well for the teaching profession.
   • Honor school and teacher autonomy: Individual schools and classrooms vary dramatically across the U.S. School autonomy and teacher professionalism are the greatest sources of understanding what populations of students need. The current move toward national standards and tests is inherently a flawed concept since student needs in Orangeburg, SC, are dramatically different than student needs in Seattle, WA.
   • Replace accountability with transparency: High-stakes accountability has not only failed to produce outcomes promised by its advocates, but also has created negative unintended consequences (cheating scandals, for example). A more promising approach to ensuring that a public institution provides that public with needed services is to require schools to be transparent: identifying educational needs and providing evidence for practices being implemented to meet those needs.
   • Address wide range of issues impacting equity—funding, class size, technology, facilities: Moving away from accountability and toward equity is a shift in the goals and then standards against which education policy is evaluated. Issues of funding, class size, technology, and facilities must be addressed to assure all children experience an equity of opportunities in every school.
   • Abandon ranking: Education in the U.S. has suffered the negative consequences of ranking for over a century. Ranking nearly always distorts data and typically fails goals of equity. Instead of ranking, education should honor how conditions of learning match clearly identified learning goals.
   • Rethink testing and grades: Tests and grades have been the foundation upon which education in the U.S. rests, but both tend to distort education seeking equity, autonomy, and democracy. Rich feedback that challenges learners and contributes to learning, however, is the lifeblood of learning.
   • Practice patience: Crisis and urgency have characterized the accountability era, and both states have contributed to the failure of accountability. Teaching and learning are complex and unpredictable, requiring political and public patience for reaching the goals that everyone seeks.

     The points identified above are not intended to be exhaustive, but the evidence is clear that education reform has been on the wrong path for three decades. Accountability has failed, but that experiment has exposed a wealth of data that should inform a new vision of the need to address social and educational inequity through policies that fulfill the promises driving our democracy and our commitment to universal public education"-P. L. Thomas, Ph.D., USA,  professor of education, author, social critic, USA

7. "The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets. According to multiple military sources, a notice has been circulated to units within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps warning staff that they are prohibited from reading stories published by The Intercept on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees—including those with top-secret security clearance—and is aimed at preventing classified information from being viewed on unclassified computer networks, even if it is freely available on the internet. Similar military-wide bans have been directed against news outlets in the past after leaks of classified information."-Ryan Gallagher, Scotland, journalist, The Intercept, International
   
8. "'Let me begin,' admits George J. Sefa Dei in We Cannot Be Color-Blind': Race, Antiracism, and the Subversion of Dominant Thinking, 'by making clear that I see myself as fully complicit in the discussion that I undertake in this chapter' (p. 25). As we face large and powerful social forces such as poverty and racism—along with more narrow issues of education—I believe we all must address that first concern of who is complicit. Let me begin with something that echoes in my mind almost continually, from Oscar Wilde: 'But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting.' Consider taking that frame and using it many contexts: 'But to recommend _____ to  _____ is both grotesque and insulting.' Also consider who makes such recommendations. For the poor, the affluent and powerful—who do not live up to the same standards they impose—are the who. Today—at this exact moment—we watch as a white authority structure recommends to a dominantly black community that which is 'grotesque and insulting.' And then on a narrower scale, those with power and money recommend to educators that which is 'grotesque and insulting.'So whether we are confronting poverty and racism or education, we all must begin with who is complicit. People in poverty and African Americans in the U.S. share one disturbing but distinct quality: disproportionately the impoverished and African Americans are excluded from the power structure. Who, then, is complicit in the existence and tolerance of poverty and racism? It cannot be those without the power; therefore, it must be those with the power. Inaction is being complicit. Silence is being complicit. There is no political option for being neutral as long as poverty and racism exist. None. White high school drop-outs and African Americans with some college have the same economic opportunities. Whites and African Americans use recreational drugs at the same rates, but African Americans are targeted, charged, and incarcerated at much higher rates. Those born wealthy and not attending college have greater economic power than those born in poverty and completing college. To be white, to be wealthy—in the U.S. is to be complicit. Inaction is being complicit. Silence is being complicit. There is no political option for being neutral as long as poverty and racism exist. None. While I think my field of education is of a magnitude smaller than issues of poverty and race, I must end there because the picture is hard to confront. And because education is and always will be inextricable from the fight to end poverty and racism; as George J. Sefa Dei concludes, 'Antiracism is about changing current processes of schooling and education delivery' (p. 39). We may say the same about poverty. I have taught high school English for 18 years in rural South Carolina and then been in teacher education for another 13 years. Teachers and teacher educators persistently complain about the bureaucracy of education; it is a relentless refrain among educators. Recently, I received an email about how to anticipate what may be demanded of us when political regimes, once again, change; the email included: 'No other profession has to deal with such crap.' My response: 'No other discipline would put up with that crap.' Educators are complicit in the crap that is education reform. Inaction is being complicit. Silence is being complicit. All those scrambling to have a seat at the Common Core table, a table inextricable from the entire reform agenda—unions, administrators, teachers—all are complicit. It is time to face the mirror, to examine who is complicit.-P. L. Thomas, Ph.D., USA, professor of education, author, social critic, USA
9. "Oakland activists block Israeli ship for third day - #BlockTheBoat campaign now spreading to other cities #Stoptheboat"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International 
10. "Globally, the response of the international community is almost zero....Leaders in the west are talking about their own safety and doing things like closing airlines – and not helping anyone else."-Brice de la Vigne, France, operations director, Médecins Sans Frontières, on the almost complete lack of international developed countries' response to stopping the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, International
11. " In the days since 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in broad daylight by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri  – amid the flurry of media coverage, the teargas and the wooden bullets, the shameless character shaming of Brown, and the gut-sick heartbreak of his family – all I keep thinking is: Make it stop, white people. You are the ones who created this godforsaken racist system by using your circumstantial power and privilege 400 years ago to institutionalize white supremacy. Now use that power and privilege you still have, 400 years later, to dismantle it. And please don’t quibble about whether you have any direct lineage to the architects of racism. You are benefitting from it, so you have a direct responsibility to figure out how to undo it. Because maybe you’ve seen what happens when we black people try to undo it in 2014 – they call in the National Guard.  In
    between talking with my son to both protect him from the same fate as Michael Brown and empower him to walk tall in his skin, I have tweeted and posted on Facebook about this all week to no avail. Some white friends and acquaintances have said their silence is not complicity, or that we all need to work together. More pointedly, it was suggested in one thread comment that my upbringing – adopted by two white parents and raised in a majority white town – imparts a certain privilege that does not allow me to truly understand the racism toward black people in places like Ferguson. But cops in places like Ferguson don’t see my white parents – that I learned early on. Since my parents, with the best of intentions, downplayed the significance of racism and racial inequality in our family, as a kid I felt as entitled to living, breathing and cultivating a full-on, ass-out, individual personality with big opinions as much as any white kid. But when I entered the real world, my opinions become angry accusations, and my individuality became threatening. My parents’ liberal ideals of a race-blind world were gorgeous in their romanticism, but they neglected to consider what might happen should my individual body end up in a place like Ferguson, Missouri ... in which case all the gorgeous romanticism in the world wouldn’t save me from being teargassed or shot to death. Even if I had ended up in Ferguson, and my white parents happened to have been visiting me last week, well, who would really try and argue that the police – dressed in their camouflage, armed with their heavy artillery, driven by a militaristic us-and-them state of mind – wouldn’t kindly have asked my parents to step aside while they kept their guns pointed squarely at me? Darren Wilson, the cop who shot Michael Brown, didn’t know whether his victim was headed to college or a high school drop-out, a straight-edge or had THC remnants in his blood, whether Brown was looking for a good flat stretch of pavement to skateboard or an unlocked car door, any more than Wilson would have known that I was raised by white people in New Hampshire, or that I bristle at authority, that I am defiant as hell, or that I sometimes drink too much wine. That cop in Ferguson saw what he was looking for: a big, black, dangerous man, because that’s what white people learn to see. And no amount of “us” behaving better is going to change that calculus for white people: white people have to change it themselves. To me, being black is about the brown of my skin, the dream-memories of high cotton, hymns, hollers and the soft backsides of nut-colored hands against my cheek. It is about the refuge I feel in the face of another black person, and the intrinsic joy at the base of my belly when I enter a room full of black people. But it is also about enduring racism on a daily basis, and often swallowing my rage and my pride in order to teach my son what it means to be black and endangered as he walks down the street. So when I call for white people to get woke and get real serious about how you can use your privilege to make change, I don’t want to hear how I’m not like those black people in Ferguson. The cops in Ferguson or on Staten Island don’t care – don’t think – that I’m a 'different kind of' black. The Detroit man who shot Renisha McBride in the face didn’t ask about her educational achievements. The North Carolina cop who shot and killed the unarmed football player didn’t ask him what color his parents are. The white guy walking down the street in Manhattan last year after George Zimmerman's acquittal – the one who said to me, 'poor Trayvon' – he didn’t turn and say it to a white woman. I’m just black to them – and you’re white. You need to come for your own. Maybe start with the still existing New Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who are currently raising money in support of Darren Wilson, 'a cop who shot a n*gger criminal.' But when black people’s anger is demonized, pathologized and criminalized – when it’s never seen as righteous, when we're being gassed in the streets for it  – don’t tell me you’re afraid of making black people angry by speaking up, or that my anger feels isolating to you. Because then I have to wonder if the people whose anger you really fear are white."-Rebecca Carroll, USA, journalist, USA
12. "The protests in Ferguson have reached the National Football League. The players on the secondary lineup for the Washington team took to the field Monday night with their hands in the air in a gesture of solidarity with the Ferguson protests. The team is facing a racial controversy of its own with two top football commentators now joining the ranks of those to avoid the name "Redskins" because it is a racial slur."-Amy Goodman, USA, journalist and co-founder, Democracy Now!, USA
13. "(The USA should) cherish ... people’s right to protest.....These scenes are familiar to me, and privately I was thinking that there are many parts of the United States where apartheid is flourishing."-Navi Pillay, South Africa, United Nations high commissioner for human rights comparing the scense from Ferguson, MO to her own experience of apartheid she experienced in South Africa, International
14. "According to the 2012 US census, African Americans represent 14.2% of the population nationwide, but 28.1% of this group lives in poverty – compared to 11.1% of the total population. Of families with children, that number jumps to a third, compared to 18.8% of families of all races. Unemployment, whether short or long-term, runs at double the rate that white workers experience. If you’re black, you’re significantly more likely to have to spend more than 30% of your monthly income on either rent or monthly occupancy costs. What all this adds up to, in the long run, is a crippling disadvantage – a yawning wealth gap between the races. One study shows that while a white family turns every $1 of income into $5 of wealth, for the typical African American family that $1 translates into a mere 69 cents of wealth. White Americans make up 64% of the country’s population, but own 88% of its wealth; today’s typical white household is likely to be 20 times more affluent than its black counterpart. As long as that remains the case, the white economic elite perpetuates itself, and continues to make the rules – deciding, for instance, what the criteria are for hiring cops in Ferguson."-Suzanne McGee, USA, journalist, The Guardian, USA
15. "The symptoms of structural racism stain America everywhere, but its execution is particularly perverse in places like Ferguson. It’s not just that black drivers are stopped more often for alleged crimes than white drivers, despite the Missouri attorney general’s report that white people break the law more often. It’s not that Ferguson’s police force is 94% white in a town that's two-thirds black. It’s not even, as Jeff Smith wrote in Monday's New York Times,  that black people – many unemployed – “do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites” by way of those stops and the subsequent fines. The real perversion of justice by way of modern American racism is that black people in Ferguson – like black people in the greater St Louis metropolitan area and nationally – are marginalized economically and physically from day one. That is the real looting of Ferguson. We are consistently twice as likely to be unemployed - and in and near St Louis, '47 percent of the metro area's African-American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed.' Our men are more likely to be convicted and our women are more likelty to be evicted. We are more likely to be victims of predatory loans. Our children are twice as likely to have asthma (even before you teargas them). Our babies are twice as likely to die before the age of one - and their mothers are three or four times more likely to die as a result of bearing them. In America, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in The Atlantic, 'White flight was a triumph of social engineering, orchestrated by the shared racist presumptions of America’s public and private sectors.' But that engineering was perfected in St Louis, which Al Jazeera reported 'has spent enormous sums of public money to spatially reinforce human segregation patterns.' In Fergusion this weekend, after echoing other politicians’ calls for residents to stop looting, Rev Jesse Jackson told me:'The real looting is legal looting. People don’t have their fair share of police jobs, fire jobs, accounting work, legal work. That’s looting. The looting by night – should not take place, but neither should the accepted level of legal looting. And that must stop.' The National Guard rolled in to town on Monday, and its presence will essentially protect that legal looting of black people – much as it was protected when Missouri became the last slave state admitted to the union. But when I hear the founder of the Rainbow Coalition and the first black president of the United States call for a stop to illegal looting that 'undermines...justice,' I wonder: Why do they care? Why should any black person care about the storefronts of Ferguson? Or care about the business life of a community where almost half of young men are locked out of the workforce – and where, if they get a criminal record while unemployed, they will effectively be locked out from employment forever? It’s not like the 'best' stores of Ferguson – the McDonald’s or the Walgreen’s, for instance – provide much more than minimum wage jobs, barely helpful for subsistence living. The dollar stores pedaling cheap goods and unhealthy food that no one needs aren’t much better. And it’s undeniable that the worst of Ferguson’s businesses – the many legal loan sharks who blight its streets – are actively strangling the last breaths from Ferguson’s black residents who are already on the margins.Will looting solve any of this? No. But will bringing in the National Guard to protect the very loan sharks and fast food restaurants who are exploiting us? Hell no! And let’s face it: fear of these businesses getting destroyed is what’s bringing the troops in, not big-picture concerns about the legal looting of human lives. Racism, looting Missouri since crackers owned slaves, lit Ferguson on fire – not some looter with a firecracker. Too often, a call for non-violence becomes a blanket excuse to do nothing and maintain the status quo. The National Guard is coming in to maintain the status quo and that is unacceptable – because black Missourians, like most African Americans, were already drowning in the status quo when Mike Brown was still alive."-Steven Thrasher, Ph.D. cand., USA, journalist, The Guardian,USA
16. "Well, the police here in Ferguson, unlike the NYPD, they come out dressed as sort of stormtroopers in full military gear. And it doesn’t seem to be the case that they have the experience working with large crowds that the NYPDdoes. They almost manage to make the NYPD, which detained, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people over the course of Occupy, you know, pepper-sprayed people, beat protesters—the police here almost make the NYPD look good in their sort of handling of crowds."-Ryan Deveraux, USA, journalist, The Intercept, interviewed about covering Ferguson, MO police brutality including being shot and detained as a journalist in Ferguson, MO, USA
17. "It is a tragedy that as a clergy person I need a tear gas mask more than I need a collar to be able to do the work that I feel called to do."-Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, USA, pastor, First Baptist Church, Jamaica Plain, MA, working in Ferguson, MO, USA
18. "The black community tends be overpoliced and underprotected. That’s a very serious problem."-john a powell,  J.D., USA, professor of law, African-American studies and ethnic studies; director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, USA
19. "Late Monday evening, after many of the major media outlets covering the protests in Ferguson, Mo., had left the streets to broadcast from their set-ups near the police command center, heavily armed officers raced through suburban streets in armored vehicles, chasing demonstrators, launching tear gas on otherwise quiet residential lanes, and shooting at journalists. Their efforts resulted in one of the largest nightly arrest totals since protests began 10 days ago over the killing of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. At approximately 2 a.m. local time, Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson announced a press conference that 31 people had been arrested over the course of the night (NBC News later reported that, according to jail records, the actual total was more than double that).  I was unable to attend or report on Johnson’s press conference because I was one of those people. Here’s what happened. At roughly midnight, protesters and journalists were gathered on W. Florissant Ave., which has been ground zero for the ongoing protests. After laying down a heavy cloud of tear gas, police officials began announcing over loudspeakers that they intended to clear the area, citing a 'public safety issue.' When some reporters pressed for clarification, multiple senior officers referred to “shots fired,” though they offered no specifics. The cable news crews on the street broke their gear down and left, as did just about everybody else. Lukas Hermsmeier, a German reporter for Bild, and I got into the rental car we were sharing and decided to make our way to the so-called 'command center' authorities have set up for journalists in the parking lot of a nearby Target. After picking up a stranded journalist and giving him a ride to his car, we found ourselves looking for a quick route to the command center that didn’t require driving along the contested W. Florissant. As we worked our way through the neighborhood’s side streets, we noted that a small contingent of protesters had returned. Crossing W. Florissant, I heard a police officer announce over a loudspeaker: 'This is your final warning.' My first instinct was to pull the car over and document whatever was about to happen. In protests, the most severe instances of violence or unlawful arrest often occur after the cameras are gone. We parked the car and got out. There were roughly two dozen rowdy protesters gathered in the middle of W. Florissant, and along its east side. They had their own megaphone, which they were using to taunt the police. It was clear that some had been drinking. One of them lit a barrel of garbage on fire. A pair of streets signs had been pulled from the ground. At least one threw a glass bottle, which landed far from the officers roughly a block and a half down the road. On the other side of W. Florissant, meanwhile, a separate group of protesters had gathered, all wearing matching T-shirts. They were clearly displeased with the behavior of their counterparts on the other side of the road. One particularly vocal young woman from this group stepped out into the street to retrieve the signs they had pulled out of the ground and left in the road. I crossed W. Florissant to see if I could interview her. We were on the sidewalk chatting when the police began firing tear gas canisters in our direction. The woman and her friends began hustling to safety, away from W. Florissant and away from our rental car. I followed her, continuing to ask questions as we hurried onto Gage Dr., which runs parallel to W. Florissant. The young woman and her friends decided it was unsafe, hopped in a car, and took off. Hermsmeier and I were stuck. The police had begun moving up W. Florissant in their armored vehicles. They continued shooting off gas canisters. In between short lulls, the remaining rowdy protesters would dart out from the shadows to egg the police on. I wanted to know what the police were firing at people so I looked for evidence. I found a smoking, hot canister and took a photo of it during a break in the firing. The road, and seemingly the entire subdivision, was quickly filling with smoke. Armored vehicles would speed up to our area, occasionally shooting tear gas as they went, and we would take cover behind anything that could stop a metal canister from slamming into our skulls. The situation did not look or feel good. Hermsmeier and I had a wide street filled with tear gas and armored vehicles between us and our ride home. The police began turning off W. Florissant and opening fire with gas canisters at unseen targets in the dense residential area. At one point, one of the canisters appeared to start a small fire in the driveway of a home. We decided our best bet was to walk north on Gage Dr. in hopes of getting beyond the wall of gas and finding a safe route to our car. We didn’t make it far. Between the gaps in the houses we could see the armored vehicles quickly moving up and down W. Florissant, parallel to us. Two turns and the police would find us off that main road and, potentially, shoot at us. We took cover behind a large tree in case the firing started again. It was then that one of the armored vehicles entered the neighborhood once more, this time ahead of us, slowly moving in the direction we were walking. With their high-powered lights scanning the neighborhood, the only option we had was to announce ourselves as members of the press and hope they wouldn’t shoot. We stepped out of the shadows, our hands in the air, and began yelling, 'Press!' and 'Journalists!' and 'We’re media!' over and over. An officer on top of the vehicle turned his light on us. After a pause, he beckoned us forward. We continued walking, our hands still in the air, still shouting that we were journalists. With rifles trained on us, we turned right on Highmunt Dr., in the direction of W. Florissant and toward another police vehicle, which had more guns pointed at us. As we made our way forward, I heard a pop and felt a stinging in my lower back. I jumped up instinctively, and realized that the officers behind us, the ones who had asked us to move forward, had shot us with what I believe were rubber bullets. I was hit once and Hermsmeier was hit twice. The shooting left a mean bruise, but all the guns trained on us provided an ample distraction from the sting. We were frightened. The police, who made no verbal commands that we had heard, had clearly demonstrated their willingness to shoot us. With several similarly armed and approaching officers directly in front of us, we dove behind a car, expecting more shooting. The police came upon us with their guns pointed directly at us. We continued repeating that we were journalists. They pulled us out from behind the car, walked us to their armored vehicles, and zip-tied our hands behind our backs. The police loaded us a vehicle known as a Bearcat and drove us to the command center. We were sitting across from a massive man in a gas mask who looked more like a sci-fi video game character than a police officer. He asked us what we were doing out when police had told people to leave. We replied that we were doing our jobs. It was at the command center, a suburban parking lot awash in neon light and men in camouflage, that we learned we were going to jail. No one read us our rights. I was later informed that we–along with just about everyone else in our jail cell–were arrested for 'refusal to disperse.' When we got to the jail, an officer took all my belongings and placed them in a bag, and told me that I was free to make my one phone call. When I told her that my lawyer’s phone number was in my wallet, she replied that it was too late (pro tip: write your lawyer’s phone number in Sharpie on your arm). The only way my editor learned that I had been arrested was because David Carson, a photographer with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (who took the photographs in this post), happened to be embedded with the tactical team that arrested us. While we were at the command center, I asked him to post news of our arrests on his Twitter feed. (Thanks, David.) We were jailed with a cross-section of the Ferguson protesters. Most of our cellmates were African American and from Ferguson or surrounding areas, though there were also some white men in the mix, too. There were three recently discharged veterans in our group and one active duty service member. I don’t know how many—if any—of the men I was in jail with had participated in the violent, destructive protesting that I saw. But far from being the hardened criminals some might paint them as, these young men—most of whom had never met before last night—offered support for each other. They were kind to one another. There was a lot of humor in the group as well, though it was all colored by a below-the-surface recognition that, for a certain portion of the men, time spent in jail cells is an unavoidable fact of life. One of our cellmates, a young African American veteran who had been picked up protesting, was stuck in jail for a mandatory 72 hours due to an outstanding warrant from an illegal lane change. Ferguson relies heavily on court fees to generate revenue, and traffic stops are a key component. Hermsmeier and I got out of jail this morning. None of the other people who are still there, as far as I know, work for well-funded, high-profile media organizations. Few are white. The concerns these men raised—and the intensity that they have for this moment in Ferguson—runs very deep. Several cited the disproportionate number of traffic stops of young men of color as a specific problem. On a more fundamental level, their grievances centered on a perceived lack of respect from the police sworn to protect their communities, a sense that anything could be done to them and nothing would be done in response. One young African American man from the area positively beamed at being arrested for a cause; he likened it to going to jail with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Not a single one of these men, through our hours of conversations, expressed any desire to let up. This will not end soon."-Ryan Deveraux, USA, journalist, The Intercept, USA
20. "It’s difficult to view citizens as partners when you’re looking at them through a Kevlar helmet and a riot shield – or when you have failed to build a culture of trust and then you add military equipment and tactics to a combustible mix of  racial discrimination and little police accountability. This explosive combination makes policing significantly less effective, and dramatically less safe for everybody. It’s no wonder so many cops – like some of those in Ferguson, Missouri – view their own community as the enemy when they spend their time geared for combat. It’s no wonder why they, in return, are viewed  as an occupying force. I was the city police chief during 1999’s so-called 'Battle in Seattle,' the clash between anti-globalization protesters and my police officers. I realize now that the way we looked – and the way we behaved – provoked and exacerbated the violence. My decision to authorize the use of so-called 'hard gear' (black uniforms with ballistic helmets and face shields, and the use of chemical agents) in our interactions with nonviolent, nonthreatening World Trade Organization demonstrators heightened tensions and put everyone – cops and citizens – at greater risk. The militarization of the WTO protests did untold damage to our efforts to build a positive, trusting partnership with our community.

     I’m saddened to have watched the situation unfold in Ferguson and see almost none of the lessons I’ve tried to offer since then put into effect. It’s difficult to implement any best practices when the everyday relationship between a city’s cops and its citizens is so broken. It may be too late to have prevented violence in Ferguson, but the community and others like it must come together now and make immediate changes to establish a baseline of behavior for law enforcement – to abide by today and to build upon for the future. The situation in Ferguson is no longer just about Michael Brown’s death: it’s about systemic racism and patterns of neglect, about leadership and the ability to influence angry, sometimes criminally motivated, individuals. Beyond the lifted curfews and long after the National Guard’s presence attempts to restore some semblance of peace, real accountability for everyone’s actions – cops and citizens – is imperative. First, leaders in Ferguson need to put together a large, representative, credible crisis team to work with the police, communicate systematically with the community and, most importantly, elicit grassroots suggestions for resolution of the conflict. While some leaders have already tried to do this on an ad hoc basis, their work needs to be institutionalized and expanded to include others. Thereafter, the city or state government should convene a group of citizens, officers, politicians and civic leaders to craft and quickly implement a statement of non-negotiable standards for the performance and conduct of each and every police officer: for example, any officer should be fired if found to be using racial or ethnic slurs or excessive force. Those local officials should create a citizens’ review board (and a process for filling it) and give it investigative authority and subpoena powers, rather than rely on the local prosecutor and police to investigate their friends and colleagues – rather than just waiting around for the US Department of Justice and FBI to complete their own independent investigations. The Ferguson police department’s disciplinary system will need to be overhauled – with the oversight of the citizens’ review board – to created a dual-track system for police offenders: those found through an independent investigation to have made honest mistakes or have 'routine' performance problems should be subject to corrective action (coaching, counseling, schooling); and those found to have engaged in willful misconduct, gross negligence or recklessness should be subject to punitive actions (up through and including dismissal and, in appropriate cases, criminal prosecution). Meanwhile, the police department needs to immediately begin a process of demilitarization and replace the military model with a community policing model. As part of that, they should adopt the 'Memphis model' of crisis intervention – requiring every employee to undergo a week of intensive training in defusing and de-escalation techniques conducted by mental health and communications experts. And they need to prohibit SWAT operations for anything other than school shootings, armed hostage situations and other immediate crises when negotiations fail and lives are at stake. So should every police department in America. It’s clear that Ferguson’s police officers, politicians and community leaders haven’t yet really embraced a philosophy of 'community policing,' and that they weren’t working in partnership to identify and solve crime, traffic and other community-police problems – not with a police force that is 93% white in a city that is two-htireds black, or with a trove of military garb waiting in the wings. Some in the Ferguson areas, like Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, understand the basics. But you can’t reverse the effects of years of military-style policing in a few hours of walking among protesters. Still, law enforcement officers in Ferguson – and in so many other places – need to start somewhere. They need to start here ... or else they’ll just keep failing in all the same ways."-Norm Stamper, USA, former police chief, Seattle, WA, USA

21. "When I asked six-year-old Amor, who wants to be a firefighter and who lives here in Ferguson, Missouri, what he thinks of the police, he said, 'They shoot people.' The children of Ferguson have an especially painful – and unfairly adult – task before them: they must make sense of the death of one of their peers, Michael Brown, and deal with the fallout from the protests, violence and militarized police presence that has, in many ways, quickly come to define their young lives in the week since Brown's violent death at the hands of a local police officer. The police response to protests in Ferguson has affected children as much as the death itself. Amor’s 11-year-old brother, Tavier, told me, 'They shouldn’t shoot people for protesting.' Sitting over pizza just a few blocks from the Ferguson Police Department, he added, 'As I was getting older, I thought police were nice people, and as I’m getting older, I’m thinking they’re so-so. They’re still good people, but they’re judging us now.' Children cope with tragedy in myriad ways – and many of the younger kids in Ferguson are using sidewalk chalk in public spaces. At the now infamously torched QuickTrip convenience store, amidst messages from adults, saw children sketching Superman and dinosaurs – a small measure of their innocence reflected while their families protested around them. But at Greater St Mark Family Church, where Saturday’s march from the site of Brown’s shooting ended, the drawings were more explicit: kids drew outlines of their own imagined dead bodies. Kids in Ferguson have been drawing their own chalk outlines to memorialize Michael Brown. Most of Ferguson’s children are African American, which automatically makes them, particularly the boys, suspect.  The weight on their small shoulders that they must be up to something is heavier now than it already was 10 days ago, before the unarmed, 18-year-old Brown was killed. Amor and Tavier’s mother is Shonta Jones, who has three other sons between the ages of three and 16. Like any parent, she wants to protect her boys from knowing too much about violence – but she is distinctly aware that a boys will be boys attitude is not a luxury her sons can afford. Her sons have to earn their innocence in Ferguson, but it comes at the expense of letting go of the assumptions of childhood at a very young age. Her 10-year-old, Antonio, for instance, didn’t used to fear the police. 'One time, a couple people stole our bikes and scooter,' he told me, and the police 'came and got out stuff back. So I was happy with them.' But after Trayvon Martin’s violent death (while wearing a hooded sweatshirt) and now Brown’s, he fears for his older brother, Taujh:'I was afraid when they killed [Brown]. I was scared about my big brother, Taujh, ’cuz he’s around 18. So I was kind of scared for him because he wears hoodies and stuff.'Taujh, 16, said he had been far less concerned about being racially profiled than his brothers or mother are for him. A couple weeks ago, he told me, he’d found the cops to be 'nice and funny.' But now, 'with the riots, I don’t want to be accused of anything,' he said. 'So I stay in front of my house.' 'As of right now,' he said, 'I don’t trust [the police] at all.'The killing of Michael Brown is one of those stories that is more than local news – it’s the story of one young man shot by a police officer in Ferguson, and the story of so many people of color, in so many places.It was more than just Brown’s death that changed Taujh’s mind: like his 11-year-old brother Tavier, it was seeing a militarized police force turned on his town. 'That made me not trust them, either. I heard people were just protesting peacefully, or whatever. They started using teargas on them. I saw a picture of a woman, a white woman, she had a big wound on her stomach from a rubber bullet. That made me not trust them. I play a lot of games. I saw a picture of a man, a sniper on a roof, like Call of Duty or Battlefield. I thought it was from a game! ... But it was real. And I thought, ‘This isn’t Iraq, this is Ferguson!’ I said, ‘That’s messed up.’ … What’s the point of bringing a tank? Are you going to blow up everybody? That’s not necessary.' Tavier added, 'I think [the police are] not scary, but they make me nervous,' noting that, during the protests, officers 'were shooting with rubber bullets, and a woman got shot in the stomach. And Mike Brown got shot.' Still, Tavier says he would call the police if he was in trouble. 'I would tell them what’s going on,' he says, adding with downcast eyes, 'If I see them, I wouldn’t run.' His 10-year-old brother, Antonio, is less sanguine after seeing where Brown was shot: 'I thought, if I call the police, and they thought I was the person that did whatever I had called [about], they might shoot me or tase me.' I, too, spent some time where Brown was shot and saw Lesley McSpadden, Brown’s grieving mother. She was surrounded by women who gently gave her hugs as she shuffled along the sidewalk like a ghost, looking only half alive. Shonta Jones can too easily imagine being in McSpadden’s shoes, and told her oldest, Taujh, that 'Mike Brown could have been you, and it hurt my soul.' Jones is terrified of the double standard on display when the police deal with people who look like her son: 'Even if [Brown] stole cigarettes it wasn’t worth killing him,' she said, adding 'even the guy who shot up the movie theater didn’t have to lose his life.' Unlike her sons, Jones never liked or trusted the Ferguson police, particularly the way they’ve treated her when she’s been pulled over in her SUV. But it’s even worse, she says, when 'you see a black man pulled over, and you see they’ve got him down on the curb. You see a white person pulled over, and they’re standing freely or still in their car.' 'I feel like we were treated very poorly when it came to our rights,” she says. 'They are taking away protesting because there were too many black people speaking up in one place.' After I interviewed Jones and her sons, I spoke with the Reverend Jesse Jackson here and asked him what he thought of Jones’s fears for her five boys. 'Those concerns are real' in Missouri and all over the nation, Jackson told me. 'My boys have been profiled,' he added, before ticking off a list of deaths of young black men at the hands of the police around the country. For these five brothers in Ferguson, the news has meant having to grapple with these same violent current events at their much younger ages. Tavier, the second-oldest in the family, has already had 'the talk' with his dad about how to manage police harassment. But at 11, his takeaway was that his dad wanted him to 'see how the police are thinking, [so] I know not to get dreads' to better avoid suspicion. Taujh, the oldest, told me initially that he’s not worried: 'I’m not bragging, but I’m an all-around good kid.' But after listening to his mother and brothers, he owned up to his mistrust of the cops and said, 'It was good to get that off my chest.' Still, whether Tavier, Antonio, Taujh, Amor and three-year-old Zion are 'good kids' or not might not matter in Ferguson – or anywhere else in America. And after the protests are over and the politicians look away, if nothing has changed, these boys will still live their lives under a cloud of suspicion. 'That’s the real violence,' as Jesse Jackson put it: when children live in neighborhoods devoid of opportunity, under an assumption of guilt which robs them of the presumption of innocence and dims their view of what may be possible in their world and their lives. The status quo is as dangerous as the events of the last week for children in places like Ferguson. If that isn’t challenged once the teargas clears, this loss of light in kids like these will be even more of a tragedy."-Steven Thrasher, Ph.D. cand., USA, journalist, The Guardian, USA
22. "Today's education reformers believe that schools are broken and that business can supply the remedy. Some place their faith in the idea of competition. Others embrace disruptive innovation, mainly through online learning. Both camps share the belief that the solution resides in the impersonal, whether it’s the invisible hand of the market or the transformative power of technology. Neither strategy has lived up to its hype, and with good reason. It’s impossible to improve education by doing an end run around inherently complicated and messy human relationships. All youngsters need to believe that they have a stake in the future, a goal worth striving for, if they’re going to make it in school. They need a champion, someone who believes in them, and that’s where teachers enter the picture. The most effective approaches foster bonds of caring between teachers and their students. Marketplace mantras dominate policy discussions. High-stakes reading and math tests are treated as the single metric of success, the counterpart to the business bottom line. Teachers whose students do poorly on those tests get pink slips, while those whose students excel receive merit pay, much as businesses pay bonuses to their star performers and fire the laggards. Just as companies shut stores that aren’t meeting their sales quotas, opening new ones in more promising territory, failing schools are closed and so-called turnaround model schools, with new teachers and administrators, take their place. This approach might sound plausible in a think tank, but in practice it has been a flop. Firing teachers, rather than giving them the coaching they need, undermines morale. In some cases it may well discourage undergraduates from pursuing careers in teaching, and with a looming teacher shortage as baby boomers retire, that’s a recipe for disaster. Merit pay invites rivalries among teachers, when what’s needed is collaboration. Closing schools treats everyone there as guilty of causing low test scores, ignoring the difficult lives of the children in these schools — 'no excuses,' say the reformers, as if poverty were an excuse. Charter schools have been promoted as improving education by creating competition. But charter students do about the same, over all, as their public school counterparts, and the worst charters, like the online K-12 schools that have proliferated in several states, don’t deserve to be called schools. Vouchers are also supposed to increase competition by giving parents direct say over the schools their children attend, but the students haven’t benefited. For the past generation, Milwaukee has run a voucher experiment, with much-debated outcomes that to me show no real academic improvement. While these reformers talk a lot about markets and competition, the essence of a good education — bringing together talented teachers, engaged students and a challenging curriculum — goes undiscussed. Business does have something to teach educators, but it’s neither the saving power of competition nor flashy ideas like disruptive innovation. Instead, what works are time-tested strategies. 'Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service': That’s the gospel the management guru W. Edwards Deming preached for half a century. After World War II, Japanese firms embraced the 'plan, do, check, act' approach, and many Fortune 500 companies profited from paying attention. Meanwhile, the Harvard Business School historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner Alfred D. Chandler Jr. demonstrated that firms prospered by developing 'organizational capabilities,' putting effective systems in place and encouraging learning inside the organization. Building such a culture took time, Chandler emphasized, and could be derailed by executives seduced by faddishness. Every successful educational initiative of which I’m aware aims at strengthening personal bonds by building strong systems of support in the schools. The best preschools create intimate worlds where students become explorers and attentive adults are close at hand. In the Success for All model — a reading and math program that, for a quarter-century, has been used to good effect in 48 states and in some of the nation’s toughest schools — students learn from a team of teachers, bringing more adults into their lives. Diplomas Now love-bombs middle school students who are prime candidates for dropping out. They receive one-on-one mentoring, while those who have deeper problems are matched with professionals. An extensive study of Chicago’s public schools, Organizing Schools for Improvement, identified 100 elementary schools that had substantially improved and 100 that had not. The presence or absence of social trust among students, teachers, parents and school leaders was a key explanation. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the nationwide mentoring organization, has had a substantial impact on millions of adolescents. The explanation isn’t what adolescents and their 'big sibling' mentors do together, whether it’s mountaineering or museum-going. What counts, the research shows, is the forging of a relationship based on mutual respect and caring. Over the past 25 years, YouthBuild has given solid work experience and classroom tutoring to hundreds of thousands of high school dropouts. Seventy-one percent of those youngsters, on whom the schools have given up, earn a G.E.D. — close to the national high school graduation rate. The YouthBuild students say they’re motivated to get an education because their teachers 'have our backs.' The same message — that the personal touch is crucial — comes from community college students who have participated in the City University of New York’s anti-dropout initiative, which has doubled graduation rates. Even as these programs, and many others with a similar philosophy, have proven their worth, public schools have been spending billions of dollars on technology which they envision as the wave of the future. Despite the hyped claims, the results (of technology programs in schools) have been disappointing. “The data is pretty weak,” said Tom Vander Ark, the former executive director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an investor in educational technology companies. 'When it comes to showing results, we better put up or shut up.' While technology can be put to good use by talented teachers, they, and not the futurists, must take the lead. The process of teaching and learning is an intimate act that neither computers nor markets can hope to replicate. Small wonder, then, that the business model hasn’t worked in reforming the schools — there is simply no substitute for the personal element."-David L. Kirp, Ph.D., USA, is a professor and author, Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools, USA
    
23. "The killing of Michael Brown has tapped into something bigger than Michael Brown. Brown was the unarmed 18-year-old black man who was shot to death Saturday by a policeman in Ferguson, Mo. There are conflicting accounts of the events that led to the shooting. There is an investigation by local authorities as well as one by federal authorities.  There are grieving parents and a seething community. There are swarms of lawyers and hordes of reporters. There has been unrest. The president has appealed for reflection and healing. There is an eerie echo in it all — a sense of tragedy too often repeated. And yet the sheer morbid, wrenching rhythm of it belies a larger phenomenon, one obscured by its vastness, one that can be seen only when one steps back and looks from a distance and with data: The criminalization of black and brown bodies — particularly male ones — from the moment they are first introduced to the institutions and power structures with which they must interact. Earlier this year, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released 'the first comprehensive look at civil rights from every public school in the country in nearly 15 years.' As the report put it: 'The 2011-2012 release shows that access to preschool programs is not a reality for much of the country. In addition, students of color are suspended more often than white students, and black and Latino students are significantly more likely to have teachers with less experience who aren’t paid as much as their colleagues in other schools.' Attorney General Eric Holder, remarking on the data, said: 'This critical report shows that racial disparities in school discipline policies are not only well-documented among older students, but actually begin during preschool.' But, of course, this criminalization stalks these children throughout their school careers. As The New York Times editorial board pointed out last year: 'Children as young as 12 have been treated as criminals for shoving matches and even adolescent misconduct like cursing in school. This is worrisome because young people who spend time in adult jails are more likely to have problems with law enforcement later on. Moreover, federal data suggest a pattern of discrimination in the arrests, with black and Hispanic children more likely to be affected than their white peers.' A 2010 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center  found that while the average suspension rate for middle school students in 18 of the nation’s largest school districts was 11.2 percent in 2006, the rate for black male students was 28.3 percent, by far the highest of any subgroup by race, ethnicity or gender. And, according to the report, previous research 'has consistently found that racial/ethnic disproportionality in discipline persists even when poverty and other demographic factors are controlled.' And these disparities can have a severe impact on a child’s likelihood of graduating. According to a report from the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University that looked at Florida students, 'Being suspended even once in 9th grade is associated with a two-fold increase in the risk for dropping out.' Black male dropout rates are more than one and a half times those of white males, and when you look at the percentage of black men who graduate on time — in four years, not including those who possibly go on to get G.E.D.s, transfer to other schools or fail grades — the numbers are truly horrific. Only about half of these black men graduate on time.Now, the snowball is rolling. The bias of the educational system bleeds easily into the bias of the criminal justice system — from cops to courts to correctional facilities. The school-to-prison pipeline is complete. A May report by the Brookings Institution found:  'There is nearly a 70 percent chance that an African American man without a high school diploma will be imprisoned by his mid-thirties.' This is in part because trending policing disparities are particularly troubling in places like Missouri. As the editorial board of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch pointed out this week:  'Last year, for the 11th time in the 14 years that data has been collected, the disparity index that measures potential racial profiling by law enforcement in the state got worse. Black Missourians were 66 percent more likely in 2013 to be stopped by police, and blacks and Hispanics were both more likely to be searched, even though the likelihood of finding contraband was higher among whites.' And this is the reality if the child actually survives the journey. That is if he has the internal fortitude to continue to stand with the weight on his shoulders. That is if he doesn’t find himself on the wrong end of a gun barrel. That is if his parents can imbue in him a sense of value while the world endeavors to imbue in him a sense of worthlessness. Parents can teach children how to interact with authority and how to mitigate the threat response their very being elicits. They can wrap them in love to safeguard them against the bitterness of racial suspicion. It can be done. It is often done. But it is heartbreaking nonetheless. What psychic damage does it do to the black mind when one must come to own and manage the fear of the black body? The burden of bias isn’t borne by the person in possession of it but by the person who is the subject of it. The violence is aimed away from the possessor of its instruments — the arrow is pointed away from the killer and at the prey. It vests victimhood in the idea of personhood. It steals sometimes, something precious and irreplaceable. It breaks something that’s irreparable. It alters something in a way that’s irrevocable. We flinchingly choose a lesser damage. But still, the hopelessness takes hold when one realizes that there is no amount of acting right or doing right, no amount of parental wisdom or personal resilience that can completely guarantee survival, let alone success. Brown had just finished high school and was to start college this week. The investigation will hopefully clarify what led to his killing. But it is clear even now that his killing occurred in a context, one that we would do well to recognize. Brown’s mother told a local television after he was killed just weeks after his high school graduation: 'Do you know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate? You know how many black men graduate? Not many. Because you bring them down to this type of level, where they feel like they don’t got nothing to live for anyway. ‘They’re going to try to take me out anyway.’ ”-Charles Blow, USA, writer and journalist, USA
24. "Many otherwise well-informed people think they have to do something wrong, or stupid, or insecure to get hacked—like clicking on the wrong attachments, or browsing malicious websites. People also think that the NSA and its international partners are the only ones who have turned the internet into a militarized zone. But according to research I am releasing today at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, many of these commonly held beliefs are not necessarily true. The only thing you need to do to render your computer’s secrets—your private conversations, banking information, photographs—transparent to prying eyes is watch a cute cat video on YouTube, and catch the interest of a nation-state or law enforcement agency that has $1 million or so to spare. To understand why, you have to realize that even in today’s increasingly security-conscious internet, much of the traffic is still unencrypted. You might be surprised to learn that even popular sites that advertise their use of encryption frequently still serve some unencrypted content or advertisements. While people now recognize that unencrypted traffic can be monitored, they may not recognize that it also serves as a direct path into compromising their computers. Companies such as Hacking Team and FinFisher sell devices called “network injection appliances.” These are racks of physical machines deployed inside internet service providers around the world, which allow for the simple exploitation of targets. In order to do this, they inject malicious content into people’s everyday internet browsing traffic. One way that Hacking Team accomplishes this is by taking advantage of unencrypted YouTube video streams to compromise users. The Hacking Team device targets a user, waits for that user to watch a YouTube clip like the one above, and intercepts that traffic and replaces it with malicious code that gives the operator total control over the target’s computer without his or her knowledge. The machine also exploits Microsoft’s login.live.com web site in the same manner. Fortunately for their users, both Google and Microsoft were responsive when alerted that commercial tools were being used to exploit their services, and have taken steps to close the vulnerability by encrypting all targeted traffic. There are, however, many other vectors for companies like Hacking Team and FinFisher to exploit. In today’s internet, there are few excuses for any company to serve content unencrypted. Any unencrypted traffic can be maliciously tampered with in a manner that is invisible to the average user. The only way to solve this problem is for web providers to offer fully encrypted services."-Morgan Marquis-Boire, Canada, journalist, The Intercept, International
25. "Since 2006, police have acquired 860+ armored vehicles, 94k machine guns."-Cemter for Investigative Reporting, USA @nytimes: http://ow.ly/AiVfY  #Ferguson #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/1ZzmVaV7Te
26. "One plaintiff was told he would not be removed from no fly list unless he spied for US in Libya: http://interc.pt/Y9VjqP"-Jeremy Scahill, USA, journalist and co-founder,The Intercept, International
27. "The brave Andrew Cuomo tells Palestinians he unfortunately won't have time to visit them on his #StandWithIsrael#StandWithIsrael Trip" -Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International 
28. "An Iranian-born mathematician has become the first woman to win math’s highest honor. Stanford University professor Maryam Mirzakhani said in a statement that she hopes her winning of the Fields Medal will encourage other young female scientists and mathematicians."-Amy Goodman, USA, journalist and co-founder, Democracy Now!, USA
29. "As you can imagine, being detained in various ways in this country without charge for four years, and in this embassy for two years, which has no outside area, and therefore no sunlight, as a result of the obstruction that is presently in place by the U.K., I am leaving the embassy soon, but perhaps not for the reasons that the Murdoch press and Sky News are saying at the moment."-Julian Assange, Australis, on his seeking to soon leave the Ecuador embassy in London, UK, to be treated for life-trheatineing heart and lung ailments after a 6-year detention in UK, the last two year of which have been inside the embassy, UK
30. "Well, I have concerns in that it seems as though the only thing that really ripped Dred Scott away from history was massive uprising. One was a civil war, and then the next thing that happened was a civil rights movement. What would we think would happen if there was a civil rights movement now with the weapons of mass destruction that local officers have? If we could just imagine what would have happened if Bull Connor had an armored personnel carrier. We might not have had a civil rights movement. And then if we had it, it would have been short-lived. This is why we need the president to be far more aggressive, not just in trying to make both sides happy. No president in a civil rights crisis can make both sides happy. Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson—they all had to step in very powerfully and say that these are matters that have to be taken up at the federal level, at the legal level. There are specific things that need to be done, and those don’t involve just asking boys to act better or for there to be mentors. There’s only so much you can do holding up your hands against structural and long-term racial problems, that Ferguson has clearly shown. This is the end of post-racialism. The question is, is it the beginning of something else?"-Kimberlé Crenshaw, J.D., USA, professor of law; founder, African American Policy Forum, USA
31. "And let me just add, I think the thing that sparked this whole thing—let’s be clear. I was listening to somebody talking about the spark was—the spark was the release of the video of Michael Brown at the same time they released the name of the officer. That was the spark. We’re victimizing the victim. Today in America, theft—if that was Michael Brown on the video—theft is still not a penalty—the penalty for theft is still not death in America, no matter how you cut it. We call it armed robbery. What I clearly saw was shoplifting. And we had a young man who’s unarmed that’s shoplifting. My children—I’m a father of four boys. My children went in a store and took some candy; I hope, I thank God, that they didn’t suffer the penalty of death for taking some candy. Neither should Michael Brown suffer the penalty of death for taking some cigars, if he took them at all. And so, releasing that video and victimizing the victim has caused outrage in our community."-Rev. Clinton Stancil, USA, senior pastor, Wayman AME Church, St. Louis,  MO, calling for the resignation of Ferguson, MO police chief Thomas Jackson over multiple errors in the wake of the shooting of unarmed African American teen Michael Brown and subsequent community outrage over a militarized police response to peaceful protesters, USA
32. "As anger erupted again on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, a human rights team from Amnesty International worked on the ground in the US for the first time ever. Confrontation flared up after an autopsy found that Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager who was fatally shot by an officer on 9 August, had suffered at six bullet wounds including one in the top of his head. Eye-witnesses report seeing police, with no visible ID badges, hurling tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters and threatening members of the press in another night of demonstrations. Amnesty International, said it would be observing police and protester activity and gathering testimonies as well as training local activists 'on methods of non-violent protest' in an 'unprecedented”'move by the campaigners. Amnesty International USA's Executive Director, Steven W Hawkins said that the 'people of Ferguson have the right to protest peacefully the lack of accountability for Michael Brown’s shooting.' Jasmine Heiss, one of the 13-strong team sent by Amnesty, told Buzzfeed that the limits placed on the organisation’s access to post-curfew areas was indicative of 'the overall lack of transparency in this investigation.' 'Law enforcement, from the FBI to state and local police, are obligated to respect and uphold the human rights of our communities,' Mr Hawkins said in a statement on 14 August.  'The US cannot continue to allow those obligated and duty-bound to protect to become those who their community fears most,' said Amnesty International USA's executive director, Steven W. Hawkins.' #Ferguson -Natasha Cluzac, UK, journalist, The Independent, reporting on the ongoing protests against the police shooting of unamred African-American teen Michael Brown and the continued militarized policing overreaction to peaceful protesters, Ferguson, MO, USA
33. "Carol Burris and Biana Tanis take a close look at New York’s Common Core tests and find them deeply flawed. Burris is a high school principal on Long Island and Tanis is a public school parent and special education teacher in the Hudson Valley. State officials celebrated paltry results: the passing rates on the reading test were flat and increased in math by 4.6%. But nearly 2/3 of the state’s children did not reach the state’s unreasonably high proficiency level. Testing experts and state officials knew in advance what the results would be. Why do they stubbornly cling to the outworn cliche that raising the bar improves achievement? We thought that idea was discredited by the abject failure of NCLB. If a runner can’t clear a four-foot bar, how will he clear a six-foot bar? Burris and Tanis show that certain groups, such as students with disabilities and English language learners, did very poorly. The content was far beyond their capacity. Fifty percent of the questions were released, and the authors show that many were age-inappropriate. What is the logic of giving 7th grade content to a 5th grader? Here is an example: 'In addition to passage difficulty, the questions themselves required skills out of the reach for many young children. Consider this fourth-grade question on the test based on a passage from Pecos Bill Captures the Pacing White Mustang by Leigh Peck.

    Why is Pecos Bill’s conversation with the cowboys important to the story?

    A) It predicts the action in paragraph 4

    B) It predicts the action in paragraph 5

    C) It predicts the choice in paragraph 10

    D) It predicts the choice in paragraph 11

    Visualize the steps required to answer this question. First, 9-year-olds must flip back to the conversation and re-read it. Next, they must go back to the question and then flip back to paragraph 4. Complete this step 3 more times, each time remembering the original question. In addition to remembering the content of each paragraph, they must also be mindful that choices A and B refer to the action in the related paragraph, while choices C and D refer to a choice. Similar questions were on the third-grade test. Questions such as these are better suited to assess one’s ability to put together a chair from Ikea than they are to assess student’s understanding of what they read.' Is it any wonder that parent anger towards the Common Core is growing in New York? This is a blue state; these parents are outraged by a state policy that labels their children as failures based on tests that are developmentally inappropriate. Why does the state want 2/3 of its children to be branded as failures? If this is what Common Core means, it will have a short life indeed. It may be fine for the kids bound for the Ivy League, but most kids are not. We need common sense more than Common Core."-Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., USA, professor of education, author, social critic, USA

34. "Our intention is to really build a movement here … our goal in the long run is for the workers themselves to refuse to unload that ship, stand with us, and take a position against Israeli apartheid.”-Laura Kiwasani, USA, Oakland CA activist organizing union workers against unloading Israeli ship trying to unload at Port of Oakland due to Israel government atrociities against Palestinians, USA
    
35. It’s hypocritical. A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin. They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistleblowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.” -James Riesen, USA, journalist under threat of criminal trial for resuing to disclose a source in response to a question about why the Obama administration attempts to use the Espionage Act to imprison reporters and whistleblowers but refuses to act on use of torture by the CIA on terrorism suspects and CIA spying on US Senate staff, USA
36. "I do not think there is a will [in Britain] to find a solution....British government hasn't taken any steps in that direction. We have made proposals, we have submitted documents, and all we have seen on the part of the British government is an increase in security to make sure Julian Assange does not leave the embassy, but there has been no political will or any steps taken towards a diplomatic solution to this....Everyone around the world knows that the rights of Julian Assange have been violated."-Ricardo Patino, Ecuador, foreign minister, on the UK's refusal to allow Julian Assange safe passage to Ecuador from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been forced to reside fearing unfair arrest due to his political views and journalistic activities with Wikileaks, Ecuador
    
37. "If you blinked at the end of June, you may have missed one of the best pieces of journalism in 2014. The New York Times headline accompanying the story was almost criminally bland, but the content itself was extraordinary: A top manager at Blackwater, the notorious defense contractor, openly threatened to kill a US State Department official in 2007 if he continued to investigate Blackwater’s corrupt dealings in Iraq. Worse, the US government sided with Blackwater and halted the investigation. Blackwater would later go on to infamously wreak havoc in Iraq. But what makes the story that much more remarkable is that its author, journalist James Risen, got it published amidst one the biggest legal battles over press freedom in decades – a battle that could end with the Justice Department forcing him into prison as early as this fall. It could make him the first American journalist forced into jail by the federal government since Judith Miller nearly a decade ago. For years, the Justice Department, first under the Bush administration and now under Obama, has been aggressively pursuing Risen to testify against one of his alleged sources who is the subject of a lead prosecution. Risen’s most well-known scoop is the one that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2006: exposing the Bush-era illegal warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, under threat of Espionage Act prosecution.  But the Justice Department has been officially pursuing him about another story for years – a tale first published around the same time, in his book State of War. In a riveting chapter that the Guardian excerpted at the time, Risen recounts the story of a spectacularly botched CIA operation wherein a Russian defector under US government control ends up essentially handing over near complete nuclear bomb blueprints to Iran. Yes, you read that right.....As Risen wrote in a compelling affadavit for his case, to root out his sources, the government has accessed his phone records, along with his email records, and even his credit card statements. He has been harassed for more than five years, from a Republican administration to a Democratic one for doing a single thing: vowing to protect his sources, the quintessential duty of any decent reporter. The case has become one of the great shames of Obama’s Justice Department, which has pursued Risen with increased vigor, and in the process, done irreparable damage to the rights of every US journalist – indeed, to the rights of every American who wants to know newsworthy events which its government deliberately keeps in the shadows.

    In 2012, when appealing Risen’s victory in lower court, the Justice Department argued that not only should Risen be forced to testify, but that in national security cases, reporter’s privilege – the right of journalists to keep sources confidential, like doctors do with their patients – should not exist at all. The government even compared journalists to someone receiving drugs from a dealer....Despite the court’s initial skepticism, the Justice Department convinced the Fourth Circuit to eviscerate reporter's privilege in its jurisdiction. The case will no doubt have lasting and profound consequences for the public’s right to know about the government’s national security policy, as the Fourth Circuit covers Maryland and Virginia, where many of the nation’s best national security reporters live and work. The region is home to Ft Meade and Langley. Think of any major story involving the NSA and CIA that has broke in the past decade and it’s likely it originated within the Fourth Circuit. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping. CIA secret prisons and torture. If Edward Snowden returns to the US, his trial will likely happen in the Fourth Circuit. Now think about reporters in this Circuit being left without any semblance of legal protection, of them being called to the stand and compelled to give up their source in any leak case – which are being prosecuted at a record pace. After the US supreme court declined to take up his case last month, Risen has exhausted his appeals. He now awaits the Justice Department’s final decision as to whether to call him to the stand. If he refuses, as he has vowed to, he will face contempt of court, which could result in steep fines of thousands of dollars per day, or imprisonment up to 18 months....This week, nearly 20 Pulitzer prize winners nearly 20 Pulitzer Prize winners have come to Risen’s defense, issuing stirring statements of support and calling on the Justice Department to drop its case once and for all. An additional 100,000 citizens have signed a petition calling on the Justice Department to drop its demand that he testify. At a press conference on Thursday, many of the country’s major press freedom organizations (including the one at which I work) will present the petition to the Justice Department and again call on them to drop the case. If there’s one issue journalists can unabashedly support without fear of being labeled as 'biased,' it’s cases like this that strike at the heart of their own rights as reporters. Tell the Justice Department to live up to its pledge: Stop pursuing James Risen. Period."-Trevor Timm, J.D., USA, executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA

38. "In Pluto's diary on the life of Michael Brown, you might notice one detail that's both touching and disturbing: 'Mike's graduation photograph was taken in March 2014, still many months ahead of when he would be able to graduate in August. Imagine the "why" of this fact: The grinding poverty in Mike's world only allowed Normandy High School to acquire two graduation gowns to be shared by the entire class. The students passed a gown from one to the other. Each put the gown on, in turn, and sat before the camera to have their graduation photographs taken. Until it was Mike's turn.' What kind of American school would have to share robes across the entire senior class? The kind that's been the subject of a lot of attention from the state board of education. This district was created by merging two of the poorest, most heavily minority districts around St. Louis—Normandy and Wellston. The poverty rate for families sending their kids to Normandy Schools was 92 percent. At Wellston School District, the poverty rate was 98 percent. Every single student in the Wellston district was African American.  
    Still, the state education board voted to merge the districts in 2010 (the first change to state school district boundaries in thirty-five years). Plagued by white flight, crashing property values that destroyed tax revenues, and a loss of state funds as the better-off residents of the area sent their children to private schools, the resulting district isn't just short of gowns, it's short of everything. Residents of the district voted again and again to raise their own property taxes, until their rates were actually the highest in the state, but a higher percentage of nothing was still nothing, and district revenues trended steadily down. After the merger, the state board proceeded with the next step on their plan. In 2012, they rated Normandy as a failed district, removed its accreditation, and placed it under direct state control. The idea was to reform the district to the state board's design, only there was one problem: the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled that students in a failed district had the right to go to other districts. Hundreds of Normandy students signed up to do just that, heading for classrooms in surrounding districts, some of which were majority white. At first, this generated tension: "News of the Supreme Court’s upholding of the transfer law initially sparked anger and fear among some white Francis Howell parents. 'I deserve to not have to worry about my children getting stabbed, or taking a drug, or getting robbed,' one mother said during a school board meeting, referring to the prospective arrival of Normandy students. 'We don’t want this here in Francis Howell,' another parent said."But for the most part that attitude didn't last. Normandy students settled in at their new districts, and despite a financial drain—Normandy had to cover the cost of transportation and pay tuition to the other districts for those students who transferred—things seemed on an upswing in the district "...the remaining students and school community came together to celebrate a spirit of new beginnings. They held pep rallies and welcome-back-to-school gatherings. Students at Normandy High School said they began tutoring each other to improve the school’s academic ranking..." Indeed, walking the halls of Normandy High School at the beginning of the school year, there was a sense of optimism despite the dire state of things. Well, you know what they say about optimists. Read below the fold for what happened next. Funding the transfer students was costing the district more than it cost to educate students within the district. Part of that was transportation, but most of it was the simple fact that other districts spent far more on their students than the poverty-stricken Normandy district. The state board of education took over the district's finances, but rather than providing a new stream of revenue, they figured out a simple way to reduce costs: "On Friday afternoon, the board met in a hastily called meeting to change the Normandy’s accreditation status -- or at least how that accreditation is described. Normandy now has 'accreditation as a state oversight district,' the revised June minutes now read." Get that? The state board, which had taken away the accreditation, now argued that Normandy was accredited, magically, without having the district actually meet any of the standards they had set. How did that happen?: “The Missouri State Board of Education, pursuant to its statutory authority to waive its rules, including those regulating accreditation, has accredited the Normandy Schools Collaborative and thus its schools,” the state’s motion to the court says. “Because of that accreditation, the Plaintiffs are not entitled to relief.… ”The school is now accredited because the board has the right to ignore the law the board claimed it was enforcing in the first place, and parents now have no right to transfer their kids to another district ... because the school is accredited. Naturally, the case is headed back to court. And if the accreditation by decree isn't enough for you, there's another bit of magic applied by the board. That transfer law? It only applies to school districts. But see, Normandy Schools are no longer in a school district. Normandy schools are now in a special collaborative and, according to the state board, "are not in any district in this state." So there you go. You can transfer from a district if you're not in a district, and if you happen to be in a district, it's magically accredited. Problem solved. So who actually runs Michael Brown's school district? Well, the president of the board of education is Peter F. Herschend of Branson, Missouri. Herschend isn't a former teacher, or a former principal, and doesn't have any training in the education field. He's the owner of  Herschend Family Entertainment, which runs Silver Dollar City and other amusement parks. He's also one of the biggest contributors to the Republican Party in the state. So, when you're wondering who runs Michael Brown's school district—when you're wondering who's in control of an urban, minority district so poor that the students have only two graduation gowns to share—it's a white Republican millionaire from out state.-Mark Sumner, USA, journalist, Daily Kos, USA
39. "The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a serious menace about which a small number of people have been loudly warning for years, with little attention or traction. In a 2007 paper on 'the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement,' the criminal justice professor Peter Kraska defined 'police militarization' as 'the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model.' The harrowing events of the last week in Ferguson, Missouri – the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager, Mike Brown, and the blatantly excessive and thuggish response to ensuing community protests from a police force that resembles an occupying army – have shocked the U.S. media class and millions of Americans. But none of this is aberrational. It is the destructive by-product of several decades of deliberate militarization of American policing, a trend that received a sustained (and ongoing) steroid injection in the form of a still-flowing, post-9/11 federal funding bonanza, all justified in the name of 'homeland security.' This has resulted in a domestic police force that looks, thinks, and acts more like an invading and occupying military than a community-based force to protect the public. As is true for most issues of excessive and abusive policing, police militarization is overwhelmingly and disproportionately directed at minorities and poor communities, ensuring that the problem largely festers in the dark. Americans are now so accustomed to seeing police officers decked in camouflage and Robocop-style costumes, riding in armored vehicles and carrying automatic weapons first introduced during the U.S. occupation of Baghdad, that it has become normalized. But those who bear the brunt of this transformation are those who lack loud megaphones; their complaints of the inevitable and severe abuse that results have largely been met with indifference. If anything positive can come from the Ferguson travesties, it is that the completely out-of-control orgy of domestic police militarization receives long-overdue attention and reining in."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
40. "Bouts of gunfire rang out around Ferguson throughout Sunday night and early Monday morning. Three people were injured and a series of shops and restaurants were vandalised and looted. Heavily armed police repeatedly fired teargas and rubber bullets during running battles with the crowds. Several people were arrested for failing to disperse and journalists were detained and threatened by police with guns."-Jon Swaine, UK and Rory Carroll, UK, journalists, The Guardian, reprorting from Ferguson, MO, USA
    
41. "Our heads hang in shame when we hear about rapes....Why can't we prevent this? When a daughter steps out, parents demand to know where she's going. But when a son returns home, does anyone dare ask where he is coming from? He might have been with the wrong people, doing wrong things. After all, a person raping is someone's son. Why don't parents apply the same yardstick of good behavior for their sons as for their daughters?...The law will take its own course, but as a society every parent has a responsibility to teach their sons the difference between right and wrong....Look at our sex ratio – 1,000 men to 940 women....Who is creating this imbalance in society? Not the Almighty. I appeal to doctors not to kill the girl child....We are in the 21st century and yet there is still no dignity for women as they have to go out in the open to defecate and they have to wait for darkness to fall. Can you imagine the number of problems they have to face because of this?" Narendra Modi, India, prime minister, delivering annual Indpendence Day speech challenging the country to end sexism in the form of brutal gang rapes and murders of women, infanticides, and a call for universal indoor plumbing to decrease rapes, India
42. "Ahmed Husseini, a student who lost several friends at Rabaa, said: "The way they started the dispersal, it wasn't a way of ending a sit-in. It was a means of revenge. We had only ever seen people getting shot like this in a video game – I never thought I'd see it in reality."-Ahmed Husseini, Egypt, a student who lost several friends in the government's massacre of peaceful protesers quoted from a Human Rights Watch report that the August 2013 Rabaa massacre of 817 protesers was premediated by Egypt security forces, Egypt
    
43. "New parents be warned: It could cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars to raise your child -- and that's not even including the cost of college. To raise a child born in 2013 to the age of 18, it will cost a middle-income couple just over $245,000, according to newly released estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's up $4,260, or almost 2%, from the year before. Estimates can vary widely depending on where you live and how much you earn. High-income families who live in the urban Northeast, for example, are projected to spend nearly $455,000 to raise their child to the age of 18, while low-income rural families will spend much less, an estimated $145,500, according to the report. The figures are based on the cost of housing, food, transportation, clothing, health care, education, child care and miscellaneous expenses, like haircuts and cell phones. But the estimates don't include the cost of college -- a big-ticket expense that keeps rising. The good news: overall costs have grown more slowly in recent years thanks to low inflation, said economist Mark Lino, who has written the annual report for the USDA since 1987. But many families are still having to do more with less. The country's median income remains more than 8% below where it was before the recession, while child care and health care costs continue to grow faster than inflation. Child care, in particular, is a huge burden -- often costing as much as the family home. In 2012, center-based care for one infant was greater than median rent payments in nearly half of the states, according to Child Care Aware of America's most recent report. In Seattle, Britta Gidican and her boyfriend spend $1,380 each month on daycare for their 17-month-old son, just $20 less than they spend on their mortgage each month. 'When I was pregnant I knew daycare would be expensive,' said Gidican, a public relations manager. 'But I didn't expect to pay two mortgages.' Rising transportation and food costs are also eating up a big chunk of family budgets. Gas prices have nearly doubled since 2004, according to the AAA. Meanwhile, food prices have increased more than 13% since 2008, according to the USDA, and make up the third biggest child-rearing expense in the agency's estimate."-Melanie Hicken, USA, journalist, USA
    
44. "We welcome the opportunity to expose the many lies and misrepresentations about tenure laws and establish, once and for all, the plain truth: Tenure is an absolutely necessary safeguard for teachers, for students and for quality public schools."-Karen Magee, USA, teacher, American Federation of Teachers union vice president, New York State United Teachers union president, parent, USA
    
45. "As part of  America's posture of Endless War, Americans have been trained to believe that everything is justified on the “battlefield” (now defined to mean 'the whole world'): imprisonment without charges, kidnapping, torture, even assassination of U.S. citizens without trials.  It is not hard to predict the results of importing this battlefield mentality onto American soil, aimed at American citizens: 'From Warfighter to Crimefighter.' The results have been clear for those who have looked – or those who have been subject to this – for years. The events in Ferguson are, finally, forcing all Americans to watch the outcome of this process."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
46. "There's also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protesters or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights."--Barack Obama, J.D., USA,  community organizer, attorney, professor, parent, President, USA
    
47. "On Saturday, local police fatally shot an unarmed African-American 18-year-old named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In the days that followed, there have been massive protests in Ferguson and heavily armed SWAT teams are roaming the streets in response. Our communities are not warzones. And yet the police, armed to the teeth, treat us like the enemy, especially if we're black, young, poor or homeless. Tanks are rolling through our towns. What will it take for police to start protecting communities of color, not waging war on them? Part of the problem is that the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice are funneling billions of dollars to state and local law enforcement agencies every year to help them purchase military weaponry and equipment. What business do the DOD, DHS, and DOJ have funding a war here at home? The scene in Ferguson is tense; the presence of what looks like a military force doesn't seem to be helping. When did 'protect and serve' turn into 'us versus them?' 'Bring it. You f***ing animals, bring it,' one police officer was caught on video telling protesters. In Ferguson and beyond, police officers are waging war through racial profiling and hyper-aggressive tactics. And the sad truth is that the scene isn't much different than the 1950s, with police using fire hoses and billy clubs to beat back civil rights protestors. The weaponry has changed, but the targets are still the same. Ersula Ore. Eric Garner. Jahmil-El Cuffee. Rosan Miller. Marlene Pinnock. Al Flowers. Alonzo Grant. This is just a sample of the men and women who have been savagely and unnecessarily beaten or even killed by police officers across America this summer. Enough is enough. With our country's long history of aggressive policing in communities of color, it shouldn't surprise us that these wartime tools and tactics are hitting poor and black neighborhoods hardest. To start undoing the damage, the feds need to stop funding this war. Good policing is about trust, which has been severely eroded through the use of excessive force and police brutality. If police forces across America continue to militarize and treat communities of color as the enemy, they will increasingly be seen as an occupying army. Stopping the funding and incentivizing of police militarization is a crucial first step to ending this war."-Anthony Romero, J.D., USA, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
48. "Last night, St. Louis and Ferguson police — dressed in camouflage and equipped with armored tanks and military rifles — fired tear gas, rubber coated bullets, and flash grenades at thousands of Black residents exercising their right to peacefully assemble and demand accountability for the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Many were injured in the war-like environment as police displayed a blatant disregard for civil rights — unlawfully arresting dozens of people including members of the press. Local authorities have proven incapable and the federal government must step in."-Matt Nelson, USA, Color of Change, USA
    
49. "A new report accuses the U.S. military of failing to investigate or punish its soldiers for apparent war crimes in Afghanistan. The report by Amnesty International examined cases involving more than 140 civilian deaths, none of which resulted in prosecutions by the U.S. military. In one case, a U.S. plane bombed women and girls collecting firewood, killing seven of them. In another, a former prisoner described torture and killings while he was held by U.S. Special Forces in Wardak province. Amnesty International research director Nicola Duckworth said Afghan families are left without information or recourse when their loved ones are killed, 'The focus is on Afghan victims who have been left in the dark, without information and without access to justice, and how the deeply flawed U.S. military system is a fundamental part of the reason why this is happening."-Amy Goodman, USA,  journalist, Democracy Now!, USA, reporting on Afghanistan
50. "Egyptian security forces intentionally killed at least 817 protesters during last August's Rabaa massacre, in a premeditated attack equal to or worse than China's Tiananmen Square killings in 1989, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has argued in a report. The 195-page investigation based on interviews with 122 survivors and witnesses has found Egypt's police and army 'systematically and deliberately killed largely unarmed protesters on political grounds' in actions that 'likely amounted to crimes against humanity.' The report recommends that several senior individuals within Egypt's security apparatus be investigated and, where appropriate, held to account for their role in the planning of both the Rabaa massacre adn others that occurred last summer– including Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Egypt's then defence minister and new president. As head of the army at the time, Sisi had overall responsibility for the army's role at Rabaa, and has publicly acknowledged spending 'very many long days to discuss all the details'.-Patrick Kingsley, UK, journalist, reporting from Egypt
51. "The Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset overtly calls for camps and ethnic cleansing for Palestinians" http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/05/the-last-and-first-temptation-of-israel/ …"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
52. "This is not China or Russia or Syria....This is America, and in this country we have a right to protest in an orderly non-violent fashion.”-Rep. John Lewis, (D-GA), USA, commenting on the illegal police shootings of peaceful protesters and arrests of journalists covering the murder by police of unarmed 18 year-old African American male Michael Brown, Ferguson, MO, USA
    
53.  “In addition to a legal response from the Department of Justice, there is a need for moral and political leadership from the executive branch, from Obama and Holder. We think the federal government should show moral leadership by making clear statements about what policing should look like.”-Ejim Dike,  USA, director of US Human Rights Network, USA
    
54. "When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury – national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture – we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands."-Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), USA, commenting on the militaeized overraction by thte mostly White Ferguson , MO police force toward peaceful protesters and arrested journalists  covering protests against the Michael Brown murder, USA
55. "We're outraged because yet again a young African-American man has been killed by law enforcement."-John Gaskin, USA,  NAACP St. Louis County, MO, and national boards of directors, on the police shooting of 18 year unarmed Michael Brown, USA, in Ferguson, MO, USA
56. "The US government is rapidly acquiring biometric data on the million+ people in its secret database. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/ …"-Jeremy Scahill, USA, journalist, The Intercept, International
57. "Israel's war criminality becoming so extreme that not even US Govt can avoid publicly condemning it now"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
58. "Being nice to the wealthy and cruel to the poor is not, it turns out, the key to economic growth. On the contrary, making our economy fairer would also make it richer. Goodbye, trickle-down; hello, trickle-up."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
    
59. "It’s a hideous atrocity, sadistic, vicious, murderous, totally without any credible pretext. It’s another one of the periodic Israeli exercises in what they delicately call 'mowing the lawn.' That means shooting fish in the pond, to make sure that the animals stay quiet in the cage that you’ve constructed for them, after which you go to a period of what’s called 'ceasefire,' which means that Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel concedes, while Israel continues to violate it. Then it’s broken by an Israeli escalation, Hamas reaction. Then you have period of 'mowing the lawn.' This one is, in many ways, more sadistic and vicious even than the earlier ones."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., USA, professor emeritus of linguistics, author, social critic on the illegal Israel war against Palestine, USA
60. "Look, it’s devastation which is both physical and emotional. What we’re seeing physically, you’ve seen on your TV sets. And unfortunately, we need to get scores of site engineers out into the field before I can make an empirical determination and tell you exactly how many homes have been destroyed, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence. And the fact that people are leaving our shelters, going out and then coming back suggests that they’re going back to destroyed homes. And don’t forget, these were homes they were told to leave, in leaflets that were dropped by the Israeli army. Well, it now would appear, at least from this anecdotal evidence, that a lot of those homes—and we estimate the homes of about 10,000 people—have been destroyed or damaged. So, we’re now in a situation where this catastrophic human displacement crisis is morphing into something equally disturbing for us, which is a huge homelessness crisis. As far as the psychological scars are concerned, imagine being a child in Gaza. If you are just five years old, three times in your short and fragile life you will have been subjected to this extraordinarily terrifying and traumatizing bombardment that we’ve seen in Gaza. We estimate that there are about 400,000 children deep in trauma. So, yes, it’s important to look at the physical nature of the destruction, but also—and I fear it’s going to last a lot longer—the psychological nature of the destruction."-Christopher Gunness, spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Palestine
61. "In Cambodia, a U.N.-backed tribunal has sentenced the two highest-ranking surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime to life in prison for crimes against humanity. The Khmer Rouge killed at least 1.7 million Cambodians during the late 1970s. More than three decades later, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan are the first leaders to be convicted."-Amy Goodman, USA, journalist/co-founder, Democracy Now!, International, Cambodia
62. "The population here is asking: 'You said there was no cure for Ebola, but the Americans are curing it?'"-Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia, assistant health minister, after the country has declared a health emergency along with the World Health Organization on the spread of Ebola in West African countries, on word that two US missionaries in Liberia are receiving an experiemental drug that is helping them to fight their Ebola diagnoses but that experimental drug is not being given to Africans also living with Ebola, Liberia
63. "Gaza isn't the only place where Israeli is killing Palestinians: also killing West Bank protesters with live ammo" http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/03/israel-shooting-deaths-after-west-bank-protest-0 … -Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept,International
64. "The massive death and destruction in Gaza have shocked and shamed the world."-Ban Ki-Moon, South Korea, U.N. Secretary-General, International
65. "In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid....To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by 'apartheid' you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce.…The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them. They want them out, or at least in prison."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., USA, professor emeritus of linguistics, author, social critic, USA
66. "A few weeks ago Steven Salaita had reason to be pleased.  After a full review by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he had received a generous offer of a tenured, associate professor position there — the normal contract was offered, signed by the school, he had received confirmation of his salary, a teaching schedule, everything except the final approval of the UIUC chancellor.

    In academia this is not at all unusual; departments and schools are told to go ahead with the offer, so as to be competitive with both the candidate’s current school and others that might be bidding for their talent.  Salaita is a world-renowned scholar of indigenous studies (and also a frequent Salon contributor). At that point, as required by academic protocols, upon accepting the position he resigned the one he held at Virginia Tech. But final approval never came.  The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today that “Phyllis M. Wise, the campus’s chancellor, and Christophe Pierre, the University of Illinois system’s vice president for academic affairs, informed the job candidate, Steven G. Salaita, on Friday that they were effectively revoking a written offer of a tenured professorship made to him last year by refusing to submit it to the system’s Board of Trustees next month for confirmation.” According to Inside Higher Education: “Sources familiar with the university’s decision say that concern grew over the tone of his comments on Twitter about Israel’s policies in Gaza. While many academics at Illinois and elsewhere are deeply critical of Israel, Salaita’s tweets have struck some as crossing a line into uncivil behavior.”  Nevertheless, IHE goes on to report: “But as recently as July 22 (before the job offer was revoked), a university spokeswoman defended Salaita’s comments on Twitter and elsewhere. A spokeswoman told the News-Gazette for an article about Salaita that “faculty have a wide range of scholarly and political views, and we recognize the freedom-of-speech rights of all of our employees." With both the university and Salaita keeping quiet on the details of the firing at the moment, it’s hard to tell what exactly changed the university’s mind.  But it would seem that Salaita would be doubly protected from summary firing.  First of all, no matter how “uncivil,” “disagreeable” or even repugnant some of his tweets might appear to some people, they are nonetheless protected under the First Amendment.  This holds true for all individuals.  But Salaita is also protected by  academic freedom, a concept enshrined in American institutions of higher education. Not only that, Salaita would be protected as a tenured professor, had it not been for his being caught between resigning from Virginia Tech and being formally hired by UIUC.  The concepts of academic freedom and tenure go hand in hand — both are aimed at guaranteeing professors the freedom to found new knowledge, which is often only possible by critically examining old knowledge and continually retesting norms and assumptions, without fear of reprisals from entrenched interests, or from those who might be threatened or offended.  Besides the lofty ideals of the pursuit of knowledge, academic freedom and tenure have practical goals as well — they assure that no professor will lose their livelihood for taking unpopular stances.  In sum, then, Salaita was on firm ground according to all the norms and protocols for both free speech and academic freedom. But his tweets had indeed offended not a few, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which wrote to UI president Robert Easter accusing Salaita of being anti-Semitic and declaring that  “such outrageous statements present a real danger to the entire campus community, especially to its Jewish students.”  Here is where things start to blur, and to blur in ways that make this issue much more than simply a matter for the ivory tower.  We see a deliberate confusion of a private individual’s thoughts and beliefs and their professional life.  Despite the fears of the Wiesenthal Center, there has been no proof whatsoever that Salaita’s tweets would be required reading in the classroom. Or that his political views would be force-fed to the students.  Furthermore, the “danger” mentioned here is extremely vague.  What is deeply troubling in this case is the influence of outside agencies and organizations on a university decision, and the absolute lack of transparency on the part of the university. As I have written elsewhere, some groups have attempted to use Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to wage legal battles against pro-boycott and pro-divestment protesters, precisely on the grounds that those protests “threatened” Jewish students:

    Historically, the Act was used during the 1960s to desegregate public schools in the South. It prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin, but does not include religion. But in October 2010, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan re-affirmed a set of guidelines initially promulgated in September 2004 that “applies Title VI … to the protection of Jewish students from anti-Semitism on campuses… Under the Department of Education guidelines, the Civil Rights Act can be invoked if anti-Jewish behavior is considered to be based on shared ethnic characteristics.”

    After those new guidelines were put in place, several complaints were filed with the US Department of Education asserting that things like “Israel Apartheid Week” and divestment protests were anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic. Those filing the complaints argued that such events created a threatening campus climate for Jewish students, and were emotionally damaging. For example, at UC Santa Cruz Tammi Rossman-Benjamin filed a complaint, arguing that “As a result of their experiences with such university-sponsored, anti-Semitic expression, Jewish students at my university have expressed feeling emotionally and intellectually harassed and intimidated by their professors, isolated from their fellow students and unfairly treated by administrators. Some have even reported leaving the university, dropping classes, changing fields of study and hiding symbols of their Jewishness.”

    Despite this and several other attempts to deploy the new guidelines, as noted in an article published in March of 2012 in The Jewish Daily Forward, ”A year and a half after the federal government extended a landmark civil rights law to cover Jewish students, Jewish groups have yet to succeed in using this law against what they see as anti-Semitic anti-Israel activity on campus. A survey by the Forward has found that at least 10 anti-Semitism cases have been filed with either the Department of Education or in court under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In only one of these cases so far has the complainant been favored: a high school case in which Israel played no role.”

    The determination letter written to UC Berkeley by the DOE contains the most succinct statement possible. It found that the kinds of protest events that were the basis of complaint “constitute expression on matters of public concern directed to the University community. In the university environment, exposure to such robust and discordant expressions, even when personally offensive and hurtful, is a circumstance that a reasonable student in higher education may experience.”

    Thus, a case against Salaita based on the “danger” his tweets might pose to the university is vague and certainly not actionable. But above and beyond this academic exercise, do we really want our tweets or other social media communications used against us in ideological witch hunts?  Do we want to allow a cloud of suspicion to hang over our heads? Do we want to constantly be checking ourselves as we voice our opinions on social media, and worry that by advocating a certain political position our employment might be jeopardized?  By not protesting this instance, we are opening ourselves up to a world in which these kinds of denials of employment will be acceptable.  What use, then, will social media be but to be a platform for the most mild forms of expression and banality with regard to controversial subjects? Such acts of intimidation based on possible “danger” reek of the McCarthyite era, where Americans were asked to sign loyalty oaths, when unpopular opinions were considered “un-American,” and when neighbor sold out neighbor in fear of being named themselves. People in the U.S. denounced others rather than being incriminated themselves.  Indeed, some of the most prominent and courageous voices were in the entertainment and media industries, and many of them were Jewish, with socialist and communist interests.  Lives were ruined, writers and intellectuals were blacklisted. Names like Bernard Gordon, Ruth Gordon, Leonard Bernstein, Lillian Hellman, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, Abe Burrows, Lee J. Cobb, John Garfield, Harry Belafonte, Richard Attenborough show up on these lists. The end result is all the same: intimidation, silencing, censorship. Only this time the charge is not being a communist sympathizer, it is being a supporter of the Palestinian people.  Again, do we wish to have social media used to denounce others?

    Another deeply problematic issue in the Salaita case is the notion even if his tweets do not present a “danger,” they must be condemned because they are “uncivil.”  And this incivility is especially troubling because it is taking place in social media, not in academic journals.  While this might sound ridiculous, that is exactly the charge leveled against Salaita by UIUC professor Cary Nelson, who defended his university’s decision to fire Salaita.

    The IHE article mentioned above notes:

    Cary Nelson, a longtime English professor at Illinois and a past president of the American Association of University Professors, has defended many professors who hold unpopular views. But he has also in the past said that it was legitimate — at the point of hiring — to consider issues of civility and collegiality. In this case, he said, that would lead him to oppose Salaita’s appointment.

    “I think the chancellor made the right decision,” he said via email. “I know of no other senior faculty member tweeting such venomous statements — and certainly not in such an obsessively driven way. There are scores of over-the-top Salaita tweets. I also do not know of another search committee that had to confront a case where the subject matter of academic publications overlaps with a loathsome and foul-mouthed presence in social media. I doubt if the search committee felt equipped to deal with the implications for the campus and its students. I’m glad the chancellor did what had to be done.”

    What we find here is a mandatory litmus test of “civility and collegiality” at the point of hire.  One really has to wonder how that might be tested, and the wonderfully diverse faculty that would result.  In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nelson goes even further:

    “Academic freedom does not require you to hire someone whose views you consider despicable,” Mr. Nelson said. “It prevents you from firing someone from a job for their views.”

    “When Salaita tweets, ‘If you’re defending Israel right now, you’re an awful human being,’” Mr. Nelson said, “he issues a judgment about his future students that would justify them believing they would be academically at risk in expressing pro-Israeli views in class.”

    “It’s not a violation of academic freedom,” Mr. Nelson said, “to decide you don’t approve of someone’s publications or their public use of social media. It’s not a violation of academic freedom to decide not to hire someone with a deplorable role as a public intellectual.”

    No matter that he was once president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP — the organization that canonized “academic freedom” and “tenure” in the first place), this is an entirely idiosyncratic interpretation of academic freedom, which goes squarely against its ethos.  Academic freedom is meant to guarantee the universities are bastions of diverse opinions, commensurate with the liberal vision of education.  Indeed, as John Stuart Mill argued long ago, without vibrant disagreement and intelligent, knowledgeable diversity, societies become nothing more than complacent, conformist and dangerously single-minded. Nelson’s contention that if a professor’s opinions are known then students will live in fear of having different ones are not restricted to Salaita’s case.  This is probably true of some of Nelson’s students, in fact. The responsibility of a professor is to remain fair-minded, but not silent.  Finally, Nelson reserves for himself alone the mantle of “acceptable” “public intellectual.”  By determining which opinions are “civil” enough to be aired, he becomes the self-appointed censor of academia. But equally bizarre is the notion that even though Salaita’s academic publications met the search committee’s standards, his tweets did not.  Salaita’s scholarship was not only accepted by the university, he was offered a job on the basis of that scholarship and teaching record. Now, it seems, that even though Salaita’s academic publications met the search committee’s standards, his tweets did not; even though his book was considered excellent enough to help gain him a tenured appointment at the university, the opinions he made on social media were enough to fire him. Fortunately, his colleagues are used to this kind of behavior on Nelson’s part: Anita Levy, associate secretary in the AAUP’s department of academic freedom, tenure and governance, on Wednesday said Mr. Nelson “does not speak for the association.” Furthermore, again from the story in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education: “John K. Wilson, a co-editor of the AAUP’s blog, Academe … argued that Mr. Nelson generally can be counted on to stick up for a faculty member in Mr. Salaita’s position, but the former AAUP president appears to have ‘a blind spot’ when it comes to the academic freedom of critics of Israel.”  This is indeed the issue. As Corey Robin points out, “incivility” is a strange charge coming from Cary Nelson, who in another life vigorously (and to my mind, rightly) protested against using 'civility' as a litmus test.  Robin writes: "A man hwo once wrote that ‘claims about collegiality are being used to stifle campus debate, to punish faculty, and to silence the free exchange of opinion by the imposition of corporate-style conformity,’ now complains about an anti-Zionist professor’s ‘foul-mouthed presence in social media.’” Here is where we really get to the heart of the matter. As president of the AAUP Nelson actually defended (albeit belatedly) a professor who, after 9/11, wrote a manifesto declaring that the bombing of the World Trade Center was the proper retribution for America’s past deeds, and that those who perished there deserved to die because they were “little Eichmanns” working in the “techno-corps.”  Yes, Cary Nelson argued for Ward Churchill’s reinstatement.  So if he can do that for Ward Churchill, why can’t he for Steven Salaita?  Easy — it’s simply because Salaita’s target is not U.S. foreign policy or global capitalism, it is Israel.  One might forgive Nelson his base hypocrisy, if it were not for the fact that it comes at the expense of another person’s career and livelihood. Fortunately, the Illinois AAUP has issued an unambiguous defense of Salaita:

    The Illinois Conference Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors supports the honoring of the appointment of Steven G. Salaita in the American Indian Studies program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Reports that the university has voided a job offer, if accurate, due to tweets on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would be a clear violation of Professor Salaita’s academic freedom and an affront to free speech that we enjoy in this country…Professor Salaita’s words while strident and vulgar were an impassioned plea to end the violence currently taking place in the Middle East. Issues of life and death during bombardment educes significant emotions and expressions of concern that reflect the tragedy that armed conflict confers on its victims. Speech that is deemed controversial should be challenged with further speech that may abhor and challenge a statement. Yet the University of Illinois cannot cancel an appointment based upon Twitter statements that are protected speech in the United States of America.

    In the spirit of full disclosure, and to end this article on a fitting note, I co-authored a piece with Steven Salaita, I am proud to say.  In it, we wondered why all those college and university presidents who wrote letters condemning the American Studies Association for endorsing the academic boycott of Israel, saying that it harmed academic freedom, were not writing similar letters condemning the Israeli government’s actual physical attacks on and closures of universities in the Occupied Territories — a much more real, violent, destructive denial of academic freedom.  I’ll speak for myself here: All you university and college presidents, who cited the AAUP as your guiding light on that issue, what do you have to say now about the Salaita case? If you wish to support Professor Salaita, here is a petiton, which in 24 hours has gathered well over 6,000 signatures."

    https://www.change.org/petitions/phyllis-m-wise-we-demand-corrective-action-on-the-scandalous-firing-of-palestinian-american-professor-dr-steven-salaita

    -David Palumbo-Liu, Ph.D., USA, professor of comparative literature, USA

67. "Well, we are dealing with day-to-day occurrences, but we do not deal with the root of the matter. The root is that Israel is occupying the Palestinian territories—the territory of the West Bank and the territory of the Gaza Strip. As long as the occupation lasts, there will be no peace. In order to put an end to the occupation, you must make peace, peace between Israel and the Palestinian people. In order to achieve peace with the Palestinian people, Israel must end the occupation, withdraw from the Occupied Territories and enable the Palestinians to set up their own independent nation and state, the state of Palestine. That’s what it’s all about. Everything else flows from this basic problem...I believe, even today, that we can come to an agreement with the Palestinian people, including Hamas. You cannot ignore Hamas. People have maybe—people abroad and in Israel, too, have completely distorted people what Hamas is. Hamas is not a militia. Hamas is not a military organization. Hamas is a Palestinian political party, which in the last Palestinian elections, supervised by ex-President Carter, Hamas had a majority. Majority of the Palestinian people, including the Gaza Strip, voted for Hamas. When a Palestinian government was set up by Hamas, it was destroyed by Israel and the United States and Europe. It was brought down. It was then that Hamas took over power in the Gaza Strip by force, but it took power after it won a big majority in free elections in the Gaza Strip. So it’s much more complicated than just a fight between Israel and a military or terrorist or whatever-you-want-to-call-it organization. You cannot wish Hamas away. You can do to Hamas whatever you want. You can kill all the 10,000 fighters of Hamas. But Hamas will remain, because Hamas is an ideology, and Hamas is a political party accepted by the Palestinian people. So, in the end, whatever we do, in the end, after all the killing and after all this terrible destruction, in the end, we’ll have to talk with Hamas."-Uri Avnery, Israel, former member of the Knesset and founder of the peacemovement Gush Shalom, Israel
68. "What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society. Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the $2.3 billion he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider trading? On the other hand, what’s the worth to society of social workers who put in long and difficult hours dealing with patients suffering from mental illness or substance abuse? Probably higher than their average pay of $18.14 an hour, which translates into less than $38,000 a year. How much does society gain from personal-care aides who assist the elderly, convalescents, and persons with disabilities? Likely more than their average pay of $9.67 an hour, or just over $20,000 a year. What’s the social worth of hospital orderlies who feed, bathe, dress, and move patients, and empty their ben pans? Surely higher than their median wage of $11.63 an hour, or $24,190 a year. Or of child care workers, who get  $10.33 an hour, $21.490 a year? And preschool teachers, who earn $13.26 an hour, $27,570 a year? Yet what would the rest of us do without these dedicated people? Or consider kindergarten teachers, who make an average of $53,900 a year. Before you conclude that’s generous, consider that a good kindergarten teacher is worth his or her weight in gold, almost. One study found that children with outstanding kindergarten teachers are more likely to go to college and less likely to become single parents than a random set of children similar to them in every way other than being assigned a superb teacher. And what of writers, actors, painters, and poets? Only a tiny fraction ever become rich and famous. Most barely make enough to live on (many don’t, and are forced to take paying jobs to pursue their art). But society is surely all the richer for their efforts. At the other extreme are hedge-fund and private-equity managers, investment bankers, corporate lawyers, management consultants, high-frequency traders, and top Washington lobbyists. They’re getting paid vast sums for their labors. Yet it seems doubtful that society is really that much better off because of what they do. I don’t mean to sound unduly harsh, but I’ve never heard of a hedge-fund manager whose jobs entails attending to basic human needs (unless you consider having more money as basic human need) or enriching our culture (except through the myriad novels, exposes, and movies made about greedy hedge-fund managers and investment bankers). They don’t even build the economy. Most financiers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants are competing with other financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants in zero-sum games that take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another. They’re paid gigantic amounts because winning these games can generate far bigger sums, while losing them can be extremely costly. It’s said that by moving money to where it can make more money, these games make the economy more efficient. In fact, the games amount to a mammoth waste of societal resources. They demand ever more cunning innovations but they create no social value. High-frequency traders who win by a thousandth of a second can reap a fortune, but society as a whole is no better off. Meanwhile, the games consume the energies of loads of talented people who might otherwise be making real contributions to society — if not by tending to human needs or enriching our culture then by curing diseases or devising new technological breakthroughs, or helping solve some of our most intractable social problems. Graduates of Ivy League universities are more likely to enter finance and consulting than any other career. For example, in 2010 (the most recent date for which we have data) close to 36 percent of Princeton graduates went into finance (down from the pre-financial crisis high of 46 percent in 2006). Add in management consulting, and it was close to 60 percent. The hefty endowments of such elite institutions are swollen with tax-subsidized donations from wealthy alumni, many of whom are seeking to guarantee their own kids’ admissions so they too can become enormously rich financiers and management consultants. But I can think of a better way for taxpayers to subsidize occupations with more social merit: Forgive the student debts of graduates who choose social work, child care, elder care, nursing, and teaching."-Robert Reich, Ph.D., USA, professor of public policy, author, former cabinet secretary of labor, USA 
69. "(1) For those who ask “what should be done?,” has the hideous aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya– hailed as a grand success for “humanitarian interventions” – not taught the crucial lessons that (a) bombing for ostensibly “humanitarian” ends virtually never fulfills the claimed goals but rather almost always makes the situation worse; (b) the U.S. military is not designed, and is not deployed, for “humanitarian” purposes?; and (c) the U.S. military is not always capable of “doing something” positive about every humanitarian crisis even if that were really the goal of U.S. officials? The suffering in Iraq is real, as is the brutality of ISIS, and the desire to fix it is understandable. There may be some ideal world in which a superpower is both able and eager to bomb for humanitarian purposes. But that is not this world. Just note how completely the welfare of Libya was ignored by most intervention advocates the minute the fun, glorious, exciting part – “We came, we saw, he died,” chuckled Hillary Clinton – was over.

    (2) It is simply mystifying how anyone can look at U.S. actions in the Middle East and still believe that the goal of its military deployments is humanitarianism. The U.S. government does not oppose tyranny and violent oppression in the Middle East. To the contrary, it is and long has been American policy to do everything possible to subjugate the populations of that region with brutal force – as conclusively demonstrated by stalwart U.S. support for the region's worst oppressors.  Or, as Hillary Clinton so memorably put it in 2009: 'I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.'How can anyone believe that a government whose overt, explicit policy is 'regime continuity' for Saudi Arabia, and who continues to lend all sorts of support to the military dictators of Egypt, is simultaneously driven by humanitarian missions in the region?

    (3) “Humanitarianism” is the pretty packaging in which all wars – een the most blatantly aggressive ones - are wrapped, but it is almost never the actual purpose.  There are often numerous steps the U.S. could take to advance actually humanitarian goals, but those take persistence and resources, and entail little means of control, and are thus usually ignored in favor of blowing things and people up with Freedom Bombs.(4) Note how even the pretenses of constitutional democracy are now dispensed with: there is a reasonable legal debate over legality, but in essence: the President has the power to order bombing of Iraq because he decides it should happen. (5) Perhaps having Israel and the U.S. simultaneously bombing Arabs in different countries – yet again – will create some extremely negative consequences?...
    (6) This above-documented parade of “Saddam-is-worse-than-Hitler” campaigns was surrounded by stints of U.S. arming and funding of the very same Saddam (the same, of course, was true of the Taliban precursors, Gadhaffi, Iran, Manuel Noriega, and virtually every other Latest Villain who needed to be bombed; the US was roughly allied with ISIS allies in Syria and American allies fund ISIS itself). The propaganda has gone from 'pulling babies from incubators: as bad as Hitler' to 'rape rooms: worse than Hitler' to the new slogan: 'worse than al-Qaeda!' What’s left?For quite some time, it was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the democratically elected president of Iran who left office peacefully at the end of his term and who never actually invaded anybody – who was The New Hitler. As all of this demonstrates, there certainly are some heinous, violent people in the world: often including America’s closest allies and the ones who unleash the violence documented here, as well as those at whom that violence is directed. But perhaps some perspective and serious skepticism is warranted the next time we’re relentlessly bombarded with messaging about The New Greatest Villainous Threat in History – and especially manipulative accusations that opposition to U.S. military attack is indicative of support for those New Villains – as a means to secure acquiescence to the next bombing campaign. (7) ....Targeted strikes against ISIS is obviously not remotely the same as a full-scale invasion of Iraq, but whatever else is true, and whatever one’s opinions are on this latest bombing, it is self-evidently significant that, as the NYT's Peter Baker wrote today,“Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition” known as Iraq.-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
70. "Hassan Zeyada has spent decades counseling fellow residents of the Gaza Strip who suffer from psychological trauma. Now, as he prepares to aid his neighbors after a new round of combat and carnage, he has a challenging new patient: himself. An Israeli airstrike demolished Zeyada’s family home on July 20, killing six close relatives, including his mother and three of his brothers.'You try to help the people with their suffering,' the doctor said recently in his Gaza City living room lined with psychology textbooks. 'It’s totally different when you have the same experience. You lose six from your family - three brothers, your mom, one of your nephews, your sister in-law. It’s really' - he paused, red-eyed - 'unexpected.'He took a mental step back, to diagnose the hallmarks of trauma in himself: He was exhibiting dissociation, speaking in the second person to distance himself from pain, as well as denial. When he heard about new shelling near where his family lived in the Bureij refugee camp, he picked up the phone to call his oldest brother there. He had forgotten that the house was already gone, his brother already dead. Zeyada, 50, works to destigmatize mental health care for a Palestinian population exposed repeatedly to war and displacement, practicing at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, which was led by the pioneering Palestinian psychiatrist and human-rights advocate Dr. Eyad Al Sarraj until his death from leukemia in December. Zeyada is not the only Palestinian caregiver to become a trauma victim. One of Zeyada’s colleagues at the program lost a brother, and their boss, Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei, lost 26 members of his extended family, including 19 children, in a single bombing. It is difficult - even absurd, the clinicians say at their darkest moments - to try to mend psyches in Gaza, where even in calmer times the conditions are hardly conducive to psychological health, and safety is never more than provisional under the many cease-fires that have come and gone. People cannot flee from Gaza; Israel and Egypt keep their borders virtually sealed. Residents can flee their neighborhoods, but even UN schools being used as shelters in Gaza have come under deadly fire. And in downtown Gaza City, where Israel has urged people to go for safety, Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly hit apartment buildings packed with residents and refugees. One strike collapsed most of a building and killed the family of a bank employee who had fled there on Israeli instructions. The Israeli imposed siege has steadily eroded livelihoods in Gaza, adding to a sense of powerlessness. Even during relative lulls in violence, Israeli strikes periodically kill militants - and bystanders. The healthy processing of grief and fear works best when sufferers feel they are out of danger, Zeyada said. But that is impossible in Gaza as long as the larger conflict persists. Sometimes, he said, he was troubled by the ethics of treating people who were likely to be traumatized again. 'You are,' he said, 'like a prison doctor treating a victim of torture, making the prisoner healthy to be interrogated and tortured again.' He spoke flatly and deliberately, his body rigid in a visible effort to maintain his composure. 'I am so afraid in this building,' the doctor said, pointing out his sixth-story window. Several apartments here, he said, are crammed with 60 people or more as residents take in fleeing relatives.'They may hit it at any time,' he said of the Israeli military. 'There is no safe place. Psychologically, that is the problem.'As they visit the grieving in their homes and shelters, and prepare to reopen their clinics when the fighting stops, Gaza’s mental health counselors face a huge job. One-third of Gazan children showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder even before the latest outbreak of fighting, according to Dr. James Gordon of the Washington-based Center for Mind-Body Medicine, which runs a program in the territory. Now, Nearly every Gazan has heard or witnessed shelling, and most know someone personally who was killed or injured.

    A few blocks from Zeyada’s apartment, Younus Al Bakr, 9, sat curled on a sofa, chewing on his fist like a much younger boy. His family said he had not spoken a word since he witnessed the shelling that killed four of his cousins on the Gaza City beach on July 17. Younus and three more cousins survived the attack, suffering shrapnel wounds along with less visible ones.

    'We didn’t lose four,' said his uncle, Hamis Al Baker. 'We lost eight.' One of the surviving boys sneaks out of the house to visit his cousins’ graves again and again, despite warnings of the danger. Another reacted to a later airstrike in the neighborhood by shaking so violently that he was taken to the hospital. The only one willing to talk - Montasser, 10 - launched in a trembling, reedy voice into a speech that mixed stock political slogans with thoughts from a small boy’s world. 'I tell the European world, the Arab world, we were playing on the beach,' he said. 'I can go now and play, but they will kill me. I’m afraid of death.' Group and individual counseling can help trauma victims find resilience and move on with their lives, Gordon said. Many feel a mixture of guilt and powerlessness and a hunger for revenge that can fuel new cycles of militancy, he said, but 'as they’re able to express their anger, the vast majority find other ways to build their society.' Still, he said, 'there’s got to be a solution - you can’t keep people in this prison.' For his own part, Zeyada said that he would seek peer counseling and go back to work, not least because, as the oldest surviving brother in his extended family, he is now responsible for 11 of his dead siblings’ children. 'There is no other choice,' he said. Through clenched teeth, he noted that his young daughters have now experienced three wars. 'Can you imagine what that means to the new generation?' he said. 'Scared parents cannot assure or secure scared children.'-Anne Barnard, USA, journalist reporting on Israel's war on the  Gaza Strip, Palestine
71. "My heart is broken as I witness the suffering of the Palestinian people and the seeming indifference of Israelis. All my life I’ve been a champion of Israel, proud of its many accomplishments in science and technology that have benefited the world, insistent on the continuing need for the Jewish people to have a state that offers protections from anti-Semitism that has reared its head continuously throughout Christian and Islamic societies, willing to send my only child to serve in the Israeli Army (the paratroopers unit-tzanchanim), and enjoying the pleasures of long swaths of time in which I could study in Jerusalem and celebrate Shabbat in a city that weekly closed down the hustle and bustle of the capitalist marketplace for a full 25 hours. And though as editor of Tikkun I printed articles challenging the official story of how Israel came to be, showing its role in forcibly ejecting tens of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 and allowing Jewish terrorist groups under the leadership of (future Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir) to create justified fears that led hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians to flee for their lives, I always told myself that the dominant humanity of the Jewish people and the compassionate strain within Torah would reassert itself once Israel felt secure. That belief began to wane in the past eight years when Israel, faced with a Palestinian Authority that promoted nonviolence and sought reconciliation and peace, ignored the Saudi Arabian-led peace initiative that would have granted Israel the recognition that it had long sought, an end to hostilities, and a recognized place in the Middle East, refused to stop its expansion of settlements in the West Bank and imposed an economically crushing blockade on Gaza. Even Hamas, whose hateful charter called for Israel’s destruction, had decided to accept the reality of Israel’s existence, and while unable to embrace its “right” to exist, nevertheless agreed to reconcile with the Palestinian Authority and in that context live within the terms that the PA would negotiate with Israel.  Yet far from embracing this new possibility for peace, the Israeli government used that as its reason to break off the peace negotiations, and then, in an unbelievably cynical move, let the brutal and disgusting kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens (by a rogue element in Hamas that itself was trying to undermine the reconciliation-with-Israel factions of Hamas by creating new fears in Israel) become the pretext for a wild assault on West Bank civilians, arresting hundreds of Hamas sympathizers, and escalating drone attacks on Hamas operatives inside Gaza. When Hamas responded by starting to send its (guaranteed to be ineffective and hence merely symbolic in light of Israel’s Iron Shield) missiles toward civilian targets in Israel, the Netanyahu government used that as its excuse to launch a brutal assault on Gaza.But it is the brutality of that assault that finally has broken me into tears and heartbreak. While claiming that it is only interested in uprooting tunnels that could be used to attack Israel, the IDF has engaged in the same criminal behavior that the world condemns in other struggles: the intentional targeting of civilians (the same crime that Hamas has been engaged in over the years, which correctly has earned it the label as a terrorist organization). Using the excuse that Hamas is using civilians as “human shields” and placing its war material in civilian apartments, Israel has managed to kill more than 1,000 civilians and wounded thousands.  The stories that have emerged from eyewitness accounts of hundreds of children being killed by Israel’s indiscriminate destructiveness, the shelling of United Nations schools and public hospitals, and finally the destruction of Gaza’s water and electricity, guaranteeing deaths from typhoid and other diseases as well as widespread hunger among the million and a half Gazans most of whom have had nothing to do with Hamas, highlights to the world an Israel that is rivaling some of the most oppressive and brutal regimes in the contemporary world. In my book 'Embracing Israel/Palestine' I have argued that both Israelis and Palestinians are victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. I have a great deal of compassion for both peoples, particularly for my own Jewish people who have gone through traumas that have inevitably distorted future generations. Those traumas don’t exonerate Israel’s behavior or that of Hamas, but they are relevant for those of us seeking a path to social healing and transformation. Yet that healing is impossible until those who are victims of PTSD are willing to work on overcoming it. And this is precisely where the American Jewish community and Jews around the world have taken a turn that is disastrous, by turning the Israeli nation state into “the Jewish state” and making Israel into an idol to be worshiped rather than a political entity like any other political entity, with strengths and deep flaws. Despairing of spiritual salvation after God failed to show up and save us from the Holocaust, increasing numbers of Jews have abandoned the religion of compassion and identification with the most oppressed that was championed by our biblical prophets, and instead come to worship power and to rejoice in Israel’s ability to become the most militarily powerful state in the Middle East. If a Jew today goes into any synagogue in the U.S. or around the world and says, “I don’t believe in God or Torah and I don’t follow the commandments,” most will still welcome you in and urge you to become involved. But say, “I don’t support the State of Israel,” and you are likely to be labeled a “self-hating Jew” or anti-Semite, scorned and dismissed. As Aaron said of the Golden Calf in the Desert, “These are your Gods, O Israel.” The worship of the state makes it necessary for Jews to turn Judaism into an auxiliary of ultra-nationalist blindness. Every act of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people is seen as sanctioned by God. Each Sabbath Jews in synagogues around the world are offered prayers for the well-being of the State of Israel but not for our Arab cousins.  The very suggestion that we should be praying for the Palestinian people’s welfare is seen as heresy and proof of being “self-hating Jews.” The worship of power is precisely what Judaism came into being to challenge. We were the slaves, the powerless, and though the Torah talks of God using a strong arm to redeem the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, it simultaneously insists, over and over again, that when Jews go into their promised land in Canaan (not Palestine) they must “love the stranger/the Other,” have one law for the stranger and for the native born, and warns “do not oppress the stranger/the Other.” Remember, Torah reminds us, “that you were strangers/the Other in the land of Egypt” and “you know the heart of the stranger.”  Later sources in Judaism even insist that a person without compassion who claims to be Jewish cannot be considered Jewish. A spirit of generosity is so integral to Torah consciousness that when Jews are told to let the land lie fallow once every seven years (the societal-wide Sabbatical Year), they must allow that which grows spontaneously from past plantings be shared with the Other/the stranger. The Jews are not unique in this. The basic reality is that most of humanity has always heard a voice inside themselves telling them that the best path to security and safety is to love others and show generosity, and a counter voice that tells us that the only path to security is domination and control over others. This struggle between the voice of fear and the voice of love, the voice of domination/power-over and the voice of compassion, empathy and generosity, have played out throughout history and shape contemporary political debates around the world. Because almost every single one of us hears both voices, we are often torn between them, oscillating in our communal policies and our personal behavior between these two worldviews and ways of engaging others. As the competitive and me-first ethos of the capitalist marketplace has grown increasingly powerful and  increasingly reflected in the culture and worldviews of the contemporary era, more and more people bring the worldview of fear, domination and manipulation of others into personal lives, teaching people that the rationality of the marketplace with its injunction to see other human beings primarily in terms of how they can serve our own needs and as instrumental for our own purposes, rather than as being deserving of care and respect just for who they are and not for what they can deliver for us, this ethos has weakened friendships and created the instability in family life that the right has so effectively manipulated (a theme I develop most fully in reporting in my book 'The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right' on my years as a psychotherapist and principal investigator of an NIMH study of stress and the psychodynamics of daily life in Western societies) No wonder that Jews and Judaism have had these conflicting streams within our religion as well. In the 2,000 years of relative powerlessness when Jews were the oppressed minorities of the Western and Islamic societies, the validation of images of a powerful God who could fight for the oppressed Jews was a powerful psychological boon to offset the potential internalizing of the demonization that we faced from the majority cultures. But now when Jews enjoy military power in Israel and economic and political power in the U.S. and to some extent in many other Western societies, one would have expected that the theme of love and generosity, always a major voice even in a Jewish people that were being brutalized, would now emerge as the dominant theme of the Judaism of the 21st  century. No wonder, then, that I’m heartbroken to see the Judaism of love and compassion being dismissed as “unrealistic” by so many of my fellow Jews and fellow rabbis. Wasn’t the central message of Torah that the world was ruled by a force that made possible the transformation from “that which is” to “that which can and should be” and wasn’t our task to teach the world that nothing was fixed, that even the mountains could skip like young rams and the seas could flee from before the triumph of justice in the world? Instead of this hopeful message, too many of the rabbis and rabbinical institutions are preaching a Judaism that hopes more in the Israeli army than in the capacity of human beings (including Palestinians), all created in the image of God and hence capable of transformation, to once again become embodiments of love and generosity.  They scoff at the possibility that we at Tikkun and our Network of Spiritual Progressives have been preaching (not only for the Middle East, but for the U.S. as well) that if we act from a loving and generous place, that the icebergs of anger and hate (some of which our behavior helped to create) can melt away and people’s hearts can once again turn toward love and justice for all. In an America that at this very moment has its president calling for sending tens of thousands of children refugees back to the countries they risked their lives to escape, in an America that refused to provide Medicare for All, in an America that serves the interests of its richest 1 percent while largely ignoring the needs of its large working middle class, these ideas may sound naively utopian. But for Judaism, belief in God was precisely a belief that love and justice could and should prevail, and that our task is to embody that message in our communities and promote that message to the world. It is this love, compassion, justice and peace-oriented Judaism that the State of Israel is murdering. The worshipers of Israel have fallen into a deep cynicism about the possibility of the world that the prophets called for in which nations shall not lift up the sword against each other and they will no longer learn war, and everyone will live in peace. True, that world is not already here, but the Jewish people’s task was to teach people that this world could be brought into being, and that each step we take is either a step toward that world or a step away from it. The Israel worshipers are running away from the world, making it far less possible, and then call their behavior Judaism and Israel “the Jewish state.” No wonder, then, that I mourn for the Judaism of love and kindness, peace and generosity that Israel worshipers dismiss as utopian fantasy.  To my fellow Jews, I issue the following invitation: use Tisha B’av (the traditional fast-day mourning the destruction of Jewish life in the past, and starting Monday night Aug. 4 till dark Aug. 5) to mourn for the Judaism of love and generosity that is being murdered by Israel and its worshipers around the world, the same kind of idol-worshipers who, pretending to be Jewish but actually assimilated into the world of power, helped destroy our previous two Jewish commonwealths and our temples of the past. We may have to renew our Judaism by creating a Liberatory, Emancipatory, Transformative Love-Oriented Judaism outside the synagogues and traditional institutions, because inside the existing Jewish community the best we can do is repeat what the Jewish exiles in Babylonia said in Psalm 137, “How can we sing the songs of the Transformative Power YHVH in a strange land?” And let us this year turn Yom Kippur into a time of repentance for the sins of our people who have given Israel a blank check and full permission to be brutal in the name of Judaism and the Jewish people (even as we celebrate those Jews with the courage to publicly critique Israel in a loving but stern way). For our non-Jewish allies, the following plea: Do not let the organized Jewish community intimidate you with charges that any criticism of Israel’s brutality toward the Palestinian people proves that you are anti-Semites. Stop allowing your very justified guilt at the history of oppression your ancestors enacted on Jews to be the reason you fail to speak out vigorously against the current immoral policies of the State of Israel. The way to become real friends of the Jewish people is to side with those Jews who are trying to get Israel back on track toward its highest values, knowing full well that there is no future for a Jewish state surrounded by a billion Muslims except through friendship and cooperation. The temporary alliance of brutal dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and various Arab emirates that give Israel support against Hamas will ultimately collapse, but the memory of humiliation at the hands of the State of Israel will not, and Israel’s current policies will endanger Jews both in the Middle East and around the world for many decades after the people of Israel have regained their senses. Real friends don’t let their friends pursue a self-destructive path, so it’s time for you too to speak up and to support those of us in the Jewish world who are champions of peace and justice, and who will not be silent in the face of the destruction of Judaism. And that gets to my last point. Younger Jews, like many of their non-Jewish peers, are becoming increasingly alienated from Israel and from the Judaism that too many Jews claim to be the foundation of this supposedly Jewish state. They see Israel as what Judaism is in practice, not knowing how very opposite its policies are to the traditional worldviews most Jews have embraced through the years. It is these coming generations of young people whose parents claimed to be Jewish but celebrated the power of the current State of Israel and never bothered to critique it when it was acting immorally, as it is today in Gaza, who will leave Judaism in droves, making it all the more the province of the Israel-worshipers with their persistent denial of the God of love and justice and their embrace of a God of vengeance and hate.  I won’t blame them for that choice, but I wish they knew that there is a different strand of Judaism that has been the major strand for much of Jewish history, and that it needs their active engagement in order to reestablish it as the 21st century continuation of the Jewish tradition. That I have to go to non-Jewish sources to seek to have this message printed is a further testimony to how much there is to mourn over the dying body of the Judaism of love, pleading for Jews who privately feel the way I do to come out of their closets and help us rebuild the Jewish world in which the tikkun (healing and transformation) needed becomes the first agenda item. Above all else, I grieve for all the unnecessary suffering on this planet, including the Israeli victims of terrorism, the Palestinian victims of Israeli terror and repression, the victims of America’s misguided wars from Vietnam through Afghanistan and Iraq and the apparently endless war on terrorism, the victims of so many other struggles around the world, and the less visible but real victims of a global capitalist order in which according to the U.N. some 8,000-10,000 children under the age of 5 die every day from malnutrition or diseases related to malnutrition.  And yet I affirm that there is still the possibility of a different kind of world, if only enough of us would believe in it and then work together to create it."-Rabbi Michael Lerner, USA, author, activist, and critic of Israel attacks on Gaza Strip, Palestine
72. "Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept. Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of 'known or suspected terrorists' that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having 'no recognized terrorist group affiliation' category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined. The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush. 'If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,' says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is 'revving out of control.'"-Jeremy Scahill, USA, and Ryan Deveraux, USA, journalists, The Intercept, International
73. "After @TimesofIsrael blog calls for genocide in Gaza @Jerusalem_Post calls for 'ethnic cleansing' of Gaza http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-fray-Why-Gaza-must-go-368862 … via @bencnn"--Ayman Mohyeldin, Egyptian-American journalist reporting from Gaza Strip, Palestine
74. "The margin of error of an artillery shell is well known. If you are shooting into a civilian area, there is a high chance of hitting civilians and a low chance of hitting your military objective, unless your military objective is to terrorise and punish a population....
    Reckless targeting is a recurring problem, and the hand-wringing and words of regret no longer have any value. If you are making the same mistakes again and again, you would hope something is being learned....There is no pattern of anyone being held to account, and impunity just leads to more reckless behaviour." -Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser on the Israeli Defense Forces' lack of accountability for civilian deaths and civilian infrastructure hits in Gaza Strip Wars, Palestine, Amnesty International
75. "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 next to 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....But even as the NSA and its partners are directed by political branches to feed the Israelis surveillance data and technology, they constantly characterize Israel as a threat – both to their own national security and more generally to regional peace. In stark contrast to the public statements about Israel made by American and British officials, the Snowden archive is replete with discussions of the Israelis as a menace rather than an ally. NSA documents previously published by The Guardian stated that 'one of NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel.' Another notes that the National Intelligence Estimate ranked Israel as 'the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.' British officials have a similar view of the Israelis, describing them as a 'very real threat to regional stability.' One top secret GCHQ planning document from 2008 notes that 'policy makers remain deeply concerned over the potential threat that Israel poses to a peaceful resolution of the Iran problem, and to some of Israel’s less desirable activities in the region.' Moreover, 'Israel’s thinking on the long-term threat offered by Iran to its fundamental foreign policy strategy of armed deterrence may create very real threats to regional stability in 2009.'"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
76. '"The compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police' (was the cause of death for African American Eric Garner during his arrest)"-Julie Bolcer, USA spokeswoman for the NYC medical examiner, who ruled his death a homicide due to the chokehold applied by a NYC police officer on Staten Island, USA
77. "If a 19 yo hacktivist had penetrated a classified congressional network, they'd be rotting in a jail cell. Must be nice to work for the CIA."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., USA,  security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
78. "Edward Snowden is cornered in a legal limbo, without a passport or asylum protection from any government. We call on all governments not to block him from travelling in order to seek protection. By interfering in his ability to do so, they are effectively complicit with the USA in his unjustified and repressive punishment."-Sherif Elsayed-Ali, Deputy Director of Global Thematic Issues, Amnesty International
79. "Even Obama says, 'We tortured some folks.' It's increasingly unconscionable that US media won't use word torture in their reporting."-Kevin Gostzola, USA, journalist, FireDogLake, USA
80. "One president let the CIA torture. The next shut down torture but expanded CIA killing. Is it any wonder that the agency has gone so rogue?"-Hina Shamsi, USA, Director, ACLU National Seecurity Project, USA
81. "Of all the barbarism seen in Gaza the last month, isn't capturing an enemy soldier from an invading/occupying army lowest on the list?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
82. "By the time you read this, who knows how many people will have been killed in Israel's latest onslaught in the Gaza Strip? As I write, some 1,400 mostly civilian Palestinians have been killed, including hundreds of children. Also, 59 Israelis have been killed, 56 of them military personnel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complains that the media show pictures of “telegenically dead” Palestinians. It's true. My Facebook feed looks like a perverse beauty contest for dead babies and traumatized kids. There are the “before” shots: Essam Ammar, 4, from Gaza City wears a yellow check shirt and holds a somewhat bedraggled flower; Hind Shadi abu Harbeid, 10, from Beit Hanoun has clearly been playing with her mother's nail varnish — she rests her chin on paint-tipped fingers and gazes away from camera, a small smile lighting up her eyes. Hatem and Yasmeen Yazji hug each other, soft hair flopping over foreheads, big smiles revealing gappy baby teeth. Then there are the “after” images: children on hospital trolleys and in ambulances, children burned, children blinded, children buried under rubble. What these dead children tell us, beyond everything else, is this: Israel believes itself unassailable. There is no doubt that Egypt's complicity, newly explicit, has helped. But Israel has acted with impunity for a long time. Remember the Turkish activists it killed on board the Mavi Marmara as they headed for Gaza? Remember Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09? And how, in 2012, the world was shocked when the four children of the Dalou family were killed in Gaza? In the last week, the United Nations noted that a child is killed every hour in Gaza, on average.My Facebook feed looks like a perverse beauty contest for dead babies and traumatized kids. A strip of coast, 25 miles long by seven miles wide. Home to 1.8 million people. Besieged and locked in for eight years now by Israel from the north, east and west, and by Egypt from the south; their medicine, their books, their calorie intake, their fuel, their CDs, their building bricks all rationed, all outside their control. Half of the Palestinians of Gaza are under age 18. Many of their parents or grandparents were refugees from land just to the north, where Israelis now gather on a hilltop to watch bombs fall on the people they've displaced, the people whose lands they've stolen. If someone with guns and bombs robs me, locks me up and starves me, surely I have the right to dig a tunnel to get hold of food and medicine. Surely I have the right to find a way to fight my jailer. It has been de rigueur to decry the Hamas rockets that crash into Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. But terrorism is using violence to impose a political condition. Terrorism is Israel imposing a siege on a people because they voted for a government Israel didn't like. Terrorism is bombing imprisoned civilians and schools and hospitals. Think of the countless days and weeks when no rockets were fired from Gaza. Was the siege lifted then? No. The world treated Gaza as a humanitarian case, as if what the Palestinians needed was aid. What Gaza needs is freedom. Israel requires the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” That is, to accept that the Palestinians living in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth, Acre, etc., will always be second-class citizens in their country. Israel ruptures logic; it wants to be a democracy practiced on the basis that some people are “chosen” and others are not. And if that won't work, then it wants the “not chosen” to disappear. This impunity will not last forever. Israel has tried to hide from judgment by using emotional blackmail and accusations of anti-Semitism. But the latest Israeli killing spree in Gaza has moved the hearts and consciences of people across the world. Protesters have marched in cities from Tokyo to Reykjavik, Iceland. A tower block in Bogota, Colombia, is illuminated in the colors of the Palestinian flag. #ICC4Israel is trending on Twitter. Dutch children have made a video speaking the words of dead Palestinian children. Hardened newsmen and women have suddenly dropped the “parity” approach and spoken of the horror they're witnessing in Gaza. In London, when a group of Jews opposed to Zionism stood on top of a red double-decker to declare their stand with the Palestinians, they were met with a huge cheer. On Sunday, a group of rabbis in Washington disavowed Israel's actions. Jewish citizens across the world declare, “Not in my name.” Protests have erupted across Haifa, Nazareth and Tel Aviv. Young people have clashed with occupation forces in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron and many other places. Some of them have lost their lives in this latest round of killing. It was not just the arms dealers watching the Israeli display over the last weeks; citizens of the world paid attention, and they've taken Palestine to their hearts. There's a rising demand for an arms embargo against Israel, and for trials for possible war crimes, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign is getting stronger. None of this will bring back one dead loved one. We mourn the dead and grieve with the living. We also resolve to do everything we can to heal this terrible wound in the heart of the world."-Ahdaf Soueif, Egypt, author and columnist, Egypt
    
83. "No, ambulances, they have not been able to reach the wounded, because the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital has been targeted and ambulance crew has been targeted. And areas that are under constant attack is right now actually behind the Israeli bulldozers and tanks, which means these areas is off-limits. You cannot get into these areas at all, and there is no possibility for you, as an ambulance crew, to get inside this area. So there are tens of people who are thrown in the streets bleeding, some of them who are still alive, others who are dead, torn into small pieces of heads and chests and legs of human beings. And remember that those people who were wounded, just remember, they are Bedouin families who were going back to their homes in the early morning hours when they heard that the ceasefire is going to start, so they wanted to go and check on their homes, but then they were caught in fire by the Israeli military on the border with the Gaza Strip.

    Ambulance crew are still appealing to the International Red Cross, and the same thing also the 71 internationals who are inside the Rafah crossing. They are appealing to the International Red Cross to evacuate them, either to get them to the Egyptian side or to the Palestinian side safely. But even the Red Cross is unable to do this, to do their job. And there is growing anger among the population on Red Cross, because they believe the Red Cross is unable to supply people with much help and to bring people in and out. Whenever we contact the Red Cross, the message we get is that the Israelis have refused our requests for coordination, even for ambulance crew. Just to get outside Rafah a little bit and talk about over 25 bodies that were found in Khuzaa. And Khuzaa is to the east of Khan Younis. That was one of the most horrifying scenes, to see human bodies eaten by animals—human bodies eaten by animals just in Khan Younis. And this is one of the worst humiliation that can happen for a dead body, that human bodies are eaten by animals inside Khuzaa, and they are just taken outside to the Gaza European Hospital and to Nasser Hospital. In the southern part of the Gaza Strip, all these hospitals are suffering. The situation is quite overwhelming."-Mohammed Omer, Palestine, journalist, Palestine.
    

84. "Israel, all the time, in the last 24 days, they targeted hospitals and UNRWA facilities, where refugees are there. And hospitals, precisely, they bombed it. I mean Shuhada al-Aqsa. They bombed al-Wafa Hospital, as well. As a result of these bombings, there was killings, injuries. Even operation theaters has been hit direct, I mean, these hospitals. So that’s not, I mean, unique or special. They are, in a very deliberate, intentional way, targeting even the hospitals. And they kill people inside it, around it. No safe haven in Gaza. No holy thing in Gaza. Everything is obscene. Israel is practicing, in very simple words, rule of jungle against civilians, against hospitals, against schools of UNRWA, against electricity station—what are, in the eye of the storm in Gaza, civilians and civilian targets, obviously. It’s very clear. Whenever the resistance hit the army and they have losses, they revenge deliberately by bombarding, killing civilians. This is, I mean, very basic, fundamental conclusion. Any who is living in Gaza can feel it, can see it and watch it, every hour, every day.And in Rafah, all this bombing for people of Rafah happened immediately after the resistance engaged and they kidnapped one of the Israeli officers there. They can target and they have the right to target the resistance group. We are not in defense of resistance group. They are for that, and they can defend themselves. Why we are here as a human rights organizations, to defend civilians at the time of war, not peace. And civilians, once and again, are the target of the most strongest fifth army on Earth, with all high tech they are using. This is a shame, shame for army and the state do such policy and such a practice. It’s shame for states who license and give them the license to kill, by giving them political approvement, endorsement for doing what they are doing in this part of the world. All what we are asking, seeking protection for civilians at a time of war. That’s why international law, international humanitarian law, is there, to protect civilians at a time of war. There is no holy blood and unholy blood, no holy suffering, unholy suffering. Every human blood is suffering, including the Palestinian blood and suffering. This is a great shame. These war crimes happening, and it’s broadcasted at the real time to the whole world. This should stop....I’m 60. I lived all my entire life in this part of the world, and I’m working in this field for the last 40 years. I attended the last wars in 2008, 2009 and 2012. I can assure you one thing: Yes, war crime happened, and entire families has been erased—Samouni, Daya and others. Houses were destroyed. Civilian targets were targeted. And we documented that. But the scale never, ever was on this level. It’s obvious from day one that they are deliberately targeting civilians and civilian targets. It’s different. We never, ever have entire areas, like Shejaiya, like Khuzaa, like Zanaa, like Beit Hanoun, like Beit Lahia, razed. Doesn’t exist anymore. Hundreds of bombs, weighing one ton, dropped on the head of the people while they are there. Israel recognized 40,000 tank shells thus far has been bombarded—you know, gunboats, aeroplanes, Apache, F-16s, artillery tanks bombing all over the place. No safe haven in Gaza, no safe place wherever you go. And that’s why this is very special and this is very unique. What we are doing, as human rights activists and organizations, we are counting corpses, bodies, injuries—not all of them, because we even cannot reach entire areas where there is hundreds of bodies are under rubbles or, you know, closed area for the Israeli army, we cannot access to it. And the ICRC totally almost paralyzed. They have no access there. They cannot protect any civilians. And that’s due to the restrictions of the Israeli army. So, I’m really worried, and I’m warning. Israel began with tens of people being killed; now we are talking about hundreds of people are killed. Now we are talking, in two hours, 90 people have been killed. We didn’t count everybody there, and many others, I mean, still in the Rafah area. We didn’t manage to bring everybody to the hospital through ICRC or Red Crescent or ambulances. And we have hundreds of injuries. The bombing, many think it is in the Rafah area, Rafah one of the areas where the bombing is happening right now. But eastern Gaza, just in front of me, I mean, the bombing right now in this minute happen, and didn’t stop for the last four, five hours. East northern area, the same thing happen at middle area and Khan Younis area; very severe firing, Amy, happening there. And now this is getting much more and more deeper to the populated area. That’s the dilemma. That’s the problem. Simply, we are human beings. All what we are seeking, simple: freedom, end of occupation, rule of law—as simple as that. We think we deserve to be protected. We deserve to be treated as a human being. We deserve to have an end for this Israeli criminal siege imposed on us for the last eight years. We think an end for this Israeli criminal, illegal occupation should have an end. We have the right to engage with life positively, to be created. Too much blood, too much suffering. If people feel they have only the rule of jungle—Israel doing that—and the West supporting these war crimes and crimes against humanity, in deliberate way, as the high commissioner of  UNRWA stated yesterday in a clear-cut way, then I think if people hate the West—U.S., U.K., France, Germany—who support this inhuman, barbaric offensive against the civilians, then I think it’s a shame for any state who support that. This should have an end....Weare not occupying Israel. We are not killing the Israelis. All what we want, simple: end the occupation. Leave Palestinians, I mean, be free. After 20 years of Oslo Accords, what we have: de facto apartheid system in the West Bank, cleansing—the ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem and Judaization, and in Gaza a state of socioeconomic suffocation and war crimes taking place every day for the last 25 years. Israel should have an end for its criminal, belligerent, illegal occupation and practice against Palestinian civilians. ’Til then, we are entitled to protection as Palestinian civilians in the time of war.-Raji Sourani, J.D., Palestine, Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Gaza Strip, and Right Livelihood Award winner, Palestine
85. "We cannot go back to a status quo where a ceasefire ends rocket fire from the Gaza Strip but does not end the system of violence that is the siege … enforced through the regular use of Israeli fire....You cannot call it a ceasefire while that system of violence still exists."-Yousef Munayyer, USA, Executive Director, The Palestine Center, USA
86. "Hundreds of people have been rallying in Dallas, Texas, this week to protest the annual convention of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council known as ALEC. The secretive group joins corporate lobbyists with state lawmakers to craft model legislation that is then introduced in legislatures nationwide. Activists have been organizing protests under the banner of 'Don’t Mess With Texas, ALEC.'"-Amy Goodman, USA, journalist and co-founder, Democracy Now!, International
87. "Here's my full statement, refusing to appear as a witness before the German Bundestag "investigation" into NSA spying (See: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/glenn-greenwald-sagt-zeugenvernehmung-vor-nsa-ausschuss-ab-a-984030.html and http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2014-08/glenn-greenwald-bundestag-untersuchungsausschuss-edward-snowden)
    * * * * I am very supportive of any attempt by the German Parliament to conduct a serious investigation into NSA spying on Germans. Unfortunately, German politicians have demonstrated, with their refusal to interview the key witness in person - Edward Snowden - that they care far more about not upsetting the U.S. than they do about conducting a serious investigation. As a result, I am not willing to participate in a ritual that is intended to cast the illusion of an investigation, but which is actually designed to avoid any real investigation, placate the German public with empty symbolism, and keep the culprit - the U.S. Government - happy. In the event that the German Parliament finds the courage to do what it should obviously do - interview Snowden in person, on German soil, regardless of how the U.S. Government would react - I would be happy to reconsider this invitation."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
88. "In Latin America, five countries — Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and El Salvador — have all recalled their ambassadors to Israel in protest of the offensive in Gaza. The presidents of Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela have issued a joint statement calling for Israel to end its 'disproportionate use of force.' Bolivia has changed its policies to require Israelis entering the country to obtain a visa, and Bolivian President Evo Morales called Israel a 'terrorist state.' Protests against Israel’s assault have erupted across Latin America and around the world."-Amy Goodman, USA, journalist and co-founder, Democracy Now!, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Israel, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela
    
89. "They have not only provided the heavy weaponry, which is now being used by Israel in Gaza, but they’ve also provided almost $1 billion in providing the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the rocket attacks, but no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling. So I am reminding the United States that it’s a party to international humanitarian law and human rights law."-Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, International
90. "The difference between Hamas and Israel is that Israel is actually implementing [a destruction policy] — actually preventing a Palestinian state which doesn’t exist. Millions of Palestinians live in this subservient position without rights, without security, without hope, and without a future.....If you don’t want to kill Palestinians, if that’s what pains you so much, you don’t have to kill them. You can give them their rights, and you can end the occupation. And to put the blame for the occupation and for the killing of innocents that we are seeing in Gaza now on the Palestinians — why? Because they want a state of their own? They want what Jews wanted and achieved? This is a great moral insult."-Rabbi Henry Siegman, USA, former executive director, the American Jewish Congress, former head of the Synagogue Council of America,and current president, U.S./Middle East Project, USA
91. "An Israeli army officer who repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza dismissed a warning from another soldier that she was a child by saying he would have killed her even if she was three years old. The officer, identified by the army only as Captain R, was charged this week with illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and other relatively minor infractions after emptying all 10 bullets from his gun's magazine into Iman al-Hams when she walked into a 'security area' on the edge of Rafah refugee camp last month. A tape recording of radio exchanges between soldiers involved in the incident, played on Israeli television, contradicts the army's account of the events and appears to show that the captain shot the girl in cold blood. The official account claimed that Iman was shot as she walked towards an army post with her schoolbag because soldiers feared she was carrying a bomb. But the tape recording of the radio conversation between soldiers at the scene reveals that, from the beginning, she was identified as a child and at no point was a bomb spoken about nor was she described as a threat. Iman was also at least 100 yards from any soldier.Instead, the tape shows that the soldiers swiftly identified her as a 'girl of about 10' who was 'scared to death'. The tape also reveals that the soldiers said Iman was headed eastwards, away from the army post and back into the refugee camp, when she was shot. At that point, Captain R took the unusual decision to leave the post in pursuit of the girl. He shot her dead and then 'confirmed the kill' by emptying his magazine into her body. The tape recording is of a three-way conversation between the army watchtower, the army post's operations room and the captain, who was a company commander.The soldier in the watchtower radioed his colleagues after he saw Iman: 'It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastward.' Operations room: 'Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?' Watchtower: 'A girl of about 10, she's behind the embankment, scared to death.' A few minutes later, Iman is shot in the leg from one of the army posts. The watchtower: 'I think that one of the positions took her out.' The company commander then moves in as Iman lies wounded and helpless. Captain R: 'I and another soldier ... are going in a little nearer, forward, to confirm the kill ... Receive a situation report. We fired and killed her ... I also confirmed the kill. Over.' Witnesses described how the captain shot Iman twice in the head, walked away, turned back and fired a stream of bullets into her body. Doctors at Rafah's hospital said she had been shot at least 17 times.On the tape, the company commander then 'clarifies' why he killed Iman: 'This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over.' The army's original account of the killing said that the soldiers only identified Iman as a child after she was first shot. But the tape shows that they were aware just how young the small, slight girl was before any shots were fired. The case came to light after soldiers under the command of Captain R went to an Israeli newspaper to accuse the army of covering up the circumstances of the killing. A subsequent investigation by the officer responsible for the Gaza strip, Major General Dan Harel, concluded that the captain had 'not acted unethically'. However, the military police launched an investigation, which resulted in charges against the unit commander.Iman's parents have accused the army of whitewashing the affair by filing minor charges against Captain R. They want him prosecuted for murder."-Chris McGreal, UK,journalist, The Guardian, reporting from Israel
    
92. "Too many innocent people dead. Tell US stop sending arms to #Israel and call for full arms embargo: http://owl.li/zOsH6  #StopTheArms"-Amnesty International @amnesty
93. "Can't believe that the agency that tortured, kidnapped, rendered, drones wedding parties, & destroys evidence would hack Senate & then lie."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
94. "Deeply cynical for @WhiteHouse to condemn killings of Palestinians while US continues to arm Israeli armed forces to the teeth"-Amnesty International @amnesty
95. "At this point, well over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on July 29 that around 74% of those killed have been civilians. Only 16% of those killed have been members of armed groups. Ten percent are 'unknown.' This means by a conservative estimate Israel is killing three civilians for every single militant that it manages to kill. Democrats are choosing to be moved by Israeli propaganda and uninfluenced by the horrific images of warfare coming out of Gaza. They thoroughly believe that Hamas is, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it, that Hamas wants to pile up as many civilian dead as they can, because somebody said they use — it’s gruesome — they use ‘telegenically dead Palestinians’ for their cause.' They will repeat this talking point with just as much enthusiasm as a right-wing Christian Zionist like Pastor John Hagee. Yet, as Georgetown Law University professor Noura Erakat wrote for The Nation, this 'insidious' talking point 'blames Palestinians for their own death and deprives them' of their victimhood. There is no proof, as international human rights organizations have found, that what they are saying is even true. In fact, it is Israeli soldiers, which have used Palestinians as human shields while waging war and defending their military occupation. Additionally, it was Israel, which chose to launch the latest offensive. Netanyahu provoked the war when he blamed Hamas for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens without any proof that Hamas was behind their deaths. The army, according to Larry Defner of 972Mag.com, then proceeded to raid, destroy, confiscate and arrest 'anybody and anything having to do with Hamas.' Palestinian protesters were killed and 60 members of Hamas freed in the Gilad Shalit deal were put back in prison. Democrats conveniently ignore the Dahiya Doctrine, which has a lot to do with why Israel is targeting civilians. As Erakat pointed out, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said while Israel was engaged in 'indiscriminate attacks on Lebanon in 2006': 'What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.' The UN Fact-Finding Mission’s Goldstone Report concluded that this doctrine had been employed in Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 people. The report expressed this concern: '…In the framing of Israeli military objectives with regard to the Gaza operations, the concept of Hamas’ 'supporting infrastructure' is particularly worrying as it appears to transform civilians and civilian objects into legitimate targets. Statements by Israeli political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza indicate that the Israeli military conception of what was necessary in a war with Hamas viewed disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve not only military but also political goals…' Nevertheless, with the exception of Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison, who has called for an end to the blockade on Gaza, it would seem there is no limit to the support for Israeli war crimes among Democrats in Congress. They will gladly join Republicans in issuing reactionary statements blaming the death and destruction on Hamas and permit Israel to prolong its campaign of terror in Gaza without facing condemnation from American politicians for acts, which target and kill civilians. Some will even go so far as to blame Palestinians for humanitarian crises created by the blockade, which Israel has been perpetuating for over six years."-Kevin Gostzola, journalist, FireDogLake, USA
96. "It is hard to imagine a greater threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances than having the CIA spy on the computers used by the very Senate staff carrying out the Senate's constitutional duty of oversight over the executive branch. It was made worse by CIA Director John Brennan's misleading the American people in denying any wrongdoing. These latest developments are only the most recent manifestations of a CIA that seems to believe that it is above and beyond the law. An uncontrolled--and seemingly uncontrollable--CIA threatnes the very foundations of our Constitution."-Christopher Anders, J.D., Senior Legislative Council, American Civil Liberties Union, stating an apology is not enough and that the matter should be taken up by the Justice Department for investigation and prosecution, USA
97. "During CIA Director John Brennan's confirmation hearings, he promised to fundamentally change the culture at the CIA and to respect vigorous and independent congressional oversight. His actions and those of CIA officials whom he oversees have proven otherwise....From the unprecedented hacking of congressional staff computers and continued leads undermining the Senate Intelligence Committees' investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation program to his abject failure to acknowledge any wrongdoing by the agency, I have lost confidence in John Breenan."-Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), intellgence committee member, in a statement after an internal investigation showing the CIA had spied on Senate staffers investigating the CIA, USA
98. "#GazaNames" Video Project with sharing the names and ages of Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in the Summer 2014 war http://www.freedom4palestine.org/ delivered by Desmond Tutu, South Africa, and multiple additional academics, activists, artists, athletes, and human rights leaders, International, Palestine
99. "The views of brutal dictators are vested with great meaning and respect when they're US-loyal and US-supported" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/world/middleeast/fighting-political-islam-arab-states-find-themselves-allied-with-israel.html … -Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
100. "I believe that there must be justice. I don’t see why there shouldn’t be. You don’t need to be very intelligent to know that a murder was committed and they need to pay for what they did. Therefore, I am calm with respect to this because I know that the case will go on and on and it will take years, but I know that one day we will have justice." -Araceli Rodríguez Salazar, Mexico, mother of 16 year-old José Antonio Rodríguez, killed by USA border agents when a group of youths threw rocks at the agents in 2012 now facing a civil rights lawsuit as over 20 persons have been killed by USA border agents on the border since 2010, USA, Mexico
101. "The Pentagon, meanwhile, has confirmed its approval of an Israeli request to restock Israel’s supplies of ammunition. The United States will provide items from its stockpile inside Israel, including mortar rounds for tanks and ammunition for grenade launchers."  -Amy Goodman, USA, journalist and co-founder, Democracy Now!, International
102. "This morning, yet another United Nations school sheltering thousands of Palestinian families suffered a reprehensible attack. All available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause. Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children. At least 16 civilians are dead, and many more are injured."-Ban Ki-Moon, South Korea, United Nations Secretary General, international on Israel Defense Forces attack against civilian children and adults in Palestine
103. "How can you run a hospital without clean water? How can you keep food if you can’t have refrigerators? Everything we take for granted is gone. So we have an unusually dangerous situation from a humanitarian perspective. And I don’t think we need more reminders of the importance of stopping this horror. We have to see the end of fighting."-Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary General, on what is happening in Gaza Strip, Palestine
104. Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Genva, 12 August, 1949) (USA and Israel are signatories) http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5?OpenDocument, international
105. "When Israel tells civilians to take refuge in a UN school & then shells it, killing 20, that's even too much for WH -Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
106. "Well, Amy, the assaults on Gaza by Israel are always heavier at night. They continue throughout the day, but the heaviest assaults come at dark. And we wake up to see many people dead and to hear their stories and to see people burying their dead. And these people at this U.N. school in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza were killed while they slept. Many of these people had come from border areas. They had heeded Israel’s warnings. Some came after leaflets were dropped on their areas, others came after their homes were destroyed by Israel, and they thought that they would be safe in a United Nations-run school. They were wrong. Last night, I was speaking to multiple eyewitnesses. They said that after the dawn prayers at around 4:30 a.m., the shelling began. They say between three and five shells landed on the school. These schools are incredibly packed, as you mentioned. I think the number now is over 240,000 are displaced in Gaza, well over 10 percent of the population. Those are counting numbers that are not only in U.N. schools but seeking refuge elsewhere, in other homes or other areas. And so these classrooms are incredibly packed. People speak of 60 to 100 people packed into these classrooms. The women and children sleep inside, the men inside. And these shells started raining down on the school. The displaced people there said they did not hear any fighting around the area prior to this attack, the ones who were awake who had just finished dawn prayer. And they spoke of seeing people with their legs blown off, arms blown off, someone said, of a head smashed in. At least 15 people have been killed, according to the Health Ministry. Up to 20 health officials in the Kamal Adwan Hospital nearby said that it was in fact 20 people had been killed, including at least one child. And many of these people, as I mentioned, had come—they come with nothing, usually just the clothes on their back. A lot of them are very poor, and they come with donkey carts. And outside the school, there was—a lot of the donkeys had been killed. There’s these dead animals outside the school as a result of the shelling.As you mentioned, the United Nations had given the coordinates of the school to the Israeli military, according to the spokesperson, at least 17 times. And now people don’t know where to go. When you speak to the survivors, they don’t know whether to stay at the school. They think now schools are no longer safe. At least six schools have been targeted since this conflict began. And they don’t know what to do, where to go. They don’t have—many of them don’t have relatives to go to because entire neighborhoods have been displaced.And so, it’s a very dire situation. And this comes after 48 hours of the heaviest air and artillery bombardment of Gaza since this three-week war began. It’s day—we’ve now crossed into—it’s a longer conflict than the 2008-2009 war on Gaza which lasted 22 days and left over 1,300 dead. The Health Ministry says now that 67 people, at least, have been killed today alone, and hundreds more wounded....And Israel seems to continue to shift what its objectives are in this conflict. When it first began, they said, you know, they would have quiet for quiet; if the rockets stopped, then they would stop. Then, last week, they said the main objective was to clear and destroy these tunnels. They said it would take three days, and that was more than 10 days ago. And recently they’re saying now that they won’t stop. They’re demanding for the complete disarmament of Hamas. So it’s really a war in search of a political objective. And in the meantime, civilians are continuing to die. They are by far the greatest victims of this assault on Gaza.Yesterday the power plant was hit. It’s been destroyed. The officials say it’s going to take up to a year to repair. It supplied over 30 percent of power to the Gaza Strip, which is already suffering severe shortages. I’ve spoken to many people who now have gone from having three to four hours of electricity a day to zero, so no electricity whatsoever. Electricity is also crucial to powering the water pumps for Gaza, and there’s a severe water crisis, as well. Prices are going up for basic goods. There are very long lines outside bakeries for bread. So it’s a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and there’s no end in sight as yet.... Andagain, 44 percent of Gaza has been declared a military buffer zone. So this was already one of the most densely populated places on Earth, and people are being displaced in massive, massive numbers into an increasingly small area. And the places that they are being displaced to are not even safe, even when they do heed Israel’s warnings, when they leave, when they go to U.N. schools, when they go to areas that they think are safe. They’re bombed in their homes. They’re bombed in U.N. schools. They’re killed inside hospitals. So, this is becoming a very difficult situation for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now!,Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
107. "Classic: CNN reports Obama expresseing concern to Israel about dead civilians--while also shipping new weapons. http://bit.ly/1pq1mAr"-Greg Mitchell, USA, author, film producer, USA
108. "No moral reasoning can justify killing 230 children in response to rockets that have killed 17 people in 5 years. http://bit.ly/1obCN6k"-Jim Naureckas, USA, editor and journalist, Fairness and Integrity in Reporting (FAIR), USA
109. "Perhaps the most dehumanizing thing in Gaza is people there don't have the time to properly mourn the dead before strikes kill even more"-Yousef Munayyer, USA, Executive Director, The Palestine Center, USA
110. "As long as US arms and supports Israel to massacre Palestinians, its “condemnations” are cynical and contemptible and should be rejected."-Ali Abuminah, USA, co-founder, ElectronicIntifada.net and author, USA
111. "What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. It is punishment for Gaza’s refusal to be a docile ghetto-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, International
112. “It is an absolute outrage that Chelsea Manning is currently languishing behind bars whilst those she helped to expose, who are potentially guilty of human rights violations, enjoy impunity....The US government must grant Chelsea Manning clemency, order her immediate release, and implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”-Erika Guevara Rosas, USA, Americas Director, Amnesty International
113. "Tunnels are uniquely terrifying because they give militants easy access to enemy territory, as opposed to F-16s which.....oh, never mind"-Yousef Munayyer, USA, Executive Director, The Palestine Center, USA
114. "As US expresses outrage for what the UN makes clear is an Israeli war crime, Washington gives Israel even more access to US weapons"-Yousef Munayyer, USA, Executive Director, The Palestine Center, USA
     
115. "There are now 204,166 in UNRWA 85 shelters across #Gaza #Gaza More leaving homes. Human displacement crisis. Appalling. RT"-Chris Gunness, spokesperson, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians on the Israeli Defense Forces war crimes committed in Gaza with the shelling of 6 UNRWA schools sheltering tens of thousands of Gaza war refugees, Gaza Strip, Palestine
116. "Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced #Gaza RT"-Chris Gunness, spokesperson, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians on the Israeli Defense Forces war crimes committed in Gaza with the shelling of 6 UNRWA schools sheltering tens of thousands of Gaza war refugees, Gaza Strip, Palestine
117. "Five Latin American countries have now recalled their ambassadors to Israel in protest of escalating Gaza attack http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.607915 …"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
118. "What I cannot accept, however, is the perversion of Zionism that has seen the inexorable growth of a Messianic Israeli nationalism claiming all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River; that has, for almost a half-century now, produced the systematic oppression of another people in the West Bank; that has led to the steady expansion of Israeli settlements on the very West Bank land of any Palestinian state; that isolates moderate Palestinians like Salam Fayyad in the name of divide-and-rule; that pursues policies that will make it impossible to remain a Jewish and democratic state; that seeks tactical advantage rather than the strategic breakthrough of a two-state peace; that blockades Gaza with 1.8 million people locked in its prison and is then surprised by the periodic eruptions of the inmates; and that responds disproportionately to attack in a way that kills hundreds of children. This, as a Zionist, I cannot accept. Jews, above all people, know what oppression is. Children over millennia were the transmission belt of Jewish survival, the object of what the Israeli novelist Amos Oz and his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger have called 'the intergenerational quizzing that ensures the passing of the torch.' No argument, no Palestinian outrage or subterfuge, can gloss over what Jewish failure the killing of children in such numbers represents. The Israeli case for the bombardment of Gaza could be foolproof. If Benjamin Netanyahu had made a good-faith effort to find common cause with Palestinian moderates for peace and been rebuffed, it would be. He has not. Hamas is vile. I would happily see it destroyed. But Hamas is also the product of a situation that Israel has reinforced rather than sought to resolve. This corrosive Israeli exercise in the control of another people, breeding the contempt of the powerful for the oppressed, is a betrayal of the Zionism in which I still believe."-Roger Cohen, USA, journalist and writer, USA
119. "UN officials say at least 7 schools have been hit in Gaza since war began. These are schools where over 100,000 are taking shelter."-Sheera Frankel, Middle East Correspondent, Buzzfeed, International
     
120. "There is no military solution to this conflict. The status quo brings only continued pain, suffering and war. Promoting economic development and social interaction in Gaza is in the long-term security interest of Israel and the rest of the region. The relative calm that existed during Secretary of State John Kerry’s extended diplomatic talks between Israel and the Palestinians during 2013-14 shows that engaging in dialogue is the first step toward stopping the violence. Ultimately, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be resolved with a final status agreement, and ending the violence and the blockade is a first step toward a permanent solution."-Rep. Keith Ellison, (D-MN), USA, the first Muslim-American elected to Congress, USA
     
121. "As much of world watches Gaza war in horror, members of Congress fall over each other to support Israel:" http://apne.ws/1pnTgIG-Associated Press (AP) tweet, USA
122. "Gaza has 1.8 million people. So 150 children dying violently is like 27,500 in US. That's 1,375 Sandy Hooks in three weeks."-Robert Wright, USA, author, academic, USA
123. "Shouldn't there be 1 person in Congress saying: "if my choice is b/w losing my seat or cheering this Gaza massacre, I'll choose the former"?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
124. "Looking at international media coverage you get a sense Israel is well on the way towards 1980s South Africa-style pariah state status."-Paul Harris, USA, Executive Producer, Al-Jazeera America, USA
125. "The area of Gaza that Israel ordered evacuated / is bombing is 44% of the entire Gaza strip. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/as-israel-enforces-its-buffer-zone-gaza-shrinks-by-40-per-cent.html … "-Tom Gara, Australia, working in NYC for Wall Street Journal, USA
     
126. "Given the now publicly admitted revelations that there is no privacy in communications, including those between attorneys and their clients, I feel ethically obligated to tell all clients that I can’t guarantee anything [they] say is privileged … or will remain confidential.”-Linda Moreno, J.D., USA, defense attorney specializing in national security and terrorism cases, quoted in light of a new study released by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU that USA government survilleance is so powerful and invasive that it compromises freedom of the press and the right to privacy between journalists and sources and attorneys and clients, USA
127. "The bombs continue falling, more and more people are running for their lives with fewer places to go and as the screams from beneath the wreckage of Israel’s assault become more frequent, a generation of Gaza’s children are being shaped by what they see. And yet, as kids often do, they can still surprise you. Inside a Gaza City UNRWA school that’s been turned into a shelter, children pack the courtyard. Several are kicking a soccer ball around. A blue United Nations flag sits atop the building and the windows below are draped with laundry that spills out onto lines that crisscross the outdoor walkways. The stench of the backed-up toilets combines with the fumes of garbage fermenting in the midday sun. Inside, piled desks covered in sheets in the hallways partition makeshift rooms for the families. There are now some 200,000 people in Gaza living in conditions like this, and many if not most of them are children. At least half of Gaza’s people—that is, 900,000 of the people here—are under the age of 18. When I enter the school building, I’m mobbed by dozen of perplexed and energetic kids tugging at my flack jacket. In fact, I feel strange decked out with protective combat gear in a sanctuary for families fleeing the fighting. But UNRWA shelters have been hit many times by Israeli shells and bombs in this three-week war. Just this morning, 16 people were killed in an UNRWA school/shelter in Jabaliya. So I wear the jacket. The children, of course, have no such protection. For the most part the ones here are under ten years old. None has ever left the narrow and overcrowded 40-kilometer strip of land called Gaza. They cannot remember a world without Israel’s seven-year blockade. They are living through their third war. Ten-year-old Yasmine al Attar stares at me from under her dark curled bangs. She’s full of curiosity as she follows me around the school in her pink tracksuit pants, black spangled shirt and blue plastic shoes, listening to every word as I talk with parents about the difficulties caring for their children packed into schoolrooms with several other families.

     The al Attar family, an extended clan of uncles and aunts and cousins several times removed, fled their Beit Lahia homes near the Israeli border more than two weeks ago as Israeli air strikes and artillery fire intensified. Yasmine’s aunt, Hula al Attar, tells me her son can’t sleep amid the nightly air strikes. Instead he howls and shakes. 'My 11-year-old son saw bodies in the street in the [2008] war and he still can’t forget those images,' says the veiled 29-year-old mother. Yasmine speaks up. She tells me she can’t sleep either, and waits out the attacks by clinging to her mother in a corner classroom. I ask her what she wants to be when she grows up. 'I don’t know if I will live,' she says flatly. When pressed for what she would like to be if she does survive, she becomes excited thinking about the possibilities. 'I’ll be a doctor,' she says at first. Then she changes her mind. 'I’ll be a journalist,' she says, pulling on her brown curls. 'I just want to do something that helps people and tells the world what’s happening.' There is a surprising sense of realism in the aspirations of these young Gazans. Yasmine can imagine peace. She can imagine she is no longer living in a blockaded strip of land, that she can travel freely and no longer worry about shortages. And she says she admires the Palestinian fighters, led by Hamas, who are, as she understands the situation, trying to repel the Israeli attackers. But Yasmine isn’t looking for a Muslim warrior’s martyrdom. Like the other children here she’s looking for someone to defend her: doctors, journalists, fighters—and those are the people she wants to be some day. It is an attitude reflected by many of the children who mask their trauma behind unwavering smiles as they bubble with chatter about the devastation they’ve seen. Mohammad al Attar, also 10, pushes through his friends and cousins until he’s standing in the center of the semicircle of his peers who’ve gathered around me. He’s short for his age, he’s swimming in his baggy tee shirt, but he wants to be heard above the clamor. He rubs his hand over his buzz-cut black hair, waiting impatiently until he has a chance to talk about his thoughts and aspirations. Mohammad says he wants to be a teacher if he has the choice. But, if nothing has changed by the time he grows up, he says, he knows he will fight. There is no malice in his voice. For this 10-year-old there are no childhood fantasies about the romance of war or political delusions about a grand victory. He’s making an honest calculation about the possibilities. 'I just want to protect people,' he says. It is not Hamas propaganda, the school curriculum or even their parents that make these children see a future where continued resistance is the only option for survival. That was an education taught by the Israeli bombs that flattened their homes and by the bread lines across the street from the school."-Jesse Rosenfeld, journalist, The Daily Beast, reporting from Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine

128. "Despite grassroots outrage at Operation Protective Edge, left-wing members of the House and Senate won’t criticize Israel’s ongoing incursion into Gaza. Much of the American left is critical of Israel, particularly since its incursion into Gaza. But in the halls of Congress, even progressive Democrats beloved by grassroots activists are loath to criticize the Jewish State’s ongoing military offensive. A Pew Research Center poll released Monday showed that a plurality of Democrats across the country, 35 percent, and liberals, 44 percent, said that Israel had “gone too far” in its response to its conflict with Hamas. Meanwhile 47 percent of Democrats told Gallup that Israel’s actions during the current conflict were “unjustified,” compared to just 31 percent who thought the opposite. But these opinions are nearly impossible to find in Congress. Democrats, when asked a question about Israeli operations in Gaza, had two standard responses: irritation, or else a statement of their broad support of Israel, without going into specifics. It was as if the very mention of Israel turned the question into a hostile interview....“[Activists] look at Congress as hopeless. Moving Congress or moving the administration is hopeless,” said Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action, an anti-war group. “That’s why there’s a shift to [the BDS movement] rather than…trying to influence congressional or administrative policy on Israel.”-Tim Mak, politics writer, The Daily Beast, USA
     
129. "As I’ve written many times before, “terrorism” is, and from the start was designed to be,  almost entirely devoid of discernible meaning. It’s a fear-mongering slogan, lacking any consistent application, intended to end rational debate and justify virtually any conduct by those who apply the term. But to the extent it means anything beyond that, it typically refers to the killing of civilians as a means of furthering political or military goals."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
130. "Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders have more in common with Palestinians than meets the eye. Many of us came here as refugees. We, or our families, came fleeing wars and coups and occupations and genocides. And frequently, paradoxically, it was the United States that supported the conflict that we were trying to escape. We understand in painful detail what it’s like to bear the brunt of U.S. global political jockeying. Many of us still grapple with the effects of colonization. Whether the U.S. military in the Philippines or Okinawa, the Secret War in Cambodia, or the current U.S. occupation of American Samoa and Hawaii, the story of Asians & Pacific Islanders in North America is fraught with its physical and psychological scars. It is our collective memory of domination and colonization that makes it so hard for us to watch the current U.S.-supported Israeli campaign against Palestinians in Gaza. This is a story to which we already know the ending. As Americans with this history, we cannot, in good conscience, stand by while Israel murders Palestinians, destroys crucial infrastructure, and displays reckless impunity under the protection of the U.S. government. In moments like this, to be silent about the parallels with our experiences is to be complicit in the violence. 'We condemn the actions of the Israeli government and call for a just and equitable peace. We call on the United States to stop its unrestricted financial, military, and political support of Israel in our names. We extend our support and prayers to the people of Gaza under attack.'-18MR Blog post, 18 Million Rising--Activating Asian America, USA
131. "By now, you’ve probably heard news outlets accuse both Israel and Hamas, on alternating occasions, of rejecting cease-fire proposals. The accusations against both are true, and this merely has to do with the terms of each proposal: Israel wants a cease-fire that effectively ends the fighting while allowing Israel to keep its boot on Gaza’s neck. Hamas, on the other hand, insists on some humanitarian conditions, including ending the siege and economic suffocation of Gaza, the introduction of international peacekeeping forces at Gaza’s borders, and the freeing of prisoners rounded up in recent weeks, many held without charge or trial. Whatever cease-fire terms end up being accepted by both sides will only matter in the short term. In the long term, only true justice (an end to Israel’s occupation and apartheid) can end this conflict. Here, the responsibility of American citizens is paramount: If we can end our government’s unconditional military and diplomatic support for Israel’s most destructive policies, or condition such support on Israel abiding by its legal and moral obligations, we can begin to work toward that real justice all Israelis and Palestinians deserve."-Omar Baddar, USA, Middle East political analyst, USA
132. "When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis — and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success ....What undermines this principle is that no country and no people would live the way that Gazans have been made to live. … The question of the morality of Israel’s action depends, in the first instance, on the question, couldn’t Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life? Couldn’t they have done something that did not require that cost? And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation." -Rabbi Henry Siegman, USA, former executive director, the American Jewish Congress, former head of the Synagogue Council of America, and current president, U.S./Middle East Project, USA
133. "I can report that the official command handed down (from the IDF) to the (Israeli) soldiers in Shujaiyya was to capture Palestinian homes as outposts. From these posts, the soldiers drew an imaginary red line, and amongst themselves decided to shoot to death anyone who crosses it. ... This was the official reasoning inside the units. I was told that the unofficial reason was to enable the soldiers to take out their frustrations and pain at losing their fellow soldiers out on the Palestinian refugees in the neighborhood."-Eran Efrati, Israel, former IDF soldier who is a peace activist with Breaking the Silence referring to a sniper shooting of Palestinian Salem Shammaly, who was killed searching for his family in Shejaiya by IDF snipers, Gaza Strip, Palestine
134. "I believe Israel wants to make people turn against the resistance....There is no way for people to turn against the resistance — in fact it is the other way around. People in the street say we do support resistance because that is the only way to end the occupation. ... I’m afraid we are going to have more radical generations in the Gaza Strip, and I fear for the future of Gaza and the future of the West Bank — and I fear the future of the region if the international community is not acting now to end the blockade and the operation in Gaza."-Mohammed Omar, journalist, Palestine
135. "In American media discourse, when Palestinians overwhelmingly kill soldiers (95% of the Israeli death toll) who are part of an army that is blockading, occupying, invading, and indiscriminately bombing them and killing their children by the hundreds, that is 'terrorism'; when Israelis use massive, brutal force against a trapped civilian population, overwhelmingly killing innocent men, women and children (at least 75% of the Palestinian death toll), with clear intentions to kill civilians...that is noble 'self-defense.' That demonstrates how skewed U.S. discourse is in favor of Israel, as well as the purely manipulative, propagandistic nature of the term 'terrorists.'"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
136. "[Israel has] shelled hospitals, U.N. schools, they’ve bombed people in their homes....There’s literally nowhere for these people to run to."-Sharif Kouddous, journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now!, Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
137. "'Stay safe,' people keep telling us. 'Where?' I always reply. One of the harsh realities of this war is that there seem to be no red lines or boundaries. People here are locked inside a tiny, cramped territory while the Israeli army bombs their homes, businesses, schools and hospitals. Some 23,160 buildings have been damaged in the past three weeks, including 560 houses that were specifically targeted, according to the Health Ministry.Most of the time there is no electricity, so at night you can only listen to what's happening around you in the dark. Parents watch as their children die, children watch as their parents die - it's like a horror film. The hardest part is how to convey the emotion and explain the events you are witnessing to people who live thousands of miles away and have likely never been to Gaza. How do you do the story justice, remaining calm and fair? Journalists are obsessed with the idea of balance, but what throws us off is that this is not an equal battle. Israel says it is defending its civilians from rockets indiscriminately fired at them and underground tunnels used to infiltrate and kill soldiers. Hamas says it is defending their civilians from an Israeli imposed siege that has strangled Gaza and affects every part of daily life. The sad reality is that this war will likely end with Israel keeping Gaza under a blockade, which means Hamas will continue to resist - if not with rockets then tunnels, if not with tunnels then something else. And if it's not Hamas it will be another group. The violence will continue as long as there is a cause.Covering this war has been just as devastating as in 2008/9, the last time Israel launched a ground assault and I was inside Gaza. Back then, people felt they were paying the price for a battle between Hamas and Israel. This time, after seven years of living under siege, many sound hopeless and support Hamas (they call it "the resistance") because they feel there is no other way to end the misery they are living in. My parents tell me stories of going on holiday to Gaza when they were young. It has a beautiful coastline and when the drones and jets are quiet you can hear the waves crashing on the beach. But the last few years of the blockade have been especially tough and Gaza is now a ghetto of 1.8 million people with many living in refugee camps surrounded by bombed out buildings. Yesterday, at a UN school turned shelter, a woman asked me where I was from 'Egypt,' I replied, expecting her to lecture me about the country's complicity in the siege and how much she hates Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi. But instead she said in a strong, sad voice: 'Take me back with you.' It's simple really: people in Gaza, like elsewhere in the world, just want a chance to live with dignity."-Sherine Tadros, Egypt,  Middle East Correspondent, SkyNews, reporting on a story headlined "The Israel-Palestine Conflict 'Is Like An Endless Horror Film', Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestinei
138. "Shifa Hospital is again a scene of chaos. Wails of grief and shouts of anger fill the halls. People crouch on the floor staring out with bloodshot eyes; others rush by with bloodied clothes. Stretchers are wheeled back and forth, nearly all of them with bandaged children lying on top, eyes wide with fright or shock. Men and women weep, their hands on their mouths as they try to hold back the grief pouring out. Nearly all the eyewitnesses say the same thing: children were playing on the street in the Al-Shati (Beach) refugee camp north of Gaza City. They scurried between a swing set on the sidewalk and a small grocery shop selling sweets and chips. At around 4:30 pm there was a loud explosion. Then many of the children lay still, some of them in pieces. 'I saw a massacre,' says Khaled al-Sirhi. The 22-year-old was sitting in the street with friends when the attack happened. 'There were heads off bodies, shoulders half torn, hands gone, chests opened.' There is blood on al-Sirhi’s shirt and hands. Al-Sirhi carried two of the wounded to ambulances, his niece and a boy who died by the time he arrived at hospital. 'There were no militants, no resistance members, just children,' he says. Ten people were killed in the attack, including eight children, and forty were injured, thirty-two of them children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel claimed a misfired militant rocket caused the carnage, but several eyewitnesses blamed the explosion on an airstrike. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the nearly three-week-long conflict, the vast majority of them civilians, including over 200 children. Over 6,400 have been injured."-Sharif Kouddous, journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now!, Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
139. "Well, I've been sitting in front of my computer for the past 21 days, morning and night, watching the horror unfold, and I felt Iwasn't doing enough, I wasn't rising to the occasion, I wasn't acting commensurate to the horror. So I decide it's time to do something more, time to go past the computer, remove myself from the computer and get arrested."-Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D., academic, author, activist on Palestine and challenging inappropriate Israel occupation and bombings of civilians, after organizing a protest of 26 peace activists who were arrested for failure to disperse outside the Israel Mission to the UN, NYC, USA
     
140. "The United States is spending about $20 billion on border security and other border crossings where they process children and where they treat them and all those other processes....We say that with just 10% of that money that you're investing on the US border, it could be spent at minimum in the three countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) and I'm confident that it would be much more profitable than investing it on border security or border control with Mexico."-Otto Pérez Molina, President, Guatemala
141. "Sad, moving, powerful, important: names, ages, pictures and background of Palestinians killed in Gaza http://humanizepalestine.com"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
142. "This stops today"-T-shirt slogan worn by Esaw Garner, USA, widow of Eric Garner, addressing supporters in Harlem NY, after her husband was allegedly killed during an arrest by a NYPD police officer using an illegal chokehold, NYC, USA
143. "In Beit Hanoun a man walks through the rubble and says aloud to himself, 'This is a town of ghosts, not people' #Gaza"-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist/reporter, Democracy Now! and The Nation, reporting from the Gaza Strip, Palestine #Gaza
144. "It is the phrase we hear throughout a long day: 'Nothing left.' And it is true. Whole areas that were once inhabited have been reduced to a landscape of earth and dust and broken shapes. Although in places there is evidence fighting has taken place, what is hard to comprehend is the Israeli justification for the scale of the destruction, save destruction for its own sake in pursuit of a policy of collective punishment." Peter Beaumont, UK journalist, The Guardian, reporting on the destruction of parts of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinians by Israeli military strikes, Palestine
145. "The atmosphere in Jerusalem, and Israel as a whole, is very scary. I never felt fear before. I felt frustrated and isolated in previous wars, but never physical fear. People are frightened to speak out. Something is broken in Israel."-Maya Frankforter, Israel, a Jewish parent whose children go to Hand in Hand, one of only five schools in Israel that welcomes both Jewish and Arab/Muslim students to learn and study together in peace and mutual collaboration, after being taunted by pro-war Israelis during a march for peace sponsored by the school, Israel
146. "Two games. Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was caught on a security camera dragging his unconscious wife-to-be Janay Palmer by the hair, after knocking her unconscious, and the National Football League has chosen to suspend him for two games. Rice in fact will return to the field just in time to wear the NFL’s pink-festooned uniforms to celebrate their deep commitment to breast cancer awareness—and their even deeper commitment to selling sixty-dollar jerseys marketed aggressively to their female fan base. In fact, the Ray Rice all-pink number is available for purchase right now. The NFL actually needs a Violence Against Women Month instead, to raise awareness about a killer that malignantly throbs in every locker room. But that is not going to happen, and it is worth understanding why. The NFL, as many have been writing for too many years, has a violence-against-women problem. The incidents are too many to catalogue. But by suspending Ray Rice for two games, a lighter suspension than the league’s marijuana smokers receive, Roger Goodell and his coterie of owners are sending a message that it just doesn’t matter. I don’t know why anyone would expect more from a league notorious for racist nicknames, out-of-control owners, and a locker-room culture that would shame some high schools. But still. Two games. I did not think the NFL had the capacity to stun me with its blockheadedness, but I was wrong. There is without question an important discussion to have—an unheated discussion not made for sports radio—about why violence against women and football seem to walk arm-in-arm. We could discuss the inability for football players to compartmentalize violence, taking the hyper-aggression of their sport home with them—something that affects families in the armed forces as well. There is a discussion we need to have about its connection to traumatic brain injury, and the ways that some of the side effects according to the NFL’s own neurologists, are mood swings, fits of temper and the inability to connect emotionally with the people in their lives. There especially is a discussion we need to have about a culture of entitlement that starts in high school and runs even more profoundly in college football, where young men produce billions in revenue and are often “rewarded”, since they can’t be paid, with a warped value system that says women are there to be taken. If we can confront how players deal with violence and with the women in their lives, then we can prevent tragedies before they take place. Unfortunately, the NFL has shown absolutely zero interest in taking this issue seriously. The league didn’t do anything after Kansas City Chiefs player Jovon Belcher killed the mother of his child, Kasandra Perkins, before taking his own life in front of his coach and general manager. If they did not do anything then, they are not about to take it seriously now. It is very difficult to not be cynical about why it is so casually indifferent to this issue. To discuss violence against women means by necessity to talk about everything endemic in the NFL that creates this culture. The NFL has been aggressively marketing its sport to parents, telling them that, despite what they may have heard, football is as healthy for their children as a Flintstones vitamin. To discuss the causes of violence against women means to put its golden goose under the harshest possible light. It means producing negative publicity, and it means blowing wind on the brushfire movement of young parents who do not want their children playing this sport. To not discuss it, however, means not only ignoring a problem that won’t go away. It means sending a message to every general manager, coach, player and fan that the worth and humanity of women is at best negligible. That is why when Rice’s coach John Harbaugh said, upon learning of Rice's suspension, 'It’s not a big deal, it’s just part of the process,' he is just taking his cues from the league that provides him with employment. Harbaugh also said, 'He makes a mistake, all right? He’s going to have to pay a consequence. I think that’s good for kids to understand it works that way.' Unfortunately, the only lessons that kids are going to learn from this episode is that the vaunted 'shield' of the NFL protects perpetrators of violence against women, for the sake of what it sees as the greater good. When its 'breast cancer awareness month' begins, people should take these jerseys and light a big old bonfire outside of NFL stadiums. They are symbols of a monstrous joke that sees women as either revenue streams, cheerleaders or collateral damage to what takes place on the field."-Dave Zirin, USA, author and sports journalist and columnist, The Nation, USA
147. "It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill the 3 Israeli Teens After All http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/hamas-didnt-kidnap-the-israeli-teens-after-all.html … (via @Remroum)"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, nternational
148. "Hussein Shinbari is the only member of his family that survived the attack on a United Nations school in Beit Hanoun on Thursday. He is covered in blood. His undershirt, his pants and his hands are all stained a deep red. After Israel launched its ground invasion into Gaza last week, the Shinbari family left their home in the northeastern town close to the Israeli border and sought shelter at the nearby school. 'They told us it was safe,' Hussein says, sitting on the ground by the morgue of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia. More than 1,500 displaced Palestinians were staying at the school. The conflict has caused unprecedented massive displacement in Gaza, forcing over 140,000 people to seek shelter in more than eighty UN shelters.On Thursday afternoon, the people in the Beit Hanoun school were told they were being transferred to another area, away from the shelling and clashes on the streets outside. According to multiple survivors, they were instructed to gather their scant belongings and assemble in the schoolyard to await buses that would take them to another shelter. At around 2:30 pm a barrage of artillery shells crashed into the school, according to witnesses. At least sixteen people were killed and more than 200 wounded, many of them women and children. Hussein lost his mother; his stepmother; his 16-year-old brother, Abel Rabo; his 12-year-old sister, Maria; and his 9-year-old brother, Ali. 'I was the only one who walked out,' Hussein says. He helped carry his dying family members to the ambulances that eventually arrived. 'I’m not asking Hamas or Fatah for anything,' he says. 'I only have God left.' The Israeli military says Hamas was firing rockets from Beit Hanoun and that it had told the Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, and the Red Cross to evacuate the school. Yet UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness says the UN had asked the Israeli military for a lull in the fighting to allow for an evacuation but did not hear back. Gunness says precise coordinates of the shelter had been formally given to the Israeli army. The attack marked the fourth time a UN facility has been hit by Israel since the conflict began on July 8. 'These people had no place to go. They are very poor, so they sought the protection of the United Nations,' says Dr. Bassam al-Masry, the head of the orthopedic department at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, whose house is adjacent to the school in Beit Hanoun. 'Today they were shelled. Why?' The hospital is filled with heart-wrenching scenes. Men and women being carried in on stretchers. People rushing through the halls with wounded children in their arms. It is unbearably hot and humid. In one corner, six women gather in a knot of grief, sobbing and holding each other. One of them collapses in shock. Inside the morgue a baby is brought onto the wooden examination table. She is about 1 year old. She looks unharmed, except when her head is turned to reveal that a small chunk of her neck is missing. The other bodies lie in the refrigerated morgue drawers cocooned in bloodied white shrouds. Only their faces are uncovered. 'We thought the school was safer than our house,' says 32-year-old Monther Hamdan. He is lying on a cot with a wounded leg and grasps his father’s hand as he speaks. All thirteen members of his family were injured in the attack. They arrived at the school three days ago. 'The tank shells fell like rain.' The attack on the UN school came on one of the bloodiest days of the conflict. Approximately 120 Palestinians were killed yesterday, bringing the death toll in Gaza to nearly 800, the vast majority of them civilians, including at least 190 children, according to the Health Ministry. Over a two-day period, a child was killed every hour in Gaza. More than 5,100 have been wounded. The level of violence has escalated significantly since Israel’s ground invasion last week. Calls for a cease-fire seem to have had the opposite effect. A three-kilometer buffer zone has been declared by Israeli military, equivalent to 44 percent of the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces have pushed in from the border backed by tanks and a continued assault from the air. Thirty-two Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist/reporter, Democracy Now! and The Nation, reporting from the Gaza Strip, Palestine
     
149. "The number of people sheltering with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza has now gone over 150,000. That’s fast approaching 10 percent of the population in Gaza. These are desperate, traumatized people who had fled from their homes in response to the dramatically escalating Israeli ground offensive. They are in areas in schools where buildings were meant to accommodate a thousand students or so a day coming in in the morning, leaving in the afternoon. They’re now overrun with people who are staying there 24/7, some for the 17th day.There’s a desperate need for sanitation, for water. Don’t forget that because of the blockade of Gaza, 95 percent of the water is undrinkable. So, in these designated shelters, you turn on the water, turn on the taps, and salt water comes out. So we have to truck in every single liter of water to 150,000 people. That’s just the water. There’s food, as well, that we need to bring in, mattresses, sanitation equipment—all sorts of things that people staying in these shelters—frankly, in a war zone— desperately need. And now it seems that there is nowhere safe in Gaza. We’ve been hit, and it seems that every single one of our over 80 shelters, all 150,000 of those individual lives taking shelter with us, are today at risk."-Christopher Gunness, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians, Gaza Strip, Palestine
150. "I’m really saddened that we, as Americans, are not able to stop the war machine. We’re not able to stop the money that’s being fueled into the state of Israel to commit all of these acts of genocide, all of these war crimes. And I’m also here as a Jewish person saying not in my name. We need to do a lot more action here in New York, because we here have a lot of power, actually, and we’re not doing enough to stop what’s going on."-Protester against ongoing USA military aid to Israel being used to kill Palestinians, USA, Israel, Palestine
151. "Across all settings, decriminalization of sex work could have the largest impact on the HIV epidemic among sex workers over just 10 years."-Kate Shannon, M.D., Canada, associate professor of medicine, and lead author on a newly released study showing the power of decriminalization of sex workers to reduce HIV infections in multiple countries, international
     
152. "Human Rights Watch has found that criminalization drives sex workers away from health services in numerous ways, from police using condoms as evidence of prostitution [in the United States and Cambodia] to fear of arrest at drug treatment centers and harm-reduction sites [Thailand] to an inability to complain to police about rape, assault from clients [U.S., Cambodia, China],”-Megan McLemore, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch health and human rights division, quoted upon news that the international HIV/AIDS conference is now promoting decriminalization of sex work worldwide as a research-based strategy to stop HIV/AIDS, international
     
153. "NEW: The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/25/nsas-new-partner-spying-saudi-arabias-brutal-state-police/ …"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept with Murtaza Hussein, Canada, journalist, international
154. "I'm talking to so many young authors, struggling debut authors who have worked for years and years to get published and then Amazon does this and crushes their hopes and dreams of building an audience...I have never seen in my entire life authors coming together like this...Ever. For any reason....Amazon has been throwing its weight around for quite some time in a bullying fashion and I think authors are fed up. We feel betrayed because we helped Amazon become one of the largest corporations in the world. We supported it from the beginning, we contributed free blogs, reviews and all kinds of stuff that Amazon asked us to do for nothing....We thought we had a fairly good partnership but in the last half dozen years Amazon's corporate behaviour has not supported authors at all."-Douglas Preston, USA,  writer and leader of the movement to challenge Amazon's attack on writers including the 4th largest publishing house, Hachette books, which has challenged Amazon's unfair market pratices and bullying of writers. He has readying to publish a full-page ad in the New York Times with a petition of over 900 authors including: Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Barbara Kingsolver, Clive Cussler, Anita Shreve and Philip Pullman, Stephen King, Donna Tartt, Paul Auster, James Patterson; John Grisham; Jennifer Egan, Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler, Siri Hustvedt and Joseph O'Neill, USA
155. "As academics, public figures and activists witnessing the intended genocide of 1.8 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, we call for a ceasefire with Israel only if conditioned on an end to the blockade and the restoration of basic freedoms that have been denied to the people for more than seven years. Our foremost concerns are not only the health and safety of the people in our communities, but also the quality of their lives – their ability to live free of fear of imprisonment without due process, to support their families through gainful employment, and to travel to visit their relatives and further their education. These are fundamental human aspirations that have been severely limited for the Palestinian people for more than 47 years, but that have been particularly deprived from residents of Gaza since 2007. We have been pushed beyond the limits of what a normal person can be expected to endure. Charges in the media and by politicians of various stripes that accuse Hamas of ordering Gaza residents to resist evacuation orders, and thus use them as human shields, are untrue. With temporary shelters full and the indiscriminate Israeli shelling, there is literally no place that is safe in Gaza. Likewise, Hamas represented the sentiment of the vast majority of residents when it rejected the unilateral ceasefire proposed by Egypt and Israel without consulting anyone in Gaza. We share the broadly held public sentiment that it is unacceptable to merely return to the status quo – in which Israel strictly limits travel in and out of the Gaza Strip, controls the supplies that come in (including a ban on most construction materials), and prohibits virtually all exports, thus crippling the economy and triggering one of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the Arab world. To do so would mean a return to a living death. Unfortunately, past experience has shown that the Israeli government repeatedly reneges on promises for further negotiations, as well as on its commitments to reform. Likewise, the international community has demonstrated no political will to enforce these pledges. Therefore, we call for a ceasefire only when negotiated conditions result in the following:
     • Freedom of movement of Palestinians in and out of the Gaza Strip.
     • Unlimited import and export of supplies and goods, including by land, sea and air.
     • Unrestricted use of the Gaza seaport.
     • Monitoring and enforcement of these agreements by a body appointed by the United Nations, with appropriate security measures.

     Each of these expectations is taken for granted by most countries, and it is time for the Palestinians of Gaza to be accorded the human rights they deserve."-No ceasefire wtihout justice" petition signatories, http://electronicintifada.net/content/no-ceasefire-without-justice-gaza/13618, Palestine

156. "Every day, the violence seems to escalate. We think that it can’t get worse, and then it does. We see what happened in Shejaiya. We thought that that was the worst of it, and now I come and hear people saying that it’s worse in Khuzaa in Khan Younis. The Israeli military continues to push in. It’s become incredibly bloody since they launched their ground invasion. The words coming out of the Israeli government are only ones of bluster and increasing their offensive. So, it doesn’t, frankly, look very good. And it’s hard to tell how long people in Gaza can hold out. They don’t really—there’s nowhere to run, as we’ve talked about. Shelters have been attacked. They’re just being pushed in towards the coast from all areas. There’s people in hospitals. There’s people in unfinished buildings. There’s people in schools. You know, there’s well over 150,000 have been displaced. And there’s hardly any electricity, hardly any water. And this—I can hear the booming now starting again, and so the onslaught continues."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist with Democracy Now! and The Nation, reporting from the Gaza strip, Palestine 
157. "As a Jewish youngster growing up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide, I was for years haunted by a question resounding in my brain with such force that sometimes my head would spin: 'How was it possible? How could the world have let such horrors happen?' It was a naïve question, that of a child. I know better now: such is reality. Whether in Vietnam or Rwanda or Syria, humanity stands by either complicitly or unconsciously or helplessly, as it always does. In Gaza today we find ways of justifying the bombing of hospitals, the annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach. In Israel-Palestine the powerful party has succeeded in painting itself as the victim, while the ones being killed and maimed become the perpetrators. 'They don’t care about life,' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, abetted by the Obamas and Harpers of this world, 'we do.' Netanyahu, you who with surgical precision slaughter innocents, the young and the old, you who have cruelly blockaded Gaza for years, starving it of necessities, you who deprive Palestinians of more and more of their land, their water, their crops, their trees — you care about life? There is no understanding Gaza out of context — Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians — and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood. The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery. Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm. With such a gross imbalance of power, there is no equivalence of culpability. Israel wants peace? Perhaps, but as the veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has pointed out, it does not want a just peace. Occupation and creeping annexation, an inhumane blockade, the destruction of olive groves, the arbitrary imprisonment of thousands, torture, daily humiliation of civilians, house demolitions: these are not policies compatible with any desire for a just peace. In Tel Aviv Gideon Levy now moves around with a bodyguard, the price of speaking the truth. I have visited Gaza and the West Bank. I saw multi-generational Palestinian families weeping in hospitals around the bedsides of their wounded, at the graves of their dead. These are not people who do not care about life. They are like us — Canadians, Jews, like anyone: they celebrate life, family, work, education, food, peace, joy. And they are capable of hatred, they can harbour vengeance in the hearts, just like we can. One could debate details, historical and current, back and forth. Since my days as a young Zionist and, later, as a member of Jews for a Just Peace, I have often done so. I used to believe that if people knew the facts, they would open to the truth. That, too, was naïve. This issue is far too charged with emotion. As the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has pointed out, the accumulated mutual pain in the Middle East is so acute, 'a significant part of the population finds itself forced to act it out in an endless cycle of perpetration and retribution.' People’s leaders have been misleaders, so they that are led have been confused,' in the words of the prophet Jeremiah. The voices of justice and sanity are not heeded. Netanyahu has his reasons. Harper and Obama have theirs. And what shall we do, we ordinary people? I pray we can listen to our hearts. My heart tells me that 'never again' is not a tribal slogan, that the murder of my grandparents in Auschwitz does not justify the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, that justice, truth, peace are not tribal prerogatives. That Israel’s 'right to defend itself,' unarguable in principle, does not validate mass killing. A few days ago I met with one of my dearest friends, a comrade from Zionist days and now professor emeritus at an Israeli university. We spoke of everything but the daily savagery depicted on our TV screens. We both feared the rancour that would arise.But, I want to say to my friend, can we not be sad together at what that beautiful old dream of Jewish redemption has come to? Can we not grieve the death of innocents? I am sad these days. Can we not at least mourn together?"-Gabor Maté, M.D., and author, Canada
     
158. "A 36-hour flight ban on Tel Aviv drew more Senate opposition/U.S. media coverage than a 7-year land/air/sea/economic blockade of Gaza."-Aaron Mate, USA, writer/producer, Democracy Now!, USA
     
159. "Can't have people humanized: Israeli agency bans radio clip naming children killed in Gaza http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-gaza-conflict-2014/1.606908 … (via @medialens)"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
160. "Our system of state murder is pure barbarity, whether the murder is "botched" or not. -Jeremy Scahill, USA, journalist, The Intercept, international
161. "This is beyond horrifying RT @ACLU #JosephWood #JosephWood has been pronounced dead. It took 1 hour and 57 minutes for the state of Arizona to kill him"-Jeremy Scahill,  USA,journalist, international
162. “The watchlisting apparatus, which has no meaningful outside oversight, gives the White House sweeping, secret powers that no democratic government should have....The government will not tell you if you are on the list, but it will share its labeling of you as a ‘known or suspected terrorist’ with foreign governments and private contractors. These policies make it nearly impossible to challenge your secret designation. The American public has a right to understand the policies of what amounts to a shadow legal system.”-Jeremy Scahill, USA, journalist, The Intercept, on his story about the unconstitutional system of creating and maintaining an undemocratic terrorist watchlist by the White House, USA
163. "My name’s Rebecca Vilkomerson. I’m the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. And we’re here today in Golda Meir Plaza at the office of the Friends of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, and we’re planning to do an action, the groups Jews Say No! and Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewish activists who are protesting against the war on Gaza, against this incredibly terrible assault on civilians, and protesting the fact that this organization right here is actually raising money for the Israeli Defense Forces, helping them, supporting the assault that they’re making on Gazan women, children and families. So we feel like it’s really important, especially as Jews, to make the statement that this is not in our name and that the Jewish community is not behind this assault in the United States and that they need to stop doing this immediately."-Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director, Jewish Voice for Peace, at a protest against private funders of the IDF where 9 nonviolent demonstrators were arrested for trespassing, NYC,  USA
164. "I think what we need to ask: Are we really guaranteeing—by supporting unconditionally this Israeli government, right-wing government, are we really helping Israel being more secure in the long term, and ultimately, American interest and stand in the world? Is that what’s happening? And look, this policy with Gaza has been failing for the last eight years. We had six bombardments in the last eight years, and this did not topple Hamas and did not limit, weaken Hamas. Actually, it empowered more and more Hamas. And moderates like myself—and, for me, Hamas is the ultimate liability for the Palestinian people—but this did not empower moderates. Moderates have been telling Israel over and over, "We want a peace deal. We will agree on most conditions that you want." And as Gideon Levy said in this venue, in this same venue, the problem with our policy, that we want to keep the status quo. That means military occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Gaza under siege. And we want—and what we are doing in the media, we are portraying actually a false image where what’s happening in Israel—and if you ask anybody, whether in New York, in D.C., in other places, "What do you think is happening?" they will tell you, "Well, Israel was minding its own business. The Palestinians started shooting missiles out of the blue." This is not the reality. This is not what’s going on. And the context of this is what’s leading the public opinion to support unconditionally Israel. And politicians will do what’s popular, not what’s right. We need to do what’s right. We, in the media, have a mission. Whether it’s MSNBC,Democracy Now!, CNN, we have a mission. We are truth tellers, and we can shape public opinion to protect public interest."-Rula Jebreal, the sole Palestinian (Arab-Israeli) journalist and commentator on MSNBC who criticized their biased coverage supporting Israel only to be kicked off of MSNBC afterward, USA, Israel, Palestine
165. "One of the US's most shameful policies is one of its least-discussed: mass incarceration, on an unparalleled scale"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
166. "Syria has reportedly seen the deadliest 48-hour period of its three-year civil war. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 700 people were killed on Thursday and Friday, more than those killed in the chemical attack on Ghouta nearly one year ago. Most of last week’s dead were killed in heavy clashes between government forces and rebel fighters at the Shaar gas field in central Syria. The Observatory puts the overall death toll since March 2011 at 170,000, more than one-third civilians. More than 2.8 million people have been displaced."-Amy Goodman, USA, journalist and co-founder, Democracy Now!, Syria
167. "Most of them are civilians, and under them we have children, we have women. Yesterday, the al-Qashar Hospital was attacked, with four people that were dead, dozens wounded. So there is a strong allegation of crime wars committed by Israel. In order to establish these war crimes, we ask now for a strong international inquiry. This has to be done in order to eventually transfer Israel in front of the International Criminal Court."-Nadia Boehlen, spokesperson, Amnesty International 
168. “Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future...On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out....These criteria should never have been kept secret.”...In a set of watchlisting criteria riddled with exceptions that swallow rules, this exception is perhaps the most expansive and certainly one of the most troubling....It’s reminiscent of the Bush administration’s heavily criticized color-coded threat alerts, except that here, bureaucrats can exercise virtually standard-less authority in secret with specific negative consequences for entire categories of people.”- Hina Shamsi, J.D., USA, head of ACLU’s National Security Project, USA
169. "The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither 'concrete facts' nor 'irrefutable evidence' to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept. The 'March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,' a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place 'entire categories' of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to 'nominate' people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as 'fragmentary information.' It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted. Over the years, the Obama and Bush Administrations have fiercely resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names on the databases—though the guidelines are officially labeled as unclassified. In May, Attorney General Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was on the no fly list. In an affidavit, Holder called them a 'clear roadmap' to the government’s terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding: 'The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed … could cause significant harm to national security.'"-Jeremy Scahill, USA, and Ryan Deveraux, USA, journalists, The Intercept, international
170. "We obtained and have published the entire US Government rulebook for watchlisting http://interc.pt/1r8CooO "-Jeremy Scahill, USA and Ryan Deveraux, USA, journalists, The Intercept, international
171. "RT @MoAnsar Israel, 4th largest army in the world, nuclear, invader/occupier: victim. Palestine, no army, impoverished, besieged: aggressor."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA,living inBrazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
172. "Well, I guess I hate being vindicated for the facts that I produced in this book, that I described in this book, the facts on the ground inside Israeli society. And what we saw in Haifa, what I understand, is that these right-wingers who attacked Rann (Bar-On) and other leftists, who are heavily demonized in Israeli society, incited against at the highest level by figures like the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, that these right-wingers arrived in buses, that this was a very organized attack. It’s apparent to me that extreme right-wing elements have infiltrated the police, which have allowed them to attack leftists across Israel, to attack antiwar protesters. They’ve infiltrated them much in the way that Golden Dawn has done in Greece. The right wing, the current inception of the street-level right wing, which kind of acts as the street muscle for Netanyahu’s governing coalition, particularly the right-wing elements represented by Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party, they are not just settlers or religious nationalists. Many of them were army reservists, who came together as part of the orange cells that protested the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2006. They formed a group called Im Tirtzu, which intimidates leftists and Palestinians on college campuses across Israel. And they are still a major part of the army, including the army officer corps. So the violence that we’re seeing in Gaza is not just related to a particular military strategy; it’s also influenced by the ideology that has captured the hearts and minds of these young men who have learned to demonize the other and see Palestinians and antiwar and human rights elements as absolutely subhuman. It’s playing out unofficially through a vigilante campaign in Israel, but in Gaza what we’re witnessing is the official revenge campaign orchestrated by Netanyahu and the military."-Max Blumenthal, USA, journalist and author, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
173. “Journalists must be protected while doing their job of giving the public information they have the right to know, helping them understand what is going on. Journalism is not a crime!”-Al-Jazeera media spokesperson after Israel military targets journalists' office in a press building in Gaza the day after Israel foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman called for the end of al-Jazzera's 'biased' reporting on Israel, and in light of Egypt's continuing to imprision three al-Jazeera journalists on trumped up charges, Egypt, Palestine
174. "These conditions are civilian; the means of achieving them are military, violent and criminal. But the (bitter) truth is that when Gaza is not firing rockets at Israel, nobody cares about it. ... Read the list of [Hamas] demands and judge honestly whether there is one unjust demand among them."-Gideon Levy, journalist, Israel
     
175. "Look, we tend to beat our enemies and never to listen to them. And many times, listening even to the enemy, even to the most bitter enemy, can serve a much better cause than beating and beating and beating. And unfortunately, Israel is just using the violence right now without listening to their conditions. I don’t know if their conditions are acceptable. I don’t know if those are really their conditions. But they say it very clearly: They ask for freedom for Gaza, they ask to lift the siege. Can you recall a more just require than this? But I’ll say something more than this. Doesn’t it serve the interests of Israel, seeing Gaza free and seeing Gaza building its economy and not living those unhuman conditions in the biggest cage in the world, which creates only more hatred and more violence? So, it is really at our door now to decide. Do we want to go from one cycle to the other, from one circle of bloodshed to the other, not solving anything? Or are we willing, once and for all, to put a real, just solution to the problem of Gaza?"-Gideon Levy, journalist, Israel
176. "Well, Gaza is a thin strip of land that is bordered mostly by Israel and also by Egypt, and it has a big seacoast, and Palestinians can’t get in or out of Gaza. They’re prevented by Israel. They’re prevented by Egypt, which largely executes U.S. and Israeli policy. And foods, basic goods, the right to import and export, all of these things are banned to them, and so this has devastated the economy here. It has devastated lives. People feel trapped. They often speak of how they live in the biggest open-air prison in the world. And even the sea, fishermen cannot go out more than a couple of kilometers to go fish, where Israeli warships await them. So, you really feel it. And you really feel this war exacerbating all those effects. And you feel—you hear drones in the air. You hear the booms of the ships. And even if you wanted to leave, you couldn’t. Even if journalists wanted to leave today, they couldn’t. Erez crossing was closed, the border with Israel, and the Egyptian border is closed, as well. So it really feels—and there’s no shelters here. There’s no air raids—sorry, there’s no air defense system. There’s no sirens. There’s really nowhere to run. You don’t know where is safe. And people are dying inside their homes and inside hospitals—not from their wounds, but from being bombed and wounded again by the Israeli military."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist with Democracy Now! and The Nation, reporting under live fire in the Gaza strip and how residents are united in resisting the seven-year siege imposed by Israel, Palestine
177. "Obama DOJ spent years trying to keep its terror watchlist manual secret- @jeremyscahill & @rdevro got & published it https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/23/blacklisted/ …"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
178. "the heavy bombing, the heavy bombardment of Gaza continues. Amongst the targets hit were five mosques, a sports stadium and many homes and businesses. Palestinians continue to die inside their homes in Gaza. I saw supermarkets that were still smoldering from what appeared to be a drone strike today. The owner was sifting through diapers and food and all his inventory that had been completely ruined, and his livelihood has been lost. And as you mentioned, I’m standing to you—I’m talking to you from the AP studio, which is just across on the same floor as the Al Jazeera studio. These were two apparently 50-caliber or heavy-caliber shots that came into the window at 9:00 in the morning, or 9:30 in the morning, pierced the window and hit the wall. These are not, you know, regular bullets. These are kind of very loud bullets that make this huge booming sound. One of the Al Jazeera people that I spoke to said that they thought it was what the Israelis call a knock on the roof, a warning shot with a rocket, that it was going to be destroyed. So we had people here, both in AP and Al Jazeera, in a lot of panic and evacuating the premises. AP then confirmed with the Israeli military that they weren’t targeted, but Al Jazeera has not had that confirmation. And the Al Jazeera staff are just downstairs at the bottom of the building, sitting there. And the AP staff are back here on a voluntary basis. So this is, you know, another instance of targeting the media. And meanwhile, as I said, people continue to die. In Rafah yesterday, there was a family, the al-Siam family; nine people of the same family were killed. I spoke yesterday about probably the single deadliest strike since the conflict began, on the Abu Jamaa family, which killed 25 people, 17 of whom were children. So, Gaza’s a place of indescribable loss and a place where family sizes continue to be shrunk by falling bombs."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist with Democracy Now! and The Nation, reporting under live fire in the Gaza strip, Palestine
179. "Every time I comfort a grieving family member who has lost a loved one to police brutality, I hope and pray that it will be the last time. But deep down, I know it won't be. Saturday morning, I was joined at National Action Network's (NAN) weekly rally by relatives of the late Eric Garner, a father of six who died as police officers in Staten Island placed him in an illegal chokehold. At our rally, Garner's widow was so overcome with grief that she collapsed on stage right near me as several of us then rushed to assist her. NAN also held a march in Staten Island over the weekend after family members came to us for help, and I preached at Riverside Church in Manhattan yesterday to call for a restoration of humanity. As Garner's children have to face the harsh reality of living without their father for the rest of their lives, we must demand that they receive justice. At the same time, NAN's Los Angeles chapter has rallied with others for Marlene Pinnock, a 51-year-old grandmother, who was repeatedly pummeled in the face reportedly by a California Highway Patrol officer. Both outrageous incidents were caught on videotape, and both cases demand swift action. But after watching continuous acts of police abuse and brutality from coast-to-coast, perhaps the real question is, have we reached a point where federal authorities need to step in?"-Rev. Al Sharpton, USA minister, parent, founder, National Action Network, USA
180. "We must take back 'cyber', use it to push our own affirmative, pro-security, anti-surveillance agenda. My HOPE X talk http://youtu.be/ZkjmYQpZ3bw"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
181. "We were about three or four hundred left-wing activists demonstrating against the war, for peace between Arabs and Jews, refusing to be enemies. As we arrived, my partner and I saw well over a thousand activists from—militant activists from the right, surrounded by police and others, screaming, "Death to Arabs! Death to leftists!" As we were protesting, they moved towards us. The police allowed them to move towards us. The police allowed them to attack us, to throw stones at us. Later on, as we were trying to leave, the police took—the police did not attempt to allow us to leave. They took over an hour to evacuate us while we were under heavy attack by stones and other missiles. Many were injured. We’ve had over 30 injured. Two women are still in hospital. There were gangs roaming the streets, beating up anyone they thought was an Arab or member of our demonstration. The police were...I believe that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a racist attack. It is not self-defense in any way. And it is a continuation of Israeli policy that has always discriminated against the Arab population. What happened to us at the protest is not new. This is something that is a trend that has been continuing for many years. There has been much incitement from the political class that has allowed even so-called moderate right-wingers to join cries saying, 'Death to Arabs! Death to leftists!' and attacking activists and Arabs in the street."-Rann Bar-On, peace activist, Israel
182. "I don’t know if this was an accident. This may have been staged by Kerry to save face for his bungled act of hollow diplomacy, which was actually a ruse to legitimize Netanyahu’s ground operation and create political space for the kind of massacres that we’ve been witnessing on this very broadcast. It was Kerry who helped draw up the sham ceasefire proposal, which was introduced by the coup regime of Egypt and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has jailed thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members who are political counterparts of Hamas, who hates Hamas, and who never presented this proposal to Hamas. Tony Blair served as the emissary between Sisi and Netanyahu. And the ceasefire was introduced to paint Hamas as rejectionists. Netanyahu openly declared that this ceasefire and Hamas’s rejection of it gave him all the political legitimacy he needed for the ground invasion. And now Kerry is criticizing the outcome of the ceasefire proposal that he introduced—the inevitable outcome—and now claiming that he wants to be flown back to the Middle East to negotiate a new ceasefire on the taxpayers’ dime. I call on John Kerry to refund the American taxpayers for all the jet fuel he’s wasted. He can dip into the Heinz family fortune if he needs to do that. This is an absolute failure of U.S. diplomacy and an abdication of leadership by Barack Obama, who says that he’s heartbroken by these images that he’s witnessing from the Gaza Strip as he oversees and authorizes the shipment of the very weapons that are used to bombard hospitals. In Deir al-Balah, the al-Aqsa Hospital was just attacked, and five are dead. Four were in surgery when they were killed."-Max Blumenthal, USA, journalist and author, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
183. "There's not always complete clarity, but calling gay men or women in spousal relationships 'boyfriends' or 'girlfriends' is belittling"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
184. "several bodies thrown out of gaza building by Israeli blast. Rescuer workers, volunteers enter. Building crumbles on top of them."-Richard Engel, USA, journalist, reporting on Israel war on Gaza strip, Palestine
185. “These shut-offs are an absolute humiliation to the American sensibility of decency...These people are Americans. We will not blink an eye to send trillions of dollars overseas to wage warfare in an illegal war. But we can't come up with the money that it takes to keep a community in water, when it's in the throes of an economic catastrophe that was caused by Wall Street?”-Mark Ruffalo, USA, actor, and anti-fracking and safe water advocate, on Detroit's use of a private contractor to turn off the water for tens of thousands of families who can't pay their bills, USA,
186. "Very heavy shelling of Gaza today. Nonstop. Not counting the dead anymore, now counting the massacres. So many families destroyed."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist, The Nation, Palestine 
187. "Two small bodies lie on the metal table inside the morgue at Gaza's Shifa hospital. Omama is nine years old. Her right forearm is mangled and charred and the top half of her skull has been smashed in. Beside her lies her seven year-old brother. His name is not certain. It might be Hamza or it might be Khalil. Relatives are having trouble identifying him because his head has been shorn off. Their parents will not mourn them—because they are dead too. All of them were killed in Shejaiya, one of Gaza's poorest and most crowded neighborhoods, which came under a brutal and sustained assault by the Israeli military today. 'They dropped shells on our heads,' says Lotfy al-Banna, a resident from the neighborhood who fled early Sunday morning. 'Everything is burnt down.' It marked the bloodiest day in a blood-soaked conflict. Nearly 90 people were killed, 60 of them in Shejaiya alone, bringing the death toll in Gaza since the assault began to 425, 112 of them children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Over three thousand people have been injured. Thick black smoke billowed up from Shejaiya throughout the day, darkening the sky. Falling bombs could be heard every few seconds. Drones buzzed overhead, and the occasional crackle of machine gun fire rang out. The attack began around 9pm and lasted well into late afternoon the following day. Tanks and artillery rained barrage after barrage of shells on the neighborhood, firing indiscriminately, according to multiple residents. Missiles slammed into apartment blocks. Ambulances could not get in. People say they waited for hours yet no one came to help. They say they were too afraid to put their heads out of the window to see what was happening around them. Some bled to death in their homes. The streets of Shejaiya were strewn with the dead. 'I saw eight people lying dead on the ground, thee children and five elderly men' says Ayman, a resident who was evacuating his family to safety. Ilham Abu Qubos, another resident, says she witnessed similar scenes. 'Death is everywhere in the streets.' Some ambulances did eventually brave the shelling to try and rescue people. But one took a direct hit, killing the paramedic inside. A TV correspondent was also killed in Shejaiya. (A day earlier the Israeli government's press office sent an email warning that Hamas 'has frequently exploited journalists as human shields' and confirming that 'Israel is not in any way responsible for injury or damage that may occur as a result of field reporting.')"-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt,journalist, The Nation, reporting from the Gaza strip on civilians killed by Israel's military, Palestine
188. "The US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have targeted American Muslims in abusive counterterrorism 'sting operations' based on religious and ethnic identity...Many of the more than 500 terrorism-related cases prosecuted in US federal courts since September 11, 2001, have alienated the very communities that can help prevent terrorist crimes."-Human Rights Watch, Illlusion of Justice: Human Rigths Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions report, USA
189. "If you say "Israel just bombed X", huge numbers of people are trained to say "but Hamas hid weapons there" w/o having any idea if it's true."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
     
190. “Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US. But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts....The US government should stop treating American Muslims as terrorists-in-waiting....The bar on entrapment in US law is so high that it’s almost impossible for a terrorism suspect to prove. Add that to law enforcement preying on the particularly vulnerable, such as those with mental or intellectual disabilities, and the very poor, and you have a recipe for rampant human rights abuses....Far from protecting Americans, including American Muslims, from the threat of terrorism, the policies documented in this report have diverted law enforcement from pursuing real threats....It is possible to protect people’s rights and also prosecute terrorists, which increases the chances of catching genuine criminals.”-Andrea Prasow, deputy director, Human Rights Watch; co-author, Illusions of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions report, USA
191. "We have seen hundreds upon hundreds of people leaving and they are not carrying bags packed with clothes, they are not carrying anything. They are literally running for their lives. They are leaving this area but of course there is nowhere safe here. You expect to see all these people flee across a border, but they can't cross a border. Gaza is completely locked off."-Sherine Tadros, Egypt, journalist reporting from Shaja'iya massacre by Israel military, Palestine 
192. "Girl, 9, we saw die in Gaza ER today had no relatives with her. Never learned her name. Still she was unforgettable: The Unknown Civilian."-Anne Barnard, USA, journalist, reporting from Gaza, Palestine.
193. "IDF death toll now 18, giving Hamas & co a 9:1 military/civilian kill ratio. Israel's is around 1:3, 27 times worse"-Tom Dale, journalist based in Egypt, on the killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel military and vice versa, Palestine 
194. "An Education Declaration to Rebuild America:Americans have long looked to our public schools to provide opportunities for individual advancement, promote social mobility and share democratic values. We have built great universities, helped bring children out of factories and into classrooms, held open the college door for returning veterans, fought racial segregation and struggled to support and empower students with special needs. We believe good schools are essential to democracy and prosperity — and that it is our collective responsibility to educate all children, not just a fortunate few. Over the past three decades, however, we have witnessed a betrayal of those ideals. Following the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, policymakers on all sides have pursued an education agenda that imposes top-down standards and punitive high-stakes testing while ignoring the supports students need to thrive and achieve. This approach – along with years of drastic financial cutbacks — are turning public schools into uncreative, joyless institutions. Educators are being stripped of their dignity and autonomy, leading many to leave the profession. Neighborhood schools are being closed for arbitrary reasons. Parent and community voices are being shut out of the debate. And children, most importantly, are being systemically deprived of opportunities to learn. As a nation we have failed to rectify glaring inequities in access to educational opportunities and resources. By focusing solely on the achievement gap, we have neglected the opportunity gap that creates it, and have allowed the resegregation of our schools and communities by class and race. The inevitable result, highlighted in the Federal Equity and Excellence Commission’s recent report, For Each and Every Child, is an inequitable system that hits disadvantaged students, families, and communities the hardest. A new approach is needed to improve our nation’s economic trajectory, strengthen our democracy, and avoid an even more stratified and segregated society. To rebuild America, we need a vision for 21st-century education based on seven principles:
     • All students have a right to learn. Opportunities to learn should not depend on zip code or a parent’s abilities to work the system. Our education system must address the needs of all children, regardless of how badly they are damaged by poverty and neglect in their early years. We must invest in research-proven interventions and supports that start before kindergarten and support every child’s aspirations for college or career.
     • Public education is a public good. Public education should never be undermined by private control, deregulation and profiteering. Keeping our schools public is the only way we can ensure that each and every student receives a quality education. School systems must function as democratic institutions responsive to students, teachers, parents and communities.
     • Investments in education must be equitable and sufficient. Funding is necessary for all the things associated with an excellent education: safe buildings, quality teachers, reasonable class sizes, and early learning opportunities. Yet, as we’ve “raised the bar” for achievement, we’ve cut the resources children and schools need to reach it. We must reverse this trend and spend more money on education and distribute those funds more equitably.
     • Learning must be engaging and relevant. Learning should be a dynamic experience through connections to real world problems and to students’ own life experiences and cultural backgrounds. High-stakes testing narrows the curriculum and hinders creativity.
     • Teachers are professionals. The working conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of students. When we judge teachers solely on a barrage of high-stakes standardized tests, we limit their ability to reach and connect with their students. We must elevate educators’ autonomy and support their efforts to reach every student.
     • Discipline policies should keep students in schools. Students need to be in school in order to learn. We must cease ineffective and discriminatory discipline practices that push children down the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools must use fair discipline policies that keep classrooms safe and all students learning.
     • National responsibility should complement local control. Education is largely the domain of states and school districts, but in far too many states there are gross inequities in how funding is distributed to schools that serve low-income and minority students. In these cases, the federal government has a responsibility to ensure there is equitable funding and enforce the civil right to a quality education for all students.

     Principles are only as good as the policies that put them into action. The current policy agenda dominated by standards-based, test-driven reform is clearly insufficient. What’s needed is a supports-based reform agenda that provides every student with the opportunities and resources needed to achieve high standards and succeed, focused on these seven areas:

     1. Early Education and Grade Level Reading: Guaranteed access to high quality early education for all, including full-day kindergarten and universal access to pre-K services, to help ensure students can read at grade level.
     2. Equitable Funding and Resources: Fair and sufficient school funding freed from over-reliance on locally targeted property taxes, so those who face the toughest hurdles receive the greatest resources. Investments are also needed in out-of-school factors affecting students, such as supports for nutrition and health services, public libraries, after school and summer programs, and adult remedial education — along with better data systems and technology.
     3. Student-Centered Supports: Personalized plans or approaches that provide students with the academic, social, and health supports they need for expanded and deeper learning time.
     4. Teaching Quality: Recruitment, training, and retention of well-prepared, well-resourced, and effective educators and school leaders, who can provide extended learning time and deeper learning approaches, and are empowered to collaborate with and learn from their colleagues.
     5. Better Assessments: High-quality diagnostic assessments that go beyond test-driven mandates and help teachers strengthen the classroom experience for each student.
     6. Effective Discipline: An end to ineffective and discriminatory discipline practices, including inappropriate out-of-school suspensions, replaced with policies and supports that keep all students in quality educational settings.
     7. Meaningful Engagement: Parent and community engagement in determining the policies of schools and the delivery of education services to students.

     As a nation, we’re failing to provide the basics our children need for an opportunity to learn. Instead, we have substituted a punitive high-stakes testing regime that seeks to force progress on the cheap. But there is no shortcut to success. We must change course before we further undermine schools and drive away the teachers our children need. All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in."-The Education Opportunity Network, USA

195. "If targeting hospitals isn't a war crime, what is?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
196. "Let me mention, because I think it’s relevant to what you’re covering here, your very, very powerful segments...about what’s going on in Gaza, the pounding of these cities, the defenselessness of ordinary people. The same thing has been happening in East Ukrainian cities—bombing, shelling, mortaring by the Kiev government—whatever we think of that government. But that government is backed 150 percent by the White House. Every day, the White House and the State Department approve of what Kiev’s been doing. We don’t know how many innocent civilians, women and children, have died. We know there’s probably several hundred thousand refugees that have run from these cities. The cities are Donetsk, Luhansk, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk—a whole series of cities whose names are not familiar to Americans. The fact is, Americans know nothing about this. We know something about what’s happening in Gaza, and there’s a division of opinion in the United States: The Israelis should do this, the Israelis should not do this. But we know there are victims: We see them. Sometimes the mainstream media yanks a reporter, as you just showed, who shows it too vividly, because it offends the perception of what’s right or wrong. But we are not shown anything about what’s happened in these Ukrainian cities, these eastern Ukrainian cities. Why is that important? Because this airliner, this shootdown, took place in that context. The American media says it must have been the bad guys—that is, the rebels—because they’ve shot down other airplanes. This is true, but the airplanes they’ve been shooting down are Ukraine’s military warplanes that have come to bomb the women and children of these cities. We don’t know that."-Stephen Cohen, Ph.D., USA, professor emeritus of Russia studies and politics,  on the context of the shooting down of Malaysia's flight MH 17 over Ukraine, likely by rebels allied with the separatist movement, Ukraine
197. "Were any other country on Earth doing what is being done in Gaza, there would be worldwide uproar."-Jon Snow, UK journalist and news anchor, Channel 4, on Israel's war against Palestine
198. "Day 11 of a brutal assault that has left over 340 Palestinians dead and more than 2,500 wounded. Israel has attacked Gaza incessantly from the air, land and sea. Drones, F-16s, Apache helicopters, naval warships, tanks and artillery guns have bombarded the Strip day and night. More than 77 percent of the dead are civilians, over seventy of them children. The Abu Jarad family home lies on the western outskirts of Beit Hanoun, close to the Israeli borders to the north and east. The area has been heavily shelled by the Israeli military. Destruction is everywhere. Gaping holes have been torn into buildings and there are craters in the ground left by missile strikes. The streets are deserted and tense.Israel has vowed a 'significant expansion' of its ground offensive. Beit Hanoun and nearby Beit Lahia have already been largely emptied of residents. The United Nations says the number of internal refugees has more than doubled since the start of the invasion, to at least 50,000."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist, The Nation, reporting from the Gaza strip on the eight children and adults of the Abu Jarad family, civilians killed by Israel's military, Palestine
199. "Israel has one of the most technologically advanced armies in the world both in terms of weaponry and intelligence. Yet, throughout this latest escalation of attacks, as with Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defence, we see a disproportionate number of civilian deaths and damage to civilian property....The obligation not to target civilians and civilian infrastructure is absolute and any intentional violation of this obligation amounts to a war crime."-Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq human rights organization, Palestine
200. "You can understand why some human rights organizations call Gaza ‘the world’s largest outdoor prison...One of the major complaints and frustrations among many people is that this is a form of collective punishment. You have 1.7 million people in this territory, now being bombarded, with really no way out."-Ayman Mohyeldin, Egyptian-American journalist reporting on the Gaza Strip, Palestine
     
201. "Amazing: Since when is "kidnapped" the word used to describe soldiers of an invading army who are captured?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist/editor/co-founder, The Intercept, international
202. "We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for it. We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth. And we will fight for it. We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality. And we will fight for it. We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty. That means raising the minimum wage. And we will fight for it. We will fight for it. And let me add to that: We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them. We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt. And we are willing to fight for it. We are willing. We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions. And we will fight for them. We will fight. We believe— only I can’t believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work. And we’re willing to fight for it. We believe that equal means equal, and that’s true in marriage, it’s true in the workplace, it’s true in all of America. And we’re willing to fight for it. We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform. And we are willing to fight for it. And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it."-Elizabeth Warren, J.D., senator (D-MA), professor, parent, USA
203. "As educators across the country work to empower all students to meet the academic and career preparation demands of the 21st century, the role of school counselors has never been more important. School counselors are often the vital link between students’ aspirations for the future and tangible opportunities for postsecondary success. They are also particularly important for our neediest students, who require expert and accessible guidance as they navigate a challenging and complicated college admissions and career preparation landscape. As State and local educational agencies (SEAs and LEAs) prepare for the start of the 2014–2015 school year, I want to call attention to the urgent need for highly effective school counselors and discuss the importance of amplifying the impact of school counselors on students’ academic success, social-emotional well-being, and college and career readiness. If the nation is to meet President Obama’s goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, it is imperative that all students have consistent access to school counselors who possess the training and skills to help students reach their highest aspirations. School counselors are pivotal in helping students manage their academic programs as well as the inevitable life events that may threaten students’ ability to succeed in school. Yet, as the Civil Rights Data Collection recently found, one in five American high schools operates without any school counselors on staff(http://www.ed.gov/blog/2014/03/five-new-facts-from-the-civil-rights-data-collection/). This is an untenable situation for millions of students who need the support of site-based school counselors, whose job it is to ensure their students’ success. Schools that do employ counselors may not use them to full advantage. Despite the critical role school counselors play in supporting students’ college and career readiness, they often are asked to perform many “non-counseling” duties that can distract from their core work and ultimately leave students without the individualized attention they need to complete their academic course work, successfully navigate the college admissions and financial aid processes, and/or prepare for productive careers. Increasing the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college and careers requires that all students benefit from a holistic support system that ensures consistent access to effective school counselors. Schools and LEAs should support their school counselors by providing them with the time, space, and resources they need to work effectively on behalf of students, while also holding them accountable for measurably improving the college and career readiness of the students they serve. Doing this well will require that SEAs and LEAs make wise investments in professional development for school counselors, create or provide data platforms that can enable school counselors to extend their impact and reach all students, and provide high-quality training for principals and teachers so they understand how to most appropriately utilize and build on the capacities of school counselors. Additionally, schools and LEAs can further support student success by engaging school counselors in a leadership capacity to serve as trainers and providers of professional development designed to improve all educators’ understanding of the college awareness, admissions, and financial aid processes. This strategy could help school counselors focus their energies on meeting students’ academic, social-emotional, and college-and career-readiness needs, especially those of the many first-generation college-bound students who are now graduating from our high schools. A systemic and sustainable approach to supporting school counselors in meeting increased professional demands should include a consideration of how federal funds and programs can help improve and expand the reach of school counselors.....Decades of professional experience confirm—and an emerging body of research indicates—that school counselors play a critical role in helping to ensure that our nation’s students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. Without the support of school counselors, millions of students would neither graduate from high school nor fulfill the essential requirements of the college admissions and financial aid processes. I urge SEAs and LEAs to use the summer months to strategize and develop policies and programs that enable school counselors to become more effective at helping greater numbers of students—especially low-income students, minority students, students with disabilities, and English learners—successfully access postsecondary education or career opportunities. I am grateful to you and our nation’s school counselors, who strive to meet the varied and complex needs of students and their families.-Arne Duncan, USA, Secretary of Education, USA
204. "In the past 24 hours, there have been a number of incidents involving the death of civilians, including the appalling killing of four boys on a beach in Gaza City. I urge Israel to do far more to stop civilian casualties. There can be no military solution to this conflict."-Ban Ki-moon, U.N. Secretary-General, South Korea
205. "In the spring of 2012, Spenser Johnson, a junior at Highland Park High School in Topeka, Kansas, was unpacking his acoustic bass before orchestra practice when a sign caught his eye. "Do you want to make money?" it asked. The poster encouraged the predominantly poor students at Highland Park to enroll in a new, yearlong course that would provide lessons in basic economic principles and practical instruction on starting a business. Students would receive generous financial incentives including startup captial and scholarships after graduation. The course would begin that fall. Johnson eagerly signed up. In some ways, the class looked like a typical high school business course, taught in a Highland Park classroom by a Highland Park teacher. But it was actually run by Youth Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit group created and funded primarily by Charles G. Koch, the billionaire chairman of Koch Industries. The official mission of Youth Entrepreneurs is to provide kids with "business and entrepreneurial education and experiences that help them prosper and become contributing members of society." The underlying goal of the program, however, is to impart Koch's radical free-market ideology to teenagers. In the last school year, the class reached more than 1,000 students across Kansas and Missouri. Lesson plans and class materials obtained by The Huffington Post make the course's message clear: The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Public assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty. Though YE has avoided the public spotlight, the current structure of the program began to take shape in November 2009, documents show, when a team of associates at the Charles G. Koch Foundation launched an important project with Charles Koch's blessing: They would design and test what they called "a high school free market and liberty-based course" with support from members of the Koch family's vast nonprofit and political network. A pilot version of the class would be offered the following spring to students at the Wichita Collegiate School, an elite private prep school in Kansas where Koch was a top donor. First, the Koch team chose its mascot: a golden eagle holding a knife in its beak. They also assigned each other nicknames: Ol' Mucky Terrahawk, Mighty Killer, Big Gay Mule, Midnight Bandit and the Erratic Assassin. The group dubbed itself the "Wu-Teach Clan."Over the next six months, members of the Wu-Teach Clan exchanged hundreds of emails with one another and with Koch lieutenants. They  hashed out a strategy to infiltrate public schools after surveys showed that the wealthy prep school students largely failed to absorb their libertarian message. We know all this because the Wu-Teach Clan used a Google group that it had left open to the public. The emails show that Charles Koch had a hands-on role in the design of the high school curriculum, directly reviewing the work of those responsible for setting up the course. The goal, the group said flatly, was to turn young people into "liberty-advancing agents" before they went to college, where they might learn "harmful" liberal ideas."-Christina Wilke, USA, and Joy Resmovits, USA, journalists, Huffington Post, USA
206. "Gaza is filled with the sounds of war. Normally a bustling and noisy place, the cacophony of its dense urban life has been replaced with the incessant buzzing of drones, the booms of naval artillery, the screech of F-16s and the blasts of missiles, shells and bombs crashing down. There are no sirens in Gaza, no shelters, no air defense system. There is only destruction and death. More than 240 Palestinians have been killed in ten days of bombardment by the Israeli military. Around 77 percent of the dead are civilians, including nearly fifty children, according to the United Nations. The devastation is visible around every corner. Disfigured buildings, facades ripped open, buckle over in grotesque poses, spilling their insides onto the streets: a fridge covered in cement dust, a torn mattress, a closet ripped in half. Shards of glass festoon the roads.  More than 1,600 homes have been reduced to rubble or severely damaged. Dozens of graveyards have been hit. 'The Israelis are even trying to kill the dead,' one resident says."-Sharif Kouddous, Egypt, journalist, The Nation, reporting from the Gaza strip, Palestine
207. "US politicians are allowed to tell the truth about Israel only when they think nobody can hear them"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist, The Intercept, international
     
208. "They will be able to move freely. They can leave. But they've been turned into walking skeletons. They've been destroyed by what they've gone through, physically and psychologically."-Jose Mujica, president, Uruguay, readying to accept 6 of 149 remaining men (four from Syria, one from Palestine, and one from Tunisia) who have been imprisoned without trial by the USA at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
209. "What last year's revelations showed us was irrefutable evidence that unencrypted communications on the internet are no longer safe. Any communications should be encrypted by default."-Edward Snowden, USA, encouraging all professionals (counselors, doctors, attorneys, journalists, clergy, and individuals seeking privacy/anonymity) worldwide who need to have privacy/privelege with clients/sources to use encryption for all digital communications due to spying/surveillance;  living in termporary asylum in Russia
     
210. "4 Palestinian kids killed in a single Israeli airstrike. Minutes before they were killed by our hotel, I was kicking a ball with them."-Ayman Mohyeldin, Egyptian-American journalist who was an eye-witness to killing of children by Israel military, followed up reports with their families as they learned the news, then ordered off the story by NBC management despite his interest in continuing to report, Gaza Strip, Palestine
     
211. "So this campaign by corporations to label this type of activity and even nonviolent civil disobedience as terrorism has been going on for decades now. And in my book, I really chart this emergence of that eco-terror rhetoric. And it all changed after September 11th, and that’s really how we got to the point of this new law, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which is so broad that, according to its supporters, it not only includes things like stealing animals from fur farms and laboratories, but also civil disobedience and protest activity. And to me, this is this radical expansion of terrorism powers in the name of protecting corporate interests. So if there’s one message, I think, for me to convey right now with this court case, as I’m watching it unfold in Los Angeles, and these ag-gag laws, is that it really doesn’t matter how you feel about animal rights groups or about these alleged crimes stealing animals; this is really about a corporate campaign to demonize their opposition and to use terrorism resources to shut down a movement."-Will Potter, USA, journalist and author, Green is the new red: An insider's account of a social movement, USA
212. "This is what Israel always does. Anybody who knows the history, it’s what the Israeli political scientist, the mainstream political scientist—name was Avner Yaniv—he said it’s these Palestinian 'peace offensives.' Whenever the Palestinians seem like they are trying to reach a settlement of the conflict, which the unity government was, at that point Israel does everything it can to provoke a violent reaction—in this case, from Hamas—break up the unity government, and Israel has its pretext. 'We can’t negotiate with the Palestinian Authority because they only represent some of the Palestinian people; they don’t represent all of the Palestinian people.' And so Netanyahu does what he always does—excuse me, what Israeli governments always do: You keep pounding the Palestinians, in this case pounding Hamas, pounding Hamas, trying to evoke a reaction, and when the reaction comes—well, when the reaction comes, he said, 'We can’t deal with these people. They’re terrorists.'"-Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D., USA, political scientist, co-author with Mouin Rabbani, fellow, Institute for Palestinian Studies, living in Jordan, How to solve the Israeli-Palestine conflict, USA, Israel, Palestine
213. "The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, 'amplif[y]' sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be 'extremist.' The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of 'fake victim blog posts,' 'false flag operations,' 'honey traps' and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users. But as the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an 'emergency' to 'help keep us safe,' a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called 'JTRIG Tools and Techniques' provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit’s operations are. The document—available in full here—is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG’s 'weaponised capability' when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker’s buffet for wreaking online havoc. The 'tools' have been assigned boastful code names. They include invasive methods for online surveillance, as well as some of the very techniques that the U.S. and U.K. have harshly prosecuted young online activists for employing, including 'distributed denial of service' attacks and 'call bombing.' But they also describe previously unknown tactics for manipulating and distorting online political discourse and disseminating state propaganda, as well as the apparent ability to actively monitor Skype users in real-time—raising further questions about the extnent of Microsoft's cooperation with spy agencies or potential vulnerabilities in its Skype’s encryption. Here’s a list of how JTRIG describes its capabilities:

     • “Change outcome of online polls” (UNDERPASS)

     • “Mass delivery of email messaging to support an Information Operations campaign” (BADGER) and “mass delivery of SMS messages to support an Information Operations campaign” (WARPARTH)

     • “Disruption of video-based websites hosting extremist content through concerted target discovery and content removal.” (SILVERLORD)

     • “Active skype capability. Provision of real time call records (SkypeOut and SkypetoSkype) and bidirectional instant messaging. Also contact lists.” (MINIATURE HERO)

     • “Find private photographs of targets on Facebook” (SPRING BISHOP)

     • “A tool that will permanently disable a target’s account on their computer” (ANGRY PIRATE)

     • “Ability to artificially increase traffic to a website” (GATEWAY) and “ability to inflate page views on websites” (SLIPSTREAM)

     • “Amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube)” (GESTATOR)

     • “Targeted Denial Of Service against Web Servers” (PREDATORS FACE) and “Distributed denial of service using P2P. Built by ICTR, deployed by JTRIG” (ROLLING THUNDER)

     • “A suite of tools for monitoring target use of the UK auction site eBay (www.ebay.co.uk)” (ELATE)

     • “Ability to spoof any email address and send email under that identity” (CHANGELING)

     • “For connecting two target phone together in a call” (IMPERIAL BARGE)

     While some of the tactics are described as 'in development,' JTRIG touts 'most' of them as 'fully operational, tested and reliable.' It adds: 'We only advertise tools here that are either ready to fire or very close to being ready.'

     And JTRIG urges its GCHQ colleagues to think big when it comes to internet deception: 'Don’t treat this like a catalogue. If you don’t see it here, it doesn’t mean we can’t build it.'"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist, The Intercept, International
214. "These children are not illegal; they are human beings, and they are not a national security threat. The only threat that these children pose to us, is the threat of testing our own conscience." #IStandWithJose-Jose Antonio Vargas, Philippines, and undocumented immigrant, USA, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, arrested covering the flood of child immigrants fleeing violence and poverty in Central America and Mexico at the Texas/Mexico border, Mexico/USA
     
215. "I want the president to be as bold and generous as Republicans have been petty and mean-spirited on immigration. We cannot let the current turmoil at the border — which we would be doing an even better job of controlling had this Congress addressed immigration reform — we can’t let this crisis distract us from the fact that record-breaking levels of deportation, and the threat of deportation, are taking a devastating toll on American communities throughout our nation."-Congressperson Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), USA
     
216. "With Congress failing to act on immigration reform, and President Obama weighing his options on executive action, the critical question remains: How do we define American?" #IStandWithJose -Jose Antonio Vargas, Philippines, and undocumented immigrant, USA, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, arrested covering the flood of child immigrants fleeing violence and poverty in Central America and Mexico at the Texas/Mexico border, Mexico/USA
217. "Those who disclose human rights violations should be protected: we need them....I see some of it here in the case of Snowden, because his revelations go to the core of what we are saying about the need for transparency, the need for consultation....We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information."-Navi Pillay, J.D., UN high commissioner for human rights, , challenging the filing of espionage charges against Edward Snowden, USA, living in asylum in Russia, by the USA
218. "The NSA is mass collecting on everyone and it's said to be about terrorism but inside the US it has stopped zero attacks."-William Binney, NSA whistleblower, USA 
219. "On July 20, 2013, agents of the U.K. government entered The Guardian newsroom in London and compelled them to physically destroy the computers they were using to report on the Edward Snowden archive. The Guardian reported this a month later after my partner, David Miranda, was detained at Heathrow Airport for 11 hours under a British terrorism law and had all of his electronic equipment seized. At the time, the Obama administration—while admitting that it was told in advance of the Heathrow detention—pretended that it knew nothing about the forced laptop destruction and would never approve of such attacks on press freedom....But emails just obtained by Associated Press pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) prove that senior Obama national security officials—including Director of National  James Clapper and then-NSA chief Keith Alexander—not only knew in advance that U.K. officials intended to force The Guardian to destroy their computers, but overtly celebrated it....How many times do Obama administration officials have to be caught misleading the public before U.S. media outlets will stop assuming their claims to be true?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, attorney, author, and journalist, The Intercept, International
220. "The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control."-William Binney, NSA whistleblower, USA
221. "The tech industry's slow, but steady adoption of crypto (particularly end-to-end) is the death of 1000 cuts for dragnet government spying."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
222. "In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Dumbledore says: ‘Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.’”-Cassidy Stay, Tezas teen mass shooting survivor who witnessed her parents' murder, like the boy wizard Harry Potter, but unlike Harry Potter her siblings were killed, and she pretended to be dead when her uncle, the shooter, fled the scene, but the bullets had only grazed her head, and she called police to warn of his actions/location so he was apprehended quickly without killing other familly members, USA
     
223. "Soaring tuitions and declining incomes have resulted in larger debt burdens. Those with only a high school diploma have seen their incomes decline by 13 percent over the past 35 years.

     Where justice is concerned, there is also a yawning divide. In the eyes of the rest of the world and a significant part of its own population, mass incarceration has come to define America — a country, it bears repeating, with about 5 percent of the world’s population but around a fourth of the world’s prisoners. Justice has become a commodity, affordable to only a few. While Wall Street executives used their high-retainer lawyers to ensure that their ranks were not held accountable for the misdeeds that the crisis in 2008 so graphically revealed, the banks abused our legal system to foreclose on mortgages and evict people, some of whom did not even owe money."-Joseph Stiglitz, Ph.D., economist, professor, Nobel Prize winner, USA

224. "We have received deeply disturbing reports that many of the civilian casualties, including of children, occurred as a result of strikes on homes. Such reports raise serious doubt about whether the Israeli strikes have been in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law."-Navi Pillay, United Nations high commissioner for human rights, on the illegal Israel bombing strikes that have killed over 100 Palestinians and wounded hundreds of others, primarily civilians, Palestine
225. "The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans—including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers—under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies.

     According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:

     • Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;

     • Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;

     • Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;

     • Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;

     • Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.

     The individuals appear on an NSA spreadsheet in the Snowden archives called “FISA recap”—short for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under that law, the Justice Department must convince a judge with the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is probable cause to believe that American targets are not only agents of an international terrorist organization or other foreign power, but also “are or may be” engaged in or abetting espionage, sabotage, or terrorism. The authorizations must be renewed by the court, usually every 90 days for U.S. citizens.

     The spreadsheet shows 7,485 email addresses listed as monitored between 2002 and 2008. Many of the email addresses on the list appear to belong to foreigners whom the government believes are linked to Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Among the Americans on the list are individuals long accused of terrorist activity, including Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, who were killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen.

     But a three-month investigation by The Intercept—including interviews with more than a dozen current and former federal law enforcement officials involved in the FISA process—reveals that in practice, the system for authorizing NSA surveillance affords the government wide latitude in spying on U.S. citizens. The five Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Some have even climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign policy establishments." -Glenn Greenwald, USA, living in Brazil, and Murtaza Hussein, Canada, journalists, The Intercept, international
226. "The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) stalwartly condemns the National Security Agency (NSA)’s systematic, unconstitutional, and profiled surveillance of the Arab- and  Muslim-American communities. In Glenn Greenwald’s published article today in The Intercept, it was revealed that thousands of community leaders, organizations and activists were targeted by the NSA. Greenwald details the NSA’s activities in targeting Arab- and Muslim-Americans, along with respective community organizations, and civil rights groups solely due to political beliefs or religious affiliation. The NSA has unlawfully spied on organizational emails, phone records, member and donor lists, and civil rights strategies, among other information. This government activity is not only discriminatory, but is also in clear violation of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth amendment.Abed Ayoub, ADC Legal & Policy Director, states, 'The magnitude of these revelations is shocking. The Obama Administration, through its directives and instructions, has shown zero regard for protecting the Constitutional Rights of the Arab- and Muslim-American communities.' It is important to note that this discrimination is not limited to Arab- and Muslim-Americans; it extends to those that share similar views of equality and justice as the respective communities. This unlawful activity pervades and is alarmingly normalized in many facets of the government — from the Transportation Security Agency’s racial profiling of Arab- or Muslim-looking travelers for searches and detainment, or the New York Police Department’s spying on Muslim Student Associations both within and outside of their jurisdiction. ADC denounces the unlawful profiling and surveillance of the Arab- and Muslim-American communities and will continue to stand in defense of the basic civil and human rights of all Americans. ADC will be following up this issue with upcoming actions items, demanding that the NSA cease its unlawful and immoral activity."-American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee statement, USA
227. "The NSA’s surveillance of Nihad Awad and CAIR fits the same pattern as the FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Then it was based on manufactured suspicions of associations with the Communist Party. Now it is seemingly based on unproven claims of tangential associations with Hamas. The government is targeting an organization for its lawful political activity and conflating peaceful support for Palestinians and equal treatment for Muslims in the U.S. with suspicious activity. The NAACP had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to vindicate the First Amendment right to association, which is what protects organizations participating in civic and political activity from government intimidation or interference. Every civic group in this country has the right to peacefully advocate for social justice at home and abroad without fear of government surveillance, intimidation, and harassment. The Church Committee exposed the extent of the infiltration of Civil Rights groups and spying on their members. It is time for a new Church Committee to look into today’s abuses."-Vincent Warren, Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director, USA
     
228. "We believe that this cycle of violence must be ended, and it’s definitely not going to be ended by more violence and by more bombs on Gaza, and it’s not going to help the people in the south and neither the people in Tel Aviv that have been subject to missiles in the past few days."-Hilleli, Women of Peace, challenging Israel's illegal and disproportionate collective military punishment toward Palestinians in the Gaza strip with mass civilian Palestinian casualties as well as a halt to Hamas' rocket fire into Israel
     
229. If Snowden’s sample is representative, the population under scrutiny in the PRISM and Upstream programs is far larger than the government has suggested. In a June 26 “transparency report,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that 89,138 people were targets of last year’s collection under FISA Section 702. At the 9-to-1 ratio of incidental collection in Snowden’s sample, the office’s figure would correspond to nearly 900,000 accounts, targeted or not, under surveillance.-Barton Gellman, Ashkan Soltani, & Julie Tate, journalists, Washington Post, USA
     
230. "But most of all, I want to recognize all of you (school counselors) for everything you do for our young people every single day.  And I have to tell you, when I found out that you all were making me an honorary school counselor, my first thought was, there is absolutely no way I’m worthy of this honor.  Because I know that you all have one of the hardest, most stressful, most important and most underappreciated jobs of anyone in this country — and I live with the President of the United States. So frankly, when I think about what you all do on an average day, well, quite frankly, I’m amazed. An average day for all of you might start with a child sobbing in your office because she’s being bullied or having trouble at home.  Or maybe it’s the kid who’s been kicked out of every class, and he’s sitting in front of you, angry and defiant, and it’s up to you to figure out how to help him get back on track. And then, later on in the day, perhaps you meet with an overwhelmed parent who’s not sure that they can really trust you, so you’ve got to convince them that you’re there to help and that you’re on their side.  And then maybe you see that kid with so much promise but who doesn’t think she’s college material and refuses to apply to any schools because she doesn’t know how she’s going to pay for school, so you’ve got to somehow show her that she has what it takes to succeed in life. And those are just a few ways that you support our young people every day.  Too often, you are the only adults in their lives who aren’t there to grade them or judge them or punish them, and that’s why they seek you out when they have nowhere else to turn. So before I say anything else today, I want to say something that I’m sure you all don’t hear nearly enough, and that is, thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you for your passion and your dedication.  Thank you for refusing to give up on a single child because you believe that every child has promise and every child has something to contribute. And as First Lady, I share that conviction, which is why I want to talk with you about my new initiative that Shari mentioned; I launched it recently to help all of our children fulfill their boundless potential.  It’s called Reach Higher, and the goal is to inspire every young person in this country to complete their education beyond high school. And I’m here today because, while we talk a great deal about the role of teachers and principals and parents in preparing kids for higher education, often, engaged school counselors like all of you are the deciding factor in whether young people attend college or not. Just take the example of a young woman named Sbeidy Dominguez from Escondido, California.  Now, no one in Sbeidy’s family had ever attended college — I know you see many kids like that — but her school counselor, Rita Guerra, insisted that she was college material.  So Rita pushed Sbeidy to take the SATs and the ACTs and enroll in AP classes.  Then, senior year, Sbeidy became pregnant, and her dreams of college started to seem impossible. But once again, Rita stepped in.  She helped Sbeidy find medical care, to complete her FAFSA forms, and to make up her AP exams after she gave birth.  And as a result, Sbeidy graduated in the top one percent of her high school class, and this fall, she will be starting [her senior year] at the University of California in Riverside. That’s the difference that you all make in a student’s life. You’re the ones planting the seeds about college as early as elementary school and middle school, making it clear that higher education is the expectation, not the exception.  You’re the ones grabbing kids in the hallway to tell them to sign up for that right college prep program, to check out that website for professional training opportunities, to convince them that they belong in that AP class and then to call the teacher to make sure it happens.  And when push comes to shove, you’re the ones helping our students meet those deadlines, and write those essays, and untangle those financial aid forms. I recently saw this firsthand at a financial aid event run by school counselors at a school in Virginia.  Students and parents had gathered to learn how to fill out their FAFSA forms.  Many of these parents hadn’t gone to college, and they seemed anxious and overwhelmed.  But I watched how those counselors interacted — they were joking with those kids and patiently answering their parents’ questions, and I could see the connection that they had to those families, and I could see the bonds of trust that had been formed. And those parents and kids walked away feeling hopeful.  They walked away feeling like they weren’t alone, like maybe they could do this college thing after all.  And that’s the impact that you all have.  And by putting our kids on the path to higher education, you all are literally affecting the entire course of their lives. See, 40 or 50 years ago, most kids could expect to graduate from high school and then go out and get a decent-paying job at a local factory or business.  But, as you all know, today, most of the fastest-growing jobs in this country require higher education, and college graduates, as you know, earn (at least) twice as much as folks with only a high school diploma. So higher education is no longer just for kids in the top quarter or the top half of the class — college is for everyone. Every student in this country needs some higher education, whether that’s two-year degree, a four-year degree, or professional training of some sort.  But while in recent decades the need for college counseling has skyrocketed, the staffing and resources have not kept pace with this increased need. And all of you know the numbers.  While school counselors at private schools have an average caseload of 106 students, and ASCA recommends no more than 250 students per counselor, the national average is one school counselor for every 471 students.  And that is outrageous.  Outrageous. And one in five American high schools doesn’t have any school counselors at all –- none.  And that’s appalling.  And a lot of people in this country have no idea about these numbers.  They have no idea about all the other challenges you face just to do your jobs. For example, those of you at the high school level are expected to help students choose between thousands of colleges and certificate programs and countless financial aid packages, but hardly any of your master’s degree programs included training on college and career readiness.  On top of that, today, students at all levels are arriving at school with greater needs and pressures and distractions, but instead of giving you time to deal with these issues, too often your schools burden you with all kinds of unrelated responsibilities.  So while you might be the most highly educated professional in the building, instead of being allowed to do the job you were trained for, you’re assigned to proctor exams, or monitor the lunchroom, or serve as substitute teachers. And then I understand that on professional development days, you have to sit through yet another workshop on reading strategies or the new math curriculum because there aren’t any professional development units relevant to your job.  So today, we make all kinds of demands on our school counselors, but we often don’t give you the support you need to meet those demands.  And this is unacceptable.  School counseling should not be an extra or a luxury just for school systems that can afford it.  School counseling is a necessity to ensure that all our young people get the education they need to succeed in today’s economy. And that’s why when we launched Reach Higher we decided to make school counselors a key focus of our work.  See, the purpose of Reach Higher is very simple –- yes. You are at — the key.  One of the things we’re trying to do through Reach Higher is to help us reach my husband’s North Star goal — that by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.  And we simply cannot achieve this goal unless you all have what you need to do your jobs.  And that’s why, today, I’m pleased to announce three new efforts to support and recognize school counselors across this country. First, as many of you might know, just yesterday, our Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released new guidance for students — for superintendents and school principals, and he stated that they can and should use their budgets to create professional development units for school counselors — that was just yesterday.  Because our Secretary of Education knows that every school counselor in this country should have quality, relevant professional development opportunities, end of story. Second, I’m thrilled that the White House will be partnering with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, with ASCA, and with other organizations to host a special event on college counseling at the end of July.  And together, we’ll be coming up with ambitious new agenda items to improve training, professional development and support for school counselors. And third — and I hope this is something you’ll like — my husband and I think that it’s time that we started giving our school counselors the recognition that you all deserve for the work that you do.  So, as you may know, every year we honor the national Teacher of the Year at the White House.  Well, starting next year, for the first time ever, we will also hold a White House ceremony honoring the School Counselor of the Year.  Yes.  This is a start.  It is really a start.The idea behind these efforts is very simple:  We want to celebrate our school counselors, and we want to highlight what’s working in college counseling across the country.  Because we know that so many of you are already leading the way. For example, Jeremy Goldman, who is the 2014 Maryland High School Counselor of the Year...well, Jeremy noticed that hardly any African American students in his school were enrolling in AP classes, so his counseling team worked with teachers and the principal and created an action plan to close this gap.  And today, both enrollment and test scores are up for African American students in his school. And Kendra Moulton — is Kendra — is she in the house?  Well, let me tell you about Kendra, because she couldn’t make it. She’s a school counselor at the Edmund G. Ross Elementary School in Albuquerque, and –Yeah — and works to create a college mindset starting as early as kindergarten.  She does this by plastering her school with college pennants, and sponsoring college T-shirt days.  She conducts career days with fifth graders, pushing them to think about the higher education that they’re going to need for the jobs of their dreams. And in districts across the country, school counselors are leading the charge to get more students to fill out their FAFSA forms.  In Miami, FAFSA completion rates jumped by 13 percent in just one year, and in San Antonio, they jumped by 31 percent. Yes. And these school districts are no different than any others, and they face every challenge you can possibly imagine. So if they can find creative ways to get students on track to college, then I know that every district in America can do the same.  And when they do it, that won’t just transform the future of the students, it will transform the future of this country.  Because that’s how we build the workforce we need to compete in today’s global economy. And I know that seems like a big ask, especially with everything else you all have on your plates.  But this isn’t the first time we’ve called on school counselors like all of you to help us meet a big national goal. In fact, back in the 1950s, after the Russians launched Sputnik and we feared that America might lose the space race, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which actually called for the training of more school counselors.  We did this because we knew that school counselors would play a vital role in identifying and preparing students to pursue careers in science and engineering. And the same thing is true with our 2020 goal –- once again, we need your help, and we’re counting on you.  And I know you all can do this, because the fact is that with every life you transform, with every life you save, you all have an impact that is truly beyond measure. And just take the example of a young man I learned about named Mikela Jones.  Mikela grew up on an Indian Reservation, and only –Yes. And only one member of his tribe had gone to a four-year college, so Mikela was convinced that college just wasn’t for him.  But Mikela’s school counselor, Antonio Lopez, had other ideas.  Antonio pushed and prodded Mikela and insisted that he meet with college admissions officers, and as a result, Mikela didn’t just go to college, he became the first person from his entire Tribe to earn a master’s degree.  And today, Mikela is a school counselor himself.  He chose this career — and these are his words — he said: “I wanted to be like Mr. Lopez, to remind students that they are special, important, and have something to offer the world.”  He said, “That is how I repay him, by helping others.” So here’s the thing, ASCA members — whenever you get tired — and I know that you do — whenever you get frustrated or overwhelmed — and I know that you do — I want you to think about the extraordinary ripple effect of your work, because it’s real.  I want you to think about the impact you have not just on every child whose life you transform, but on the family that child will raise, on the business where that child will work, on the community that child will one day serve.  I want you to think about how long after those kids graduate your work lives on in their hearts and minds, and in the hearts and minds of everyone they touch. So today, I want to end as I started –- by once again saying thank you.  Really, thank you.  Thank you for your compassion and determination.  Thank you for the boundless love you show our children. And I for one, as your First Lady, I am grateful for all that you do.  And I look forward to working closely with you in the years ahead to give all our young people the bright futures they so richly deserve."-Michelle Obama, USA, First Lady, hospital administrator, parent, USA
231. "The National Education Association is meeting now in Denver at its annual conference. The American Federation of Teachers holds its annual convention in Los Angeles in another week or so. Both must take seriously the threat to the survival of public education: not only privatization but austerity and over-testing. These are not different threats. They are connected. Austerity and over-testing set public schools up to fail. They are precursors to privatization. They are intended to make public schools weak and to destroy public confidence in democratically controlled schools. What is needed at this hour is a strong, militant response to these attacks on teachers, public schools, and -- where they exist -- unions. For sure, unions have their faults. But they are the only collective voice that teachers have. Now is the time to use that voice. The battle for the future of public education is not over. Supporters of public education must rally and stand together and elect a president in 2016 who supports public schools. This is a time to get informed, to organize, to strategize, and to mobilize. If you are not angry, you have not been paying attention."-Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., professor of education, social critic, parent, grandparent, and author, Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools, parent, grandparent, USA
232. "We are disappointed that the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Augustin Matata Ponyo, refuses to acknowledge that rape is being used as  torture by his own state security services outside of the conflict region, including in the capital of Kinshasa. Our recent report, Rape as torture in the DRC: Sexual violence beyond the conflict zone, highlights medical forensic evidence of rape and torture in prisons throughout the DRC, documented to the very highest standard recognised in international law. Without acknowledging that there is a problem, the DRC government has little prospect of being able to tackle the issues that our report raises and of continuing to attract international support to help it do so. By failing to engage with this disturbing evidence, the DRC government is turning a blind eye to a major problem both inside and outside the conflict zone; it urgently needs to recognise that rape and torture is now prevalent in the whole of the DRC. We have been very careful in our report not to attribute responsibility for these violations to the DRC government; however, as the state has responsibility for assuring the security of its citizens, it now needs to take responsibility for preventing these horrific human rights violations in the future and ensuring that the judicial system will be effective in bringing the torturers to justice and providing redress for the survivors."-Jean-Benoit Louveaux, policy and advocacy manager, Freedom from Torture, Democratic Republic of the Congo
     
233. "NSA: We don't spy on Americans (unless they use Tor, Tails, or  read articles about Linux online)"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
234. "If Judge Zweibel, [District Attorney] Cyrus Vance or Michael Bloomberg set out to make an example out of me to dissuade dissent, this has had the exact opposite impact. I am absolutely and further committed to fighting for rights and freedoms that I did not even realize had been eroded to the extent that they have. I will work tirelessly to make sure that these women’s voices reach outside of that prison system. And I feel like we have finally made a real and concrete step towards effecting a true possibility of the statement, 'We are the 99 percent.'"-Cecily McMillan, Occupy Wall Steet actvist and former political prisoner, USA
     
235. "And again, that’s where I think we are making such progress in the U.S. The abortion rate’s down. The unintended pregnancy rate’s down. And we’re seeing, through the now birth control benefit under the Affordable Care Act, more women, many women, who struggled to afford birth control now can actually get it paid for at no cost under their insurance plan. It is a great public health advance. And so it’s really too bad in 2014 that we would see five justices on the Supreme Court—all male, by the way—make a decision that takes away a benefit for women that is good for their health. You know, one of the things that was interesting yesterday is we saw every major medical association—the  AMA, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—come out against this decision, saying it gets between women and their doctors about what care is the very best for them."-Cecile Richards, president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on the success of contraception services to lower the rate of abortion and unintended pregnancies and the damage done with the Supreme Court's Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision, in which the court ruled that private employers have the right to end insurance coverage for birth control and emergency contracepton that conflicts with their religious beliefs, USA
236. "Closing the borders is bad, because the Latinos are not the only illegal people. The Chinese, the Americans, the Africans, the Canadians, the Europeans, there are all sorts of illegal people. There aren’t any legal people here in the United States; we are all illegal. The only legal people are the Native Americans, because this is their country, and foreigners came here to steal it from them."-Lupillo Rivera, Mexican-American singer, at a counter-rally challenging anti-immigrant protesters who blocked buses of detained migrant children arriving at detention centers in California from Texas, USA
237. "We are living in an era when the very idea of public education is under attack, as are teachers' unions and the teaching profession. Let's be clear: these attacks and the power amassed behind them are unprecedented in American history. Sure, there have always been critics of public schools, of teachers, and of unions. But never before has there been a serious and sustained effort to defund public education, to turn public money over to unaccountable private hands, and to weaken and eliminate collective bargaining wherever it still exists. And this effort is not only well-coordinated but funded by billionaires who have grown wealthy in a free market and can't see any need for regulation or unions or public schools. In the past, Democratic administrations and Democratic members of Congress could be counted on to support public education and to fight privatization. In the past, Democrats supported unions, which they saw as a dependable and significant part of their base. This is no longer the case. Congress is about to pass legislation to expand funding of charter schools, despite the fact that they get no better results than public schools and despite the scandalous misuse of public funds by charter operators in many states."-Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., professor of education, social critic, parent, grandparent, and author, Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools, parent, grandparent, USA
238. "Such positive safety changes made by some of our country’s leading retailers are proof of the influence of women and mothers. As we look toward election season, we hope our legislators are taking notice that when woman and mothers collectively raise our voices – and soon cast our votes, we are determined to leave an impact.”-Shannon Watts, founder, Moms Demand Action, on the annoucement that Target is the latest corporation to ban persons from carrying guns in their stores even in "right to carry" states joining other corporations with the same policy: Chili's, Chipotle, Sonic, and Starbucks, USA
     
239. "If Blackwater was so cavalier about threatening State Department officials with death its hard to even imagine what they did to Iraqis."-Murtaza Hussain, Canada, journalist, The Intercept, International
240. "Tragic about the three Israelis, just like it was tragic about the 9 Palestinians killed looking for them - don't just see half the deaths."-Murtaza Hussain, Canada, journalist, The Intercept, International
241. "This will be a demonstration of a peaceful act of civil disobedience, to give Hong Kong residents faith in this kind of movement."-Alex Chow,  general secretariat of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, on the annual July 1 Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstration which this year had 500,000 participants in response to  increasing crackdowns from China on Hong Kong and push for voting autonomy, civil liberties, free press, and independent courts, as organized by Occupy Central with Love and Peace, Hong Kong
242. "NSA's broad 'foreign intel' powers 'allow for surveillance of academics, journalists and human-rights researchers.'"-Trevor Timm, J.D., executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
243. "The murder of 3 Israeli teenagers is a tragedy and crime. So is the collective punishment that preceded it and that will now follow it."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
244. "US gov has known for decades US phone networks were vulnerable to interception. Instead of fixing, they exploited."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
245. "Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community."-Ruth Bader Ginsburg, J.D., Supreme Court Justice, in her dissent from Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which the court ruled that private employers have the right to endy insurance coverage for birth control and emergency contracepton that conflicts with their religious beliefs, USA
246. "It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month's full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage."-Ruth Bader Ginsburg, J.D., Supreme Court Justice, in her dissent from Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which the court ruled that private employers have the right to deny insurance coverage for birth control and emergency contracepton that conflicts with their religious beliefs, USA
     
247. "So these students, we veterans of the civil rights movement, we are here right now to demand that we want justice right now. Not tomorrow, right now. The concentration of wealth in this country among the most powerful people in this country is just as bad as it was in 1846! 1846! 1846 was in the beginning stages of the Industrial Revolution, before the abolition of slavery. So we’ve got to challenge that, and we can only challenge by organizing. We’re going to create another Nissan, a Nissan that respects us as human beings, that respects our human rights! Workers’ rights are civil rights!"-Danny Glover, actor, human and civil rights activist, speaking on teh 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer bus rides in Mississippi to current activists, students, and Nissan factory workers seeking to unionize, USA
     
248. "The reality of today’s world is that we’re competing with portable digital media. So you really want to arm parents with tools and rationale behind it about why it’s important to stick to the basics of things like (reading) books (out loud daily to infants and children to boost vocabulary and brain power).”-Alanna Levine, M.D., pediatrician, interviewed on the eve of the American Academy of Pedatrics recommendation to all parents that chidren be read to daily starting at birth tho help close achivement gap, USA
     
249. "US tech companies losing customers, profits as people globally (rationally) fear US companies collaborate with NSA"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
250. "Under the policy we developed, 30 percent of students are admitted to Chicago’s highly selective high schools (such as Walter Payton College Prep) based strictly on the traditional criteria of grades and test scores. The remaining seats are allocated to the highest-scoring students from four different socioeconomic tiers, under the premise that students in the poorest parts of the city who score modestly lower on standardized tests have a lot to offer, given the obstacles they’ve had to overcome. Demographers rank Chicago’s census tracts from most to least advantaged by six criteria: median family income, average level of education attained by parents, percentage of single-family homes, percentage of homes where English is not the first language, percentage of homeowner-occupied residences, and school achievement scores by attendance area. The policy has resulted in far more racial and ethnic diversity than in New York City’s elite public schools. At Walter Payton, 21 percent of students are black and 25 percent are Latino. Some critics worry that these numbers are still inadequate in a public school system where 41 percent of students are black and 45 percent Latino. But compared with Stuyvesant, Payton is a multicultural paradise. Other critics argue that the system tilts too far in favor of children from low-income neighborhoods. But the plan has proved to be the basis for a stable and enduring compromise. Fears that students from low-income areas would fail have not come to pass, and Chicago’s top selective schools still rank as the top three in the state. New York City schools have never been subject to a citywide desegregation suit, and the state’s schools are now more segregated than Mississippi's. But the unfortunate reality of segregation can be leveraged to promote a positive outcome in the city’s elite schools. Isn’t it time for New York City’s top schools to recognize that excellence can be found among students of all racial and economic backgrounds?"-Richard Kahlenberg, author, The remedy: Class, race, and affirmative action, USA
251. "Today, as we speak, there are 14 journalists in jail in Egypt, including the three al-Jazeera journalists that we're here to help. That makes Egypt, in our reckoning, the biggest jailer of journalists in the Arab world--more than Syria, where there are about 12. That's not a record that any country should be happy to have. So we are working for the release of all those journalists, and we should urge the Egyptian authorities to work to their release and the president, al-Sisi, has it wihtin his power ot free them."-Robert Mahoney, USA, deputy director,  Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria, Egypt
252. "The use of DU (highly toxic depleted uranium) against these targets questions the adherence of coalition forces to their own principles and guidelines. They should be held accountable for the consequences."-Wim Zwijnenburg, Denmark,  author of PAX report showing that USA-led coalition forces fired multiple DU rounds in or near populated areas of Iraq with severe health consequences for civilians in both wars in Iraq
253. "The real reasons why children are coming is, number one, the violence (of the drug trade and economic repression in Mexico and Central America) and, number two, to reunify with a parent who left them behind."-Sonia Narario, Argentinean-American, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author, "Enrique’s journey: The story of a boy’s dangerous odyssey to reunite with his mother,” USA
254. "So far in 2014, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports over 47,000 unaccompanied children detained after crossing the border, almost double the number for all of 2013, and almost five times the number from 2009."-Amy Goodman, journalist, executive producer, and co-founder, Democracy Now!; columnist, Truthdig, USA
255. "I have went from being a ecstatic, overwhelmed, not able to speak to crushed again. Once again the citizens came out and did what was necessary. He said he would do what the citizens wanted what. They came out and they spoke. They supported the yes vote."-Crystal Moore, fired police chief of Latta, South Carolina, whom voters reinstated while limiting powers of the homophobic mayor who fired her due to her sexual orientation, USA
256.  "Today's verdict is disgraceful. It tells journalists that simply doing their job is considered a criminal activity in Egypt. We call on the international community to join us in condemning this verdict and ask governments to apply political and financial pressure on a country that is rapidly unwinding recently won freedoms, including freedom of the press. The government of newly elected president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi must build on the country's democratic aspirations and halt curbs on the media and the silencing of voices of dissent."-Jodie Ginsburg, Index on Censorship's chief executive, international, on the Egypt court condemning 3 al-Jazeera reporters to 7 years in prison for doing their job and equating journalism with terrrorism, Egypt.
257. "Only three countries in the world report that they don't offer paid maternity leave – three – and the United States is one of them. It's time to change that. A few states have acted on their own to give workers paid family leave, but this should be available to everyone, because all Americans should be able to afford to care for a family member in need."-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, parent, President, USA
258. "For example, how much evidence does the president need to determine that a particular American is a legitimate target for military action? Or, can the president strike an American anywhere in the world? What does it mean to say that capturing an American must be ‘infeasible’? And exactly what other limits and boundaries apply to this authority?"-Sen. Ron Wyden (D-CO), USA
259. "Overall, a compelling body of evidence has accumulated that clearly demonstrates that the wide-scale use of these persistent, water-soluble chemicals is having widespread, chronic impacts upon global biodiversity and is likely to be having major negative effects on ecosystem services such as pollination that are vital to food security."-from Worldwide intergrated Assessment on Systemic Pesticides, published by 23 international scientists in Environmental and Pollution Research journal, on the dangers to all world ecosystems' food supply from the pesticides konwn as neonicotinoids, which ensure that neurotoxins appear in every part of the plants that they are sprayed on, international
260. "...the (USA) government's drone killing program is built on gross distortions of law."-Pardiss Kebriaei, J.D., attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought a lawsuit challenging the illegal killing of USA citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike without due process in Yemen
261.  "What is so powerful here is that we have the first federal appellate court and ... it's a case coming out of Utah affirming in the strongest, clearest, boldest terms that the Constitution guarantees the freedom to marry and equal protection for all Americans and all means all, including gay couples."-Evan Wolfson, J.D., President, Freedom to Marry, on the verdict by the 10th circuit court, which issued a stay on the ruling pending appeal but also now covers Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, andNew Mexico,  USA
     
262. "Governments once assumed almost all the risk of college by heavily subsidizing its cost. In the face of tax revolts and stressed state budgets, however, that support has faltered. Because real incomes are falling or stagnant for most families, even moderate increases in college costs eat up an increasing share of resources. Without a major recommitment to public funding for college, higher debt is the new reality. Protecting student borrowers against economic risk is a sound way to keep young people investing in education."-Susan Dynarski, Ph.D., professor of economics, education, and public policy, USA
     
263. "In case you're wondering why we're always on the brink of war, reminder U.S. DOD (Department of Defense) is the biggest employer on Earth: pic.twitter.com/ZtV3FR2Zzz"-Murtaza Hussain, Canada, journalist, The Intercept; the world's top ten employers in order with their employees are:
     (1) USA Department of Defense 3.2 million employees; (2) China's People's Liberation Army 2.3 million employees; (3) Walmart (USA) 2.1 million employees; (4) McDonald's (USA) 1.9 million employees; (5) UK National Health Service 1.7 million employees; (6) China National Petroleum Corporation; (7) State Grid Corporation of China 1.5 million employees; (8) Indian Railways, 1.4 million employees; (9) India's Armed Forces, 1.3 million employees; (10) Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry) (Taiwan), 1.2 million employees
264. "If we have for the first time since the Second World War more than 50 million people (50% children) displaced by war or by persecution, it’s because we are witnessing a multiplication of new conflicts in the world. And the global conflict generates global displacement. And at the same time, old conflicts seem never to die."-António Guterres, U.N. high commissioner for refugees, with the highest total--over 2.5 million--from Syria
265. "Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.The classified files, revealed today by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information in a reporting collaboration with The Intercept, shed light on how the NSA’s surveillance of global communications has expanded under a clandestine program, known as RAMPART-A, that depends on the participation of a growing network of intelligence agencies. It has already been widely reported that the NSA works closely with eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as part of the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance. But the latest Snowden documents show that a number of other countries, described by the NSA as “third-party partners,” are playing an increasingly important role – by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables."-Ryan Gallagher, Scotland, journalist, The Intercept, NSA "five eyes" spying alliance: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, USA; NSA SIGNIT third-party countries:  Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Tunisia, and United Arab Emirates
266. "There is considerable value...in encouraging, rather than inhibiting, speech by public employees."-Sonia Sotomayor, J.D., Supreme Court Justice,writing on behalf of a 9-0 verdict in favor of broadening public employee rights to free speech in cases where they find corruption and speak out against it in Lane v. Franks et al, USA
267. "Only in a realm where we’re not being watched can we really test the limits of who we want to be. It’s really in the private realm where dissent, creativity and personal exploration lie."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
268. “I think they (US military) should leave the area, not to intervene ... and pull out their forces, and let the Arabs and the countries of the area solve their problem. But it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take some time, but eventually they will figure out a way.”-Sami Rasouli, Iraqi-American, restaurateur and founder, Muslim Peacemaker Teams, Iraq 
269. "Let’s be clear: US is war weary. There is no military solution to sectarian conflict in Iraq."-Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), USA
270. "The biggest (USA) mistake was to invade Iraq."-Lakhdar Brahimi, former foreign minister, Algeria, and  UN Special Envoy to Haiti, South Africa, and Afghhanistan 
     
271. “I have opposed U.S. involvement in Iraq since 2002, and believe that further military involvement lacks an effective objective or a solid endgame.”-Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), USA
     
272. "I thought I was going to die. They kept me chained up, they didn't care about me or give me any food … They sold us like animals, but we are not animals – we are human beings."-Vuthy, Cambodia, a former monk who was sold from sea captain to captain in Thailand, where human trafficking in the shrimp and fish meal industry boats is used by CP (Charoen Pokphand) Foods, whose main clients are the four largest global food retailers: Walmart (USA), Carrefour (France), Costco (USA), and Tesco (UK) is rampant, Thailand
273. "When we think we’re being watched, we make behavior choices that we believe other people want us to make. It’s a natural human desire to avoid societal condemnation. That’s why every state loves surveillance -- it breeds a conformist population."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
274. "If you buy prawns or shrimp from Thailand, you will be buying the produce of slave labour."-Aidan McQuade, UK, director, Anti-Slavery International
275. "Global brands and retailers can do so much good without bringing too much risk upon themselves by simply enforcing their supplier standards, which typically prohibit forced labour and child labor. And if local businesses realize that non-compliance results in loss of business, it has the potential to bring about huge positive change in the lives of migrant workers and trafficking victims."-Lisa Rende Taylor, Ph.D., USA, anthropologist, Anti-Slavery International
276. "Sexual violence is a crime like no other. It touches all aspects of a person's life – mental, physical, social. It destroys everything. I have seen what a great misfortune it is to be a child of rape. But I have also seen that human beings, whatever they have lived through, can make progress and get better."-Marie Josée Ukeye, therapist to children and families who survived mass rape during the Rwandan genocide in the mid-1990s, Rwanda
277. "Whistle-blowers such as Snowden and Manning should not face the impossible decision between living in exile and spending decades imprisoned. We deserve a justice system that holds governments accountable and considers the public service done by whistle-blowers and the people who publish their information."-Michael Ratner, J.D., USA, attorney for Juilan Assange, Australia, and Wikileaks, international
278. "Harassment, targeting and prosecution of whistle-blowers, journalists and publishers have become a dangerous new normal — one we should refuse to accept, especially in a time when governments are becoming more powerful and less accountable. It's time to end this assault, starting with granting Snowden amnesty and withdrawing the threat of U.S. criminal prosecution of Assange."-Michael Ratner, J.D., USA, attorney for Wikileaks and founder Juilan Assange, Australia, living in exile in Ecuador's embassy in the UK 
     
279. "As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan. I believe that the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance."-Chelsea Manning, whistleblower and former Army intelligence analyst, USA
     
280. “The mass arrest of non-violent protesters has no place in any democracy. The NYPD pursued a policy of arresting thousands of people who had done nothing wrong. I hope that the resolution of this lawsuit will show that the NYPD policy must change. It is my hope that this case and others like it will free our streets and parks for peaceful protest.”-David Thompson, J.D., an attorney for 14 Occupy Wall Street protesters who sued NYC in federal court for  for wrongful arrest violating their rights to free speech and assembly and awarded a total of $583K in compensatory damages, USA
     
281. "Finally, the world is seeing FIFA for what it is: a stateless conglomerate that takes bribes while acting as a battering ram for world leaders who want to use the majesty of the World Cup to push through their development agendas at great human cost. People don’t have to be displaced and workers don’t need to die for soccer. The World Cup can be staged in countries with existing stadiums and infrastructure. Moreover, the secret bidding process for host countries must end so that soccer isn’t abused for economic and political ends. International soccer desperately needs two entirely distinct bodies. One would be in charge of monitoring and actually stopping corruption, bribery and match-fixing."-Dave Zirin, USA, journalist, sports writer, author, Brazil's dance with the devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the fight for democracy, Brazil, international
282. "Today is a really good day for billionaires. For the 40 million people dealing with student loan debt, it wasn’t such a good day. This raises the fundamental question: Who does Washington work for? Does it work for those who can hire armies of lobbyists to make sure that every single loophole in the tax code is protected for them? Or does it work for young people who are trying to get started in life?...We’re not giving up. After all, we did get bipartisan support today, and we still have 40 million Americans out there who are trying to deal with $1.2 trillion in student loan debt."-Elizabeth Warren, J.D., Senator, (D-Massachusetts), attorney, professor, consumer rights activist, parent, USA
283. "Well, first of all, I think that we have to change the story that we tell. Obama’s announcement was couched in the story of the American dream, how he and Michelle made it by going to college. But in reality, we know just as a factual statement that it is low-wage jobs that are expanding, the ones that don’t require college and high wage jobs that do require college are actually shrinking. So, fundamentally, I think that the idea that you’ll earn an extra $1 million over the course of your lifetime is probably broken and probably doesn’t hold true. So, we have to actually create a public education system in this country that’s free. We’re also going to have to address some of the inherent issues; the way in which this crosses racial lines and really is a very racialized system and is perpetuating and increasing all sorts of inequality."-Pamela Brown, Ph.D. candidate in sociology, The New School, student debt activist who co-launched Occupy Student Debt, USA
284. "And we celebrate the role of college as a sort of bridge between adolescence and adulthood, the idea that you should have an opportunity to find out what you're good at and what you care about, but that’s a sort of luxury for many people who are unable to pay for this education that is just spiraling out of control in terms of its cost."-Andrew Rossi, film director, Ivory Tower, exposing the unsustainable system of USA higher education costs including skyrocketing tuition, reduced government funding, and massive student debt, USA
285. "The process of limiting press access to a conflict begins when a reporter applies for embed status. All reporters are carefully vetted by military public affairs officials. This system is far from unbiased. Unsurprisingly, reporters who have established relationships with the military are more likely to be granted access. Less well known is that journalists whom military contractors rate as likely to produce “favorable” coverage, based on their past reporting, also get preference. This outsourced “favorability” rating assigned to each applicant is used to screen out those judged likely to produce critical coverage."-Chelsea Manning, whistleblower and former Army intelligence analyst, USA
286. "Well, we do see statistics that show that those who have a college degree make in medium lifetime earning $1 million more than those who have only a high school diploma. But what that very powerful statistic leaves out are all of those who don’t complete, who don’t finish their college experience and those who have student loan debt that is so paralyzing when they graduate, that they are not able to pursue life choices."-Andrew Rossi, film director, Ivory Tower, exposing the unsustainable system of USA higher education costs including skyrocketing tuition, reduced government funding, and massive student debt, USA
     
287. "I think that the first demand has to be to write off student debt. Now, how that happens is up for discussion. I think that it should all be written off because there are so many things that are profoundly unfair about the student debt system right now. One thing, if you’re 18 years old, you should not be able to get into $100,000 worth of debt before you can even go to a bar and have a beer. That just, out of hand, is ridiculous and it’s a hallmark of our predatory system."-Pamela Brown, Ph.D. candidate in sociology, The New School, student debt activist who co-launched Occupy Student Debt, USA
288. "The explosion in student debt has of course mirrored an unprecedented hike in tuition. The cost of a college degree has grown by over 1120% in the (last) thirty years far surpassing price hikes for food, medical care, housing, gasoline and other basics. All this points to a crisis that threatens not just the economy, but the nation’s education system itself."-Amy Goodman, journalist, executive producer, and co-founder, Democracy Now!, USA
289. "President Obama went on to endorse a measure from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren that would let millions of students refinance or loans at lower interest rates. To pay for it, Warren’s measure would enact the Buffet rule, closing a tax loop-hole for millionaires. The figures on student debt are staggering. The nation’s $1.2 trillion in student loans exceeds all other forms of consumer debt, except for home mortgages. This year’s graduate class is the most indebted in U.S. history, with borrowers owing an average of 33,000 dollars upon graduation. More than 70% of this year’s class has taken on a student loan, up from less than half of graduates 20 years ago."-Aaron Mate, journalist, Democracy Now!, USA
     
290. "We are showing Brazil and the world that our country needs to invest in healthcare, education, public transportation and culture. Not in stadiums, not in airports. We need public goods that go to the people, not to FIFA, not to tourists. We want investment that stays here, that stays for the people."-Maria de Lurdes Fonseca, teacher on strike against inappropriate government funding for new world cup (FIFA) stadium or airport expansion instead of all citizen's needs, Brazil
     
291. "This is indicative of a way under-discussed trend: the gradual importation of War on Terror tactics to US soil."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
292. "It’s not the only country that has psychosis, and yet we kill each other in these—in these mass shootings at rates that are exponentially higher than any place else....The country has to do some soul searching about this. This is becoming the norm, and we take it for granted, in ways that, as a parent, are terrifying to me. And I am prepared to work with anybody, including responsible sportsmen and gun owners, to craft some solutions. But right now it’s not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress, and that’s—we should be ashamed of that."-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, parent, President, USA
293. "The story with the Clintons is that they left office millions of dollars in hock to various law firms. But this wasn't some random financial misfortune that could have happened to anyone. If you found yourself in legal hot water, you wouldn't possibly be able to hire the Clinton's lawyers. No firm would let you run a multi-million dollar tab. The reason the Clintons were able to get away with it is that it was always obvious that Bill had enormous post-presidential earnings potential. This is a situation where the Clintons' ability to go so deeply into debt is a sign of the vast economic privileges they enjoyed. Not just the ability to become millionaires after leaving office, but the ability to access certain aspects of the millionaire lifestyle even before leaving office."-Matthew Yglesias, writer, Voxmedia, USA
294. "In an era of too-big-to-fail banks, we should have known it was coming: An intelligence agency too big to rein in — and brazen enough to say so. In a remarkable legal filing on Friday afternoon, the NSA told a federal court that its spying operations are too massive and technically complex to comply with an order to preserve evidence. The NSA, in other words, now says that it cannot comply with the rules that apply to any other party before a court — the very rules that ensure legal accountability — because it is too big."-Patrick Toomey, J.D., staff attorney, ACLU, USA
295. "In essence, the result of that 2008 near tie vote was that Obama got to go first with the understanding that Clinton would automatically get the nomination 8 years later. What this means is that (barring unforeseen circumstances)there will have been no left wing challenge in presidential races for 16 years and I think that suits the Party and its rich donors just fine. They hate primaries. And since they will have had 16 uninterrupted years of preferred policy, even as the voters get to feel the inspiration of the two historic firsts, why would anyone rock the boat? Progressives might have been able to leverage that fierce competition in 2008 but they got caught up in the emotion just like everyone else so there wasn't any real ideological challenge. Unfortunately, it probably ended up being the last primary in which they could have had a voice for a very long time. Too bad."-Digby, @Digby56, and digbysblog, the Blogosphere
     
296. "The best report money can buy. It absolves upper management, denies deliberate wrongdoing, and dismisses corporate culpability."-Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), attacking the internal General Motors report that led to  firing multiple low-level employees over nonrerporting an ignition lock problem that led to at least 13 deaths and multiple injuries; Sen. Blumenthal demands instead an impartial external investigation into GM illegal practices, USA
297. "One should not expect any change to come from the US government itself (which includes Congress), whose strategy in such cases is to enact the pretext of “reform” so as to placate public anger, protect the system from any serious weakening, and allow President Obama to go before the country and the world and give a pretty speech about how the US heard their anger and re-calibrated the balance between privacy and security. Any new law that comes from the radically corrupted political class in DC will either be largely empty, or worse.The purpose will be to shield the NSA from real reform. There are, though, numerous other avenues with the real potential to engender serious limits on the NSA’s surveillance powers, including the self-interested though genuine panic of the US tech industry over how surveillance will impede their future business prospects, the efforts of other countries to undermine US hegemony over the internet, the newfound emphasis on privacy protections from internet companies worldwide, and, most of all, the increasing use of encryption technology by users around the world that poses genuine obstacles to state surveillance. Those are all far, far more promising avenues than any bill Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss will let the US Congress cough up.But beyond surveillance and privacy, one of the goals of this NSA reporting (at least from my perspective) was to trigger a desperately needed debate about journalism itself, and the proper relationship of journalists to those who wield political and economic power. The question of why the New York Times was excluded from this story led to a serious public examination for the first time of its decision to suppress that NSA story, which in turn led to public recriminations over the generally excessive deference US media outlets have shown the US government. Obviously, that debate is far from resolved; witness the endless parade of American journalists who, without any apparent  embarrassment, cheer Michael Kinsley’s decree that for publication questions, “that decision must ultimately be made by the government.”But Dean Baquet’s very public expression of regret over past suppression decisions, and his observation that 'news executives are often unduly deferential to seemingly authoritative warnings unaccompanied by hard evidence' is evidence of the fruits of that debate.That national security state officials  routinely mislead and deceive the public should never have even been in serious doubt in the first place – certainly not for journalists, and especially now after the experience of the Iraq War.That fact – that official pronouncements merit great skepticism rather than reverence – should be (but plainly is not) fundamental to how journalists view the world."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
298. "We say no to the dismissive, destructive attitude of 'Boys will be boys'"-Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general, condeming the language used by some politicians in India to justify men raping and murdering young girls, Korea, International
299. "It's been a year since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the US government's abusive spying programs. In that time Congress and the Obama Administration have failed to protect our rights. Now, they've got a rebellion on their hands as tech companies and internet users work together to directly intervene in mass surveillance and block the NSA and its kind from the web."-Tiffiniy Cheng, Fight for the Future, USA #ResetTheNet
300. "Undoubtedly Snowden's biggest tangible impact has been on the security of ordinary internet users. After shocking stories of the NSA vacuuming up  hundreds of thousands of buddy lists from Yahoo, breaking into the data links in between Google's servers, and having a disturbingly close  relationship with Microsoft's product teams, service providers have raced to prove which can protect their users' data better. Yahoo, after years of being the joke of security researchers, hired a top security expert and shored up its systems  in multiple ways. Google, after two of its employees 'exploded in profanity' upon hearing about one of the NSA stories, has not only led the way in providing encryption in all aspects of its service, but just announced on Tuesday night that it will begin to provide a truly end-to-end email encryption plug-in – and that it will be naming and shaming other companies who don't encrypt messages sent between different email providers. As Microsoft chief lawyer wrote on Wednesday, 'much more needs to be done.'-Trevor Timm, J.D., executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
     
301. "Cut to a year later: multiple major lawsuits challenging key portions of the NSA's powers are now alive and well. The first judge to rule on the mass phone metadata surveillance program in an adversarial proceeding called it 'almost Orwellian' and  'likely unconstitutional.' We learned the Justice Department undoubtedly lied to the US supreme court last year. Court orders in multiple Freedom of Information Act cases have pried loose hundreds of pages of previously secret FISA court rulings, including one declaring a part of NSA's surveillance apparatus unconstitutional. What has been called 'the magistrate's revolt' is now beginning among judges in lower courts, where there is a renewed interest in pushing back on government claims and invoking the Fourth Amendment. (Internationally, the UN started an investigation into NSA and GCHQ practices, and on Wednesday, German prosecutors announced the opening of a criminakl inquiry into bulk spying on Germany's citizens – and the tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone.)"-Trevor Timm, J.D., executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
302. "This windfall from Americans has led, more directly than you think, to two-dozen reform bills getting introduced by their elected representatives, to two presidential commissions that recommended broad changes to the structure and power of the NSA, to pushback from judges we haven't seen in years. All three branches, after at least partially sanctioning the status quo in secret, have called for various levels of reform to surveillance on you. This is the power of whistleblowing. This is why you have Ed Snowden to thank. But with no legislative reform yet, the fight is far from over. As Snowden said around the six-month anniversary of his leaks, 'I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.' In the coming year, the public will have to decide: are you willing to continue to fight for real and permanent change, or will the NSA sink back into the shadows, allowed to continue its mass surveillance, largely unabated, until the next Snowden comes along?"-Trevor Timm, J.D., executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
     
303. "Most of the narrative around trans identity has been about transitioning. You blend in, and that is the goal, but blending in was never an option for me. Some people are going to know that we’re trans. There’s nothing wrong with that."-Laverne Cox, actress, trans activist, USA
     
304. "Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same. This is the beginning of a moment where we the people begin to protect our universal human rights with the laws of nature rather than the laws of nations."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia #ResetTheNet
     
305. "We have the technology, and adopting encryption is the first effective step that everyone can take to end mass surveillance. That's why I am excited for Reset the Net -- it will mark the moment when we turn political expression into practical action, and protect ourselves on a large scale. Don't ask for your privacy. Take it back."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia  #ResetTheNet
     
306. "Mass surveillance is illegitimate. I'm taking steps to take my freedoms back and I expect governments and corporations to follow in my footsteps and take steps to stop all mass government surveillance."-Reset the Net, USA/international #ResetTheNet
307. "Repeatedly, individuals failed to disclose critical pieces of information that could have fundamentally changed the lives of those impacted by a faulty ignition switch."-Mary Barra, CEO, General Motors, USA
308. "The U.S. government killed three Americans without due process. Getting answers in court should not be too much to ask in a democracy, but our system of checks and balances failed these families."-ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights joint statement condemning the dismissal of a lawsuirt by the families of Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, his teenage son, Abdulrahman, and Samir Khan, who had filed  suit accusing top U.S. officials of unlawful killings in drone strikes abroad after a federal judge ruled the victims' constitutional rights were not violated, USA
309. "It's fascinating how there's so much sympathy for a US POW, but so little for GITMO detainees kept in a cage for a decade w/no charges."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
310. "Any intel service can invade any phone the minute it connects to a network. Can turn it on, take pictures on it, download data on it."-Jesselyn Radack, J.D., attorney for human rights and national security issues, whistle-blower, parent, USA
311. "Senator Franken proposes legislation to ban GPS stalking apps, holding hearing with focus on domestic violence nexus"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
312. "We have transitioned into a world where law enforcement is hacking into people’s computers, and we have never had public debate."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
313. "Microsoft, which secretly modified Skype to be wiretap friendly at request of the FBI, complains about NSA trust deficit."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
314. "Six month ago, 29% of all emails sent _by_ Gmail were encrypted with STARTTLS. We're now at 69%, and it will go up. Thank you #Snowden"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
315. "And for the rest of us, Snowden's inspirational effect is no less profound. Quite simply, he has reminded everyone about the extraordinary ability of any human being to change the world. An ordinary person in all outward respects--raised by parents without particular wealth or power, lacking even a high school diploma, working as an obscure employee of a giant corporation--he has, through a single act of conscience, literally altered the course of history.   Even the most committed activists are often tempted to succumb to defeatism. The prevailing institutions seem too powerfull to challenge; orthodoxies feel too entrenched to uproot; there are always many parties with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. But it is human beings collectively, not a small number of elites working in secret, who can decide what kind of world we want to live in. Promoting the human capacity to reason and make decisions: that is the purpose of whistle-blowing, of activism, of political journalism. And that's what is happening now, thanks to the revelations brought about by Edward Snowden."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
316. "I started off at the bottom, like everyone else. But I've seen things change: the erratic scheduling, the lack of flexibility. It's hard to get a day off when you want. They make it very clear that Walmart comes first. Your job is always on the line.”-Linda Haluska, Walmart employee, parent, protesting in Chicago and other USA cities as "Walmart moms," having been with the company 8.5 years she makes $28K annually and is striking in solidarity with a majority of "Walmart mom" employees who make less than $25K a year with increasing job insecurity, USA
     
317. "When Walmart gets a $104m tax break for giving its executives outrageous pay packages, the rest of us pick up the tab. With this tax loophole, the bigger the executive bonuses, the less Walmart pays in taxes. This is truly one of the most perverse loopholes of all time.”-Frank Clemente, executive director, Americans for Tax Fairness, USA
     
318. "The $104m in tax subsidies for Walmart’s executive pay over the past six years would have been enough, for example, to cover the cost of providing free lunches for 33,000 children."-Sarah Anderson, director, Global Economy project, Institute for Policy Studies, USA
319. "What’s even more outrageous is that this is a company (Walmart)  that pays its workers so little that many of them must rely on such public assistance programs.” -Sarah Anderson, director, Global Economy project, Institute for Policy Studies, USA
     
320. "After all, people won't use technology they don't trust."-Brad Smith, J.D., general counsel, Microsoft, USA
     
321. "And that journalists had joined the call to treat my reporting as a felony was a remarkable triumph of propaganda for the powers of government, which could rely on trained professionals to do their work for them and equate adversarial investigative journalism with a crime."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
322. "Edward Snowden's bravery, real journalists' reporting, and intense grassroots organizing has shifted public opinion profoundly on this topic, and created an environment where everyone wants to be on the side of privacy. That can only spell good things for the future of the internet, but it will be important in the weeks to come that we judge companies, politicians, and ourselves, by actions and not words.”-Evan Greer, Fight For the Future, USA
     
323. "As the colossus fulfills its visions, in principle every keystroke might be sent to President Obama's huge and expanding databases in Utah. In other ways too, the constitutional lawyer in the White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties. The principle of the presumption of innocence, which dates back to Magna Carta 800 years ago, has long been dismissed to oblivion."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor emeritus, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
324. "The (Snowden-released NSA) documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp of the colossus - in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic society. Nothing so ambitious was imagined by the dystopian prophets of grim totalitarian worlds ahead. It is of no slight import that the project is being executed in one of the freest countries in the world, and in radical violation of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, which protects citizens from 'unreasonable searches and seizures,' and guarantees the privacy of their 'persons, houses, papers and effects.' Much as government lawyers may try, there is no way to reconcile these principles with the assault on the population revealed in the Snowden documents."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor emeritus, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
325. "From that day forward (Presdent Reagan in 1981), in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home, state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting, though there are other options: drug lords, mad mullahs seeking nuclear weapons, and other ogres said to be seeking to attack and destroy us. Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim. In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor emeritus, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
326. "The wound is still very deep. And though we might now shed fewer tears than in the past, our conviction is even stronger. We must pursue justice for our loved ones."-Zhang Xianling, Tiananmen Mothers group, whose son Wang Nan was killed along with hundreds of others during the Tiananmen Square government suppression of democratic dissent. Tiananmen Mothers wants China to name the dead, overturn the court's verdict that it was 'a counterrevolutionary riot,' and allow peaceful public mourning by families, China
327. "Nothing is easier in America than breaking the law without the slightest consequence if you wield power."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
328. "The government fears any acknowledgement or discussion of the incident would undermine the legitimacy of their version of events. Most people in China today don't want to talk about Tiananmen, believe in the official verdict or don't know about it – generally there's silence except for from a small minority of activists trying to keep the memory alive. In that sense the authorities have been quite successful. But the same issues raised 25 years ago continue to dominate the grievances people raise today, such as lack of accountability and corruption."-Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch, China
329.  "The Chinese government has tried their best to remove all elements of people remembering it (China's bloody supression of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in 1989). They have managed to keep it away from all the media and social media – but that's needed because people refuse to forget."-Wu'er Kaixi, a Tiananmen Square, China democracy protest student leader living in exile, Taiwan
     
330. "I urge the Chinese authorities to immediately release those detained for the exercise of their human right to freedom of expression. Rather than stifle attempts to commemorate the 1989 events, the authorities should encourage and facilitate dialogue and discussion as a means of overcoming the legacy of the past."-Navi Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights, on China's crackdown and detention of activists seeking to commemorate the 25th anniversary of China's bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement protests, China
331. "In the last 24 hours we’ve had two major announcements from China and the US which send a powerful signal to other world leaders ahead of crucial climate talks later this year. The Chinese government has already set out ambitious plans to cut the country’s reliance on coal – an additional cap on CO2 suggests the country’s leaders are serious about tackling their emission problem."-Doug Parr, Greenpeace's chief UK scientist, on announcements of significant planned reductions in carbon emissions in coal plants in both countries, USA, China
332. "The attempts of business to undermine 15 will continue, well after this vote today. They may submit legal challenges, they may challenge at the ballot, they may wait for their moment to make the 'temporary' tip penalty permanent. But today’s message is clear: If we organize as workers, as a labor movement, with a socialist strategy, we can tackle the chasm of income inequality and social injustice. 15 in Seattle is just a beginning. We have an entire world to win. Solidarity."-Kshama Sawant, Seattle, WA city council member, socialist, after the Seattle city council voted unanimously to double the USA's minimum wage to require $15 an hour for Seattle employees, USA
333. "Question of the day: if Obama has the power to transfer these 5 detainees, why can't he transfer all & close GITMO?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
334. "But when we look at the most common [female] occupation today, it’s not a high-flying executive. It’s a retail sales person.”-Amy Traub, senior policy analyst, Demos; author of a report showing that on average women are paid $10.58 an hour in retail jobs compared to men's $14.62, meaning women are cheated out of $40.8 billion annually in lost wages, USA
335. "Richard Nixon Would Be Pleased With Obama's DOJ: Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From Reporter Over Identity of Source,"-John Dean, J.D., attorney, author, former counsel to Presidents Nixon and Ford, USA
336. "The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents. The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the agency has turned to new software to exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications, the N.S.A. documents reveal. Agency officials believe that technological advances could revolutionize the way that the N.S.A. finds intelligence targets around the world, the documents show. The agency’s ambitions for this highly sensitive ability and the scale of its effort have not previously been disclosed."-James Risen and Laura Poitras (living in Germany), journalists, USA
337. "A hundred thousand low-wage workers in Seattle will be seeing their wages raised to $15 an hour over the next 10 years. That would imply a transfer of roughly $3bn from the top to the lowest-paid workers. Such a transfer has not happened in so many decades because mostly what’s happened is the flow of wealth has been from the bottom up. This is really raising the confidence of working people around the country."-Kshama Sawant, Seattle, WA city council member, socialist, on the eve of the Seattle city council voting to double the USA's minimum wage to require $15 an hour for Seattle employees, USA
     
338. "But we’re on camera all the time. And not just by the government. In stores we’re on camera. And stores are now combining that information with our mobile phones to look at our buying patterns and notice that we spent some time at the perfume counter and we didn’t buy anything, and then we get a little text or e-mail telling us about perfume because we have an interest in it. Because they saw us on a camera standing in front of the counter. The surveillance by government and by the private sector and the use of data — big data analysis, matching data from one source with data from another, is a real issue that we need to address."-Richard Clarke, former top counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and George W Bush administrations, critic of the current USA drone program, and author of  the novel Sting of the drone, USA
339. "I can spot ugly in a minute. No people even pull it around me that know me. They’ll just walk away, and that’s a good thing to do because I’ll either pick up the phone or I’ll nail you.”-Storme DeLarverie (1920-2014), lesbian activist who defended LBGT rights at the original Stonewall Inn riot and subsequently in lower Manhattan, USA
     
340. "I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes. Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have. But we have established procedures now with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where people who take actions as serving presidents or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried. So the precedent is there to do that sort of thing. And I think we need to ask ourselves whether or not it would be useful to do that in the case of members of the Bush administration. It’s clear that things that the Bush administration did — in my mind, at least — were war crimes."-Richard Clarke, former top counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and George W Bush administrations, critic of the current USA drone program, and author of  the novel Sting of the drone, USA
341. "I think what happened — and it happened largely under President Obama — was that the aperture got very, very broad. Not only were they targeting people whose names they knew, but they were targeting people whose names they didn’t know. They were targeting people in so-called signature strikes, when a place look like a terrorist camp. And they were able, after looking at that place for days on end, to satisfy themselves that it was a terrorist camp. Then they attacked that camp without knowing, frankly, the names of the people who were there. The result was, collateral damage. We don’t know how much. There are widely varying estimates of the number of innocent people who have been killed in each of these cases. But, we do know that innocent people were killed. As recently as the attack in Yemen at the end of last year that blew up a wedding. When you do things like that, you cause enemies for the United States that will last for generations. All of these innocent people that you kill have brothers and sisters and tribe — tribal relations. Many of them were not opposed to the United States prior to some one of their friends or relatives being killed. Then, sometimes, they cross over not only to being opposed to the United States, but by being willing to pick up arms and become a terrorist against the United States. So you may actually be creating terrorists rather than eliminating them by using this program in the wrong way."-Richard Clarke, former top counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and George W Bush administrations, critic of the current USA drone program, and author of  the novel Sting of the drone, USA
     
342. "John Kerry's challenge to Snowden to return and face trial is either disingenuous or simply ignorant that current prosecutions under the Espionage Act allow no distinction whatever between a patriotic whistleblower and a spy. Either way, nothing excuses Kerry's slanderous and despicable characterizations of a young man who, in my opinion, has done more than anyone in or out of government in this century to demonstrate his patriotism, moral courage and loyalty to the oath of office the three of us swore: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States."-Daniel Ellsberg, former military analyst and whistleblower who leaked The Pentagon Papers, USA
343. "More than ever, wealthy students are attending (post-secondary) institutions that spend more per student, have high graduation rates and subsequently graduates who earn robust incomes. Lower-income students attend institutions that spend less per student, have lower graduation rates and graduates who earn modest incomes. Money matters."-Joseph B. Moore, Ph.D., president, Lesley University, Massachusetts, USA
344. "She was always studying and working. That's what she liked best. She wanted to be a doctor."-Sohan Lal, a farmer who found his daughter and niece who had gone out in darkness to a local field to go to the bathroom (no indoor plumbing) and were subsequently gang-raped, murdered, and hung from a tree by a group of five neighbors, in a country where 244,470 sexual assault offences were reported to police in 2012, a fraction of the actual crimes in a country of 1.25 billion residents and where sexual assault and gang rapes of girls and women and lax policing and enforcement of criminal penalities continue, Uttar Pradesh, India
345. "John Kerry talking about Snowden in 2014 sounds like Dick Cheney in 2004 talking about Kerry #Traitor #Coward #HelpingTheTerrorists"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
346. "This was now a stop-and-shoot – no longer a chase-and-shoot. The law does not allow for a stop-and-shoot."-Tim McGinty, J.D., Cuyahoga County prosecutor, announcing two counts of manslaughter against Cleveland patrol officer Michael Brelo who stood on the hood of the car of two unarmed African American alleged car chase suspects and fired 15 shots through the windshield, five of which were fatal, killing them both at point-blank range, having fired 34 prior shots of a total of 137 shots fired during or after the chase by various officers; five police supervisors were also charged with dereliction of duty for failing to supervise the chase; the Cleveland police department is under federal investigation for both use of deadly force and pursuit policies, USA
     
347. "It's the first time in the history of the Paris Club that a counry in our conditions has negotiated with a multilateral body without the intervention of the International Monetary Fund, and witihout giving up the autonomy that a sovereign country should have, and which reveals to us that when we're allowed to grow, when we're allowed to develop our own policies, that when we're allowed to generate jobs and employment, the conditions exist to honor one's commitments and take charge of its debt. We're not, as the vultures say, serial debtors. They, the international financial capitalists, are serial predators not just on our ecomony but of many economies in the world." -Cristina Fernández de Kirchener, president, Argentina
348. “For those who believe the public has the right to know what information the NSA is allowed to collect the conclusion drawn in this case is that the Snowden leaks worked and the Freedom of Information Act did not."-Nate Jones, FOIA Coordinator, National Security Archive, USA
349. "We’ve had the first federal open court to ever review these programs to declare it likely unconstitutional and Orwellian. And now you see Congress agreeing that mass surveillance, bulk collection, needs to end. With all of these things happening, that the government agrees, all the way up to the president again, make us stronger, how can it be said that I did not serve my government? How can it be said that this harmed the country when all three branches of government have made reforms as a result of it?"-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia
350. "This is the seventh poll in Egypt since the ouster of Mubarak just over three years ago. None of the people in office right now have been elected by any of those polls. And when those—when we did have elected officials, much of the political elites spent their time discussing issues over identity rather than issues, the deep—discussing the deep social and economic problems that plague Egypt. So, the electoral process has been increasingly dissatisfying and alienating for many Egyptian voters. Another reason is, of course, the certainty of the outcome of this election. Unlike the 2012 poll, which had candidates from across the political spectrum, this election just has two candidates, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Hamdeen Sabahi, both of which espouse different brands of the same ideology, Nasserism. And Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is a candidate that’s backed by the state, he’s backed by the business elite, and is widely expected to win. And so the certainty of the results may have played into people not bothering to come. And certainly, there is an active boycott. We have to remember that the largest political group in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood, is not taking part in this election. They’ve been the subject of an incredibly harsh crackdown. Many of their rank and file have been killed. Their leaders are jailed. And so they have refused to take part, as have groups like the April 6 Youth Movement. So, again, officials are saying the turnout is somewhere between—in the mid-thirties, but that is a much lower turnout than we saw in the runoff that elected Mohamed Morsi in 2012, which had 52 percent."-Sharif Abdel Kouddous, independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, Nation Institute fellow, on the low voter turnout in elections that have been controlled by military and business interests after a coup d'etat, which the USA refuses to recognize as a coup, Egypt
351. "This is the case in every society: those who pose no challenge are rarely targeted by oppressive measures, and from their perspective, they can then convince themselves that oppression does not really exist. But the true measure of a society's freedom is how it treats its dissidents and other marginalized groups, not how it treats good loyalists. Even in the world's worst tyrannies, dutiful supporters are immunized from abuses of state power. In Mubarak's Egypt, it was those who took to the street to agitate for his overthrow who were arrested, tortured, gunned down; Mubarak's suppoters and people who quietly stayed at home were not. In the United States, it was NAACP leaders, Communists and civil rights and anti-war activists who were targeted with Hoover's surveillance, not well-behaved citizens who stayed mute about social injustice. We shouldn't have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to feel safe from state surveillance. Nor should the price of immunity be refraining from controversial or provocative dissent."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
352. "You may encounter many defeats but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it."-Maya Angelou, Ph.D. (1928-2014), poet, author, civil rights activist, professor, parent, USA
353. "History despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again."-Maya Angelou, Ph.D. (1928-2014), poet, author, civil rights activist, professor, parent, USA
     
354. "Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but it has not solved one yet."
     -Maya Angelou, Ph.D. (1928-2014), poet, author, civil rights activist, professor, parent, USA
355. "We’ve basically gone back to where we were 170 years ago. We are doing an abysmal job of treating people with serious mental illnesses in this country. It is both inhumane and shocking the way we have dumped them into the state prisons and the local jails."-E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., psychiatrist, author, critic of the effort to deinstitutionalize psychiatric patients in the 1960s, and lead author on the Treatment Advocacy Coalition and National Sheriffs' Association 2014 report showing only 35,000 persons with severe mental illness are in state hospitals but over 356,000 are in prisons or jails, USA
     
356. "The truth is that European-style welfare states have proved more resilient, more successful at job creation, than is allowed for in America’s prevailing economic philosophy."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
357. "It is not hard to understand why authorities in the United States and other Western nations have been tempted to construct a ubiquitous system of spying directed at their own citizens. Worsening economic inequality, converted into a full-blown crisis by the financial collapse in 2008, has generated grave internal instability....Authorities faced with unrest generally have two options: to placate the population with symbolic concessions or fortify their control to minimize the harm it can do their interests. Elites in the West seem to view the second option--fortifying their power--as their better, perhaps only viable course of action to protect their position. The response to the Occupy movement  was to crush it with force, through tear gas, pepper spray, and prosecution. The para-militarization of domestic police forces was on full dispay in American ciites, as police officers brought out weapons seen on the streets of Baghdad to quell legally assembled and largely peaceful protesters. The strategy was to put people in fear of attending marches and protests, and it generally worked.  The more general aim was to cultivate the sense that this sort of resistance is futile against a massive and impenetrabie establishment force. A system of ubiquitous surveillance achieves the same goal but with even greater potency. Merely organizing movements of dissent becomes difficult when the government is watching everything people are doing. But mass surveillance kills dissent in a deeper and more important place as well: in the mind, where the individual trains him- or herself to think only in line with what is expected and demanded."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
358. “Right to care does not mean access to treatment. Tens of millions of people who did not have insurance coverage may now be prompted to seek mental health treatment. And the capacity just isn't there to treat them. There really is no mental health system in the US."-Paul Appelbaum, M.D., psychiatrist, professor, USA
359. "It’s been pretty damn pathetic in a whole lot of ways. One thing is that they (colleges) tend to worry a lot more in many cases about the well-being of the perpetrators than the victims. Another thing is that they shifted responsibility for preventing rape from men not to rape to women to do all kinds of things to not get raped, which we don’t do with any other crime. And, you know—and then they haven’t pursued these things seriously. It’s also kind of crazy. It’s like, OK, if there’s petty vandalism on campus, maybe that’s a campus issue, but if there’s a felony crime that involves, you know, a woman being strangled, a woman being brutalized, why is that not turned over to the legal system, which is there to deal with those things, the idea that it’s an in-house incident? But what—you know, it’s been mishandled or overlooked, not handled at all, for decades, forever. But what’s amazing is, because these young women rose up, they said, 'This is not acceptable. This is not a legitimate way to deal with it.' Because they used social media, their voices, the mainstream media, they’re organizing to say, 'This has to stop. This has to change.' They’re really radically changing how it’s being treated and exposing the universities"-Rebecca Solnit, critic, activist, author, Men explain things to me, responding to the recent attention the government and anti-rape on campus groups have received to hold colleges more accountable for how they handle rape and sexual violence on campus, USA
360. "There’s this incredibly annoying phrase, 'not all men,' that comes up all the time. You know, you say three women a day are murdered by male partners, and so often some guy will say, "Not all men." An angry feminist said to me yesterday, you know, 'What do they want? A cookie for not raping, beating and murdering?' And, you know, we know it’s not all men, but we need to talk about the fact that it is all women. And that’s what "yes all women" said, is, "Yeah, we know not all men are rapists and murderers, are not abusers and misogynists, but all women are impacted by the men who are." And that’s where the focus needs to be, because it has such a huge impact. Every woman, every day, when she leaves her house, starts to think about safety: Can I go here? Should I go out there? Do I need to take the main street? Do I need to be in by a certain hour? Do I need to find a taxi? Is the taxi driver going to rape me? You know, women are so hemmed in by fear of men, it profoundly limits our lives. And of course it’s not all men, but it’s enough that it impacts all women. And it’s pretty nearly worldwide. The tweets were coming from all over the English-speaking world and parts of the world that aren’t primarily English-speaking, to say that this problem impacts me, this problem impacts us, and we need to keep doing things about it. We need to escalate, and we need to address how deeply embedded it is. And we need to make visible what’s been invisible, and we need to change it. And I think this weekend we really started to do that."-Rebecca Solnit, critic, activist, author, Men explain things to me, USA
361. "We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender."-Rebecca Solnit, critic, activist, author, Men explain things to me, USA
     
362. "I've spent 19 yrs teaching my daughter how not to be raped. How long have you spent teaching your son not to rape? #yesallwomen"— Deanna Raybourn, international
363. "Ultimately, beyond diplomatic manipulation and economic gain, a system of ubiquitous spying allows the United States to maintain its grip on the world. When the United States is able to know everything that everyone is doing, saying, thinking, and planning--its own citiazens, foreign populations, international corporations, other government leaders--its power over those factions is maximized. That's doubly true if the government operates at ever greater levels of secrecy. The secrecy creates a one-way mirror: the US government sees what everyone else in the world does, incuding its own population, while no one sees its own actions. It is the ultmate imbalance, permitting the most dangerous of all human conditions: the exercise of limitless power with no transparency or accountability. Edward Snwden's revelations subverted that dangerous dynamic by shining a light on the system and how it functions.  For the first time, people everywhere were able to learn the true extent of the surveillance capbilities amassed against them."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
364. "Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, 'Stop this madness! We don't have to live like this'? Too many have died. We should say to ourselves, 'Not one more!'"-Richard Martinez, parent whose son was killed in a gun massacre near Santa Barbara, CA, challenging politicians' fear of the NRA and unwillingness to pass strong gun control laws, USA
365. "There's this unbalanced approach, where there's all this energy put into how to reward executives, but little energy being put into ensuring the rest of the workforce is engaged, productive, and paid appropriately." -Richard Clayton, research director, Change to Win Investment Group, on word that average CEO pay is now over $10 million for companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 and a CEO makes 257 times the average worker's salary up, from 181 times in 2009; average weekly pay for USA workers rose 1.3% in 2013 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, USA
366. "After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society...This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm."-National Research Council, The growth of incarceration in the United States: Exploring causes and consequences (2014), USA
367. “How is this not extortion? You know, the thing that is illegal when the Mafia does it.”-Dennis Loy Johnson, Melville House, on Amazon's raising prices and delaying shipments of books in the USA and Europe from publishers who refuse to pay higher prices for Amazon to sell their books due to Amazon's inability to make a profit, USA & Europe
368. "The NFL can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur."-Letter written by 49 Democratic Senators to Washington Redskins owner George Allen asking him to change the team's name, USA
     
369. "So let’s recap: The New York Times chose someone to review my book about the Snowden leaks who has a record of suggesting that journalists may be committing crimes when publishing information against the government’s wishes. That journalist then proceeded to strongly suggest that my prosecution could be warranted. Other prominent journalists —including the one who hosts Meet the Press–then heralded that review without noting the slightest objection to Kinsley’s argument. Do I need to continue to participate in the debate over whether many U.S. journalists are pitifully obeisant to the U.S. government? Did they not just resolve that debate for me? What better evidence can that argument find than multiple influential American journalists standing up and cheering while a fellow journalist is given space in The New York Times to argue that those who publish information against the government’s wishes are not only acting immorally but criminally?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
370. “Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution.”-Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice, in his opinion rendered for Olmstead v. United States, 1928,  a wiretapping trial with great parallels to the NSA and recent government prosecution and threats of prosecution of surveillance whistleblowers, USA
371. "Chile needs and the people have clamored for this reform, which must transform quality education into a right"-Michelle Bachelet, President, at a bill-signing ceremony investing billions in public K-16 education, ending state subsidies to for-profit schools and universities, and potentially introducing free college for all students, Chile
     
372. "It's over--You are all free of debt."-Paps Fritas/Fried Potatoes (aka Francisco Tapia) a visual artist who burned over $500m in student debt contracts from the fraudulent for-profit Universidad del Mar which was secretly funneling public profits to for-profit owners and subsequently shut by the government with students not having received their diplomas but still having to pay debt until the records were burned, absolving students of having to pay for fraud; part of a three-year student campaign to demand quality free education K-16 for every student Chile
     
373. "These people are getting rich sitting in Congress. And what do they do? They don't take care of our kids."-Richard Martinez, parent whose son was killed in a gun massacre near Santa Barbara, CA, challenging politicians' fear of the NRA and unwillingness to pass strong gun control laws, USA
     
374. "In the end, the story of economic policy since 2008 has been that of a remarkable double standard. Bad loans always involve mistakes on both sides — if borrowers were irresponsible, so were the people who lent them money. But when crisis came, bankers were held harmless for their errors while families paid full price. And refusing to help families in debt, it turns out, wasn’t just unfair; it was bad economics. Wall Street is back, but America isn’t, and the double standard is the main reason."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
375. "All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being "left alone", is to remain quiet, unthreatening and compliant."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
376. "Allowing the NSA to consult on cryptographic standards is like consulting with a shoplifter on the design of your store alarm system."-Amie Stepanovich, Access, a digital rights group, USA
     
377. "It was—Tom Wheeler, the chair of the FCC, had—it had kind of been leaked out a couple weeks prior to this that he was open to a fast lane, meaning that—the antithesis of net neutrality. Net neutrality has been the architecture of the Internet from the very beginning. What it means is it treats all digital content, all content that comes across the Internet to you, the consumer, through the Internet service providers, is all treated the same, is all treated equally or neutrally. And that has led to all this innovation that we’ve had over all these years on the Internet. And what Chairman Wheeler is talking about is allowing a fast lane, and it would be deep-pocketed corporations that would be able to buy this. And so, information would come to viewers from big corporations faster, or consumers. And this really would hurt innovation, and it has freedom of speech issues."-Senator Tom Franken (D-MN), USA
     
378. "I had not devoted 10 years of my life to building Lavabit, only to become complicit in a plan which I felt would have involved the wholesale violation of my customers' right to privacy. Thus with no alternative, the decision was obvious: I had to shut down my company. The largest technological question we raised in our appeal (which the courts refused to consider) was what constitutes a "search", i.e., whether law enforcement can demand the encryption keys of a business and use those keys to inspect the private communications of every customer, even when the court has only authorized them to access information belonging to specific targets. The problem here is technological: until any communication has been decrypted and the contents parsed, it is currently impossible for a surveillance device to determine which network connections belong to any given suspect. The government argued that, since the "inspection" of the data was to be carried out by a machine, they were exempt from the normal search-and-seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment. More importantly for my case, the prosecution also argued that my users had no expectation of privacy, even though the service I provided – encryption – is designed for users' privacy. If my experience serves any purpose, it is to illustrate what most already know: courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance under the shroud of secrecy, lest we find ourselves summarily deprived of meaningful due process. If we allow our government to continue operating in secret, it is only a matter of time before you or a loved one find yourself in a position like I did – standing in a secret courtroom, alone, and without any of the meaningful protections that were always supposed to be the people's defense against an abuse of the state's power."-Ladar Levinson, founder/CEO, Lavabit, who chose to close the company rather than submit to the USA's attempts to illegally search clients' privately encrypted email communications, USA
     
379. "The display of firearms in our restaurants has now created an environment that is potentially intimidating or uncomfortable for many of our customers." #BurritosNotBullets-Chipotle statement banning firearms in their restaurants after a successful petition campaign by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, USA
380. "And so the perception – on both sides of the Atlantic – takes hold that racism is not a system of discrimination planted by history, nourished by politics and nurtured by economics, in which some groups face endemic disadvantage – it's about ignorant old people getting caught saying mean things. By privileging these episodes – outrageous as they are – racism is basically reduced to the level of a private, individual indiscretion made public. The scandal becomes not that racism exists but that anyone would be crass enough to articulate it so brazenly. The reality of modern racism is almost exactly the opposite: it's the institutional marginalisation of groups performed with the utmost discretion and minimum of fuss by well-mannered and often well-intentioned people working in deeply flawed systems. According to a recent US department of education report, black preschoolers (mostly four-year-olds) are four times more likely to be suspended more than once than their white classmates. According to a 2013 report by Release, a UK group focusing on drugs and drug laws, black people in England and Wales are far less likely to use drugs than white people but six times more likely to be stopped and searched for possession of them. In both countries black people are far more likely to be convicted, and to get stiffer sentences and longer jail time."-Gary Younge, columnist/journalist working in the USA for The Guardian, UK
381. "The NSA is the definitive rogue agency: empowered to do whatever it wants with very little control, transparency, or accountability."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of No place to hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
382.  "We know no one is perfect, but what we cannot tolerate, what we will not accept, is that a person or a company who knows danger exists and says nothing. Literally, silence can kill. What we now know is that GM knew about this issue years before this past February. Since at least November of 2009, GM has had information linking ignition switch problems with airbags failing to deploy. They had that information and they told no one."-Anthony Foxx, Secretary of Transportation, on General Motors being fined $35 milion for withholding life-threatening safety innformation about failed ignitions with no GM official indicted on criminal counts, USA
     
383. "The Justice Department, on the other hand, convinced the Supreme Court to dismiss a case that could have dramatically curtailed the NSA's most egregious abuses of power based on false statements. And now all of us are forced to live with the consequences of that."-Trevor Timm, J.D., Executive Director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
384. "If the government is right, nothing in the Constitution bars the NSA from monitoring a phone call between a journalist in New York City and his source in London. For that matter, nothing bars the NSA from monitoring every call and email between Americans in the United States and their non-American friends, relatives, and colleagues overseas."-Jameel Jaffer, J.D., Deputy Legal Director, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
385. "We already know the government does not think you have any right to privacy when it comes who you talk to, or when, or for how long, or where you are while you're talking. Now the government has said, in court, that you don't have any right to the content of private conversations with anyone who is located outside the United States – or to any domestic communication remaining private if it is, at some point, transmitted overseas, which happens often."-Trevor Timm, J.D., Executive Director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
386. "Declining state support and rising tuition do more than reduce access to public higher education for many low-income students. The trends also lure colleges into catering to the social and educational needs of affluent, full-freight students at the expense of others. In doing so, they create a social atmosphere that has a profound effect on mobility....We followed a cohort of women who... lived on the same dormitory floor through their entrance into the work force. Similar except for class background, they left college with vastly different life prospects. Time spent at the university had done little to diminish existing differences. Few of the women from less privileged backgrounds realized their dreams of upward mobility, while most of those from privileged backgrounds were poised to reproduce their parents' affluence. While our in-depth data is on women, we do not expect that the situation will be different for men. The women's outcomes were, in large part, a result of the structure of academic and social life on the campus. We identified three pathways through the university, each associated with the agenda of a different group of students. The party pathway accommodated the interests of socially oriented and out-of-state students—the segment of the affluent for which the university was best poised to compete by offering a fun 'college experience.' At the heart of the party pathway was a powerful Greek system, a residence-hall system that fed students into the party scene, and numerous 'easy' majors. As the most visible and well-resourced route through the institution, the party pathway was impossible to avoid—even by those who wished to. It was a constant reminder to those who couldn't afford or didn't wish to join of their place in the university. The professional pathway, which moved academic achievers into professional jobs, required early and active intervention by involved, educated parents, often putting it out of reach of less-affluent women. The mobility pathway, through which many of those less-privileged students sought access to the middle class, was so poorly supported by the university that those women who transferred to less-prestigious regional campuses ended up with better long-term prospects in the labor market than similar women who did not transfer. This university is not unique. Four-year residential campuses have seen increases in spending for student services, including recreation and athletics, that far surpass those for academic instruction and financial aid. Some observers call it the 'country-clubization of the American university.' At midtier public universities, that means structuring academics around student social life....Our study provides evidence of a large (and likely to grow) mismatch between what many four-year institutions provide and what most Americans seeking higher education need. By catering to the affluent minority, public universities are ceasing to serve as vehicles for economic mobility and instead reproducing social inequalities."-Laura Hamilton, Ph.D., professor of sociology, and Elizabeth Armstrong, Ph.D., professor of sociology and organizational studies; co-authors of "Paying for the party: How college maintains inequality," USA
387. "What I wanted more than anything was for the world to see Snowden's fearlessness. The US government had worked very hard over the past decade to demonstrate unlimited power. It had started wars, tortured and imprisoned people without charges, drone-bombed targets in extrajudicial killings. And the messengers were not immune: whistle-blowers had been abused and prosecuted, journalists had been threatened with jail. Through a carefully cultivated display of intimidation to anyone who contemplated a meaningful challenge, the government had striven to show people around the world that its power was constrained by neither law nor ethics, neither morality nor the Constitution: look what we can do and will do to those who impede our agenda. Snowden had defied the intimidation as directly as possible. Courage is contagious. I knew that he could rouse so many people to do the same."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
388. "Higher education in the United States is highly stratified, showering the most resources on the most-advantaged students. Low-income and minority students are concentrated in community colleges, which spent an average of $12,957 per full-time-equivalent student in 2009, while higher-income and white students are disproportionately educated at private four-year research institutions, which spent an average of $66,744 per student. Our system of college admissions exacerbates inequalities. Colleges pride themselves on defending race-based affirmative-action programs, but their policies tend to benefit the most economically advantaged students of color. Most colleges do little to provide affirmative action for low-income students, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Research published by the Century Foundation has found that while affirmative action triples the percentage of black and Latino students compared with the share who would be admitted based on grades and test scores, the lower socioeconomic half of applicants receives no break in admissions. Meanwhile, legacy preferences for the children of alumni increase one's chance of admissions by 45 percentage points, aiding an already highly privileged group. Similarly, colleges have tilted away from economic need to merit aid. At the same time, the federal government gives tax breaks to wealthy students. Less than one-third of the American population has bachelor's degrees—the rationale for using public money to support a fairly small group at the top is that we all benefit when more students are educated. The corollary is that we should focus aid on those students who would not attend and complete college but for public aid—a notion we've lost sight of when we subsidize those who would attend anyway."-Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow, Century Foundation, USA
     
389. "College education is becoming a passive participant in the reproduction of economic privilege. Taken one at time, postsecondary institutions are fountains of opportunity; taken together, they are a highly stratified bastion of privilege. Of course, sorting by race, class, and sex begins long before college-admissions officers get involved. And almost a third of Americans don't even go to college, while 36 million in the work force have gone to college but not earned degrees. But sorting continues in terms of what kind of college you attend, whether you graduate, how much farther you go, and (an important factor often overlooked) what you major in—all decisions that make a difference to later earnings, and that reflect highly segregated social and economic patterns. The patterns are reinforced as an unintended consequence of the business model of higher education: Competition among institutions is based on prestige, relentlessly matching the most-advantaged students with the most-selective institutions, while the rest are stratified in a finely grained hierarchy of separate and unequal tiers of four-year and two-year institutions. Therefore, as enrollments in higher education increase, individual students are better off, in that more of them have access to some form of education. But inequality among students as a whole spreads. Institutional competition simultaneously increases postsecondary quality and inequality. Happily, the number of selective and highly selective colleges in Barron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges has grown by more than 30 percent since the 1990s. Unhappily, the share of students from the bottom income quartile at the 200 selective colleges has stalled at less than 5 percent. And white flight has long since moved on from the leafy green suburbs to the nation's selective college campuses, leaving the overcrowded and underfinanced community colleges to blacks, Hispanics, and lower-income students. Postsecondary stratification matters. The most-selective institutions spend more per student, have better graduation rates, and offer better access to jobs or graduate and professional schools than less-selective institutions do. Where you go and what you take determines what you make. And more than dollars and cents, the current dynamic of selectivity separates learning that transforms lives from job training. On the surface, the great sorting seems impartial. After all, we each have to do our own homework to make the grades and ace the tests that give us access to the most-selective colleges and the best jobs. Fair enough? Not entirely. In a society where people start out unequal, the test-based metrics that govern college admissions become a dodge—a way of laundering the money that comes with being born into the right bank account or the right race or ethnicity. Maybe the more affluent kids are just born smarter? Not so. For most low-income kids, there is no relationship between their innate abilities measured in childhood and their aptitudes developed in time for college. Conversely, the best predictor of the developed aptitudes of adolescents from affluent families is their innate abilities when they were children."-Anthony Carnevale, Ph.D., Director, Center on Education and the Workforce, USA
390. "Regardless of previous academic achievement, low-income students are much more likely than higher-income students to attend community colleges than four-year institutions. And students who start in community colleges do not, on average, progress as far as those starting in four-year institutions; they are certainly less likely to complete a B.A. Thus, by starting at a community college, they may fall further behind more-advantaged students. Research suggests that many low-income students are "underplaced": They have the academic skills to gain admission to more-selective colleges than the ones they attend. Better counseling and financial-aid programs might improve equity by displacing some higher-income students from four-year colleges. But it is hard to believe that such efforts would make a perceptible dent in the current extent of inequality. Eliminating community colleges, or encouraging every student to enroll in a four-year institution, won't work unless four-year institutions are willing to take the students who now attend community colleges. But selective institutions are not about to open their doors to all comers. For the most part, they have used the growing demand for higher education to become even more selective rather than to expand enrollment. The availability of low-cost, local, open-access community colleges is therefore crucial. As tuition at four-year institutions rises, and college degrees become a prerequisite for jobs paying a living wage, community colleges fill an ever more crucial role in our economy. Accordingly, their enrollments have steadily grown. But fewer than two-fifths of students who start in community colleges go on to complete a degree or certificate within six years. Community colleges must find a way to increase completion rates without restricting access. Can that be done? There is reason for optimism. The past decade has seen a growing volume of research, and reform, devoted to that issue. Perhaps the most important conclusion is that reforms must be ambitious and concerned with the entire student experience at college, including opportunities to transfer to four-year colleges. Reforms that focus on only one stage, such as remediation or counseling for course selection, will have, at best, only modest effects."-Thomas Bailey, Ph.D., professor of education and economics and director, the Community College Research Center, USA
391. "In the postwar years, the GI Bill and the community-college system created opportunities for those lacking in background or resources (in many cases, both) to work their way up the educational and professional ladder. During the same period, grass-roots social movements—above all the civil-rights movement and feminism—compelled elite four-year colleges, which spend up to 10 times as much per student as public universities do, to open their doors to students whose class background or race had previously been grounds for exclusion. Since the 1980s, however, that situation has begun to reverse itself. Under the constraints of the antitax revolt, dwindling public revenues, and, more recently, the 2008 financial crisis, we have witnessed a major withdrawal of funds from public education, whose burdensome costs must increasingly be borne by private citizens. When coupled with the burgeoning sticker price of college tuition—since 1986 tuition costs have risen by 500 percent, over four times the rate of inflation— the result is that a baccalaureate degree has increasingly become the prerogative of the most affluent Americans. Statistics show that whereas children of a family earning $90,000 or more per year stand a 50-percent chance of earning a B.A. by the age of 24, when household income drops to the $60,000- $90,000 range, the odds fall by half, to one in four. Should family income fall below $35,000, those odds plummet to one in 17. To offset rising tuition costs, lower- and middle-income students now graduate with mammoth student-loan debts."-Richard Wolin, Ph.D., professor of history, USA
     
392. "Well, you know, when I started the study, I didn’t know that fast food was going to be such an extreme outlier in terms of pay disparity. The study arose kind of in this context that Terrance and other workers like him have created, where there’s a growing awareness that inequality is undermining the economy at several levels. But when I dug into the data, what I found was that fast food is a catalyst, with inequality that outstrips all the sectors of the economy. The CEO of a fast-food company in 2012 earned 1,200 times what the typical worker earned that year."-Catherine Ruetschlin, policy analyst, Demos, and author of the report Fast Food Failure: How CEO-to-Worker Pay Disparity Undermines the Industry and the Overall Economy, USA
393. "As a lesbian, gay or trans person, there is nowhere you can go on the planet to be treated equally under the law. It is unfair and it is untenable. But, the laws don't tell the whole story. Everywhere you go, there are millions of people who reject the notion that your ability to live openly and free from torture and discrimination should be an accident of your birth."-Andre Banks, executive director, All Out, on the release of information from the International Lesbian and Gay Association that 2.79 billion people worldwide live in 77 countries where being gay can lead to either prison and/or death (Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen), International http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/may/-sp-gay-rights-world-lesbian-bisexual-transgender
394. "What is significant is that Narendra Modi, a hard-line leader in a hard-right, Hindu-right party, is the person who’s been elected by a majority of Indians to be their leader—not without significant backing from corporate interests in India. And so he is not just a man who’s been chosen by the masses, but who is a man who was anointed by the corporations, by the elite media in India, well before the election results came in. This is the result that the corporations in India wanted. And the reason for that is that, you know, Mr. Modi, one of the things that’s being talked him is that he—as the chief minister of Gujarat, he led it into—he is a very pro-development politician, which basically means pro-business, not development in the sense of the large sums of people."-Siddhartha Deb, journalist and author, reporting on the election of conservative Narendra Modi who has allied himself with Hindu nationalists and corporations as Prime Minister, India
     
395. "From what I hear, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, telecom, big polluters and outsourcers are all salivating at the chance to rig the deal in the upcoming trade talks. So the question is: Why are the trade talks secret? You’ll love this answer. Boy, the things you learn on Capitol Hill. I actually have had supporters of the deal say to me, 'They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed."-Sen. Elizabeth Warren, J.D., (D-MA), consumer rights activist, parent, on the danger of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that would harm workers and enrich transnational corporations, USA
     
396. "I work with KFCon Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn, and I’m receiving $8 an hour. And I’m here with other co-workers and other friends that I work with, associates that I work with, and we’re standing as one to get $15 and a union. I’m not able to meet my needs, my bills, my children’s needs, rent, clothing. It’s like hard trying to make it, get back and forth to work, and we’re not getting equal pay. The CEOs and corporations, they’re getting so much money, we should be able to have that fair share in the wage."-Sheila Brown, New York City fast food employee, parent, protesting with workers in 30 other countries for the right to unionize and a living wage of $15, USA
     
397. "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon, and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed for even an instant. If you seek to help, join the open source community and fight to keep the spirit of the press alive and the internet free. I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light."-Edward Snowden, USA, whistleblower on NSA spying, from author and journalist Glenn Greenwald, J.D.'s book, No Place to Hide, living in temporary asylum, Russia
398. "Because of the access technical experts have to comptuer systems, I saw a lot of secret things, and many of them were quite bad. I began to understnad that what my government really does in the world is very different from what I'd always been taught. That recognition in turn leads you to start reevaluating how you look at things, to question things more."-Edward Snowden, USA, whistleblower on NSA spying, from author and journalist Glenn Greenwald, J.D.'s book, No Place to Hide, living in temporary asylum, Russia
399. "Honestly, the thing that saved me was being gay. My gayness made me very combative, assertive and an outsider. I'm always thankful for that."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
400. "$15 and a union!"and #FastFoodGlobal! -The rallying cry and hashtag for fast food workers and labor activists across the 30 countries rallying with a day-long strike for a living wage and the right to organize for all workers, particularly those in fast food and other low-paying service and retail industries, International
401. "GCHQ and the NSA have developed an array of the sophisticated surveillance implants, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, with each of the spy tools tailored for a different purpose. Some are used to compromise large-scale internet networks so that the spies can sweep up private data as it is passing through them. Others infect specific computers with malicious software that effectively gives the agencies total control of a target’s machine – enabling them to take covert snapshots using its webcam, record audio using its microphone, log what is being typed on the keyboard, collect data from any removable flash drive that is connected, and snoop its Web browsing history."-Ryan Gallagher,  reporter, The Intercept, Scotland
     
402. "The wives of the miners kiss their husbands in the morning. When they come back, even if they are five minutes late, everyone starts calling. You never know what is going to happen." -Gulizar Donmez, a neighbour of one of the hundreds of victims in the largest mine disaster in a country with the world's 3rd highest level of mining deaths and lax regulations, Turkey

403. “These dire honey bee numbers add to a consistent pattern of unsustainable bee losses in recent years. While various factors are contributing to bee deaths, a strong and growing body of science tells us we must take action now to protect bees from neonicotinoid pesticides.”-Lisa Archer, Friends of the Earth head of food and technology program, remarking on a study released showing at current extinction rates, honeybees, which are requried to pollinate 25% of USA crops, are headed toward permanent death unless neonicotinoid pesticides are banned, USA

404. "As we have noted elsewhere, we are concerned that the executive branch's decade-long reliance on a secret body of surveillance law has given rise to a culture of misinformation, and led senior officials to repeatedly make misleading statements to the public, Congress and the courts about domestic surveillance. The way to end this culture of misinformation and restore the public trust is to acknowledge and correct inaccurate statements when they are made, and not seek to ignore or justify them. We will continue to enage with you and other executive branch officials to ensure that this takes place."-Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), in a letter to the Solicitor General challenging the Justice Department, USA
     
405. "But while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organisations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers. The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of (and excerpt from) No Place to Hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
406. "As the school year ends, children are heading into the tobacco fields, where they can’t avoid being exposed to dangerous nicotine, without smoking a single cigarette. It’s no surprise the children exposed to poisons in the tobacco fields are getting sick."-Margaret Wurth, children's rights researcher, Human Rights Watch,  co-author of a report that USA child laborers are endangered with nicotine poisoning or Green Tobacco Sickness working in tobacco fields, international
407. "Glenn Greenwald's new book includes full list of NSA's "3rd party" SIGINT partner countries: pic.twitter.com/aYaLaZPmI8"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
408. "Slide naming NSA corporate partners (inc Intel, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Oracle) published by Greenwald  pic.twitter.com/IOGimzE0oZ"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
409. "At the end of the day, the work of reporters like Glenn reminds governments—and the global population more broadly—that we live in a multipolar world, where civil power is growing at the expense of institutional authorities. Governments that don't legitimize their authority with the public will increasingly see that authority eroded by a decentralized, global community creating its own technical solutions to policy abuses. Clever applications of technology are increasingly serving as a new kind of Supreme Court, where bad policies in Uganda can be overturned by a bit of good engineering in Europe. For example, when the Turkish government said, 'We're blocking online protest speech,' the Internet said, 'Overruled.'"-Edward Snowden, USA, whistleblower on NSA spying, on why he chose to work with journalist Glenn Greenwald, J.D.,  living in temporary asylum, Russia
410. "Years from now, CIA's hand in the resurgence of Polio may be seen as its greatest fiasco, which is saying something"-Trevor Timm, J.D., executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
411. "There are few things in life more ironic than being accused by U.S. Generals, including those who participated in the war in Iraq, of being responsible for the loss of lives. For that sort of irony, nothing will beat that episode where the US Pentagon chief and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that WikiLeaks – not themselves, but WikiLeaks – has 'blood on its hands' by virtue of publishing documents about the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In the world of the U.S. National Security State and its loyal media, those who go around the world killing innocent people over and over are noble and heroic, while those who report on what they do are the ones with 'blood on their hands.' But what makes this claim so remarkable is how often it is made and how false it always turns out to be. The accusation about WikiLeaks was ultimately demonstrated to be false. The same was true of the identical claim made about NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and the leaker who exposed the Bush-era warrantless eavesdropping program, and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, and virtually every other person who has brought unwanted transparency to what the U.S. Government is doing in the dark. But accusing whistleblowers and journalists of causing the deaths of innocent people is a tactic people like Gen. Alexander continue to embrace because it’s virtually never pointed out by our stalwart media how many times that claim has been proven to be an utter fabrication."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of (and excerpt from) No Place to Hide, , senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
412. "Collect it all. Sniff it all. Know it all. Process it all. Exploit it all."-NSA conference slide shown at Munk debate on surveillance, Canada
     
413. "As Yahoo demonstrates, the security teams at tech firms protect your data. The privacy teams protect the companies when they mine your data."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
414. "In less than 10 minutes, you can make these four simple changes to your web browser and stop most online tracking."-Trevor Timm, J.D., executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/4-simple-changes-protect-your-privacy-online
415. "FCC commissioner uses insecure, never-patched mobile device to tweet selfie. Does nothing about smartphone security."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
416. "If you're going to be changing all/many of your passwords, post Heartbleed, this is a perfect time to switch to a password manager."--Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, on the importance of using a password manager in light of the NSA's illegal surveillance Heartbleed bug program, which is able to spy on passwords of users across the internet from multiple tech sites, USA
417. "The primary defense of the NSA and its defenders is that one need not worry about the staggering sums of data they collect because they have implemented very rigorous oversight mechanisms and controls that prevent abuse. Yet Edward Snowden spent months downloading a large amount of highly sensitive documents right under their noses. And not only did they have no idea that he was doing it, but now – even after spending large sums of money to find out – they are still completely incapable of learning which documents he took or even how many he took. Does that at all sound like a well-managed, tightly controlled system that you can trust to safeguard your most personal data and to detect and prevent abuse of this system by the tens of thousands of people who have access to it?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author of (and excerpt from) No Place to Hide, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian, living in Brazil
     
418. #BringBackOurGirls Twitter hashtag being useed worldwide to support the safe return of 257  girls  kidnapped by a terror group, Nigeria
     
419. "We assume that OECD's (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) experts are motivated by a sincere desire to improve education. But we fail to understand how your organisation has become the global arbiter of the means and ends of education around the world. OECD's narrow focus on standardised testing risks turning learning into drudgery and killing the joy of learning. As Pisa has led many governments into an international competition for higher test scores, OECD has assumed the power to shape education policy around the world, with no debate about the necessity or limitations of OECD's goals. We are deeply concerned that measuring a great diversity of educational traditions and cultures using a single, narrow, biased yardstick could, in the end, do irreparable harm to our schools and our students."-120 educators, academics, and activists asking for a moratorium on PISA testing and its antidemocratic influence on education policy worldwide: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/06/oecd-pisa-tests-damaging-education-academics International

420.  “The fact that the city council of a major city in the US will discuss in the coming weeks raising the minimum wage to $15 is a testament to how working people can push back against the status quo of poverty, inequality and injustice.”-Kshama Sawant, Ph.D., professor, economist, Seattle city council member, socialist, challenging the democratic mayor to not compromise with corporations to delay implementation of a $15 minimum wage law in a city where more than 1/3 of workers make less than $15 an hour, USA

421. "I think maybe this report will be the turning point when people finally realize that this is about them. It's about them and their lives … Earlier, they had seen it as a distant threat – distant in time, distance in space, this is about poles, this is about island nations. They haven't seen it as a threat in their own backyard.”-Susan Hassol, chief science writer, National Climate Assessment, showcasing current and future climiate change effects throughout the USA particularly heavy rains in the northeast, fire and drought in the southwest, and sea-level rise in low-lying coastal areas, USA
422. "I intend to reaffirm the principle that no individual or entity that does harm to our economy is ever above the law. There is no such thing as 'too big to jail.'" -Eric Holder, J.D., Attorney General, making the statement after years of criticism that the largest financial corporations finance elections for both major parties, buy huge influence by lobbying politiicans, and that no banker has gone to jail over the illegal actions that caused the Great Recession, USA
423. "Surveillance equals power. The more you know about someone, the more you can control and manipulate them in all sorts of ways. That is one reason a Surveillance State is so menacing to basic political liberties.”-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian US, quoted at a Toronto debate on national surveillance (watch @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/05/02/livestream-munk-debate-surveillance-greenwald-hayden/ ) with the anti-surveillance team of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian versus former CIA and NSA director general Michael Hayden and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, J.D., Canada
424. "Top Ten Banned Books in USA in 2013:

     1. Captain Underpants (series) by Dav Pilkey
     2. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
     3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
     4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
     5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
     6. A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl, by Tanya Lee Stone
     7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
     8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
     9. Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
     10. Bone (series), by Jeff Smith" -American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, USA

425. "My name is Rosie Frascella. I'm a 12th grade English teacher at the International High School in Prospect Heights. And today I stood with 29 other teachers and staff members, and we've refused to give the ELA performance-based assessment. The reason we refused to give it is because the first assessment was traumatizing for our students. They were demoralized. They put their heads down and they cried. It was way above their reading level. And the city was careless and took no consideration in the needs of English language learners. And we refuse to demoralize our students."-Rosie Frascella, high school teacher refusing to implement inappropriate Common Core English Language Arts assessments, addressing a May Day rally in NYC's Union Square, USA
     
426. "Even in a place like North Dakota, where the students aren't particularly diverse relative to the rest of the country, it's important for our social fabric, for our sense as a nation, that students are engaging with people who think, talk and act differently than them but can also be just as effective at raising student achievement in the classroom."-Ulrich Boser, the author of the Center for American Progress report showing that almost 50% of the USA K-12 population are students of color with Latinos the largest and growing group, paralleling a study from the National Education Association showing that only 1 in 5 USA teachers is a person of color, illustrating the "diversity gap" in K-12 public schooling, USA
427. “It's no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing. It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love.” -Edward Snowden, USA, whistleblower on NSA spying, living in temporary asylum, Russia, warning on a video streamed to a Toronto debate audience (watch @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/05/02/livestream-munk-debate-surveillance-greenwald-hayden/ ) that entire populations around the world are under surveillance by governments not only individuals, Canada
     
428. "The average annual cost for infant care in the U.S. is $6,000 or $7,000 a year. When you look at the average income of many single mothers, that is going to end up being a quarter of it. That’s huge. That is just out of reach for many folks.”-James Ziliak, Ph.D., professor and director, Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky, USA
429. "What is state surveillance? If it were about targeting in a discriminate way against those causing harm, there would be no debate. The actual system of state surveillance has almost nothing to do with that. What state surveillance actually is, is defended by the NSA's actual words, that phrase they use over and over again: 'Collect it all.’ "-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian US, quoted at a Toronto debate on national surveillance (watch @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/05/02/livestream-munk-debate-surveillance-greenwald-hayden/ ) with the anti-surveillance team of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian versus former CIA and NSA director general Michael Hayden and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, J.D., Canada
     
430. "There is far too much test prep if, by test prep, we mean setting aside good and challenging curriculum in order to prepare students for low-level tests of basic skills that rely on remembering facts and the rote application of procedures."-Marc Tucker, president, National Center on Education and the Economy, questioning inappropriate and inaccurate assessments and testing being used in public schools related to Common Core standards, USA
431. "Why does the emotional reaction to interpersonal racism drown out the muted response to institutional racism, which actually does more damage?"-Charles Blow, columnist, New York Times, USA
432. "The most important thing we can do to prevent the gun violence that kills 86 Americans every day is enforce criminal background checks on all commercial gun sales (to) make sure criminals and other dangerous people aren't bypassing these important safeguards to acquire machine guns.”-Everytown for Gun Safety spokesperson, USA
     
433. "With estimates that men comprise more than half the victims of sexual assault in the military, we have to fight the cultural stigmas that discourage reporting and be clear that sexual assault does not occur becuase a victim is weak, but rather because an offender disregards our values and law."-Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense, speaking on news that reporting of sexual assaults in the military has increased by 50% in the last year, USA
434. "We are not to torture people to death. Not thrashing and convulsing. That makes them no better than the murder he committed. That makes us in Oklahoma look like savages. Come on, America, look at this."-LaDonna Hollins, stepmother of Clayton Lockett, who was the target of a botched execution by the state of Oklahoma, announcing plans to file a civil lawsuit to challenge the state's illegal use of torture, USA
435. "It's always strange how little embarrassment European leaders have about their abject subservience to the US"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian US, USA
436. "Colleges and universities need to face the facts about sexual assault – no more turning a blind eye or pretending it doesn't exist." Joe Biden, Vice President, co-founder of 1 Is 2 Many initiative, parent, announcing the White House guidelines to end sexual assault on the website www.NotAlone.gov, with 1 in 5 USA women sexually assaulted while attending college, most campus victims know their attackers, alcohol and other drugs are often involved, and only 12% of college women report assaults to police, USA
437. "Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force. And the question I think I would have is, why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force after we’ve just gone through a decade of war at enormous costs to our troops and to our budget?" -Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, 44th President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, parent, USA
438. “How many people have to die for Congress to take even a small step toward transparency? It's stunning that after all these years we still don't know how many people the Obama administration has killed with drones.”-Zeke Johnson, director, Amnesty International’s security and human rights program, USA
439. "We ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.”-Sonia Sotomayor, J.D., Justice, Supreme Court, issuing a 58-page dissent to the Court, which upheld the state of Michigan's right for voters to end the use of race in college admissions decisions even with Michigan seeing a 25% drop in college admissions for African American students in the last four years, USA
440. "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."-Ehud Barak, defense minister, Israel
441. "US senators - deferring to James Clapper's demands - remove requirement for disclosure over drone strike victims"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian US, USA

442.  "In each trial, the defense were not able to present their case, the witnesses were not heard, and many of the accused were not brought to the courtroom. This lacks any basic guarantees of a fair trial – not only under international law, but also Egyptian national law. The trials themselves are a death sentence to any remaining credibility and independence of Egypt's criminal justice system."-Mohamed Elmessiry, Amnesty International researcher who attended the hearings where an additional 683 men were condemned to death for the alleged murder of one police officer, following a trial a month earlier where the same judge, Saeed Youssef, gave 529 men death sentences for the alleged killing of a different police officer; both the largest simultaneous death sentences in history, Egypt

443. "It shows that it's not just the Islamists who are being targeted, it's also liberal groups like us. And [the government] will continue all the way to close down all democratic forces, and it's just the beginning." -Ahmad Abd Allah, spokesperson, 6 April youth group, which led to the 2011 democratic revolution, after a judge outlawed its presence, Egypt

444. "This report updates NELP’s previous industry-based analyses of job loss and job growth trends during and after the Great Recession. The report shows that low-wage job creation was not simply a characteristic of the early recovery, but rather a pattern that has persisted for more than four years now. We find that during the labor market downturn (measured from January 2008 to February 2010), employment losses occurred throughout the economy, but were concentrated in mid-wage and higher-wage industries. By contrast, during the recovery (measured from February 2010 to February 2014), employment gains have been concentrated in lower-wage industries. Specifically: Lower-wage occupations constituted 22 percent of recession losses, but 44 percent of recovery growth. Mid-wage occupations constituted 37 percent of recession losses, but only 26 percent of recovery growth. Higher-wage occupations constituted 41 percent of recession losses, and 30 percent of recovery growth. Today, there are nearly two million fewer jobs in mid-and higher-wage industries than there were before the recession took hold, while there are 1.85 million more jobs in lower-wage industries. Service-providing industries such as food services and drinking places, administrative and support services, and retail trade have led private sector job growth during the recovery. These industries, which pay relatively low wages, accounted for 39 percent of the private sector employment increase over the past four years."-Michael Evangelist, policy analyst, National Employer Law Project & author, "The low-wage recovery: Industry employemnt and wages four years into the recovery (April 2014)," USA
445. "In this and other instances, the freedom to engage in Palestine-related speech, research, and teaching came under direct, intense attack, but these attacks were also used as levers for a much broader assault on the independence of universities by individuals and organizations intent on curtailing dissent or critical inquiry related to US global power and hegemony. These incidents serve as warnings that any institution where uncensored speech about Palestine takes place may find itself at the center of a congressional and media storm accusing it of supporting anything ranging from 'anti-Americanism' to 'terrorism' and the 'destruction of Israel.'"-Ali Abunimah, journalist; co-founder, Electronic Intifada; author, "The battle for justice in Palestine,"  USA, Palestine
446. "And the thing is that the old media model, which, again, was funded by advertising, was a situation where you could turn off your television, and you could opt out. We have a much more sort of pervasive, ubiquitous system right now. And in a way, the old problems have intensified because it’s not—it’s not just something—an ad isn’t just something you are watching, actually; now you’re being watched, you’re being tracked, you’re being monitored. I mean, the dominant business model on the Internet is surveillance. And this is going to create a lot of problems down the road. I think that we need to look ahead and look at the forces that are shaping the development of these tools."-Astra Taylor, filmmaker and author, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, USA
447. "What's the one thing that can make loyal Dem Senators harshly denounce an Obama cabinet member? Israel."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian US, USA
448. "I live to educate, empower, and connect all parents, but especially Black and Latino parents. We are often portrayed as being uncaring, uneducated, lazy, and a whole host of other false stereotypes. But I am the rule, not the exception. Amazing things happen when you engage us in a truly meaningful way; when you believe in us; when you arm us with the data to help us bring our stories to life; when you provide trainings and ensure we are the messengers."-Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director, Alliance for Quality Education (NY state), parent, USA
449. "We are demanding the deceased’s family members and the injured workers should get the proper compensation as per the International Labor Organization’s Convention 121, based on loss of future earning and pain and sufferings. Our garments workers are workers of the global market; they should get the compensation as per the global standard. And the brands sourcing from here, they should pay this contribution to the trust fund which is organized by ILO."-Roy Ramesh Chandra, United Federation of Garment Workers, on the one-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, which killed 1,135 garment workers and injured over 2,500, Bangladesh
450. "The nuclear-armed states continue to peddle the myth that they are committed to multilateral disarmament initiatives, while squandering billions to modernise their nuclear arsenals. The UK government's plans to replace Trident make a mockery of its professed belief in multilateral frameworks – and now in addition to huge public opposition in the UK, it will also face an international legal challenge to expose its hypocrisy."-Kate Hudson, general secretary, The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK in light of news that the Marshall Islands is suing nine countries (USA, Russia, UK, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel) for failure to disarm all nuclear weapons as agreed to by a 1970 treaty  and the continued physical health effects and harm suffered by Marshall Islands residents when their country was used as a nuclear bomb testing grounds in the 1940s and 1950s. The USA and Russia have 16,000 of the world's remaining 17,000 nuclear warheads, USA, Russia, UK, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, Marshall Islands
451. "It's a direct result of pollution in surface water. Basically the degree of pollution for surface water is directly correlated to that for shallow ground water, while activities such as mining, oil drilling and landfills have caused pollution in deep ground water."-Ma Jun, founder, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, after the annual report of the Ministry of Land and Resources found almost 60% of the nearly 5,000 ground water test sites polluted, China
     
452. "What deserves a bigger punishment--someone with a college education who knowingly helps a gangster or a terrorist open a bank account? Or a high school dropout who falls asleep on the F train?"-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
453. "We often hear that religious liberty is under attack in our country. Often the fact that same-sex couples are allowed to marry is cited as evidence of this attack. But, as this law makes clear, the religious liberty of same-sex couples and their officiating clergy is what is truly being blatantly attacked. This should outrage anyone who claims to believe in religious freedom. There are couples in North Carolina who are waiting to be able to legally and religiously marry. There are many clergy who are standing by ready to officiate at their weddings. And there is a law that is stopping them. Today, the United Church of Christ, along with plaintiffs which include three UCC ministers, two Unitarian Universalist clergy, one Lutheran pastor, one Baptist minister, and one rabbi, as well as the eight extraordinarily courageous and faithful couples they seek to marry, are taking a stand for religious freedom in North Carolina. They are standing up for true religious liberty. And they are saying it is no longer acceptable to oppress the religious rights of all in the name of the religious preferences of the few."-Rev. Emily C. Heath, United Church of Christ clergy, discussing a new lawsuit filed in the state of North Carolina challenging the state's banning of same-gender marriage officiation by clergy as an attack on freedom of religion, USA
454. "If you grew up well off, you probably don't know how easy it is for poor people to end up in jail, often for the same dumb things you yourself did as a kid. And if you're broke and have limited experience in the world, you probably have no idea of the sheer scale of the awesome criminal capers that the powerful and politically connected can get away with, right under the noses of the rich-people police."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
455. "Of course, on the other end of the spectrum are the titans of business, the top executives at companies like Goldman and Chase and GlaxoSmithKline, men and women who essentially as a matter of policy now will never see the inside of a courtroom, almost no matter what crimes they may have committed in the course of their business. This is obviously an outrage, and the few Americans who paid close attnetion to news stories like the deferred prosecution of HSBC for laundering drug money, or the nonprosecution of the Swiss bank UBS for fixing interest rates, were beside themselves with anger over the unfairness of it all."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
456. "Our prison population, in fact, is now the biggest in the history of human civilization. There are more people in the United States either on parole or in jail today (around 6 million total) than there ever were at any time in Stalin's gulags. For what it's worth, there are also more Black men in jail right now than there were in slavery at its peak."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
457. "The issue for black people was never integration or segregation but white supremacy. The paradigm of integration and segregation was a white concern … That was how they posed the issue of civil rights, given their own interests, and that was how the entire issue then became understood. But the central concerns of black people were not whether they should integrate with white people or not but how to challenge white people's hold on the power structure."-Charles Payne, Ph.D., professor, USA
     
458. "The whole notion that every single aspect of a student's life should be put online somewhere and stored in a data cloud and shared with vendors is something that horrifies most parents and horrifies most privacy experts,"-Leonie Haimson, director, Class Size Matters, who sees the closing of inBloom corporation as a victory for parents and students in challenging the inappropriate privatized use of student data for profit, USA
459. "Sexism will never end until men and boys take it as seriously as women and girls do. Racism will never end until whites take it as seriously as people of other races do.”-Stuart Chen-Hayes, Ph.D., professor, counselor, parent, USA
     
460. "Excessive alcohol use accounted for an estimated 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost in the United States each year during 2006–2010 and an estimated $224 billion in economic costs in 2006. Excessive alcohol use is associated with increases in the chances of heart disease, breast cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancy, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, sudden infant death syndrome, motor-vehicle crashes, violence, suicide, and many other health problems. It includes binge drinking, exceeding weekly limits (for men, 15 or more (drinks) on average in a week; for women, eight or more (drinks) on average per week); and any use by pregnant women or persons aged <21 years. A standard drink is considered 12 ounces of 5% beer, 5 ounces of 12% wine, or 1.5 ounces (a shot) of 80-proof distilled spirits or liquor (e.g., gin, rum, vodka, or whiskey). In 2011, binge drinking was reported by 18.3% of U.S. adults (38 million persons) surveyed through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), who reported doing so an average of approximately four times a month and consuming approximately eight drinks per occasion on average." -Lela R. McKnight-Eily, Ph.D., et al., CDC Morbidity and Morality weekly report study on communication about alcohol abuse between patients and health care professionals, USA
461. "We cannot separate these cases from one another because doing so allows us to ignore the fact that all these crimes have exactly the same cause – violent men, and the silence of non-violent men. We can only move past violence when we recognise how it is enabled, and by attributing it to the mental illness of a singular human being, we ignore its prevalence, it root causes, and the self-examination required to end the cycle. The paradox, of course is that in our current narrow framework of masculinity, self-examination is almost universally discouraged. Since Jill died, I wake up every day and read a quote by Maya Angelou – 'history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.' Male self-examination requires this courage, and we cannot end the pattern of men’s violence against women without consciously breaking our silence."-Tom Meagher, Australia, whose wife, Jill, was murdered, challenging male silence against male violence, writing for the White Ribbon campaign, Ireland
462. "Today we’re announcing Everytown for Gun Safety, a new organization that brings mayors, moms and the grassroots movement of Americans together to deal with the issue of gun violence. Gun violence kills 86 Americans every day. It happens everywhere—in big cities, small towns, on our streets, schools, shopping malls and places of worship."-Ed Murray, Mayor of  Seattle, Washington, USA
     
463. "What has to stop is the practice of suspicion-less surveillance of Muslim communities, not just the unit assigned to do it."-Joint statement by Muslim Advocates and the Center for Constitutional Rights, welcoming the New York City Police Department's disbanding of its controversial spying "Demographics Unit" that secretly infiltated Muslim student groups, mosques, and built a huge database that never yielded a terrorism lead or investigation, USA
464. "Our conclusion in the report was that the photographs and the witness himself are credible and sustainable in a court of law at the international or domestic level and that what he brought out over a perod of two years is direct, specific provable evidence of widespread and industralized killing not seen recently. And the reason I underscore this is, and I"ll highlight it again, it's a rare thing in our business that we get this type of direct evidence. But it's direct, provable, sustainable, beyond a reasonable doubt evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity being conducted by the Assad regime."-David Crane, J.D., international war crimes prosecutor and chief prosecutor at the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal, Syria
465. "The rational part of me realizes this is just the death rattle of the old way of life."-Eddie Outlaw, gay business owner who co-created the "We don't discriminate" sticker campaign to counteract recently passed Mississippi legislation that allows legal discrimination against LBGT people by business owners for religious reasons, USA
466. "Well, this book grew out of my experience covering Wall Street. I’ve obviously been doing it since the crash in 2008. And over and over again, I would cover these very complex and often very socially destructive capers committed by white-collar criminals. And the punchline to all of the stories were basically the same: Nobody would get indicted; nobody went to jail. And after a while, I started to become interested specifically in that phenomenon. Why was there no enforcement of any of this? And around the time of the Occupy protest, I decided to write this book, and then I shifted my focus to try to learn a lot more for myself about who does go to jail in this country, because I thought you really can’t make this comparison accurately until you learn about both sides of the equation, because it’s actually much more grotesque to consider the non-enforcement of white-collar criminals when you do consider how incredibly aggressive law enforcement is with regard to everybody else."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
467. So, I mean, it’s—you have a whole bunch of people sort of at the top of the regulatory agencies, whether it’s Justice, the SEC, the CFTC, maybe the Enforcement Division of the SEC,who all came from these big banks or from law firms that represented these big banks. And it’s a very incestuous community. And just like you talked about with James Kidney, the SEC official who left, as a result of this kind of merry-go-round of people who all work for the same companies— and they’re going to go to government for a while, then they’re going to go back to the corporate defense community after they leave and make millions of dollars—they’re very, very reluctant to be aggressive against these companies, because it’s their—culturally, they’re the same people as their targets, whereas there isn’t that same simpatico with the very poor. And I think that’s a very—it’s an important distinction to make, and people don’t understand it.-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
468. "So, HSBC, again, this is one of the world’s largest banks. It’s Europe’s largest bank. And a few years ago, they got caught, swept up for a variety of offenses, money-laundering offenses. But one of them involved admitting that they had laundered $850 million for a pair—for two drug cartels, one in Mexico and one in South America, and including the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico that is suspected in thousands of murders. And in that case, they paid a fine; they paid a $1.9 billion fine. And some of the executives had to defer their bonuses for a period of five years—not give them up, defer them. But there were no individual consequences for any of the executives. Nobody had to pull money out of their own pockets for permanently. And nobody did a single day in jail in that case. And that, to me, was an incredibly striking case. I ran that very day to the courthouse here in New York, and I asked around to the public defenders, you know, "What’s the dumbest drug case you had today?" And I found somebody who had been thrown in Rikers for 47 days for having a joint in his pocket."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
469. "So, again, going back to Chase, they paid $20 billion in fines. And what the government always says in response to the question of why aren’t these guys in jail, they always say, 'Well, we don’t have enough evidence. These cases are hard to make.' But my question is, over and over again, they somehow seem to have enough leverage to get billions of dollars of fines out of these companies, but not enough leverage to get even a day in jail for any of their executives? It doesn’t add up. Logically, it’s a total non sequitur. There’s no way you can have a company paying that much money and not have somebody guilty of a crime. It’s just—it’s not possible."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, parent, USA
470. "But what’s interesting—what’s symbolic about Richard Fuld is that here’s a guy who nearly blew up the planet by, you know, loading up his company (Lehman Brothers) with deadly leverage and making a string of irresponsible decisions to over-invest in subprime mortgages, and the collapse of the company resulted in all of us having to pay these enormous bailouts. But Fuld walked away with, by his count, $300 million, maybe $350 [million], but by the count of some others, more closer to half-a-billion dollars, and he kept the money. And that is a consistent theme of the financial crisis. Not only were these guys not prosecuted, they got to keep all of their money, all of the ill-gotten gains that they made during these periods."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
471. "We were so moved to hear of the Cooper family's constant love and support of their own daughter, even as the Perry case was in full swing and Mr. Cooper was spending his days planning Prop 8's defense. Some may find this contrast between public and private jarring, but in our opinion, loving an LGBT child unequivocally is the single most important thing any parent can do. We are overjoyed for Ashley and her fiancée, and we wish them the very best."-Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, lead plaintiffs in California's Proposition 8 case, which was overturned on appeal by the Supreme Court allowing gay marriage in California, writing to Charles Cooper, J.D., the attorney arguing to keep the ban in place, upon his revelation that his views are changing due in part to his daughter having come out as a lesbian and soon to be married to another woman in Massachusetts with his family's blessing and seeing Perry and Stier as role models for their daughter as parents, USA
472. "Yeah, they have this program in San Diego where if you apply for welfare, the state gets to pre-emptively search your house to make sure that you’re not lying about, for instance, having a boyfriend. You know, so you’re a single mom. You go to the welfare office. You need financial assistance. You represent on the form that you’re not cohabiting with anybody. And just to check, they tell you to go sit tight in your house. And I’ve heard stories of people who waited, literally sitting in their house for a week, not knowing when the inspector is going to come, because if you’re not there when they come, you don’t get your welfare. So, the person comes finally. It’s not a social worker. It’s very often a law enforcement official. They go in, and they search your house. I talked to a number of women who have recounted the experience of having their underwear drawers rifled through. You know, one woman talked about an inspector sticking his pencil end into the underwear drawer and picking out a pair of sexy panties and saying, you know, "Who do you need these for? If you don’t have a boyfriend, what’s this for?" And this is the kind of thing that people have to go through. And I understand that, to many middle Americans, you know, welfare recipients are not—are perhaps not the most sympathetic people. But it’s very striking that, for instance, the recipients of bailouts, we don’t have the right to go in and check their books, but somebody who applies for federal assistance to feed their kids, we have the right to go through their underwear drawer. And I thought that was a striking comparison."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
473. "Again, this is that same Gen Re case I talked about, the $750 million stock fraud where these guys all got off. And what was so interesting about that is—so, if you go to court, the judges almost never are from the same neighborhoods as the accused. But when you do have a case where it’s, you know, somebody from the suburbs who lives in Connecticut and the judge is also somebody who’s from the suburbs and lives in Connecticut, and he has members of the local PTA come out and say that, you know, 'This guy is somebody who wouldn’t even jaywalk. You know, he’s a God-fearing person. Yes, maybe he might have committed a $750 million stock fraud, but he’s a very decent person,' they will very frequently—like, bail is never an issue for this kind of defendant, which is very, very important. You know, these—and beyond that, in that particular case, after they were convicted, all of these defendants were allowed to remain free pending appeal, which removed all of the leverage the state might have had to roll up these defendants up into higher targets, whereas that’s exactly the opposite of what happens to poor defendants, who are frequently thrown in jail. Their, you know, bail is set at a level that’s higher than they can afford. And then, while you’re in jail waiting for trial, you start to do the math, and you realize that you could stay in jail longer in bail than you would do if you were sentenced. And that’s one of the reasons why people plead out, even when they’re innocent, because the math just works in the state’s favor. They have all these tricks they can use to keep you in jail longer than you’re supposed to be."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
474. "Fast-forward again to the next big crisis, and how many people have we got—have we actually put in jail? Zero. And this was a crisis that was much huger in scope than the S&L crisis or the accounting crisis. I mean, it wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth, and nobody went to jail, so that we’re now in a place where we don’t even recognize the importance of keeping up appearances when it comes to making things look equal."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
475. "This report looks at known killings of people defending environmental and land rights. It identifies a clear rise in such deaths from 2002 and 2013 as competition for natural resources intensifies. In the most comprehensive global analysis of the problem on record, we have found that at least 908 people have died in this time. Disputes over industrial logging, mining and land rights are the key drivers, and Latin America and Asia-Pacific particularly hard hit. Deadly Environment also highlights a severe shortage of information or monitoring of this problem, meaning the total is likely to be higher than the report documents. This lack of attention is feeding endemic levels of impunity, with just over one per cent of the perpetrators known to have been convicted. Overall, the report shows how it has never been more important to protect the environment, and it has never been more deadly. It calls on national governments and the international community to act urgently to protect the environment and the citizens who defend it."-Deadly Environment: The dramatic rise in killings of environmental and land defenders" report summary, International
476. "I think one of the problems that the increasing wealth gap is bringing to us is that there’s a smaller and smaller group of untouchables, and then there’s a sort of widening group of everybody else, and we all have the same lack of respect from the law enforcement."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look media, and author, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," parent, USA
     
477. "I was forced to endure the muder of three members of my family, who were killed because of my sexuality. I was sentenced to death. I fled for my life."-Aderonke, a lesbian who fled Nigeria to the UK, who is now fighting deportation, UK
478. "A 2011 Justice Department study noted that some normal, healthy adults have died after being shocked but that people who are intoxicated or who suffer from heart disease or other significant illnesses may be at greater risk of death. An even more troubling study by Amnesty International, which monitors this issue, estimates that since 2001 more than 550 people have died after being shocked by Tasers during arrest or while in jail. Police agencies in the United States, the report found, routinely use the shock weapons on suspects who present no danger but fail to comply immediately with a police officer’s commands."-New York Times editorial challenging the use of tasers in schools and ending reliance on security and police offers for school safety, USA
479. "And while supposed Obamacare horror stories keep on turning out to be false, it's already quite easy to find examples of people who died because their states refused to expand Medicaid. According to one recent study, the death toll from Medicaid rejection (by Republican governor-led states) is likely to run between 7,000 and 17,000 Americans each year. But nobody expects to see a lot of prominent Republicans declaring that rejecting Medicaid expansion is wrong, that caring for Americans in need is more important than scoring political points against the Obama administration. As I said, there’s an extraordinary ugliness of spirit abroad in today’s America, which health reform has brought out into the open. And that revelation, not reform itself — which is going pretty well — is the real Obamacare nightmare."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
480. "I’d like to tell you what was wrong with the tests my students took last week, but I can’t. Pearson’s $32 million contract with New York State to design the exams prohibits the state from making the tests public and imposes a gag order on educators who administer them. So teachers watched hundreds of thousands of children in grades 3 to 8 sit for between 70 and 180 minutes per day for three days taking a state English Language Arts exam that does a poor job of testing reading comprehension, and yet we’re not allowed to point out what the problems were. This lack of transparency was one of the driving forces that led the teachers at my school to call for a protest rally the day after the test, a rally that attracted hundreds of supporters. More than 30 other New York City schools have scheduled their own demonstrations. I want to be clear: We were not protesting testing; we were not protesting the Common Core standards. We were protesting the fact that we had just witnessed children being asked to answer questions that had little bearing on their reading ability and yet had huge stakes for students, teachers, principals and schools. (Among other things, test scores help determine teacher and principal evaluations, and in New York City they also have an impact on middle and high school admissions to some schools.) We were protesting the fact that it is our word against the state’s, since we cannot reveal the content of the passages or the questions that were asked."-Elizabeth Phillips, Principal, PS 321, Park Slope, Brooklyn, USA
481. Human Interference with the Climate System: Human influence on the climate system is clear....Five integrative reasons for concern (RFCs) provide a framework for summarizingkey risks across sectors and regions....The RFCs illustrate the implications of warming and of adaptation limits for people, economies, and ecosystems:
     
     (1) Unique and threatened systems: Some unique and threatened systems, including ecosystems and cultures, are already at risk from climate change (high confidence).The number of such systems at risk of severe consequences is higher with additional warming of around 1°C. Many species and systems with limited adaptive capacity are subject to very high risks with additional warming of 2°C, particularly Arctic-sea-ice and coral-reef systems.
     (2) Extreme weather events: Climate-change-related risks from extreme events, such as heat waves, extreme precipitation, and coastal flooding, are already moderate (high confidence) and high with 1°C additional warming (medium confidence). Risks associated with some types of extreme events (e.g., extreme heat) increase further at higher temperatures (high confidence).
     (3) Distribution of impacts: Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development. Risks are already moderate because of regionally differentiated climate-change impacts on crop production in particular (medium to high confidence). Based on projected decreases in regional crop yields and water availability, risks of unevenly distributed impacts are high for additional warming above 2°C (medium confidence).
     (4) Global aggregate impacts: Risks of global aggregate impacts are moderate for additional
     warming between 1-2°C, reflecting impacts to both Earth’s biodiversity and the overall global economy (medium confidence). Extensive biodiversity loss with associated loss of ecosystem goods and services results in high risks around 3°C additional warming (high confidence). Aggregate economic damages accelerate with increasing temperature (limited evidence, high agreement) but few quantitative estimates have been completed for additional warming around 3°C or above.
     (5) Large-scale singular events: With increasing warming, some physical systems or ecosystems may be at risk of abrupt and irreversible changes. Risks associated with such tipping points become moderate between 0-1°C additional warming, due to early warning signs that both warm-water coral reef and Arctic ecosystems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts (medium confidence). Risks increase disproportionately as temperature increases between 1-2°C additional warming and become high above 3°C, due to the potential for a large and irreversible sea-level rise from ice sheet loss. For sustained warming greater than some threshold, 44 near-complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet would occur over a millennium or more, contributing up to 7m of global mean sea-level risk-United Nations Climate Change Committee, international
482. "The numbers tell the sad truth: we are in the midst of a surge in driver inattention, and crash statistics bear out that we can characterize the last 10 years simply as New Jersey's Distracted Driving Decade. What is perhaps most troubling about these numbers is that the issue of distracted driving seems to be getting progressively worse. Our research indicates that while crashes and fatalities are trending downward as a whole, the number and proportion of distracted crashes are rising."-John Hoffman, J.D., Acting New Jersey Attorney General, commenting on a study showing in 10 years 1.4 million car crashes had distracted driving as a major contributing factor and over 1600 persons are dead from those accidents, USA
483. "For me, the most significant revelation is the ambition of the United States government and its four English-speaking allies to literally eliminate privacy worldwide, which is not hyperbole. The goal of the United States government is to collect and store every single form of electronic communication that human beings have with one another and give themselves the capacity to monitor and analyze those communications. So, even though I’ve been warning for a long time about this being an out-of-control, rogue surveillance state, long before I ever heard the name Edward Snowden, to see in the documents that that not only is their ambition, but something that they’re increasingly close to achieving, was, to me, by far the most significant goal, something that I don’t think anyone in the world knew or understood. And every other revelation is really just a subset of that one."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian US, USA
484. "I am grateful to the committee for their recognition of the efforts of those involved in the last year's reporting, and join others around the world in congratulating Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, Ewen McCaskill and all the others at The Guardian and Washington Post on winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Today's decision is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of presure to get them to stop what the world now recognizes was work of vital public importance. This decision reminds us that what no individual conscience can change, a free press can. My efforts would have been meaningless without the dedication, passion, and skill of these newspapers, and they have my gratitude and respect for their extraordinary service to our society. Their work has given us a better future and a more accountable democracy."-Edward Snowden, USA, whistleblower on NSA spying, living in temporary asylum, Russia
485. "The Army’s difficulty in dealing with this is not an Army problem; it’s a societal problem. We’re talking about over two million people who have deployed in the last 10 years," Philipps says. "Over 500,000 of them have more than three deployments. These are people who may have issues that they need our help with. And if the Army isn’t sort of the first responder, the person who gets them on the right track, and the Army in fact, through its actions, is banning them from care for the rest of their lives, that’s going to affect our society for a really long time."-Dave Phillips, journalist, who wrote Pulitzer-Prize winning series "Other than Honorable," Colorado Springs Gazette, USA
     
486. "I would like to see the debate be about not whether the U.S. should be collecting metadata under a specific provision of the Patriot Act, 215, but the broader question of whether or not we want to empower the government to monitor and surveil people who are suspected of absolutely no wrongdoing whatsoever, essentially to engage in mass surveillance. Is that really a proper function of the state? And even beyond just domestically, why should one government, in particular, turn the Internet from what it was intended to be, and its greatest promise, which is a tool of freedom and human exploration and liberation, into the most oppressive tool of human control and surveillance ever known in history?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney, author, senior editor/journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for NSA reporting with The Guardian US, USA
487. "[The SECis] an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors. On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening."-James Kidney, J.D., retiring attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission referring to his superiors going easy on Wall Street banks over their policies that caused the 2008 financial crisis, USA
488. "But I think that it’s important also that we remember that when we actually do this reporting, the enormous risks that journalists take on and especially that sources take on, and in the case of Snowden, putting his life on the line, literally, to share this information to the public, not just the American public, but to the public internationally."-Laura Poitras, USA, living in Germany, journalist and filmmaker, co-accepting the George Polk award for journalism in New York for her reporting on the NSA files and national security issues and dedicating the award to Edward Snowden, USA, living in asylum in Russia
489. "I think journalism in general is impossible without brave sources. I know our journalism, in particular, would have been impossible without the incredible courage of Edward Snowden. And it’s really remarkable that the reporting that we’ve done has won all sorts of awards, not just in the United States, but around the world, and he, in particular, has received immense support, incredible amounts of praise from countries all over the world and all sorts of awards, and the fact that for the act of bringing to the world’s attention this system of mass surveillance that had been constructed in the dark, he’s now threatened with literally decades in prison, probably the rest of his life, as a result of what the United States government is doing, I think, is really odious and unacceptable. And I hope that, as journalists, we realize how important it is not only to defend our own rights, but also those of our sources like Edward Snowden. And I think each one of these awards just provides further vindication that what he did in coming forward was absolutely the right thing to do and merits gratitude, and not indictments and decades in prison."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, USA, co-accepting the George Polk award for journalism in New York for reporting on the NSA files and national security issues, dedicating the award to Edward Snowden, USA, living in asylum in Russia, USA
     
490. "The stark, simple truth is this: the right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago.”-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, parent, President, USA
491. "I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil which some priests, quite a few in number, obviously not compared to the number of all the priests, to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children. The Church is aware of this damage, it is personal, moral damage carried out by men of the Church, and we will not take one step backward with regards to how we will deal with this problem, and the sanctions that must be imposed. On the contrary, we have to be even stronger. Because you cannot interfere with children."-Pope Francis, Vatican City
492. "Remove all priests known to have raped children or others, and require reporting to secular authorities. Today, throughout the world, priests who are known to church officials continue to hold posts in congregations, schools, orphanages, and elsewhere, unbeknownst to local communities. The church has shown over and over that it cannot police itself. These matters must be turned over to the proper authorities, and it is well within the scope of Pope Francis’s power to make sure this happens. Punish church officials who have covered up cases of rape and sexual violence by clergy, failed to report them, and obstructed investigations by law enforcement. Pope Francis’s promised 'sanctions' must address the systemic impunity that helped to create the culture of rape and sexual violence that exists today within the church. Encourage and protect church whistleblowers who have come forward with information about the crisis of sexual violence. So far church officials have intimidated and retaliated against whistleblowers. Pope Francis can and must work with whistleblowers to get to the root of the problem."-Center for Constitutional Rights response to Pope Francis's apology for sexual abuse of children with three concrete actions needed to end abuse of children and cover-ups by Catholic clergy, USA
493. "It has become more and more common to hear from detainees that they were sexually assaulted or harassed, and it seems that the tactic is being used to humiliate the detainee, and to make them feel powerless, and under the control of the police. These cases demonstrate how empowered the police feel, and how above the law they feel, and how little respect they have for legal protection or moral consideration. The police feel so confident about themselves that they can break all rules, and even taboos of Egyptian society, to degrade the detainee."-Mohamed Lotfy, co-founder of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, Egypt
494. "Our investigation looked at officer-involved shootings that resulted in fatalities between 2009 and 2012 and found that a majority of them were unreasonable and violated the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We found that officers used deadly force against people who did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious harm to the officers or to others, and against people who posed a threat only to themselves. In fact, we found that sometimes it was the conduct of the officers themselves that heightened the danger and escalated the need to use force."-Joceyln Samuels, J.D., acting assistant attorney general, Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice, on pervasive police brutality in the Albuquerque, NM police department resulting in the killing of 23 people by department officers since 2010, USA
495. "But the minute I mention my female partner, I run the risk of not only getting paid less, but also being fired on the spot. If the president truly wants to move forward the cause of equal pay for all women, he could start by signing another executive order he promised to sign back in 2008--one that would prohibit discrimination by federal contractors based on sexual orientation and gender identity."-Heather Cronk, managing director, Get Equal, USA
496. "How do you engineer a bland, depoliticised world, a consensus built around consumption and endless growth, a dream world of materialism and debt and atomisation, in which all relations can be prefixed with a dollar sign, in which we cease to fight for change? You delegate your powers to companies whose profits depend on this model. Power is shifting: to places in which we have no voice or vote. Domestic policies are forged by special advisers and spin doctors, by panels and advisory committees stuffed with lobbyists. The self-hating state withdraws its own authority to regulate and direct. Simultaneously, the democratic vacuum at the heart of global governance is being filled, without anything resembling consent, by international bureaucrats and corporate executives."-George Monbiot, author and columnist, The Guardian, UK
497. "The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations … including domestically within the borders of the United States."-Edward Snowden, USA, whistleblower on NSA spying, living in temporary asylum, Russia
     
498. "And so, I said, 'Well, trickle down hasn't worked, but gush up has,' because after the opening up of the economy, we are in a situation where, you know, 100 of India’s wealthiest people own—their combined wealth is 25 percent of the  GDP, whereas more than 80 percent of its population lives on less than half a dollar a day. And the levels of malnutrition, the levels of hunger, the amount of food intake, all these—all these, you know, while India is shown as a quickly growing economy, though, of course, that has slowed down now dramatically, but at its peak, what happened was that this new—these new economic policies created a big middle class, which, given the population of India, gave the impression of—it was a universe of its own, with, you know, the ability to consume cars and air conditioners and mobile phones and all of that. And that huge middle class came at a cost of a much larger underclass, which was just away from the arc lights, you know, which wasn’t—which wasn’t even being looked at, millions of people being displaced, pushed off their lands either by big development project or just by land which had ceased to be productive. You had—I mean, we have had 250,000 farmers committing suicide...."-Arundhati Roy, author, activist, social critic, India
     
499. "Solution No. 1 Provide good prenatal care for every pregnant woman. Solution No. 2 Make high-quality early childhood education available to all children. Solution No. 3 Every school should have a full, balanced, and rich curriculum, including the arts, science, history, literature, civics, geography, foreign (world) languages, mathematics, and physical education. Solution No. 4 Reduce class sizes to improve student achievement and behavior. Solution No. 5 Ban for-profit charters and charter chains and ensure that charter schools collaborate with public schools to support better education for all children. Solution No. 6 Provide the medical and social services that poor children need to keep up with their advantaged peers. Solution No. 7 Eliminate high-stakes standardized testing and rely instead on assessments that allow students to demonstrate what they know and can do. Solution No. 8 Insist that teachers, principals, and superintendents be professional educators. Solution No. 9 Public schools should be controlled by elected school boards or by boards in large cities appointed for a set term by more than one elected official. Solution No. 10 Devise actionable strategies and specific goals to reduce racial segregation and poverty. Solution No. 11 Recognize that public education is a public responsibility, not a consumer good." -Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., professor of education, social critic, parent, grandparent, and author, Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools, parent, grandparent, USA
500. "It's not as though we don't know what works. We could implement the policies that have reduced the achievement gap and transformed learning outcomes for students in high-achieving nations where government policies largely prevent childhood poverty by guaranteeing housing, healthcare and basic income security. These same strategies were substantially successful in our own nation through programs and policies of the war on poverty and the Great Society, which dramatically  reduced poverty, increased employment, rebuilt depressed communities, invested in preschool and K-12 education in cities and poor rural areas, desgregated schools, funded financial aid for college and invested in teacher traning programs that ended teacher shortages."-Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education and author, USA
     
501. "In America, you can grow up to oversee torture & illegal domestic eavesdropping and be treated as a wise statesman"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, USA
502. "Reformers frequently say that poverty is just an excuse, that poverty is not destiny, and that a child's education should not be determined by his or her zip code. Poverty is not an excuse. It is a harsh reality. No one wants poverty to be any child's destiny. Public schools exist to give all children equal education  opportunity no matter what their zip code. Schools fail when they lack the resources to provide equal educational opportunity. And they fail not because of lack of will but because poverty overwhelms the best of intentions. Poverty persists not because schools are bad and teachers don't care but becuase society neglects its root causes. Concentrated poverty and racial segregation are social problems, not school problems. Schools don't cause poverty and racial segregation, nor can schools solve those problems on their own.....there is no example in which an entire school district eliminated poverty by reforming its schools or by replacing public education with privately managed charters and vouchers."-Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., professor of education, social critic, parent, grandparent, and author, Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools, parent, grandparent, USA
     
503. "But who wouldn’t prefer modest inflation and a bit of asset erosion to mass unemployment? Well, you know who: the 0.1 percent, who receive “only” 4 percent of wages but account for more than 20 percent of total wealth. Modestly higher inflation, say 4 percent, would be good for the vast majority of people, but it would be bad for the superelite. And guess who gets to define conventional wisdom. Now, I don’t think that class interest is all-powerful. Good arguments and good policies sometimes prevail even if they hurt the 0.1 percent — otherwise we would never have gotten health reform. But we do need to make clear what’s going on, and realize that in monetary policy as in so much else, what’s good for oligarchs isn’t good for America."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
504. “The students and civil groups have halted the forced passage of the agreement and demonstrated that [President] Ma [Ying-jeou’s (馬英九)] administration’s has lost legitimacy, because since 2008, it has been abusing power, making arbitrary decisions, breaching the rule of law, violating human rights and causing democracy to retreat. The movement has revealed how the current cross-strait interaction has been dominated by the clandestine, under-the-table trading between the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] and the Chinese Communist Party, a model that only helps the cross-strait political elite and capitalist corporations amass their fortunes and sacrifices the rights and benefits of most of the public. From this moment on, no behind closed doors negotiation is allowed; no regime can be permitted to make brazen moves to sell out Taiwan. We Taiwanese, not anybody else, are the masters of this island.”-Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), student protest leader, on ending the three-week old occupation of government ofices due to concessions from the government on all four student demands, Taiwan
     
505.  “General Hayden’s suggestion that Chairman Feinstein was motivated by ‘emotion’ rather than a focus on the facts is simply outrageous.  Over the past five years I watched Chairman Feinstein manage this investigation in an extremely thorough and professional manner, and the result is an extraordinarily detailed report based on millions of pages of internal CIA records, including operational cables, internal memos, and interview transcripts. General Hayden unfortunately has a long history of misleading the American public – he did it on domestic surveillance when he was the head of the NSA, and he did it on torture when he was the CIA Director. The best way to correct this culture of misinformation is to give the American people a chance to review the facts for themselves, and I’ll be working with my colleagues and the administration to ensure that happens quickly.”-Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), challenging the former CIA/NSA director's remarks suggesting that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s landmark report on torture and coercive interrogations was not objective, USA
     
506. "Twenty years ago, April 6, 1994, Rwanda’s extremist Hutu government and military led a campaign to exterminate the minority Tutsis. During the genocide, an estimated 800,000 people were killed in three months of systematic slaughter—men, women and children massacred in an orchestrated, pre-planned campaign of genocide not seen since the Holocaust. The killing continued for a hundred days. In Rwanda, the machete became the symbol of horror. As the situation in Rwanda spiraled into a bloodbath, the United States was careful never to call it a "genocide" because that eight-letter word carried obligations to intervene under international treaties. On a visit to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1998, President Clinton apologized for not acting quickly enough and immediately calling the crimes genocide."-Amy Goodman, journalist, Democracy Now!, USA, on the 20th anniverary of the genocide killing 800,000 persons in Rwanda
     
507. "My hope and my belief is that as we do more of that reporting and as people see the scope of the abuse as opposed to just the scope of the surveillance they will start to care more. Mark my words. Put stars by it and in two months or so come back and tell me if I didn't make good on my word."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, remotely addressing the Amnesty International annual conference, USA
508. "Metadata is what allows an actual enumerated understanding, a precise record of all the private activities in all of our lives. It shows our associations, our political affiliations and our actual activities." -Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia
     remotely addressing the Amnesty International annual conference, USA
509. "The nation has more than 200 “cancer villages,” small towns like mine blanketed with factories where cancer rates have risen far above the national average. (Some researchers say there are more than 400 such villages.) Last year the Ministry of Environmental Protection acknowledged the problem of “cancer villages” for the first time, but this is of little comfort to my parents’ neighbors and millions like them around the country. More than 50 percent of China’s rivers have disappeared altogether, and few of the surviving waterways are not completely polluted. Some 280 million Chinese people drink unsafe water, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Nearly half of the country’s rivers and lakes carry water that is unfit even for human contact. And China’s cancer mortality rate has soared, climbing 80 percent in the last 30 years. About 3.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year, 2.5 million of whom die. Rural residents are more likely than urban residents to die of stomach and intestinal cancers, presumably because of polluted water. State media reported on one government inquiry that found 110 million people across the country reside less than a mile from a hazardous industrial site."-Sheng Keyi (盛可以), author, Northern girls (Bei mei), China
510. "My hometown’s terminal illness and the death of Lanxi River have been heartbreaking for me. I know the illness does not just affect my village and my river. The entire country is sick, and cancer has spread to every organ of this nation. In our society, profit and G.D.P. count more than anything else. A glittering facade is the new face of China. Behind it, well-off people emigrate, people in power send their families to countries with clean water, while they themselves consume quality food and clean water through the networks that serve the privileged. Yet many ordinary people still refuse to wake up, as if they were busy digging at the soil beneath their own feet while standing on a precipice."-Sheng Keyi (盛可以), author, Northern girls (Bei mei), China
511. "The main ideas behind the student-led movement are clear: Keeping Taiwan’s democracy healthy requires that everyone — including the public sector, civil society and individuals — go beyond voting in an election year to fully exercise citizen participation in public affairs; legislative processes must be held accountable; and the nation’s most cherished ideals should not take a back seat to commercial and other interests in the government’s cross-strait policy."-Editorial, Taipei Times, Taiwan
512. "That major news sites like the Wash Post are considering moving to HTTPS by default is a direct result of Snowden's disclosures. We all win."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
513. "@GGreenwald: The lesson Snowden can teach is that any individual has the power to literally change the world #Amnesty2014"-tweet paraphrasing journalist Glenn Greenwald's speech @ Amnesty International annual conference, USA 
514. "It would not come without great personal risk, but the American people may only be served well if someone with a conscience is brave enough to leak the full (Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of CIA torture and abuse) report and hold the CIA accountable for its crimes once and for all."-Trevor Timm, executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation, USA
     
515. "Unfortunately, the skills myth — like the myth of a looming debt crisis — is having dire effects on real-world policy. Instead of focusing on the way disastrously wrongheaded fiscal policy and inadequate action by the Federal Reserve have crippled the economy and demanding action, important people piously wring their hands about the failings of American workers. Moreover, by blaming workers for their own plight, the skills myth shifts attention away from the spectacle of soaring profits and bonuses even as employment and wages stagnate. Of course, that may be another reason corporate executives like the myth so much. So we need to kill this zombie, if we can, and stop making excuses for an economy that punishes workers."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
516. “One of our recommendations is that children should be taught about relationships and sex at a young age. If we start teaching kids about equality and respect when they are 5 or 6 years old, by the time they encounter porn in their teens, they will be able to pick out and see the lack of respect and emotion that porn gives us. They’ll be better equipped to deal with what they are being presented with.”-Miranda Horvath, Ph.D., professor, referring to what families and eduators can do collaboratively to teach healthy sexuality and counteract the unknown effects of childhood/early adolescent exposure to digital pornography, U.K.
517. "Nationally drunken drivers cause 1 death every 51 minutes. 82% of fatal crashes are caused by drunk drunken driving. The problem is so prevalent it is estiamted that 1 in 3 people will be invovled in a a DWI-related crash in their lifetime."-Jordan B. Richards, J. D., public defender and defense attorney, USA
518. "The issue is simple. We are not mascots. I'm nobody's mascot. My children are not mascots. It mocks us as a race of people. It mocks our religion."-Robert Roche, executive director, American Indian Education Center, parent, at a protest agains the Cleveland "Indians" baseball team mascot Chief Wahoo, USA
519. "But these documents, along with the AP’s exposure of the sham “Cuban Twitter” program, underscore how aggressively western governments are seeking to exploit the internet as a means to manipulate political activity and shape political discourse. Those programs, carried out in secrecy and with little accountability (it seems nobody in Congress knew of the “Cuban Twitter” program in any detail) threaten the integrity of the internet itself, as state-disseminated propaganda masquerades as free online speech and organizing. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, USA
520. "These tests have changed the entire atmosphere of education for our children. My children come home saying a large portion of the day is for test prep." -Danielle Flora, School Counselor and parent, on why she chose to have her three children opt-out from high stakes common core testing, along with an estimated 28,000 other children statewide, Islip, Long Island, USA

521.  "There's a lot of fear about kids having to go to summer school, about failing. For some parents, pulling their kids out of the tests is just a very protective action to keep their kids from having to experience all this destructive anxiety."-Nancy Cauthen, Parent, Change the Stakes advocacy group to end high stakes Common Core testing in NYC, USA

522. "The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never be allowed to happen again. This is not what Americans do. The report also points to major problems with the CIA’s management of this program and its interactions with the White House, other parts of the executive branch and Congress. This is also deeply troubling and shows why oversight of intelligence agencies in a democratic nation is so important."-Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has voted to release part of the 6,000 page report condemning the Bush administration's torture and rendition program, and accusing CIA members of spying on Senate staff members and deleting files during its investigation, USA
523. “Torture is wrong, and we must make sure that the misconduct and the grave errors made in the CIA’s detention and interrogation program never happen again.”-Senators Angus King (Ind-ME) & Susan Collins (R-ME), USA
524. "Well, we have been trying since 1966 to get criminal penalties into the Department of Transportation safety statute, and we’ve always failed because the auto companies have opposed it vigorously. But I think that the time has now come to put a requirement that if an auto company knowingly and willfully covers up or refuses to disclose a safety defect or a noncompliance with a safety standard, that they are liable for criminal sanctions. And that would include jail time as well as dollar amounts. So, it’s really past time for that. The Toyota case, where they also did a cover-up with these runaway cars, sudden-acceleration cars, the U.S. attorney, using some power in the Justice Department statute for covering up documents, found a $1.2 billion penalty for Toyota but did not put anybody in jail. It is my belief that until some auto manufacturer employees, whether it’s the top or the middle or whoever did the cover-up, go to jail for allowing a defective system to kill people, that we’re never going to have any understanding within the company of how that culture has to change and safety has to be the number one priority."-Joan Claybrook, former head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, commenting on GM's failure to correct a faulty ignition switch that has resulted in hundreds of needless deaths, USA
525. "DOJ ignores Congressional demands for criminal investigation of James Clapper's lies: law not for people like him."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, USA
526. "It was a disastrous decision, following on the footsteps of Citizens United....what the justices, the right-wing justices, are talking about is freedom of speech for billionaires and large corporations to own American democracy. At a time when we already have enormous income and wealth inequality in this country, what the justices are saying is that these very same people can now basically purchase the United States government, can spend unlimited sums of money on elections. And I think that is a disaster for the foundations of American democracy."-Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind.-VT) denouncing the Supreme Court's conservative wing elminating spending limits by wealthy persons on federal election candidates, party committees, and political action committees, further limiting democracy, USA
527. “If the world doesn’t do anything about mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases and the extent of climate change continues to increase, then the very social stability of human systems could be at stake."-Rajendra Pachauri, Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of 1800 international climatology scientists, meeting in Japan
528. "Venezuelans are proud of our democracy. We have built a participatory democratic movement from the grass roots that has ensured that both power and resources are equitably distributed among our people. According to the United Nations, Venezuela has consistently reduced inequality: It now has the lowest income inequality in the region. We have reduced poverty enormously — to 25.4 percent in 2012, on the World Bank’s data, from 49 percent in 1998; in the same period, according to government statistics, extreme poverty diminished to 6 percent from 21 percent. We have created flagship universal health care and education programs, free to our citizens nationwide. We have achieved these feats in large part by using revenue from Venezuelan oil."-NicolÁs Maduro, President, Venezuela
529. "We are the people left behind when a loved one got into what was supposed to be a safe car, a GM car, a car that GM knew for years was dangerous and defective. Our daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, wives and husbands are gone because they were a cost of doing business GM’s style."-Laura Christian, whose daughter was killed in an accident due to a faulty General Motors ignition switch that GM refused to fix even though it knew it was faulty causing over 300+ needless deaths, USA
530. "Four years prior to producing the Cobalt, GM engineers were aware of a problem with that ignition switch design which it could cause it to turn it to the accessory position with just the weight of a key chain or a road bump.] Rather than fixing the problem, they chose to keep producing the Cobalt with the ill-fated ignitions switch, selling it to an unsuspecting public. Would fixing the problem when it was discovered save these two girls’ lives and the lives of many others? Yes. Should GM be able to hide behind their bankruptcy and not accept the responsibility and liability of these young lives? No."-Ken Rimer, who had a family member killed in an accident due to a faulty General Motors ignition switch that GM refused to fix even though it knew it was faulty causing over 300+ needless deaths, USA
531. "Over the last 40 years, the U.S. government has relied on extreme fear-mongering to demonize transparency. In sum, every time an unwanted whistleblower steps forward, we are treated to the same messaging: You’re all going to die because of these leakers and the journalists who publish their disclosures!....The NSA engages in this fear-mongering not only publicly but also privately. As part of its efforts to persuade news organizations not to publish newsworthy stories from Snowden materials, its representatives constantly say the same thing: If you publish what we’re doing, it will endanger lives, including NSA personnel, by making people angry about what we’re doing in their countries and want to attack us. But whenever it suits the agency to do so–meaning when it wants to propagandize on its own behalf–the NSA casually discloses even its most top secret activities in the very countries where such retaliation is most likely....Actually, in this case, the NSA’s “most carefully guarded secrets” were spilled thanks to Chris Inglis and the paper’s own Ken Dilanian. But because the purpose was to serve the NSA’s interests and to propagandize the public, none of the people who pretend to object to leaks–when they shine light on the bad acts of the most powerful officials–will utter a peep of protest. That’s because, as always, secrecy designations and condemnations of leaks are about shielding those officials from scrutiny and embarrassment, not any legitimate considerations of national security or any of the other ostensible purposes."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, USA
     
532. "US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications."-Spencer Ackerman and James Ball, journalists, The Guardian, USA
533. "NSA using power to monitor foreigners overseas as pretext for surveillance of Americans at home"-Jameel Jaffer, J.D., deputy legal director, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
     
534. "The death toll is jarring: Nearly one-fifth of all fatal fires in New Jersey are caused by a smoker’s negligence — and experts say it’s most likely more. Nationwide, it’s even worse, approaching 1 in 4."-Star-Ledger editorial, USA
     
535. ""Regardless of our own racial background or socio-economic position, we are inextricably interconnected as a society. We must view all children in America as our own – and as key contributors to our nation's future."-Race for Results, a report from the Annie E Casey Foundation showing that on 12 different indicators in every USA state including reading/math proficiency, high school graduation, teen birthrates, employment prospets, family income/education levels, and neighborhood poverty, children of African-American, Latino/a and Native American ethnic/racial identities are far behind Asian and White children, USA
     
536. "(The findings from the  Race to Results report are) a call to action that requires serious and sustained attention from the private, nonprofit, philanthropic and government sectors to create equitable opportunities for children of color."-Patrick McCarthy, president, Annie E Casey Foundation, USA
537. "The Obama administration for which Vietor was a spokesman repeatedly supplied arms to the regime in Bahrain as they brutally crushed democratic protesters. They vigorously supported the repellent Mubarak regime, the long-time US ally, until his downfall became inevitable; Hillary Clinton, upon being named Secretary of State, gushed: 'I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.' Obama has continually embraced the anti-democratic Gulf monarchs ruling Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.  And all of that is independent of the unparalleled political, financial, diplomatic and military support which the US lavishes on Israel as it engaged in all sorts of decades-long occupation, repression and aggression.  And then there’s the closest US ally of them all, which also just happens to be one of the world’s most brutally repressive regimes: the House of Saud. During Vietor’s tenure, the administration revealed 'plans to offer advanced aircraft to Saudi Arabia worth up to $60 billion, the largest US arms deal ever, and is in talks with the kingdom about potential naval and missile-defense upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more.'”-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, commenting on the USA's support by centrist Democrats for some of the most oppressive and often authoritarian state regimes in the world (Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia), USA
538. "The main focus of massive Internet companies and government agencies both still largely align: to keep us all under constant surveillance. When they bicker, it’s mostly role-playing designed to keep us blasé about what's really going on....These companies are certainly pissed that the publicity surrounding the NSA's actions is undermining their users' trust in their services, and they're losing money because of it. Cisco, IBM, cloud service providers, and others have announced that they're losing billions, mostly in foreign sales. These companies are doing their best to convince users that their data is secure....Google’s recent actions, and similar actions of many Internet companies, will definitely improve its users' security against surreptitious government collection programs—both the NSA's and other governments'—but their assurances deliberately ignores the massive security vulnerability built into its services by design. Google, and by extension, the U.S. government, still has access to your communications on Google's servers. Google could change that. It could encrypt your e-mail so only you could decrypt and read it. It could provide for secure voice and video so no one outside the conversations could eavesdrop. It doesn’t. And neither does Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, or any of the others. Why not? They don’t partly because they want to keep the ability to eavesdrop on your conversations. Surveillance is still the business model of the Internet, and every one of those companies wants access to your communications and your metadata. Your private thoughts and conversations are the product they sell to their customers. We also have learned that they read your e-mail for their own internal investigations. But even if this were not true, even if—for example—Google were willing to forgo data mining your e-mail and video conversations in exchange for the marketing advantage it would give it over Microsoft, it still won't offer you real security. It can't. The biggest Internet companies don’t offer real security because the U.S. government won't permit it."-Bruce Schneier, journalist, The Atlantic, author, and C03 Systems chief technology officer, USA
539. "The Obama administration has used the Freedom of Information Act to increase rather than decrease government secrecy. In 2013, it increased use of exemptions to bar release of requested files by 22% over the previous year, according an analysis by the Associated Press. The government fully denied or redacted large portions of files in 36% of the 704,394 requests submitted. There also was a substantial increase in citing national security concerns as reason for withholding information. The administration did so 8,496 times in 2013 – more than double the rate in President Obama's first year in office. The National Security Agency censored records or denied FOIA requests 98% of the time in 2013. This growing disregard for openness is especially disappointing from a president who, on his first full day in office, announced he would have the most transparent administration in history. It is evident not only in the administration's handling of FOIA requests, but also in the recent CIA dispute with the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee over the committee's report on the government's use of torture in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the scope and nature of mass surveillance by the NSA, known because of files made public by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The need to reverse this trend is evident in the critical role the FOIA has played in revealing secrets that, once public, led to major reforms. The revelation of COINTELPRO, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's secret illegal operations, is an example of the fundamental importance of the FOIA."-Betty Medsger, journalist, professor, author, The Burglary: The discovery of J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, USA
     

540. “500,000 people have spoken. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), do you still plan on hiding? 500,000 people demand your positive response.”-Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) co-leader of the Taiwan student and worker/small business protest for democracy, announcing over half a million Taiwan citizens rallying for democracy and protesting the Taiwan-China free-trade agreement, Taiwan

541. "So let's reform the NSA and its countless collections. But let's not forget the FBI's reported 10,000 intelligence analysts working on counter-terrorism and the 15,000 paid informants helping them do it. Let's not forget the New York Police Department's intelligence and counter-terrorism division with its 1,000 officers, $100m budget and vast program of surveillance. Let's not forget the especially subtle psychological terror of being Muslim in America, where, sure, maybe your phone calls won't be stored for much longer, but there's a multitude of other ways you're always being watched."-Arun Kundnani, author, USA
     
542. "It's (revenge porn) pure misogyny. It's about hating women. It's about hurting them. That's the whole purpose of the site. It wasn't about the pictures. There were hundreds of people self-submitting photos, but they're not victims because they are saying: 'Hey, you can post my nude picture.' But that wasn't interesting. The thing is humiliating people. The kind of people who would never post their photo on a site like that, and who have a lot to lose. Who have high-profile jobs, or could have their entire life destroyed. That's what he found enjoyable. That's what his followers found enjoyable."-Charlotte Laws, who for 2 years investigated revenge porn website king Hunter Moore, who was indicted by the FBI on charges of conspiracy, unauthorized access to computers, and identity theft, USA
     
543. "As for the substantive reform, the fact that the President is now compelled to pose as an advocate for abolishing this program – the one he and his supporters have spent 10 months hailing – is a potent vindication of Edward Snowden’s acts and the reporting he enabled. First, a federal court found the program unconstitutional. Then, one of the President’s own panels rejected the NSA’s claim that it was necessary in stopping terrorism, while another explicitly found the program illegal. And now the President himself depicts himself as trying to end it. Whatever test exists for determining whether “unauthorized” disclosures of classified information are justified, Snowden’s revelations pass the test with ease. That President Obama now proclaims the need to end a domestic spying program that would still be a secret in the absence of Snowden’s whistleblowing proves that quite compellingly."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, commenting on President Obama's reversal to now support ending NSA bulk collection of telephone calls, USA
544. "We aren’t yet a society with a hereditary aristocracy of wealth, but, if nothing changes, we’ll become that kind of society over the next couple of decades."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
545. “Few topics in American society have more myths and stereotypes surrounding them than poverty, misconceptions that distort both our politics and our domestic policy making. They include the notion that poverty affects a relatively small number of Americans, that the poor are impoverished for years at a time, that most of those in poverty live in inner cities, that too much welfare assistance is provided and that poverty is ultimately a result of not working hard enough. Although pervasive, each assumption is flat-out wrong....40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will experience at least one year below the official poverty line during that period....54 percent will spend a year in poverty or near poverty....Put simply, poverty is a mainstream event experienced by a majority of Americans.”-Mark R. Rank, author, professor of social welfare, USA
546. "The use of rape as a weapon of war is one of the most harrowing and savage of these crimes against civilians. This is rape so brutal, with such extreme violence, that it is even hard to talk about it."-Angelina Jolie, actress, United Nations refugee agnency (UNHCR) goodwill ambassador, parent, USA expatriate living in France, paying tribute to the 8,000+ victims of the 1995 Srebenica massacre of Muslim men and boys in Bosnia by Serbians and urging the international community to stop the use of sexual violence as a war weapon as is currently happening in Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Syria.
547. "In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York state has consistently been one of the most segregated states in the nation – no southern state comes close to New York."-Gary Orfield, Ph.D., co-director, Civil Rights Project at University of Southern California on a recent study showing Black and Latino/a students who attend schools integrated by race and income do better than those who are in segregated schools based on housing patterns, USA
548. "1. China 2. Iran 3. Iraq 4. Saudi Arabia 5. United States of America"-Amnesty International report ranking order of the world's countries that did the most executions in 2013, China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, USA
549. "The fact that the President is now compelled to pose as an advocate for abolishing this program – the one he and his supporters have spent 10 months hailing – is a potent vindication of Edward Snowden’s acts and the reporting he enabled."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, USA
     
550. "We've been talking about reforming schools in New York and elsewhere. This issue was never addressed. When you concentrate the neediest kids together in under-resourced schools they tend not to do very well."-Pedro Noguera, Ph.D., professor of educational leadership, parent, USA
551. “The president is acknowledging that a surveillance program endorsed by all three branches of government, and in place for more than a decade, has not been able to survive public scrutiny. It's an acknowledgement that the intelligence agencies, the surveillance court and the intelligence committees struck a balance behind closed doors that could not be defended in public.”-Jameel Jaffer, J.D., deputy legal director, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
552. "The very first open and adversarial court to ever judge these programs has now declared them 'Orwellian' and 'likely unconstitutional.' In the USA Freedom Act, Congress is considering historic, albeit incomplete reforms. And President Obama has now confirmed that these mass surveillance programs, kept secret from the public and defended out of reflex rather than reason, are in fact unnecessary and should be ended. This is a turning point, and it marks the beginning of a new effort to reclaim our rights from the NSA and restore the public's seat at the table of government." -Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia
553. "So, in 2004, the FBI designated the animal rights and environmental movements the leading domestic terror threats in the country, despite the fact that neither of these movements have ever physically injured a single person ever in this country, and then, not long thereafter, as you said, the passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, this pernicious piece of post-9/11 legislation, explicitly targeting animal rights and environment activists as terrorists. People have been prosecuted under the AETA, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, as terrorists under federal law, facing federal felonies for writing anti-animal-experimentation slogans on the sidewalk in chalk. And in this particular document, yeah, this is the FBI looking at animal rights activists who have gone undercover on a factory farm, and the FBI’s response to the horrific conditions on this farm, and the actions uncovering them, is to consider bringing felony terrorism charges against these activists. These are activists who are exposing animals confined in cages so small they can’t stand up, turn around or spread their wings, just horrific conditions which are the absolute norm on factory farms. And the FBI is considering bringing terrorism charges against these activists. And I wanted to know why. And so, I have about 600 FOIA requests currently in motion with the FBI pertaining to the FBI’s campaigns against the animal rights movement. And the FBI—and I’ve sued the FBI, because they’ve stopped complying with my requests. And the FBI is now arguing in court that those FOIA requests themselves are threats to national security. Keep in mind, they’re not arguing that releasing the documents would be a threat to national security. They’re arguing that having to decide now whether or not they will release the documents—they want a seven-year delay so they can think about whether or not to release the documents; otherwise, it will constitute a threat to national security. Further, they argued the threat to national security is so severe that they can’t even tell us why."-Ryan Shapiro, Ph.D. candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the "FOIA superheo" who has discovered hundreds of thousands of documents on how the government unfairly has targeted animal rights and encornmental activists and currently suing federal agencies such as the NSA & FBI for failure to comply with FOIA requests on USA assistance in spying on and imprisoning former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela who was not removed from the USA terrorism watch list until 2008,  USA
554. "We have got to win back the trust not just of governments, but, more importantly, of ordinary citizens. And that's not going to happen overnight, because there's a tendency to be sceptical of government and to be sceptical of the US intelligence services."-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, 44th President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, father, announcing a proposal to end the bulk collection of telephone call data by the NSA nine months after it was revealed by Edward Snowden's whistleblowing, USA
555. "If having a Congressman run around accusing people of Russian allegiance based on secret evidence isn't "McCarthyism", what is? #Mike Rogers"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., living in Brazil, journalist, The Intercept, USA
     
556. "If we fear being forced out, we won’t be able to defend our democracy. We want to show the Ma administration the people’s determination.” -Dennis Wei (魏揚) , National Tsing Hua University graduate student and convener, Black Island National Youth Front, which developed the legislative siege and ongoing protests to challenge the Ma administration’s attempt to undemocratically push a China free trade pact through the Taiwan legislature at the expense of small businesses and workers, Taiwan
557. "Egypt's independent judiciary (on day 2 of trial): Minya criminal court sentences 529 Brotherhood supporters to death"-Sharif Kouddous, journalist,Democracy Now!, The Nation fellow, and member, Mosireen collective, reporting on the lack of democracy or due process for 500 given death sentence over the alleged murder of one police officer with no ability for lawyers to give opposing testimony, Egypt
558. "On March 23, 2014, President Ma Ying-jeou responded to Taiwanese citizens’ peaceful protest against the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement with a violent crackdown. The Ma administration lost its legitimacy when it turned against its own citizens and harmed them. Taiwanese abroad everywhere support our fellow citizens who occupied the Legislature and Executive Yuan in protest to guard Taiwan’s democracy. We are deeply saddened that Taiwan’s hard-earned democracy has been trampled on by its own government and we denounce the use of violence.

     1. We demand President Ma to end the violent crackdown, stop provoking the people, and take full responsibility for the administration’s use of violence.
     2. We support the protesters’ demand to nullify the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement and allow for full democratic participation in cross-strait negotiations.
     3. We support the call by civic groups in Taiwan for the Kuomintang government to work with opposition parties and civic groups to resolve the current predicament in a peaceful manner and restore Taiwan's democracy."-Statement of overseas Taiwan citizens opposing government brutality against students/citizens peacefully protesting ratification of the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement with China, Taiwan

559. "As both (Taiwan President) Ma (馬英九) and Wang (王金平) did not respond positively [to our demands], we have decided to expand our action by calling on the public to surround the Chinese Nationalist Party’s [KMT] local headquarters wherever they are,”-Fei-fan Lin (林飛帆), National Taiwan University political science graduate student and and a China-Taiwan Free Trade pact protester occupying the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan
560. "Tech companies can honestly say they've never shared customer data/with the NSA, since they give it to the FBI (which then gives it to NSA)."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
561. "The public interest from the Huawei story is obvious. It demonstrates that the NSA has been doing exactly that which the US Government has spent years vocally complaining is being done by China. While the US has been telling the world that the Chinese government is spying on them through backdoors in Huawei products, it’s actually the NSA that has been doing that. It also yet again gives the lie to the claim that the NSA does not engage in economic espionage."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
562. "We will continue [the occupation] since [President] Ma did not respond to our demands or hold an open dialogue with the students and the people. We will take further actions." Yu-Feng Huang, a Taiwan student protest leader speaking on behalf of thousands of students who have occupied the yuan building (legislative assembly in Taipei) in response to President Ma's attempt to unilaterally push through a free trade agreement with China that would open Taiwan to economic colonization, Taiwan
     
563. "Across the world, people who work as system administrators keep computer networks in order – and this has turned them into unwitting targets of the National Security Agency for simply doing their jobs. According to a secret document provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the agency tracks down the private email and Facebook accounts of system administrators (or sys admins, as they are often called), before hacking their computers to gain access to the networks they control."-Ryan Gallagher and Peter Maass, journalists, The Intercept, USA
564. "You know, everyone needs to share in this job—black, Hispanic, Asian. And I knew that there was no reason that blacks were being excluded—no good reason that blacks were being excluded. So, you know, it was a fight that I was glad to take on."-Paul Washington, past president, the Vulcan Society of Black Firefighters, and captain of Engine 234, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on NYC settling a decade-old lawsuit on discrimination toward FDNY's lack of hiring people of color and women to be firefighters, USA
565. “I perceive fear of an intelligence community drunk with power, unrepentant and uninclined to relinquish power.”-Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), USA
     
566. "The last year has been a reminder that democracy may die behind closed doors, but we as individuals are born behind those same closed doors. And we don’t have to give up our privacy to have good government. We don’t have to give up our liberty to have security. And I think by working together, we can have both open government and private lives. And I look forward to working with everyone around the world to see that happen."-Edward Snowden, USA, living in asylum in Russia, addressing a TEDx conference remotely in Vancouver, Canada
567. "'I'm a journalist who scorns sources who leak classified information' = 'I'm a doctor who scorns people who find cures for fatal diseases'"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
568. "Fast-food corporations are regularly committing wage theft by not paying workers for tasks performed before clocking in or after clocking out, not paying workers for all the hours they work, not providing workers with a required meal break. It is unacceptable, and it’s now time that government steps in and supports these workers and protects their salaries — and supports their right to organize, so that they could have a decent salary, a living salary to make ends meet in New York City."-Tish James, J.D., NYC Public Advocate, proposing a measure to establish a worker hotline reporting wage theft, USA
569. "My name is Franklin. I am 25 years old and work just over 30 hours a week at McDonald’s. I work in McDonald’s to make ends meet, but I’ve also been a victim of wage theft, and I’m here today because it has to stop. Like Jennifer, I’ve never been paid the state-mandated uniform maintenance fee, but for months now I’ve also been forced to work off the clock and after my shift ends at midnight, two nights a week for five to 10 minutes, sometimes 10 to 20 minutes off the clock. It means doing clean-up and other basic job duties. It may not sound like a lot, but when you’re living on the edge like me, every penny counts."-Franklin La Paz, McDonald's employee, NYC, USA
570. "Rather than promptly disclosing and correcting safety issues about which they were aware, Toyota made misleading public statements to consumers and gave inaccurate facts to members of Congress. When car owners get behind the wheel, they have a right to expect that their vehicle is safe. If any part of the automobile turns out to have safety issues, the car company has a duty to be upfront about them, to fix them quickly, and to immediately tell the truth about the problem and its scope. Toyota violated that basic compact. Other car companies should not repeat Toyota’s mistake: a recall may damage a company’s reputation, but deceiving your customers makes that damage far more lasting.”-Eric Holder, J.D.,  Attorney General, USA.  Toyota agreed to pay $1.2bn on Wednesday, the largest fine ever for an automotive company, and gets deferred prosecution, and an independent monitor to assure Toyota's compiance with safety practices and reporting ending a USA criminal investigation into misleading statements the car company made about safety issues in Toyota and Lexus vehicles after a series of crashes, USA
571. "(The Justice Department) spent time cooking the numbers about the cases it pursued, when it should have been prosecuting cases."-Senator Charles Grassley (D-IA) criticizing the Justice Department's overstatements of how few investigations and prosecutions for mortgage fraud during the great recession were actually completed when it said otherwise, USA
     
572. "This report calls into question the Department’s commitment to investigate and prosecute crimes such as predatory lending, loan modification scams and abusive mortgage servicing practices." Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Senator, and Congress members Elijah Cummings and Maxine Waters (D-CA), challenging Attorney General Eric Holder, who claimed to have filed lawsuits on behalf of homeowner victims for losses totaling more than $1 billion during the great recession, but the actual amount was 91 percent less, around $95 million, USA
     
573. "Do pro-NSA Dems ever wake up, look in the mirror, and ask: "Why did I say none of this during the Bush-era NSA debates"?-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA,  journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
574. "The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording '100 percent' of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden."-Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani, journalists, Washington Post, USA
575. "But that’s the way governments operate: They protect themselves from their own citizens. Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be—protect themselves. That’s why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them. Just to give one final example, when Edward Snowden’s revelations appeared, the head of U.S. intelligence, James Clapper, testified before Congress that no telephone communications of Americans are being monitored. It was an outlandish lie. Lying to Congress is a felony; should go to jail for years. Not a word. Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., professor of linguisitics, author, social critic, speaking in Japan about government lies about nuclear blast health risks, Agent Orange, and other wartime atrocities, USA
576. "I'm concerned the growing trend toward relying upon FOIA exemptions to withhold large swaths of government information is hindering the public's right to know. It becomes too much of a temptation. If you screw up in government, just mark it top secret."-Senator Patrick Leahy, (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, USA
     
577. "Anyone who claims that standardized testing is fair is ridiculous." -Anthony-James Green, private SAT test prep tutor to the children of the wealthy who charges up to $650/hour for his services, USA
578. "You know what would be more impressive than a phone call from an angry Mark Zuckerberg to Obama over NSA impersonating Facebook? A lawsuit."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
579. "Silicon Valley execs: We're really upset at what NSA has been doing (now that everyone else knows!)"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, journalist, The Intercept,
     living in Brazil
580. "This world is an unsafe place. Will it not become even more dangerous if any state would be willing to claim that international law does not prevent them from committing human rights violations abroad?”-Walter Kälin, J.D., international human rights lawyer, Switzerland, and one of 18 members of the United Nations Human Rights committee, who attacked the USA government’s refusal to recognise the convention’s mandate over its actions beyond its own borders and at home including human rights violations such as: prisoner detention without charge at Guantánamo; drone strikes to kill international suspects without a trial; transfer of detainees to third countries that practice torture; NSA surveillance; failure of Obama adminstration to prosecure government officials responsible for torture in Bush administration; declassification of Senate report about CIA torture practices; 470,000 crimes committed with firearms annually, including  11,000 homicides; stand-your-ground gun laws; racial disparities in justice including disproportionate number of  black prisoners serving longer sentences than whites; mistreatment of adolescent prisoners and prisoners with emotional disabilities; school segregation; high homelessness rates and criminalization of homeless people; racial profiling by police, including NYPD toward Muslim communities in and outside NYC, USA
581. "It's just horrific – there's no other way of describing this. She (human rights activist and political prisoner Yun-li Cao) was part of a growing community inside the country that was trying to hold the government accountable for a host of issues through peaceful and legal means. This is an absolute travesty of a case. Six months ago she was fine and trying to take part in UPR (the UN's universal periodic review) – and now she's dead."-Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, on the death of political prisoner/human rights activist Yun-li Cao due to refusal of medical treatment by government authorities, China
582. "People really need to understand how very important this issue is, because it strikes at the core of human rights, in general. And I think maybe part of the problem is that most of the people who still are providing abortion services are people who gew up when it was illegal and understand, and there's almost like, 'oh, well, it's legal,' and so they almost accept it as a given. It's not a given, and it's going to be taken away if we don't do something. And those of us who provide can't keep doing it on our own, by ourselves. We can't. We're disappearing." -Susan Cahill, owner of All Families Healthcare in Kalispell, MT, which closed after being vandalized allegedly by the son of an anti-abortion activist, one of 6,000 acts of violence toward USA abortion providers in recent decades, USA
583. "It’s really a slow genocide of the people, not just indigenous people of this region, but it’s estimated that there are over 10 million people who are residing within 50 miles of abandoned uranium mines."-Klee Benally, activist and musician, protesting the legacy of environmental and health problems that have spiked cancer deaths for people living near the more than 300 abandoned uranium mines in the southwest USA due to improper storage of toxic waste and water/land/air contamination, Diné Nation.
584. "We can be sure about one thing: The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret."-Marcy Wheeler, journalist and policy analyst, The Intercept, USA
585. "The revelations of a global system of blanket surveillance have come as a great surprise to hundreds of millions of citizens around the world whose governments were operating these systems without their knowledge. But they also came as a surprise to many high-ranking political officials in countries around the world who were previously ignorant of those programs, a fact which the NSA seems to view as quite valuable in ensuring that its surveillance activities remain immune from election outcomes and democratic debate."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
586. "Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process."-Ryan Gallagher, USA, and Glen Greenwald, J.D., USA, living in Brazil, journalists, The Intercept, international
587. “Brennan is up to his eyeballs in trouble. It’s one thing to stonewall congressional intelligence staffers, quite another to be charged with spying on them for doing their jobs. For years, Feinstein has had the CIA’s back. Now she’s out for blood. How the CIA managed to turn one of its staunchest defenders into one of its fiercest critics is just mind boggling."-Amy Zegart, Ph.D., professor and co-director, Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, USA
     
588. "It is about time Ms Feinstein used her powers as the democratically elected head of the intelligence committee to question the NSA with the same vigour – or even a small part of  it – that she is displaying towards the CIA. That would, indeed, be a defining moment for the oversight of the US intelligence community: all of it."-Editorial, The Guardian, UK/international
589. "It's clear the CIA was trying to play 'keep away' with documents relevant to an investigation by their overseers in Congress, and that's a serious constitutional concern. But it's equally if not more concerning that we're seeing another 'Merkel Effect,' where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it's a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, commenting on the hypocrisy of Germany's Chancellor Merkel and USA Senate Intelligence Chair Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), USA
     
590. "It’s impossible to totally prevent any kind of accident or disaster happening at the nuclear power plants. And so, the one way to prevent this from happening, to prevent the risk of having to evacuate such huge amounts of people, 50 million people, and for the purpose, for the benefit of the lives of our people, and even the economy of Japan, I came to change the position, that the only way to do this was to totally get rid of the nuclear power plants."-Naoto Kan, former prime minister of Japan at the time of the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown who was a fan of nuclear power and has become a major critic, Japan
591. "Dear CIA: you can torture, render, overthrow democratically elected governments, lie to the FBI and courts: but you cannot spy on Feinstein!"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney and journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
592. “...horrible details of a CIA program that never, never should have existed.”-Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), head of Senate Intelligence Committee, on why her committee's 6,000 page report should be declassified and shared with the public to ensure torture is never again part of public policy, USA
593. "This is a defining moment for the oversight role of our intelligence committee ... and whether we can be thwarted by those we oversee.”-Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), head of Senate Intelligence Committee, accusing CIA of spying on and threating her committee into not releasing 6,000 page report showing CIA illegal spying, torture, and rendition practices post 9/11, USA
594. “If you are a target of the NSA, it is game over no matter what unless you are taking really technical steps to protect yourself.”-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, in video presentation to computer conference, USA
     
595. “It would be very good thing if the president right now rejected the use of tar sands oil in the Keystone pipeline. Why would we embrace tar sands oil and backslide to a dirtier tomorrow?”-Tim Kaine, (D-VA.), at an all-night climate change Senate session, USA
596. "The seriousness of this problem is not lost on your average American. A large majority of Americans believe climate change is real...but despite overwhelming scientific evidence and overwhelming public opinion, climate change deniers still exist.....It's time to stop acting like those who ignore this crisis--the oil baron Koch brothers and their allies in Congress--have a valid point of view."-Harry Reid, (D-Nev.), Senate Majority Leader, at an all-night climate change Senate session, USA
597. "Solitary confinement, so widely used in US prisons for no good reason, is torture."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney and journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
598. "I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them. As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the US government, I was not protected by US whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, in written testimony to the European Union parliament committee investigating on NSA/GCHQ spying in Europe.
     
599. “The NSA has grown to be a rogue agency. It has grown to be unfettered … the ability to surveil everyone on the planet is almost there, and arguably will be there within a few years. And that’s led to a huge transfer of power from the people who are surveilled upon, to those who control the surveillance complex.”-Julian Assange, Australia, Wikileaks editor, living in asylum in the embassy of Ecuador in London, UK
600. "For us, this president has been the deporter-in-chief. Any day now, any day now, this administration will reach the two million mark for deportations. It's a staggering number that far outstrips any of his predecessors and leaves behind it a wake of devastation for families across America."-Janet Murguía, head of the National Council of La Raza, speaking about President Obama's anti-immigrant policy, USA
601. "Many of them may not ever wear the uniform again, but they believe so strongly in these reforms that for a full year now they have come to us to meet with senators and members of Congress to tell those stories of what they endured and why the system is so broken. Tragically today the Senate failed them."-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) speaking about the rejection of a measure to put military sexual assault case hearings outside the chain of command following the 2012 report of over 26,000 sex crimes in the military in one year, USA.

602. "To directly answer your question, yes, global surveillance capabilities are being used on a daily basis for the purpose of economic espionage. That a major goal of the US Intelligence Community is to produce economic intelligence is the worst kept secret in Washington."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, in written testimony to the European Union parliament committee investigating on NSA/GCHQ spying in Europe

603. "I was stunned that they would ask me to divorce. I am a practicing Catholic. I believe in marriage."-Mark Zmuda, former Vice Principal at Seattle's Eastside Catholic High School suing over being fired for legally marrying his husband in Washington state after the school promoted a written employee and student sexual orientation nondiscrimination policy, USA
     
604. "The surest way for any nation to become subject to unnecessary surveillance is to allow its spies to dictate its policy."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, in written testimony to the European Union parliament committee investigating on NSA/GCHQ spying in Europe
     
605. "The NSA granted me the authority to monitor communications world-wide using its mass surveillance systems, including within the United States. I have personally targeted individuals using these systems under both the President of the United States' Executive Order 12333 and the US Congress' FAA 702. I know the good and the bad of these systems, and what they can and cannot do, and I am telling you that without getting out of my chair, I could have read the private communications of any member of this committee, as well as any ordinary citizen. I swear under penalty of perjury that this is true. These are not the capabilities in which free societies invest. Mass surveillance violates our rights, risks our safety, and threatens our way of life."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, in written testimony to the European Union parliament committee investigating on NSA/GCHQ spying in Europe.
     
606. "An NSA official, writing under the pen name 'Zelda,' has actually served at the agency as a Dear Abby for spies. Her 'Ask Zelda!' columns, distributed on the agency’s intranet and accessible only to those with the proper security clearance, are among the documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The columns are often amusing – topics include co-workers falling asleep on the job, sodas being stolen from shared fridges, supervisors not responding to emails, and office-mates who smell bad. But one of the most intriguing involves a letter from an NSA staffer who complains that his (or her) boss is spying on employees." -Peter Maass, journalist, The Intercept, USA
607. "The Senate Intelligence Committee oversees the CIA, not the other way around.” -Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) after it was reported that the CIA has been illegally spying on members of the Senate Intelligence committee, USA
608. "And what my mother meant when she said you can’t eat beauty was that you can’t rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul. It is what got Patsy in so much trouble with her master, but it is also what has kept her story alive to this day. We remember the beauty of her spirit even after the beauty of her body has faded away. And so I hope that my presence on your screens and in the magazines may lead you, young girl, on a similar journey. That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade to that beauty."-Lupita Nyong'o, Academy-award winning actress for her portrayal of Patsy in 12 Years a Slave, on challenging her own internalized racism/beautyism and how others can do so, Kenya
609. "Even now, how many American TV hosts on the major networks and cable outlets report on the types of American killings described in the first three paragraphs of this interview with Hamid Karzai, or the ongoing extinguishing of innocent human lives by President Obama’s drone attacks, or the pervasive chaos and suffering left in the wake of the NATO intervention in Libya that they almost universally cheered, or the endless brutality of the West Bank occupation and Gaza domination by the US’s closest Middle East ally, or, for that matter, US/EU interference in the very same country that Russia is now condemned for invading?"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney and journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
610. "No, I arrived at the airport. When I gave in my passport, I was taken aside, brought into a separate room, where I was held for seven hours without anybody ever telling me what was wrong. Then I was put into a jail cell in the airport, held overnight. And in the morning, five very scary-looking men came in and wanted to take me away. And I said, "The embassy is coming. The embassy is coming." They were supposed to have arrived. Instead, they dragged me out, tackled me to the ground, jumped on me, handcuffed my wrists so tight that they started bleeding, and then dislocated my shoulder, and then kept me like that, grabbing my arm. The whole way, I was shouting through the airport, screaming in pain. Then the—I demanded to get medical attention. The Egyptian doctors came and said, "This woman cannot travel. She’s in too much pain. She needs to go to the hospital." The Egyptian security refused to take me to a hospital and threw me on the plane. Thank God there was an orthopedic surgeon on the plane who gave me another shot and put the arm back in its shoulder. But they were so brutal, and, as I said, Amy, never saying why."-Medea Benjamin, USA activist and founder, CodePink, illegally jailed, attacked, and injured without provocation by Egyptian thugs at a Cairo, Egypt airport detention cell with US Embassy employees in absentia as she was deported to Turkey for medical attention as she attempted to join a group of women peace activists headed toward the Gaza strip, Egypt
611. "I rise on behalf of the vast majority of the American people who believe that money is not speech, corporations are not people, and our democracy should not be for sale to the highest bidder. Overturn Citizens United. Keep the cap in McCutcheon. The people demand democracy."-Kai Newkirk, activist, 99Rise, USA
     
612. "If you go to President Obama’s speeches, he repeatedly says that he is here for the sake of American interests, for the safety of America and for the security of America, and that they’re here in Afghanistan helping Afghanistan in order to help America; therefore, it’s not for us."-Hamid Karzai, President, Afghanistan
     
613. "This is what imperialism is all about: To give yourself the right to intervene in far away places and to project power in every corner of the globe, including the Arctic, and to disregard world public opinion.  Imperialism is to have the temerity to lecture and hector Russia about the evils of intervention in the affairs of its neighbor, Ukraine, where the US and EU are blatantly conspiring against Russian interests there. . . . Obama sends drones around the world to kill people, including Americans, who have never been put on trial and yet sounds like a peaceful dove when offering lessons to Russia. Basically the US is objecting to attempts by Russia to play a smaller and even far less aggressive version of its own world game."-As'ad AbuKhalil, Ph.D., professor of political science, USA
614. "Putin invokes West's record in Afghanistan, Iraq & Libya to defend his own behaviour in Crimea. Annoying that he does have a point. #Ukraine."-Mehdi Hasan, journalist and author, UK
615. "I was not openly gay. I wanted to work as an actor, and it would have been dangerous—in fact, impossible—to be hired as an actor if I were out. It wasn’t until 2005 that—well, it happened again because of a political thing that happened. Both houses of the California Legislature passed the marriage equality bill. It was precedent-setting, because Massachusetts had marriage equality, but that came through the judicial route. In California, we got it through the legislative route. That bill went to the governor’s desk for his signature. The governor at that time happened to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he ran for office, he campaigned by saying, 'I’m from Hollywood. I’ve worked with gays and lesbians. Some of my best friends are...'—all the clichés. So I was confident that he was going to sign it. When he played to his right-wing Republican base and vetoed it, my blood was boiling. And I saw all these young people on the evening news pouring out onto Santa Monica Boulevard protesting Schwarzenegger’s veto, and I felt I needed to participate, get my voice heard in that. And for that voice to be heard, it had to be authentic. And I came out to the press. I had been out, you know, quietly—friends, family, some relatives. But in 2005, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto prompted me to speak to the press. And that’s what’s called coming out openly."-George Takei, actor, marriage equality and civil rights activist, speaking about his decision to come out as gay in response to homophobic oppression in California, USA
616. "Last Wednesday, 31 students filed two federal complaints against the University of California, Berkeley for failing to prevent, investigate, or discipline assailants in cases of sexual violence and harassment. I was one of the students. While our individual stories are unique, our experiences of sexual assault are all too common at universities across the United States....Sexual assault is an epidemic across college campuses; you are more likely to be sexually assaulted if you attend university than if you do not. And too often, the subsequent betrayal from the university is even worse than the assault itself. As one survivor stated: 'If I knew what I know now, I wouldn't have reported my case ... I would have rather taken this secret to my grave than to have told anyone at Berkeley.' How many survivors have to speak before someone starts to listen?"-Sofie Karasek, sexual assault survivor and student, University of California-Berkeley, USA
617. "The intense emotions I have felt in the last day and a half since setting foot on this dear land are indescribable. Not even the most creative of imaginations could have prepared me for what I have been living since stepping off the stairs of the airplane that brought me to the homeland."-Fernando González, home in Cuba after fifteen years as a political prisoner falsely convicted on espionage charges with four others monitoring violent right-wing Cuban exile groups, Cuba.
618. "The American people want diplomacy to work. The American people don't want war. The American people look at Iraq and say, 'Oh, AIPAC was one of those groups that pushed us into that war. How did that work out?'"-Medea Benjamin, activist and founder, CodePink, at an anti-AIPAC protest, USA
     
619. "It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's, and so I want to salute the spirit of Patsy for her guidance, and for Solomon, thank you for telling her story and your own. When I look down at this golden statue, may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you're from, your dreams are valid."-Lupita Nyong'o, 2014 Academy Award Supporting Actress (and first ever Oscar to a Kenyan) for the role of Patsy, an enslaved Black woman in the USA, in 12 Years a Slave, Kenya
     
620. "Kerry on 'Face the Nation' admonishes Russia to 'behave like a G8 country.' Isn't violating sovereignty of countries what G8 countries do?"-Kevin Gosztola, journalist, co-author, Truth & consequences: The US vs. Private Manning, USA
     
621. "Regarding GCHQ/NSA collection of sex chat photos, remember they plot to use online sex activity to harm reputations"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney and journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
622. "We lost everything. We were given a one-way ticket to wherever in the United States we wanted to go to, plus $20. And many people were very embittered about their West Coast experience, and they chose to go to the Midwest, places like Chicago or Milwaukee, or further east to New Jersey, New York, Boston. My parents decided to go back to Los Angeles. We were most familiar there. But we found that it was very difficult. Housing was impossible. They would deny us housing. Jobs were very, very difficult. My father’s first job was as a dishwasher in a Chinatown restaurant. Only other Asians would hire us. And our first home was on skid row, with the stench of urine everywhere and those scary, smelly, ugly people lined up leaning on brick walls. They would stagger around and barf right in front of us. My baby sister, who was now five years old, said, 'Mama, let’s go back home,' meaning behind those barb wire fences. We had adjusted to that. And coming home was a horrific, traumatic experience for us kids."-George Takei, actor and marriage equality and civil rights activist, speaking about his family's experience in internment camp for USA citizens of Japanese ethnicity during WW II losing all their possessions and constitutional rights, USA
     
623. "My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
624. "I suffered every parent’s worst nightmare…..my son and brother….were sitting in our house, working on the computer and having tea, when a missile destroyed their futures.  Both had bright futures. My brother had a Masters degree and taught English in our local government-run school. My son was working part time in another local school in order to raise money so he could further his education. This is a tradition in my family – we are all teachers or doctors. That is who we are. And that is who my son wanted to be."-Kareem Khan, from a family of teachers and doctors, now an anti-drone activist and the first Pakistan citizen to legally challenge USA CIA drone program, recently kidnapped and tortured, Pakistan
     
625. "We are extremely troubled by today’s press report that a very large number of individuals – including law-abiding Americans – may have had private videos of themselves and their families intercepted and stored without any suspicion of wrongdoing. If this report is accurate it would show a breathtaking lack of respect for the privacy and civil liberties of law-abiding citizens.” -Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mark Udall (D-CO), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) USA Senators' joint statement as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee vowing investigations of UK's GCHQ "security" agency illegal spying program "Optic Nerve" and possible collaboration with NSA on USA citizens via Yahoo chat webcams, USA
626. "Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal. GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not."-Spencer Ackerman and James Ball, journalists, The Guardian, UK
627. "...these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., USA, attorney and journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
     
628. "I am certain that the only reason I am being continually harassed — something that began long before any visit to Syria — is because [Cage] and I are at the forefront of investigations and assertions based on hard evidence that British governments, past and present, have been willfully complicit in torture."-Moazzam Begg, Director of prisoner advocacy group Cage, and former Guantanamo prisoner held for 3 years by the USA without charge, arrested on suspicion of "facilitating terrorism overseas" in Syria, UK
     
629. "The report presents a body of evidence that shows a harrowing pattern of unlawful killings and unwarranted injuries of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the West Bank"-Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa program, Amnesty International, quoting from their report Trigger Happy and calling for international monitors of Israeli Defense Forces, Israel
630. "I think they crossed the line. They claim they’re allowed to do some level of investigative work to protect military activities, military shipments. But entrapping people—attempting to entrap people into conspiracies where they can get charged with major felonies they had no intention of committing, dealing with law enforcement agencies around the country to keep tabs on activists, following them to protests in Denver and St. Paul that have absolutely nothing to do with military shipments, they crossed the line into law enforcement, into civilian law enforcement. And they did so quite knowingly and deliberately, and created this cover story that Towery was working for the fusion center, reporting to the sheriff’s office, not doing this during his work time, because they were well aware—in fact, he got paid overtime for attending the RNC, DNC conference at Evergreen, by the Army. So the Army was expressly paying him to monitor, disrupt and destroy these folks’ activism and their lives."-Larry Hildes, J.D., Civil Rights Attorney, National Lawyers Guild, defending anti-war activists spied on by the Army, USA
     
631. "Widely explosed during the Church Committee hearings in 1975, these secret FBI operations--COINTELPRO and others--utilized the tools of espionage. Tools usualy reserved for clandestine use against foreign enemies were employed under Hoover against a wide swath of Americans in efforts to stop dissent. The methods used by the FBI inflicted pain, anxiety and humiliation--forms of torture."-Betty Medsger, professor of journalism, former Washington Post reporter, and author of The burglary, which discloses the Media, PA FBI office burglars who suspected FBI illegalities and found the FBI secret files on COINTELPRO and FBI Director J Edgar Hoover's half a century of crime, subversion, and intimidation toward unions, writers, peace groups, anti-war groups, Black liberation groups, American Indian Movement, Puerto Rican independence movement,  socialists, and campus faculty/student groups, within the FBI, paralleling illegal CIA and NSA practices in the USA and abroad, USA
632. "The most startling aspect of that expansion was the NSA's decision less than a month after the 9/11 attacks to aim its powerful electronic surveillance equpiment at Americans' communications and take it all in, literally."-Betty Medsger, professor of journalism, former Washington Post reporter, and author of The burglary, which discloses the Media, PA FBI office burglars who suspected FBI illegalities and found the FBI secret files on COINTELPRO and FBI Director J Edgar Hoover's half a century of crime, subversion, and intimidation toward unions, writers, peace groups, anti-war groups, Black liberation groups, American Indian Movement, Puerto Rican independence movement, socialists, and campus faculty/student groups, within the FBI, paralleling illegal CIA and NSA practices in the USA and abroad, USA
633. "The most interesting thing going on here is what I call an 'unstable transition.' It explains the force of the backlash just as African gays and lesbians are starting to come out. It releases hatred and rage, but what is happening is irreversible. Gays and lesbians are coming to consciousness, organising themselves and speaking out."-Edward Cameron, J.D., Constitutional Court Judge and one of Africa's first public figures to be out as gay and HIV+, South Africa
634. "What happened was that I was writing my book. I was about halfway through. I had been to see Glenn Greenwald in Rio, in Brazil, to interview him, which was a kind of curious experience because Gleen is clearly very heavily surveilled by, I think, all sorts of people. Back at my home in the English countryside, I was writing kind of rather disparagingly, rather critically, about the NSA and its—the damage these revelations had done to Silicon Valley. And I was sitting back, working offline, I have to say, and, as you say, the text began rapidly deleting. And I thought, "Oh, my goodness! What is going on here?" This happened four or five times over a period of a month, to the point where I was actually, almost kind of jokingly, leaving little notes every morning to this kind of mysterious reader. And then, at one point, one of my colleagues mentioned this in a newspaper interview in Germany, and it suddenly stopped. So, I wrote this piece not because this was an especially sinister experience, but merely to kind of lay out the facts in what was another curious episode in an already quite surreal tale."-Luke Johnson, author and Guardian reporter, UK
     
635. "By now, it is no secret that the U.S. government is in the hacking business. However, these capabilities are not limited to nation state attacks against Iran and China. They extend to law enforcement, too. The FBI now has a unit solely focused on hacking into the computers and mobile phones of surveillance targets. The software used by this unit can surreptitiously enable a computer's webcam; collect real-time location data; and copy emails, web browsing records, and other documents. And although the FBI has been an early adopter of this kind of surveillance technology, other law enforcement agencies are not far behind. Soon, local police will also have software capable of allowing them to hack into the phones and computers of suspected criminals."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
636. "The education system here puts a heavy emphasis on rote memorization, which is great for students' test-taking ability but not for their problem-solving and leadership abilities or their interpersonal skills. Chinese schools just ignore these things."-Lao Kaisheng, Ph.D., professor of education, China
     
637. "Our communications are vulnerable to NSA mass surveillance. We must encrypt all of our data - said no politician ever."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
638. "At the moment, those people are obsessed with how they read books—whether it’s on a Kindle or an iPad or on printed pages. This conversation, though important, takes place in the shallows and misses the deeper currents that, in the digital age, are pushing American culture under the control of ever fewer and more powerful corporations. Bezos is right: gatekeepers are inherently élitist, and some of them have been weakened, in no small part, because of their complacency and short-term thinking. But gatekeepers are also barriers against the complete commercialization of ideas, allowing new talent the time to develop and learn to tell difficult truths. When the last gatekeeper but one is gone, will Amazon care whether a book is any good?"-George Packer, writer, The New Yorker, USA
     
639. "In sum, the UK Government wants to stop disclosure of its mass surveillance activities not because it fears terrorism or harm to national security but because it fears public debate, legal challenges and accountability. That is why the UK government considers this journalism to be 'terrorism': Because it undermines the interests and power of British political officials, not the safety of the citizenry. I’ve spent years arguing that the word 'terrorism' in the hands of western governments has been deprived of all consistent meaning other than 'that which challenges our interests', and I never imagined that we would be gifted with such a perfectly compelling example of this proposition."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D.,  attorney and journalist, The Intercept, on the UK court ruling equating journalism with terrorism and upholidng the illegal detention of his partner, David Miranda, in Heathrow airport, UK, in transit between Germany and Brazil, carrying journalistic materials for The Guardian
640. "Heroes never die."-Yulia Tymoshenko, former prime minister, speaking upon her release from prison by people's movement agitating succesfully for resignation of current prime minister along with parliament's impeachment of him in the same day, Ukraine
641. "This is a call to begin a spirited discussion centering on such real healthcare reform. I am not naive to the hard economic realities of healthcare delivery or how civil discussions on reforming healthcare payments need to continue. However, meaningful and lasting solutions will not be found in models that commoditize health and continue to be based on a foundation of reward and punishment alone. They will be found in models that bring back the joy of healthcare to professionals who deliver it – physicians such as me and countless others who seem to have lost the single most powerful driving force – purpose."-Nirmal Joshi, M.D., challenging the depersonalization of market-based health care "reform," USA
     
642. "And so the analysis that I'm going to offer tonight, I think, takes two sets of blinders off -- that we have to take off. The first set of blinders separates educational reform from what's going on in the economy. The other set of blinders says that we can look at education in this country separately from what goes on in the rest of the world. Because what I'm going to lay out tonight for you is a perspective that says NCLB, all these policies that Diane just described, are neoliberalism coming home. They are policies that were imposed for the first time under Pinochet -- under Pinochet. Next in Argentina. Next in Uruguay. Throughout all of Latin America and Central America. And when I spoke about this at a conference in London about a year and a half ago, I said, 'Every country in the world has enacted these policies.' Stephen Ball, who wrote a great report on privatization globally for the Education International, corrected me. Very politely in private. And he said, 'Lois, it's not every country in the world. It's not Finland or North Korea.' So let us understand that this is a global project that began 40 years ago, was tested, 'refined' if you want to use that word, imposed on Africa, Asia, and Latin America by the World Bank. Why? Because developing countries wanted aid. If they wanted aid, they had to undergo economic restructuring AND educational reform.  So what were the contours of that neoliberal project?....Here are the contours: Privatization, fragmentation of oversight and regulation and creation of individual schools, standardized testing, and assault on teachers unions. Those are the 4 pillars of this project. Privatization: Commodification, marketization of education, Diane describes that.  Fragmentation: Elimination of the regulatory mechanisms. So that now we have fragmentation, regulation devolves to an individual school; that's charter schools. In the UK they're called 'academies.' In Sweden they're called 'charter schools.' All over the world, except for Finland and North Korea --China included -- China has charter schools. China has charter schools. Standardized testing: You eliminate a regulatory framework, how do you gauge "accountability?" Standardized tests. Standardized tests are, for the most part, created by for-profit companies who market the textbooks and who market professional development. Do you see how it's a web? Everybody see how it's a web? Standardized tests, well if that's the only accountability measure, that means teachers are measured by standardized tests. Merit pay. Well, if you have merit pay, you don't need to have teachers who have a lot of education or a lot of experience because the only thing that you pay them by is the kids' test scores. And finally, what is THE greatest barrier? THE greatest barrier. Most potentially, most powerful, an existing barrier to this program? Teachers' unions. And now we have to understand that's the reason, every day in the paper, we read about bad teachers and how the unions defend them. That is the reason. Because teacher unions globally are standing in the way of this project."-Lois Weiner, Ph.D., Professor of Education, social critic, and author, The future of our schools: Teachers unions and social justice, USA
643. "In contrast to service model unionism, social-organizing unionism sees unions as a social movement where the bonds of solidarity within the rank and file provide the foundation from which concerted collective action emanates. In the social-organizing model of unionism the leadership, staff and bureaucracy still exist, but their role is to organize, energize and activate the rank and file for collective action. Social-organizing model unions seek to set their own agenda in dealing with management. Social-organizing unions see organizing as a method to run contract campaigns and contract campaigns as a method to organize the rank and file; they are two sides of the same coin. Grievances, arbitrations and contracts are still key moments in the rhythm of the union, but the unity of the membership, and solidarity actions (often pre-grievance) take their place alongside the more officious features of unionism. In social-organizing unions, membership is active and decision-making is inclusive and consciously strives to expand democratic voice. Crucially, social-organizing unions see the contract, the membership and the union as embedded in a context that includes the wider economy, the political system and culture. Therefore they actively engage the political process in order to fight for the conditions of their membership." -Chicago Teachers' Union report, USA
     
644. "The Washington State Senate, rejecting federal bribes and threats, voted NO to evaluating teachers by student test scores. The fact that this method has failed wherever it was tried may have influenced their decision. Also, the state senators may have been aware of the research showing the utter failure of this way of evaluating teachers, which reflects who was in the class, not teacher quality."
     -Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., professor of education, former US Secretary of Education, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
645. "None of this behavior bears any relationship to actual reality: It’s as though the elite political class of an entire nation somehow got stuck in an adolescent medieval fantasy game. But the political principles of monarchy, hereditary privilege, rigid class stratification, and feudal entitlement embedded in all of this play-acting clearly shape the repressive mentality and reverence for state authority which Her Majesty’s Government produces. That journalism disliked by the state can be actually deemed not just a crime but “terrorism” seems a natural by-product of this type of warped elite mindset, as does the fact that much of the British press led the way in demanding that the Guardian’s journalism be criminalized (not unlike how many members of the American media have become the most devoted defenders of the NSA and have taken the lead in demonizing the journalistic transparency brought to that and other government agencies)."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Intercept, on the UK court ruling equating journalism with terrorism and upholidng the illegal detention of his partner, David Miranda, in Heathrow airport, UK, in transit between Germany and Brazil, carrying journalistic materials for The Guardian
646. "The 2014 agenda of every governor should address the needs of today’s students by ending futile policies of over-testing, closing schools and sanctioning teachers and by supporting programs that actually will move our kids forward. As is done in the top-ranked industrialized nations, we should address socio-economic disparities by providing wraparound services in schools to meet students’ health and social service needs—which are essential given a U.S. child poverty rate of 23 percent. States should direct resources to the schools and students with the greatest needs, ensure that teachers are well-prepared and supported, provide all students with a robust curriculum, expand and enhance partnerships with parents and community, provide multiple pathways to graduation like career and technical education, and ensure there is high-quality, universal early childhood education." -Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, USA
647. "We’re calling for a country where every Bahraini is respected, every Bahraini is treated equally. We’re calling for a country where we feel we have rights, where we feel we have dignity, where people can’t step all over us, can’t torture and kill and get away with these things. We’re living in a country, basically, where the criminals are the most powerful people in the country, and where a lot of us actually feel proud when we’re in jail, because we know that in Bahrain, when you go to jail, it means you did something right and not wrong."-Zainab Alhkawaja, human rights activist, Bahrain
648. "Name that country: Raided a newsroom, monitored the readers of a news site, equated journalism with terrorism. China? Iran? Nope. The UK."-Trevor Timm, Executive Director, Freedom of the Press, USA
     
649. "States 'improvise' w/ execution drugs. Last words of man executed in Jan by Oklahoma: 'I feel my whole body burning.'"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
650. "A great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."-Matt Taibbi, journalist, First Look Media, developing a new internet magazine devoted to reporting on political and financial corruption, commenting on Goldman Sachs, one of the banks whose illegal practices were responsible for the Great Recession, USA
     
651. “I am very proud of the work I did. In fact, in light of today’s decision equating journalism with terrorism, I am more certain than ever that I did the right thing, since governments like this really need transparency.”-David Miranda, Brazil, partner of The Intercept journalist Glen Greenwald, J.D., on having lost his first court case against the UK government for illegally stopping him and confiscating journalistic materials and his own possessions under suspicion of terrorism while in transit between Germany and Brazil in Heathrow airport, UK
     
652. "In a world where so many of our developing thoughts and queries and plans must be entrusted to the open internet, mass surveillance is not simply a matter of privacy, but of academic freedom and human liberty."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, on being voted Rector at University of Glasgow, Scotland

653. "We are reminded by this bold decision that the foundation of all learning is daring: the courage to investigate, to experiment, to inquire. If we do not contest the violation of the fundamental right of free people to be left unmolested in their thoughts, associations, and communications - to be free from suspicion without cause - we will have lost the foundation of our thinking society. The defence of this fundamental freedom is the challenge of our generation, a work that requires constructing new controls and protections to limit the extraordinary powers of states over the domain of human communication."-Edward Snowden, USA, NSA whistleblower living in termporary asylum in Russia, on being voted Rector at University of Glasgow, Scotland

654. "Publishers who disclose abuses of government power should not be subjected to invasive surveillance for having done so, and individuals should not be swept up into surveillance dragnets simply because they’ve visited websites that report on those abuses. Further, the United States should not be urging allied countries to pursue prosecutions that would be unconstitutional if undertaken here at home."-Jameel Jaffer, J.D., Deputy Legal Director, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
655. "I think we've shown that we oppose mass surveillance and intrusion to our private lives and that also we stand in solidarity - that we believe whistleblowers should be honoured and they're heroes rather than traitors."-Luba Nowak, one of the student nominators of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, USA, living in temporary asylum in Russia, who was voted student rector at Glasgow University, Scotland
656. “These documents demonstrate that the political persecution of WikiLeaks is very much alive. The paradox is that Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks organization are being treated as a threat instead of what they are: A journalist and a media organization that are exercising their fundamental right to receive and impart information in its original form, free from omission and censorship, free from partisan interests, free from economic or political pressure.”-Baltasar Garzón, J.D., former judge representing Wikileaks, Spain
657. "Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution." -Glenn Greenwald, J.D., journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil, and Ryan Gallagher, journalist, The Intercept, Scotland
658. "How could targeting an entire website's user base be necessary or proportionate? These are innocent people who are turned into suspects based on their reading habits. Surely becoming a target of a state's intelligence and security apparatus should require more than a mere click on a link?"-Gus Hosein, Executive Director, Privacy International, UK
659. "All the reassurances Americans heard that the broad authorities of the FISA Amendments Act could only be used to 'target' foreigners seem a bit more hollow when you realize that the 'foreign target' can be an entire Web site or online forum used by thousands if not millions of Americans."-Julian Sanchez, Research Fellow, Cato Institute, USA
660. "WikiLeaks strongly condemns the reckless and unlawful behavior of the National Security Agency. We call on the Obama administration to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the extent of the NSA’s criminal activity against the media including WikiLeaks and its extended network. News that the NSA planned these operations at the level of its Office of the General Counsel is especially troubling. No less concerning are revelations that the US government deployed "elements of state power" to pressure European nations into abusing their own legal systems; and that the British spy agency GCHQ is engaged in extensive hostile monitoring of a popular publisher’s website and its readers. The NSA and its UK accomplices show no respect for the rule of law. But there is a cost to conducting illicit actions against a media organization. We have already filed criminal cases against the FBI and US military in multiple European jurisdictions. The FBI’s paid informant, who attempted to sell information about me and my staff to the FBI, was imprisoned earlier this year. No entity, including the NSA, should be permitted to act against journalists with impunity. We have instructed our General Counsel Judge Baltasar Garzón to prepare the appropriate response. The investigations into attempts to interfere with the work of WikiLeaks will go wherever they need to go. Make no mistake: those responsible will be held to account and brought to justice."-Julian Assange, Australia, Wikileaks editor, living in asylum in the embassy of Ecuador in London, parent, UK
661. "More than one-in-four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery. These presidents bought, sold and bred enslaved people for profit. Of the 12 presidents who were enslavers, more than half kept people in bondage at the White House."-Clarence Lusane, Ph.D., professor, historian, and author, The Black history of the White House, USA
     
662. "It is prudent to assume that governments are watching. That doesn't mean you need to make it easy for them."-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
663. "If I stop wearing the colors of the rainbow, just because somebody took away a flag from me, that means that these people win. And I don't want to be guided in my life by fear, I want to be guided in my life by courage, the courage that I always had in my life."-Vladimir Luxuria, transgender activist and former member of parliament in Italy on her dual protests displaying a "Gay is OK" banner and wearing a rainbow headdress and carrying a gay pride flag challenging gay "propaganda" law at Olympic Park in Sochi, Russia
     
664. "Lawyers: how many more stories of NSA spying do you need to read before you encrypt your work emails and calls?"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
665. "The reporters (Glen Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill) conferred with (Edward) Snowden to negotiate release of the (NSA) material and then used their extensive backgrounds covering national security to explore the purloined files and reveal their stunning import, describing how the NSA gathered information on untold millions of unsuspecting – and unsuspected – Americans, plugged into the communications links of major internet companies and coerced companies like Yahoo and Google into turning over data about their customers." -George Polk Awards statement, one of jounalism's highest honors, given in 2014 to Glenn Greenwald, J.D., The Intercept and living in Brazil, independent filmmaker Laura Poitras living in Germany, and Guardian reporter Ewen McAskill, UK, along with Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, USA, on their national security reporting about the NSA files in The Guardian and the Washington Post, with material given by Edward Snowden, USA, living in temporary asylum in Russia
666. “The government, whether in the US, UK, or elsewhere does not have the authority to monitor, harass, or intimidate lawyers for representing unpopular clients.”-Jesselyn Radack, J.D., attorney representing whistleblower Edward Snowden, after being detained for inappropriate questioning at Heathrow airport, UK
     
667. "The troubling questions regarding the abuse of the state secrets privilege are obvious: If officials of the federal government (USA) are willing to use it to conceal a bureaucratic error, how far would they be willing to go to cover up serious crimes such as torture and assassination?"-Murtaza Hussain, journalist, The Intercept, Canada
668. "And since justice is what love looks like in public, you can't talk about loving folk and not fighting for justice, especially beginning with the least of these."-Cornel West, Ph.D., author, academic, activist, social critic, minister, USA
669. "This is the NSA using a form of signals intelligence to, first, determine who should be targeted for assassination based on an analysis of their metadata—has this person called what we think are bad people enough times for us to decide that they should die—and then, secondly, trying to help the CIA and JSOC find those individuals who have been put on a list of, basically, assassination, but not by finding where they are, but by finding where their telephone is—a very obviously unreliable way of trying to kill people that is certain to result in the death of innocent people. And obviously, the source who came forward has said that that’s exactly what has happened. So it’s really an incredibly expanded role that we’re revealing that the NSA engages in, far beyond what traditionally the American people are told about why this agency exists."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Intercept, living in Brazil
670. "It only takes one irresponsible operator to contaminate 300,000 people."-Susan Jacks, industrial safety consultant on the Freedom Industries chemical leak in West Viriginia, USA
671. "Formerly incarcerated people continue to face significant obstacles. They are frequently deprived of opportunities that they need to rebuild their lives. And in far too many places, their rights—including the single most basic right of American citizenship, the right to vote—are either abridged or denied. As the Leadership Conference Education Fund articulated very clearly in your recent report, and I quote: 'There is no rational reason to take away someone's voting rights for life just because they’ve committed a crime, especially after they’ve completed their sentence and made amends,’ unquote."-Eric Holder, J.D., Attorney General, parent, USA
672. "But I do think it’s chilling that we live in an era where a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize and is a constitutional lawyer by training is streamlining and creating a mechanism for making assassination, including of U.S. citizens, a normal part of our—what’s called our national security policy."-Jeremy Scahill, author, journalist, The Intercept, USA
673. "...we’re living in the era of pre-crime, where President Obama is continuing many of the same policies of his predecessor George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. And there’s this incredible reliance on technology to kill people who the United States thinks—doesn’t necessarily know, but thinks—may one day pose some sort of a threat of committing an act of terrorism or of impacting U.S. interests. And the U.S. wants to shy away from having its own personnel on the ground in countries like Yemen or Pakistan or Somalia, eventually Afghanistan, and so what’s happened is that there’s this incredible reliance on the use of remotely piloted aircraft, i.e. drones."-Jeremy Scahill, author, journalist, The Intercept, USA
674. "I was a drone operator for six years, active duty for six years in the U.S. Air Force, [and I was] party to the violations of constitutional rights of an American citizen who should have been tried under a jury. And because I violated that constitutional right, I became an enemy of the American people."-Brandon Bryant, former USA Air Force drone sensor operator on the illegal killing of USA citizen Anwar Awlaki, USA
675. "From cyber-attacks to journalist threats to aggressive wars: US & UK are most prolific practioners of that which they condemn & punish"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Intercept, USA, living in Brazil
676. "It’s called 'The Day We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance.' More than 6,000 websites are taking part, including Reddit, Tumblr, Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union. The websites will display a banner encouraging visitors to fight back against surveillance. Internet users are encouraged to post memes and change their social media avatars to reflect their demands. Organizers announced the action on the eve of the death anniversary of the Internet open-access activist Aaron Swartz. He helped set a precedent for such Internet-based protests in January 2012 when over 8,000 websites went dark for 12 hours in protest of a pair of controversial bills that were being debated in Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOP, and the PROTECT IP Act, or PIPA. The bills died in committee in the wake of the protests."-Amy Goodman, journalist and co-founder, Democracy Now!, USA
677. "As a black minister who has been vocal about his support for the LGBT community for the past few years, I have been attacked by other ministers and preachers. But it is absolutely critical that we affirm people for who they are. We cannot castigate or ridicule individuals for living their lives and remaining honest to themselves. We should instead support them and learn from their struggles. Michael Sam is an inspiration to everyone who believes in justice across all lines -- all lines. Sometimes, it's easy to remain below the radar and not rock the boat. It's more comfortable to stay within acceptable norms and live your life, rather than draw attention to yourself. But it is only when those who have been rejected or dismissed by society fight for their equality and the equality of others that we see real change. It is never the carefree route, nor the simple route. Maybe that's why only a few select people have the distinct qualities to travel down that difficult road. Michael Sam has proven to be one of those unique individuals. His actions should give us all strength to live our truths no matter what the consequences may be. No justice until we are all free."-Rev. Al Sharpton, minister and civil rights activist, USA
     
678. "The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people."-Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald, J.D., journalists, The Intercept, USA
     
679. "You know, to Jeremy’s point about the State of the Union essentially being a propaganda speech, which is absolutely true, what you didn’t hear there was really what the state of the economy is for ordinary Americans, for working people in this country. You didn’t hear anything about poverty, for example. So, for years now, the American people have made it clear, in poll after poll and in other ways, that employment is their top priority. I mean, people need jobs. But neither party, presidents from either party and Congress, whether it’s in the control of the Republicans or the Democrats, have had a sustained, effective job creation program in this country. And the United States is never going to get out of its morass until it’s able to put people back to work. We now have nearly 50 million people who are officially poor in the United States, according to federal guidelines. Another 50 million people are just a notch or two above the official poverty rate. That’s nearly a third of the entire population that’s poor or near poor. One out of every three black children in the United States is poor. If you just walk a few blocks from this studio, every day you will see enormous lines wrapped around the corner for soup kitchens and that sort of thing. And that’s the case in places across this country. None of that was addressed. And none of the initiatives that the president has offered, and nothing that the Republicans have offered in years, would begin to address this state of distress among American working people and among the poor."-Bob Herbert, Senior Fellow, DEMOS, USA
     
680. "How many more rapes do we have to endure to wait and see what reforms are needed?”-Kirsten Gillibrand, J.D., (D-NY), chair of the Senate armed services personnel subcommittee, parent, in light of skyrocketing sexual abuse in the military including large numbers in Okinawa, Japan, with few prosecutions or penalties for military perpetrators, USA
     
681. "Obama is excellent at finding excuses not to prosecute the most powerful, from torturers to Wall St. to Clapper"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil
682. "It’s ironic that officials are giving classified information to journalists in an effort to discredit me for giving classified information to journalists. The difference is that I did so to inform the public about the government’s actions, and they’re doing so to misinform the public about mine."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on USA NSA spying, living with temporary asylum in Russia
683. "We have found dozens of cases of women who said they signed confessions due to torture. We have ourselves documented their torture on their bodies, seen the marks left behind. We have talked to judges who themselves have verified being put under pressure to convict women without evidence. In Iraq still, there is an abiding sense of absolute impunity for the security services, which is blessed and sanctioned by the government. Until Maliki makes clear that he will not tolerate torture and abuse, either in Iraq’s prisons or in Iraq’s police stations, we can expect this to continue."-Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch, reporting findings of massive abuse toward women in Iraq
684. "In every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States, they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,"-Eric Holder, J.D., Attorney General, parent, USA
     
685. "It is a travesty this is happening. It will make it impossible to prosecute cases of violence against women …the most vulnerable people won't get justice." now.-Manizha Naderi, Director, Women for Afghan Women, on Afghanistan's new law hindering domestic violence prosecution; iit doesn't allow criminal testimony by one family member toward another, Afghanistan
     
686. "This day has been a long time coming, but the international community is finally holding the Vatican accountable for its role in enabling and perpetuating sexual violence in the church. The whole world will be watching to ensure that the Vatican takes the concrete steps required by the UN to protect children and end these crimes. Impunity and cover-up, including at the highest levels of the church, will not be tolerated." -Katherine Gallagher, J.D., Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights, immediately following UN report asking the Vatican to immediately remove all priests suspected of or convicted of child sexual abuse from ministry, USA
687. "How to commit felonies, avoid prosecution, keep your high-level job, then anoint yourself arbiter of others' criminality, by James R Clapper"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., Attorney and journalist, First Look media,  USA, living in Brazil
688. "It's a wake-up call not to Catholic officials (who have known about and concealed abuse for decades and still do) but for secular officials, especially those in law enforcement, who can and should investigate Catholic abuses and cover-ups and prosecute the church supervisors who are still protecting predators and endangering children."-Barbara Blaine, president, Survivors Network of those Abused (SNAP), describing  the UN's report  asking the Vatican to immediately remove all priests suspected of or convicted of child sexual abuse from ministry, USA
689. "Well, in the initial part of the—the first part of the article, I talk about the Olympics as a place of exploitation. I make the comparison of the Olympic opening ceremonies to that of the Hunger Games opening ceremonies, in terms of the pageantry, the clearly divided—you have the district-level divisions. I see those—that kind of division really as reflective of national division. I think there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between the nature of the Olympics themselves, the cruelty and exploitation embedded within them, and the same cruelty and exploitation that we see in the movie The Hunger Games."-Samantha Retrosi, former Luge team Olympian on how lack of state support forces athletes to bow to corporate sponsors' demands, Italy
     
690. "By having these devices in our pockets (smartphones) and using them more and more, you're somehow becoming a sensor for the world intelligence community."-Philliipe Langlois, Priority One Security founder, France
691. "Rising inequality has obvious economic costs: Stagnant wages despite rising productivity, rising debt that makes us more vulnerable to financial crisis. It also has big social and human costs. There is, for example, strong evidence that hgih inequality leads to worse health and higher mortality. But there’s more. Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of people who are alarmingly detached from reality — and simultaneously gives these people great power."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
692. "The FBI basically pursued Pete Seeger to the point where he couldn’t get a job. The only people that he could sing for were kids, because they never thought there’d be a problem with Pete Seeger singing for 6-year-olds. Little did they know. Out of that came, not a subversive movement, but instead, an American folk-music revival that I think we have to give the FBI credit for helping to establish."-David King Dunaway, Pete Seeger's biographer, USA
693. "The fixation on testing and data over everything else is a fundamental flaw in how our nation approaches public education."-Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, USA
694. "All of these attacks are being—a group, a Sinai-based militant group called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which was formed in 2011, they have claimed responsibility for nearly all of these attacks, including the assassination of a senior intelligence—a senior Interior Ministry official just a few days ago near his home. They have denounced the Muslim Brotherhood in statements. Despite that, the current government and the military, and the press in tow, have often blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for all of these attacks and hold them responsible. And one of the deadliest bombings that Egypt has seen, which took place in December and killed 16 people, targeting the provincial headquarters of the police in the Delta, the day after is when the Cabinet designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. So, we’ve seen this rise in militancy and this cycle of violence continue in Egypt, and currently there’s no end in sight."-Sharif Kouddous, independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, Nation Institute fellow, Egypt
695. "I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American."-Pete Seeger (1919-2014) folk singer-songwriter, social critic, anti-war & justice activist, parent, testifying at the House Unamerican Activities Committee (McCarthy era in the 1950s), USA
     
696. "It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.”-Pete Seeger (1919-2014) folk singer-songwriter, social critic, anti-war  & justice activist, parent, USA
697. "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."-Pete Seeger (1919-2014) folk singer-songwriter, social critic, anti-war & justice activist, parent, from the inscription on his banjo, USA
698. "If there's information at Siemens (German engineering company) that's beneficial to US national interests – even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security – then they'll (NSA) take that information nevertheless."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on USA's NSA spying, speaking remotely to a television station in Germany, granted temporary asylum, Russia
699. "What I heard reinforced all the media stories that have been circling since the propaganda bill became federal law: That vicious homophobia has been legitimized by this legislation and given extremists the cover to abuse people's basic human rights."-Sir Elton John, singer, songwriter, parent, on Russia anti-gay "propaganda" law and anti-gay environment, USA
700. "NSA advises kids: protect your private data ... 'there are people out there who don’t have your best interests in mind' / The irony, it burns"-Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
701. "This (Obama's) is the most secretive White House I have ever dealt with."-Jill Abramson, Executive Editor, New York Times, USA
702. "The Republican National Committee encourages Republican lawmakers to enact legislation to amend Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, the state secrets privilege, and the Fisa Amendments Act to make it clear that blanket surveillance of the internet activity, phone records and correspondence – electronic, physical, and otherwise – of any person residing in the US is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court."-Republican National Committee resolution on ending illegal NSA surveillance, USA
     
703. "The prevalence of rape and sexual assault at our Nation's institutions of higher education is both deeply troubling and a call to action.  Studies show that about one in five women is a survivor of attempted or completed sexual violence while in college.  In addition, a substantial number of men experience sexual violence during college.  Although schools have made progress in addressing rape and sexual assault, more needs to be done to ensure safe, secure environments for students of higher education."-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, 44th President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, father, USA
704. "(The NSA bulk data surveillance program) lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value. As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program."-Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, USA
     
705. "I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly."-Wentworth Miller, actor, coming out in refusal to attend Sochi Olympic games due to anti-gay legislation and environs in Russia, USA
706. "My case clearly demonstrates the need for comprehensive whistleblower protection act reform. If we had had a real process in place, and reports of wrongdoing could be taken to real, independent arbiters rather than captured officials, I might not have had to sacrifice so much to do what at this point even the president seems to agree needed to be done.”-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on USA NSA spying, granted temporary asylum, Russia

707. "Not all spying is bad. The biggest problem we face right now is the new technique of indiscriminate mass surveillance, where governments are seizing billions and billions and billions of innocents' communication[s] every single day. This is done not because it’s necessary – after all, these programs are unprecedented in US history, and were begun in response to a threat that kills fewer Americans every year than bathtub falls and police officers – but because new technologies make it easy and cheap."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on USA NSA spying, granted temporary asylum, Russia

708. “The same memo warned that the practices Leso came up with could produce 'irreversible' psychological harm, yet Leso went ahead and took part in interrogation sessions that applied those same techniques. He was in the room, watching as our client collapsed psychologically from being degraded, physically abused, deprived of sleep and human contact. And we’re supposed to believe some throwaway line in a memo written a few weeks earlier excuses all of that and makes Leso fit to serve as a psychologist treating vulnerable patients?”-Shayana Kadidal, J.D., Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney for Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was tortured in the presence of former military psychologist John Leso, upon learning the American Psychological Association refused to sanction him for unethical behavior, USA
709. "We came to the conclusion that the killings were of an industrial kind. That they were regular, they were persistent and they were systematic and they have been going on for years. Such that the evidence we found would certainly underpin any count of a crime at intertnational law. And pictures are reminiscent of the worst pictures that came out of Belsen and Auschwitz and after the second world war. And these poor creatures were not only starved but were also tortured while they were starving." -Desmond Da Silva, former war crimes prosecutor, Syria
710. "For now, however, Republicans are in a deep sense enemies of America’s poor."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
711. "There is no country in the world with the diversity, confidence and talent and black pride like Nigeria. The anti-gay marriage law shames us all." -Binyavanga Wainaina, author, on coming out as gay to protest anti-gay laws in Africa, Kenya
     
712. "In developed and developing countries alike we are increasingly living in a world where the lowest tax rates, the best health and education and the opportunity to influence are being given not just to the rich but also to their children. Without a concerted effort to tackle inequality, the cascade of privilege and of disadvantage will continue down the generations. We will soon live in a world where equality of opportunity is just a dream. In too many countries economic growth already amounts to little more than a 'winner takes all' windfall for the richest."-Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam executive director, United Kingdom
713. "It is staggering that in the 21st Century, half of the world's population – that's three and a half billion people – own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers (85 billionaires) could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus."-Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam executive director, United Kingdom
     
714. "What’s wrong with this story? Even on its own terms, it postulates opportunities that don’t exist. For example, how are children of the poor, or even the working class, supposed to get a good education in an era of declining support for and sharply rising tuition at public universities? Even social indicators like family stability are, to an important extent, economic phenomena: Nothing takes a toll on family values like lack of employment opportunities. But the main thing about this myth is that it misidentifies the winners from growing inequality. White-collar professionals, even if married to each other, are only doing O.K. The big winners are a much smaller group. The Occupy movement popularized the concept of the '1 percent,' which is a good shorthand for the rising elite, but if anything includes too many people: most of the gains of the top 1 percent have in fact gone to an even tinier elite, the top 0.1 percent."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, on the myth of wealthy elites doing well due to "lifestyle choices," USA
715. "The FBI viewed no space as off limits. The agency consistently bugged (Martin Luther) King’s hotel rooms to monitor his planning of the 1963 March on Washington and to keep tabs on his strategic partnerships with other civil-rights leaders. But it also sought to compile a dossier of embarrassing information about King’s private sex life that the government could (and did) employ to discredit King and obstruct his political efforts. King was not alone on the government’s long list of targets; he shared marquee billing with boxer Muhammed Ali, humorist Art Buchwald, author Norman Mailer, and even Senator Howard Baker. But the greater scandal was that — as the Church Committee revealed in 1976 — these big names appeared alongside more than one million other Americans, including half a million so-called 'subversives.' Back then, it took the Church Committee to reveal that American 'intelligence agencies ha[d] regularly collected information about personal and political activities irrelevant to any legitimate government interest,' precipitating a national effort to restore to Americans the full extent of privacy guaranteed by the Constitution. But the Church Committee’s report did not spring from a vacuum: It was only possible because of some extraordinary feats of democratic citizenship, and a reporter’s dogged request for documents  under a new statute called the Freedom of Information Act.-Brett Max Kaufman, J.D., Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project, USA
716. "Our ultimate goal is to remove all bases from Okinawa. And we’ve been building network with the other what is called host communities of U.S. military in the area, in the Asia Pacific, because we realize that it’s important to know their situation, because when there have been plan to relocate Marines to—Marines in Okinawa to Guam, for example, that would be great burden for them on their small island. We did not want these—giving troops around on small islands. Our—particularly International Network Against—International Women’s Network Against Militarism is to close down all the bases, convert them to more civilian, more beneficial to local people’s use, and demilitarize the security system."-Kozue Akibayashi, Ph.D., professor and peace activist, Japan
717. "In response to political scandal and public outrage, official Washington repeatedly uses the same well-worn tactic. It is the one that has been hauled out over decades in response to many of America's most significant political scandals. Predictably, it is the same one that shaped President Obama's much-heralded Friday speech to announce his proposals for "reforming" the National Security Agency in the wake of seven months of intense worldwide controversy. The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are 'serious questions that have been raised.' They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic 'reforms' so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge....That, in general, has long been Obama's primary role in our political system and his premiere, defining value to the permanent power factions that run Washington. He prettifies the ugly; he drapes the banner of change over systematic status quo perpetuation; he makes Americans feel better about policies they find repellent without the need to change any of them in meaningful ways. He's not an agent of change but the soothing branding packaging for it. As is always the case, those who want genuine changes should not look to politicians, and certainly not to Barack Obama, to wait for it to be gifted. Obama was forced to give this speech by rising public pressure, increasingly scared US tech giants, and surprisingly strong resistance from the international community to the out-of-control American surveillance state. Today's speech should be seen as the first step, not the last, on the road to restoring privacy. The causes that drove Obama to give this speech need to be, and will be, stoked and nurtured further until it becomes clear to official Washington that, this time around, cosmetic gestures are plainly inadequate."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil

718. "From before the accident, we had always been strongly calling upon the government, and also TEPCO, to make sure that no accident was ever allowed to happen. And they were always telling us, 'Don’t worry, Mayor. No accident could ever happen.' However, because this promise was betrayed, this is why I became anti-nuclear."-Katsutaka Idogaw, former mayor, town of Futaba, location of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident caused by a tsunami, Japan

719. "Massive amounts of data about millions of people allows commercial interests to sort users into categories, and then marketers can tailor that category's online experience to push its members as firmly as possible in the direction of its product. No one's privacy has been violated in the sense of having a secret revealed; it's almost the opposite, and it's almost worse: We're being manipulated in a way that makes us less individual, less unique, less capable of having secrets to begin with. The masters of modern spycraft have learned from the masters of marketing the science of predicting human behavior. One of the main reasons for 'bulk' collection, one that seems less alarming on its surface, is to watch for patterns of behavior that indicate possible terrorist activity. But when an organization is sufficiently skilled at predicting human behavior, the next phase, almost inevitably, is to try to influence it. We need to update our vision of what an Orwellian use of bulk data might be. We probably don't have to worry about federal agents knocking down doors in the middle of the night. Tyranny can be a lot more insidious than that. It can be the limitation of options, the curbing of ambitions, or the gentle nudging forward down a path you thought you choose."-Ana Marie Cox, journalist, United Kingdom
720. "We have been through a lot of political scandals. But never before has the nation been roiled by a conspiracy to create a traffic jam."-Gail Collins, author and journalist on governor Chris Christie's (R-NJ) staff political payback to Democrats unwilling to endorse him for governor, USA
721. "The President's speech offered far less than meets the eye."-Rush Holt, Ph.D., research scientist, professor of physics and public policy, congressional representative (D-NJ), sponsor of Surveillance State Repeal Act legislation to stop the NSA from security encryption degredation and other overreaches by curtailing Patriot Act spying, father, USA
722. "Obama to Snowden: Thanks for showing me the gaping hole we tore in the Constitution. Here's a band-aid. Now please go to jail."-Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, First Look Media, and philanthropist, USA
723. "The key question: Will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil
724. "The president should end – not mend – the government's collection and retention of all law-abiding Americans' data. When the government collects and stores every American's phone call data, it is engaging in a textbook example of an 'unreasonable search' that violates the constitution."-Anthony Romero, J.D., Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), USA
725. “There is no question that many of the highest-risk activities, which happened to be the most profitable activities for Wall Street, are now at least reduced and often totally gone....They’ve had to exit hedge funds and private equity funds and they sold off any business with ‘proprietary trading’ on the door.”-Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, a pro-regulatory banking reform group, USA 
726. "The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 milion text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top secret documents."-James Ball, Guardian journalist, revealing information on a joint investigation of NSA material with the UK's Channel 4 provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, UK
     
727. "The Uighur people have become outsiders in the development of their own homeland and survival. It is here that the people's anger begins to grow. Uighur people need an avenue to express their aspirations and protect their rights."-Ilham Tohti, academic and Uighur economist at Beijing's Central University for Nationalities, detained by authorities for challenging illegal and unethical government acts, China
728. "We're in a constitutional crisis--have been since 9-11, but didn't seem to know it--which has come to the public's attention thanks to Snowden. Manning's revelations were horrifying enough to those who care about what we do to "others," "foreigners," "enemies," and their relatives: But humans, not just Americans, generally don't get as upset about that as about what Snowden has shown our government does to "us," at home. We need to remain aware, however uncomfortable and frustrating that is, that what they've been doing is outrageous and intolerable in what we want to preserve as a free society. And then act on the enraging information to demand of our representatives in Congress that they act on their constitutional responsibilities to rein in executive branch abuses that violate the oath to the constitution that both Congresspersons and all officials take."-Daniel Ellsberg, former USA military analyst and whistleblower on the Pentagon Papers and the illegal actions of USA government and the Vietnam War on NSA abuses, USA
729. "I'm very much in love with you."-Roger Jean-Claude Mbede (1980-2014), declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, who was rejected by his family and died soon after release from prison where he received no medical attention for a hernia, having been jailed due to anti-gay laws where he was convicted and served a multi-year sentence for texting this statement to another man, Cameroon
730. "Deep beneath desert sands, an embattled Middle Eastern state has built a covert nuclear bomb, using technology and materials provided by friendly powers or stolen by a clandestine network of agents. It is the stuff of pulp thrillers and the sort of narrative often used to characterise the worst fears about the Iranian nuclear programme. In reality, though, neither US nor British intelligence believe Tehran has decided to build a bomb, and  Iran's atomic projects are under constant international monitoring. The exotic tale of the bomb hidden in the desert is a true story, though. It's just one that applies to another country. In an extraordinary feat of subterfuge, Israel managed to assemble an entire underground nuclear arsenal – now estimated at 80 warheads, on a par with India and Pakistan – and even tested a bomb nearly half a century ago, with a minimum of international outcry or even much public awareness of what it was doing. Despite the fact that the Israel's nuclear programme has been an open secret since a disgruntled technician, Mordechai Vanunu, blew the whistle on it in 1986, the official Israeli position is still never to confirm or deny its existence. When the former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo last month, declaring Israeli possession of both nuclear and chemical weapons and describing the official non-disclosure policy as "outdated and childish" a rightwing group formally called for a police investigation for treason." Julian Borger, journalist, The Guardian, regarding Israel's illegal nuclear weapons, UK
     
731. "Without prompt corrective action to reclassify broadband, this awful ruling will serve as a sorry memorial to the corporate abrogation of free speech."-Michael Copps, former Federal Communications Commission commissioner, on the federal appears court decision to stop federal rules that promoted equal access to the Internet, USA
732. "Edward Snowden has done more for our Constitution in terms of the Fourth and First amendment than anyone else I know."-Daniel Ellsberg, former USA military analyst and whistleblower on the Pentagon Papers and the illegal actions of the USA government and the Vietnam War, USA
     
733. "Journalism isn’t possible unless reporters and their sources can safely communicate, and where laws can’t protect that, technology can. This is a hard problem, but not an unsolvable one, and I look forward to using my experience to help find a solution.”-Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, making a statement upon joining the Press Freedom Foundation board, USA citizen living in temporary asylum in  Russia
734. “The overall problem for U.S. counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they don’t sufficiently understand or widely share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques.”-Peter Bergin, Director of New America Foundation, terrorism expert, and lead author of recent repot challenging the need for phone metadata collection by the NSA as having no evidence of success, USA
735. "One purpose of last TPP fast-track bill: prohibit measures countries want to shield privacy of their citizens' data"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil
736. “While there were compelling operational reasons to stand up Guantánamo prison early in the (Iraq and Afghanistan) war, we squandered international goodwill and lost opportunities by failing to adhere to the Geneva Conventions and to our own rule of law. Those decisions turned Guantánamo into a liability.”-Major General Michael Lehnert, first commanding officer at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) speaking 12 years after the first prisoners arrived, USA
737. "And we really need to wake up and say, 'OK, what do we do to get good jobs? What do we do to get better wages? And, of course, along with that, how do we educate our children for the jobs of the 21st century?' And then, with that, we do need a safety net that reaches all the people. We have 20 million people now who are in deep poverty, whose incomes are below half the poverty line, below $9,500 for a family of three. These are things that, across the board, both parties need to pay attention to in constructive ways."-Peter Edelman, faculty director, Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy at Georgetown University and author, So rich, So poor: Why it’s so hard to end poverty in America, USA
738. "Dissent and accountability are the lifeblood of democracy, yet people now think they just have to roll over in the name of 'anti-terrorism.' Members of government think it can lie to us about it, and that they can lie to Congress. That concerns me for the future of my children and grandchildren, and that too makes me feel I can talk about, at my age, doing something as drastic as breaking-in to an FBI office in the search for truth."-Bonnie Raines, anti-Vietnam War protester, day care operator, parent, and grandparent, who with seven others broke into FBI offices in 1971 and showed the world the illegal secret surveillance network tactics the FBI had created to monitor civil rights, peace, and Black Power activists, aka COINTELPRO, disinformation campaigns, and an attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into a suicide attempt, with their identitites newly published in journalist Betty Medsger's book, The burglary: The discovery of J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, USA
739. "As for the illegality of the FBI, they’re supposed to enforce the law. Here they are interposing themselves as almost a political counterforce to stop certain movements. And it had a direction to it: They were stopping left-liberal movements. And they were using techniques that we usually associate with state police in countries and systems that we usually think of as alien."-David Kairys, J.D., civil rights attorney representing the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, which broke into the FBI's offices in Media, PA in 1971 and shared the documents of COINTELPRO and government illegal surveillance, intimidation on anti-war, peace, Black Power and other left groups as portayed in journalist Betty Medsger's book, The burglary: The discovery of J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, USA
740. "We decided that it was time to, once again, come forward with the question of government surveillance, government intimidation, and the right of citizens to vocally dissent. I think that the gasoline of democracy is the right to dissent, because wherever there’s power, wherever there’s privilege, power and privilege are going to try to remove, insofar as they can, from public discourse anything they want to do. That leaves the citizens’ right to dissent as the last line of defense for freedom. Now, that’s what we were faced with back in 1970s. I think that’s what we’re faced with once again today. It should not surprise us. I mean, it should not surprise us that those in power in Washington want to make the decisions that really count off stage, out of sight from the rest of us. But democracy depends upon the rights of citizens to have the information they need in order for them, the citizens—who are the sovereigns—for them to decide what the government should be doing and should not be doing. They must have that information so that they can make up their minds."-John Raines, Ph.D., anti-Vietnam War protester, professor emeritus of Religious Studies, parent, and grandparent who with seven others broke into FBI offices in 1971 and showed the world the illegal secret surveillance network tactics the FBI had created to monitor civil rights, peace, and Black Power activists, aka COINTELPRO, disinformation campaigns, and an attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into a suicide attempt, with their identities newly published in journalist Betty Medsger's book The burglary: The discovery of J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, USA
741. "US Govt warns: leaks help Terrorists, endanger national security! - for every leak over the last 40 years"-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil
742. "Wars are a lot easier to get into than out of. Those who ask about exit strategies or question what will happen if assumptions prove wrong are rarely welcome at the conference table when the fire-breathers are demanding that we strike—as they did when advocating invading Iraq, intervening in Libya and Syria, or bombing Iran's nuclear sites. But in recent decades, presidents confronted with tough problems abroad have too often been too quick to reach for a gun. Our foreign and national security policy has become too militarized, the use of force too easy for presidents....For too many people—including defense "experts," members of Congress, executive branch officials and ordinary citizens—war has become a kind of videogame or action movie: bloodless, painless and odorless. But my years at the Pentagon left me even more skeptical of systems analysis, computer models, game theories or doctrines that suggest that war is anything other than tragic, inefficient and uncertain. The people who understand this best are our men and women in uniform....I came to believe that no one who had actually been in combat could walk away without scars, without some measure of post-traumatic stress."-Robert Gates, Ph.D., former Secretary of Defense under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, USA
743. "The BSA is a law that requires financial institutions — as institutions — to establish and maintain effective anti-money laundering compliance programs and to know their customers. It is not a tip; it is not a suggestion. It is a legal requirement, enforceable through criminal sanction. Today’s charges have been filed because, in this regard, JPMorgan, as an institution, failed and failed miserably. One reason, among others, that Madoff was able to get away with his crime for so long was that JPMorgan had an inadequate and ineffective anti-money laundering program."-Preet Bharara, J.D., New York District Attorney, discussing the settlement fining JP Morgan $2.6 billion, which increases the total in fines they have paid for financial crimes to $20 billion in the last year with deferred prosecution agreements but no criminal charges or jail time, USA
     
744. "Flags are bits of colored cloth that gvts use 1st to shrink-wrap people’s minds & then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead" -Arundhati Roy, author, activist, India
     
745. "Dissent and accountability are the lifeblood of democracy, yet people now think they just have to roll over in the name of 'anti-terrorism.' Members of government thinks it (they) can lie to us about it, and that they can lie to Congress. That concerns me for the future of my children and grandchildren, and that too makes me feel I can talk about, at my age, doing something as drastic as breaking-in to an FBI office in the search for truth."-Bonnie Raines, anti-Vietnam War protester, day care operator, parent, and grandparent, who with seven others broke into FBI offices in 1971 and showed the world the illegal secret surveillance network tactics the FBI had created to monitor civil rights, peace, and Black Power activists, aka COINTELPRO, disinformation campaigns, and an attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into a suicide attempt, with their identitites newly published in journalist Betty Medsger's book The burglary: The discovery of J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI,  USA
746. "Once I got over the shock of thinking that this was the nuttiest thing I’d ever heard in my life, I’m like, this is a great idea, because we’re not going to make any allegations; we’re going to take their own paperwork, signed by their own people, including J. Edgar Hoover, and give it to the newspapers. So, let’s see you argue with that. I definitely see parallels between Snowden’s case and our case. What we revealed changed public opinion, which is why the laws were changed. If revealing ourselves is going to get people arguing with each other about what the FBI did then and what the NSA is doing now, I think that’s a good thing."-Keith Forsyth, anti-Vietnam War protester and engineer, who with seven others broke into FBI offices in 1971 and showed the world the illegal secret surveillance network tactics the FBI had created to monitor civil rights, peace, and Black Power activists, aka COINTELPRO, disinformation campaigns, and an attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into a suicide attempt, with their identities newly published in journalist Betty Medsger's book The burglary: The discovery of J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, USA
747. "Approximately 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT, nearly 70 percent of whom report that they became homeless after their family rejected them for being queer. Others struggle to get an education and a job, and we must remember that many LGBT people work in places that are not covered by non-discrimination policies. And 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, gay and bisexual men and transgender women -- particularly those of color -- remain disproportionately vulnerable to HIV infection. The incidence of HIV remains stubbornly unchanged despite great advances in prevention in recent years. Twenty percent of those infected are unaware of their status, but the promise of the CDC's 2006 policy to implement universal screening for HIV has yet to become reality."-Harvey Makadon, M.D., professor, Harvard Medical School and Director, National LBGT Health Education Center, USA
748. "In order for the human race to continue, women must be safe and empowered. It's an obvious idea, but like a vagina, it needs great attention and love in order to be revealed."-Eve Ensler, survivor, activist, playwright, performer, V-day co-founder, author, The Vagina Monologues and I am an emotional creature: The secret lives of girls around the world, playwright, from The Vagina Monologues, USA
749. "It looks like we’re terribly reckless people. But there was absolutely no one in Washington – senators, congressmen, even the president – who dared hold J Edgar Hoover to accountability. It became pretty obvious to us that if we don’t do it, nobody will."-John Raines, Ph.D., anti-Vietnam War protester, professor emeritus of Religious Studies, parent, and grandparent who with seven others broke into FBI offices in 1971 and showed the world the illegal secret surveillance network tactics the FBI had created to monitor civil rights, peace, and Black Power activists, aka COINTELPRO, disinformation campaigns, and an attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into a suicide attempt, with their identities newly published in journalist Betty Medsger's book The burglary: The discovery of  J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, USA
750. "When you talked to people outside the movement about what the FBI was doing, nobody wanted to believe it. There was only one way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their handwriting."-Keith Forsyth, anti-Vietnam War protester and engineer who with seven others broke into FBI offices in 1971 and showed the world the illegal secret surveillance network tactics the FBI had created to monitor civil rights, peace, and Black Power activists, aka COINTELPRO, disinformation campaigns, and an attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into a suicide attempt, with their identities newly published in journalist Betty Medsger's book The burglary: The discovery of  J Edgar Hoover's secret FBI, USA
751. "At this stage of the game, for any serious observer of the Philadelphia schools to claim shock or “disenchantment” at the struggle here feels a bit like a contrivance, does it not? This past year, ed reformers – among many other things – championed the closing of 24 public schools which sent 9,000 children to schools worse off than the ones they previously attended; the loss in the name of austerity of 4,000-some librarians, scientists, counselors, administrators, reading specialists and aides; an all out union-busting effort which included supporting the unsuccessful withholding of $45 million in federal funds; and a crass attempt to push forward a regressive charter bill labeled as “reform.” The ed debate is deeply polarized for a reason. There are reasons why the struggle is so great, why there is so much pushback from communities, and why the issue is less about “gridlock” than a fundamental difference in how we view public goods, whether we make room for teacher and professional voices, where we stand on organized labor or issues of equity. Being unhappy with the level of engagement, calling mothers like myself “shrill” and full of “histrionics,” broadly labeling public actions (which have included such things as public testimony, filing formal complaints against the state, and documenting lack of services for special needs population) as “celebrity jockeying,” feels an awful lot like marginalization. More important, this is not a single person’s issue or viewpoint. This is an issue that has energized much of the city. Simply dismissing it as distasteful or somehow not civil enough means potentially missing the whole point of not just this article but the Philadelphia struggle overall. I do think there’s more we can and must do to bring this into a public sphere and broaden and deepen the dialogue (that’s been a large part of my work and my overall takeaway from this piece), but I don’t think it’s right for people to enter into a 12-year post takeover struggle demanding to play referee."-Helen Gym, former teacher, curriculum writer, activist challenging corporatizing of Philadelphia public schools, parent, USA
     
752. "Well, not only haven’t the promises made by its proponents come true, but in most instances the actual opposite occurred. For instance, listening to President Clinton made my blood boil, because in no year of NAFTA were 200,000 jobs created. Rather, now 20 years out, one million net U.S. jobs have been lost to the growing trade deficit with Mexico and Canada under NAFTA, and there’s a list of an explicit 400,000 with Canada, 845,000 total jobs lost to NAFTA, specific workers certified under just one narrow program called Trade Adjustment Assistance that’s very hard to qualify for. And on that end, if you want to see the actual effect of NAFTA in your community, you can go to our website, tradewatch.org, look at the Trade Data Center. You can put in your zip code, and actually it will pop up the list of companies. A lot of them were companies that explicitly said during the NAFTA debate, "Congress, if you pass NAFTA,we’re going to create X number of jobs in Y community." And you can actually go by the company name and see Caterpillar, GE, Chrysler promising jobs then, offshoring jobs in reality, using NAFTA’s investor protections. Now, the one place that U.S. exports did grow was in dumping subsidized corn. Over 1.5 million campesinos in Mexico displaced. As folks know, desperate immigration from Mexico after the NAFTA wipeout increased—doubled in the years after NAFTA. Meanwhile, in the corporate tribunals, over 365,000—sorry, $365 million have been paid out to corporations attacking environmental and health laws. So even the environmental improvements didn’t happen. Poverty increasing in Mexico, job offshoring in the U.S., and that is in effect across the economy. So if you weren’t one of the people who lost your job to NAFTA, the effect of having those million people displaced from higher-wage jobs meant they were competing for the service-sector jobs in the U.S. that aren’t subject to offshoring. So the government data shows that when someone lost their job to offshoring, on average, they lost 20 percent of their income and then went into the pool of people searching for non-offshorable jobs. So even in those sectors that are growing in the service sector, wages are flat or declining, which is a key factor to this growing income inequality.That’s the reality of 20 years of NAFTA. But despite that, now the Obama administration is trying to do NAFTA on steroids, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, given the record, is outrageous—can be stopped, but is pending."-Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, USA
753. "The indigenous of Mexico were considered worse than animals, as if they were objects, as if they were rocks, plants, something that can or cannot be. So what the indigenous must do is fight to regain a space within society and to plant again the concept of dignity, which is not something that is understood in the head. It is something by which you live and die, something that is felt within the chest, within the essence of the human being."-Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista and anti-NAFTA leader (translated), Mexico
     
754. "The Zapatistas control about a third of the territory of the state of Chiapas, which they organized into five autonomous regions. And each one of those regions has a capital, a capital town or seat of administrative government called a caracol, which means "snail" in Spanish. So, in each of the five caracoles on New Year’s Eve, they had a 20 anniversary celebration with thousands of people from Zapatista communities, often wearing ski masks or bandanas covering their faces, dancing all night to live music, with thousands of people who came from all over Mexico and all over the world, in fact—from Europe, from Africa, from the Middle East, from Asia, from the United States—to participate in this celebration, a celebration on one hand of 20 years since the Zapatistas said "Basta" to NAFTA and neoliberal economic policies, but also to celebrate all the things that the Zapatistas have achieved in those 20 years in terms of constructing an alternative form of autonomous self-government in the territory that they control."-Peter Rossett, Ph.D., professor, rural social movements, Mexico
755. "So, Title IX has been on the books for 40 years. It prohibits discrimination based on gender in education. It applies K-through-12, as well as universities. And when we’re talking about sex discrimination, it applies to school sports, but it also applies to sexual violence and harassment in schools. And schools have a duty, when they know about or should know about sexual violence occurring, to prevent it, to address it and to actually help protect the student so that she can learn in a safe environment." -Sandra Park, J.D., Senior Attorney, Women's Rights Project, American Civil Liberties Union,  USA
756. "Students found 'responsible' for sexual assaults on campus often face little or no punishment from school judicial systems, while their victims’ lives are frequently turned upside down....Administrators believe the sanctions administered by the college judiciary system are a thoughtful way to hold abusive students accountable, but the Center’s probe has discovered that 'responsible' findings rarely lead to tough punishments like expulsion—even in cases involving alleged repeat offenders."-Center for Public Integrity study released in 2010, USA
     
757. "What we know about rape in this country is that half of the women who are raped are under the age of 18, so we are talking about girls, and a significant number of those sexual assaults are occurring in schools. Obviously, a lot of those sexual assaults are not reported. But what we know about reports is about 3,800 are reported in public schools in a year. I mean, so that’s a significant number, but just a small percentage of the total number of sexual assaults that are occurring at schools. And so it’s vitally important that school administrators and police really understand their obligations to respond to the violence and not turn around and penalize the victim like they did in Rachel’s case."-Sandra Park, J.D., Senior Attorney, Women's Rights Project, American Civil Liberties Union, who fought Texas Henderson High school's accusation that school rape survivor Rachel Bradshaw-Bean had committed 'public lewdness' and sent both her and her perpetrator to a disciplinary school (ACLU helped her attend a different high school and the US DOE office of Civil Rights ruled Henderson High violated Title IX), USA
     
758. "Well, they’re not alone. To go—I would go to a counselor, if anything. If I were to, you know, change what I did, I would go—definitely go to a counselor. And they are trained to handle that. And I know it’s—I can’t really tell them to go to their parents, because I didn’t go to my parents. And I don’t know what’s most comfortable for them, but someone that they can trust. And just take that leap of faith, because every single person is important, whether you feel it or not. And it’s—it is an emotional roller coaster, but they’ll be happy that they chose to tell someone."-Rachel Bradshaw Bean, high school graduate and rape survivor, on what young people who are raped or sexually assaulted should do, USA
     
759. "The stench of hypocrisy that is emanating from these Internet giants and their reaction to the NSA stories is nothing short of suffocating. When nobody knew about it they were completely content to cooperate with the NSA, far beyond what the law required. They were eager to do it. There were a couple of exceptions: Twitter certainly resisted a lot of government surveillance and deserves a lot of credit for it, Yahoo on occasion has as well. But by and large they were full-fledged partners to the NSA in constructing the surveillance state; they were instrumental to it. They barely raise a public peep in protest. It was only when their behavior became publicly known and became a threat to their self-interest, only then did they find their voice and say this was objectionable and needed to be reined in. On the one hand, part of what I think needs to happen is that the cost to these companies of acquiescing to and participating in this surveillance state needs to be raised — that has happened, and that’s a good thing. But for them to pitch themselves as the defenders of the privacy rights of their customers is a ridiculous joke and I think nobody has trouble seeing that."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil
     
760. "But rarely do those concerned about the consequences of legalized marijuana confront the consequences of our current marijuana prohibition regime, under which some groups of Americans are swiftly labeled criminals and set on a path of being marginalized by society for what the elite and well-off usually end up recalling as foolish but ultimately harmless experimentiation with drugs. Consider that at least the last three American presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, have all more or less admitted to smoking weed. Bush’s former budget director and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, was arrested for possession of marijuana and other drugs while a student at Princeton. On Friday, two major newspaper columnists, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post and David Brooks of the New York Times, admitted to using marijuana. Yet just as all three of the above presidents presided over a criminal justice system that imposes harsh punishments for marijuana use, Marcus and Brooks argue against Colorado and Washington’s marijuana initiatives, on the basis that marijuana is bad for you. The real question with marijuana legalization, however, is not whether it’s not healthy to consume, but whether our current system of prohibition makes things worse. Excessive consumption of alcohol is not healthy, either, but after more than a decade of banning alcohol, Americans decided the collateral consequences of prohibition were far worse than the consequences of letting people have a drink. Presumably, Brooks and Marcus don’t think of themselves as criminals who should have gone to jail for their drug use, any more than our three past presidents. Marcus all but acknowledges as much, saying that “[t]hrowing people in jail for smoking pot is dumb and wasteful.” But that’s what marijuana being illegal means in most states and under federal law: It means people go to jail. It almost never means, however, that people like Brooks and Marcus go to jail. Anyone who wants to see what a de facto legalization environment looks like can visit an elite college campus, where both the trade and use of marijuana are highly visible, and where those who get caught face the relatively minor sanctions associated with breaking campus rules rather than the lifelong consequences of breaking the law. What we basically have now is a system where marijuana is practically legal for the wealthy and white and illegal for everyone else. Although marijuana use among blacks and whites is about the same, according to a 2013 report by the ACLU, blacks are almost four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession."-Adam Swerner, journalist, MSNBC, USA 
761. "Is this really how we want to start the new year, by denying unemployment benefits to more than a million Americans who have lost their jobs? The bipartisan budget agreement passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama protects military spending, but promises to throw the most desperate in our economy into increased financial hardship, thrusting hundreds of thousands of families beneath the poverty line. The long-term unemployment rate is at the highest it has been since World War II, while the percentage of those receiving the benefits is at its historic low. Meanwhile, Wall Street bankers are popping the corks, celebrating a banner year for the stock market. As brokers await their bonuses, many more of the unemployed will head for the breadlines."-Amy Goodman, author and journalist, Democracy Now!, USA
     
762. "To keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage. The powerful – if they want to keep their power – will try to know as much about us as they can, and they will try to make sure that we know as little about them as is possible." -Julian Assange, journalist & founder, Wikileaks, parent, remotely addressing a BBC audience from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, England due to fear of illegal extradition to the USA via UK and/or Sweden governments), Australia
763. "Through the confessional system the Catholic church spied upon the lives of its congregants. While Latin mass excluded most people who could not speak Latin from an understanding of the very system of thought that bound them. Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves. The principle remains the same in the present era. Documents disclosed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that governments dare to aspire, through their intelligence agencies, to a god-like knowledge of each and every one of us."-Julian Assange, journalist & founder, Wikileaks, parent, remotely addressing a BBC audience from the embassy of Ecuador in England due to fear of illegal extradition to the USA via UK and/or Sweden governments), Australia
764. "We've failed as a society when we do not meet the needs of the least advantaged."-Zachary Carter, J.D., Corporation Counsel, New York City, USA
765. "For 2014, all those claiming telephone or email metadata isn't invasive should voluntarily & regularly post their own for the world to see."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil
     
766. "The wave of progressive victories our city has recently enjoyed, thanks to the City Council, was in some ways inevitable. The fabric of our city, of our nation, is made strong by the untold sacrifices of so many who are left defenseless, unrepresented, unspoken for. But at some point in history, the tide must turn. The policies that make them voiceless must give way to a government that works for them, that speaks for them, that cares more about a child going hungry than a new stadium or a new tax credit for a luxury development. To live up to that challenge and to be morally centered in our decisions is the task before those of us who think of ourselves as the progressive wing of our city. Even as the tide turns towards progress, we do not have the luxury to rest. You see, the growing gap between the haves and have-nots undermines our city and tears at the fabric of our democracy. We live in a gilded age of inequality, where decrepit homeless shelters  and housing developments stand in the neglected shadow of gleaming, multi-million-dollar condos; where long-term residents are being priced out of their own neighborhoods by rising rents and stagnant incomes; where stop-and-frisk abuses and warrantless surveillance have been touted as success stories, as if crime can only be reduced by infringing on the civil liberties of people of color."-Letitia "Tish" James, J.D., attorney, former NYC City Council member, NYC Public Advocate, first African American woman elected to citywide office in NYC, USA
767. "When I said I would take dead aim at the 'Tale of Two Cities' I meant it."-Bill de Blasio, former public advocate, Mayor, New York City, parent, USA
768. "The coming together of the systems of governments, the new information apartheid across the world, the linking together, is such that none of us will be able to escape it in just a decade. Our identities will be coupled to it, the information sharing such that none of us will be able to escape it. We are all becoming part of the state, whether we like it or not, so our only hope is to determine what sort of state it is that we are going to become part of. And we can do that by looking and being inspired by some of the actions that produced human rights and free education and so on, by people recognizing that they were part of the state, recognizing their own power, and taking concrete and robust action to make sure they lived in the sort of society that they wanted to, and not in a hellhole dystopia."-Julian Assange, journalist & founder, Wikileaks, parent, remotely addressing a computer conference in Germany from the embassy of Ecuador in England due to fear of illegal extradition to the USA via UK and/or Sweden governments), Australia
769. "As well as getting Snowden asylum, we set up Mr. Snowden’s defense fund, part of a broader endeavor, the Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund, which aims to protect and fund sources in trouble. This will be an important fund for future sources, especially when we look at the U.S. crackdown on whistleblowers like Snowden and alleged WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced this year to 35 years in prison, and another alleged WikiLeaks source, Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison this November."-Sarah Harrison, Wikileaks, speaking in Germany at a computer conference unable to return to her native UK for fear of being charged with terrorism in her work to support whistleblower Edward Snowden both in Hong Kong and Russia
     
770. "The designation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a terror group & targeting of journalists is ominous."-Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater; Dirty Wars; and journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now!, and First Look media, USA
771. "We saw our friends die. But we also see our friends live. So many of them live, and we often toast their long and full lives. They carry us on. There is the sudden. There is the eventual. And in between there is the living. We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust. That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust."-Narrators ofTwo boys kissing, written by David Levithan, USA
772. "New York has faced fiscal collapse, a crime epidemic, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. But now, in our time, we face a different crisis — an inequality crisis. It’s not often the stuff of banner headlines in our daily newspapers. It’s a quiet crisis, but one no less pernicious than those that have come before.”-Bill DeBlasio, former public advocate, Mayor, New York City, parent, USA
773. "I urge everyone to return to the days of robust lawyering. Be Bill Kunstler in the precinct.  Be 'THE LAWYER.' Be the champion who defends fearlessly. When I say that the right to counsel is being eviscerated I mean that the forces of the empire are very busy removing the nerves, the hearts and guts of the Fifth Amendment and leaving it a shell of what it was and can be. We are the opposition that need to gather our shields and swords in its defense and be selfless and brave. Let us press forward–Instead of the derision we often face, let us all strive to be 'the Lawyer' respected and honored."-Lynne Stewart, J.D., civil rights attorney, and former political prisoner jailed on highly questionable charges of material support of terrorism in speaking to a Reuters reporter as an attorney defending Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, parent, grandparent, USA
774. "I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that?....We can't have a post-privacy world until we're post-privilege. So when we cave in our autonomy, then we can sort of say, 'well, okay, we don't need privacy anymore, in fact we don't have privacy anymore, and I'm okay with that.' Realistically though people are not comfortable with that. Because, if you only look at it from a position of privilege, like, say, white man on a stage, then yeah, maybe post-privacy works out okay for those people. But if you have ever not been, or if you are currently not, a white man with a passport from one of the five good nations in the world, it might not really work out well for you, and in fact it might be designed specifically such that it will continue to not work out well for you, because the structures themselves produce these inequalities. So when you hear someone talk about post-privacy, I think it's really important to engage them about their own privilege in the system and what it is they are actually arguing for."-Jacob Appelbaum, Computer Security Researcher and Tor Project co-founder, USA but for better privacy protections living in Germany
775. "For all those women who marched, for all those women who lobbied, for all those women who died, we say to you today, your lives ahve always been our concern, your sacrifices our motivation. We will continue the fight, and our struggle will go on for as long as it must."-Dr. Kenneth Edelin, M.D. (1939-2013),reproductive justice pioneer once convicted for doing a legal abortion and acquitted; championied health care rights of poor women of color, USA
776. "True change happens not through mandates and top-down decision making but through communication, collaboration and celebrating the successes along the way. Raising the success rate of our students is the only goal." -Carmen Fariña, NYC Schools Chancellor, former teacher, principal, superintendent, deputy chancellor, parent, grandparent, USA
     
777. “The very idea that human beings can communicate for even a few moments without their ability to monitor is intolerable.”-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, remotely delivering a computer conference keynote in Germany remarking on  NSA illegal surveillance activity goal of accessing all digital human communication, Brazil
     
778. "*At least two vacations a year can cut heart attack risk by 50%m*Singing along to your favorite songs can lower your blood pressure *Breaking up food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full *You may also want to consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem as appealing as they did. Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash *Quit complaining--stress hormone levels rise by 15% after 10 minutes of complaining *Fast foods are quick, reasonably  priced, and readily available alternatives to home cooking. While convenient and economical for a busy lifestyle, fast foods are typically high in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt, and may put people at risk for becoming overweight."-McResources website "help" for McDonald's employees who aren't paid a living wage, USA/international
     
779. "Governments are power systems. They are trying to sustain their power and domination over their populations and they will use what means are available to do this. By now the means are very sophisticated and extensive and we can expect them to increase....We’re developing technologies that will be used by our own governments and by commercial corporations and are already being used to maximize information for themselves for control and domination. That’s the way power systems work. Of course, they’ve always played the security card. But I think one should be very cautious about such claims. Every government pleads security for almost anything it’s doing, so since the plea is predictable it essentially carries no information. If after the event the power system claims security, that doesn’t mean it’s actually a functioning principle. And if you look at the record, you discover that security is generally a pretext and security is not a high priority of governments. If by that I mean the security of the population — security of the power system itself and the domestic interests it represents, yes, that’s a concern. But security of the population is not."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
780. "Over the past generation — roughly speaking, the neoliberal period — there has been a substantial shift toward corporatization of the universities, toward imposing of the business model on higher education. Part of that is what you’ve mentioned, tuition rises. There has been an enormous increase in tuition. I don’t think you can give an economic argument for that. Take a look at the comparative evidence. Right to our south, Mexico, which is a relatively poor country, has a quite respectable higher education system, and it’s free. The country that consistently ranks among the highest in educational achievement is Finland. A rich country, but education is free. Germany, education is free. France, education is free."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
781. "What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is a far cry from clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited clouds and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: 'The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon?' I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV (drone) analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian's life all because of a bad image or angle. It's also important for the public to grasp that there are human beings operating and analysing intelligence these UAVs. I know because I was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an almost daily routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone. UAV proponents claim that troops who do this kind of work are not affected by observing this combat because they are never directly in danger physically. But here's the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were. Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we fight it, and become bitter. Some troops seek help in mental health clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can talk to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it interesting that the suicide statistics in this career field aren't reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions are heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety."-Heather Linebaugh, former US Air Force drone program geo-spacial analyst, 13 intelligence squadron; member, Iraq Veterans Against War, USA
782. "I'm glad that this chapter is over, but the book still remains to be written. As long as there is threat for the Arctic, as long as multinational companies, like Gazprom, like Shell, like Exxon, and the puppet regimes are intent on raping the Arctic, we will certainly continue to fight against that and to work toward a sane future."-Dimitri Litvinov, Greenpeace Artic 30 activist, upon leaving Russia after being jailed on trumped-up charges after two months in jail from protesting Russian Arctic oil drilling, Sweden
     
783. "We resolved that we were going to have to be very disruptive of the status quo--not only the surveillance and political status quo, but also the journalistic status quo. And I think one of the ways that you can see what it is that we were targeting is in the behavior of the media over the past six months since these (NSA) revelations have emerged almost entirely without them and despite them. (We) knew in particular that one of our most formidable adversaries was not simply going to be the intelligence agencies on which we were reporting and who we were trying to expose, but also their most loyal, devoted servants, which calls itself the United States and British media. It is really the case that the United States and British governments are not only willing but able to engage in any conduct no matter how grotesque."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, delivering a computer conference keynote in Germany remotely from Brazil remarking on co-interviewing Edward Snowden in Hong Kong
     
784. "But I do think that a major reason why reducing unemployment isn’t a political priority is that the economy may be lousy for workers, but corporate America is doing just fine. And once you understand this, you also understand why it’s so important to change those priorities. There’s been a somewhat strange debate among progressives lately, with some arguing that populism and condemnations of inequality are a diversion, that full employment should instead be the top priority. As some leading progressive economists have pointed out, however, full employment is itself a populist issue: weak labor markets are a main reason workers are losing ground, and the excessive power of corporations and the wealthy is a main reason we aren’t doing anything about jobs. Too many Americans currently live in a climate of economic fear. There are many steps that we can take to end that state of affairs, but the most important is to put jobs back on the agenda."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
785. "People have been thinking too long that art is a privilege of the museums & rich. Art is not business! It does not belong to banks & fancy investors. Art is food. You can't eat it but it feeds you. Art has to be cheap & available to everybody It needs to be everywhere because it is the inside of the world. Art soothes pain! Art wakes up sleepers! Art fights against war & stupidity! Art sings Halleluja! Art is for kitchens! Art is like good bread! Art is like green trees! Art is like white clouds in blue sky! Art is cheap! Hurrah!"-Peter Schumann, Cheap Art Manifesto & founder, Bread & Puppet Theatre, Glover, Vermont, USA
786. "The same rights that people have offline must be protected online, including the right to privacy."-UN general assembly resolution unanimous vote on reolution introduced by two countries illegally spied on by the USA NSA: Germany and Brazil
787. "Combined and collective action by everybody can end serious violations of human rights … That experience inspires me to go on and address the issue of internet [privacy], which right now is extremely troubling because the revelations of surveillance have implications for human rights … People are really afraid that all their personal details are being used in violation of traditional national protections"-Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, J.D., United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and attorney, comparing the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa with current efforts to end internet surveillance violations by USA, UK, and other governments, South Africa
788. "If we fail in the courts of Uganda, we shall go to the African Court. And if we fail in the African Court, we shall go to the international court. Because the reason why, actually, we are not already in court when this bill was passed, because you cannot challenge something that is not already passed. When it was proposed in Parliament, we couldn’t challenge it, because you cannot challenge something that is not passed. But now that it’s passed, it has actually made us stronger. It has paved a way, a shorter way for us to go to the constitutional court. And for us, that’s one positive thing we’ve seen about this, despite all the setbacks."-Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, LBGT rights activist commenting on how homophobic bill requiring not reporting LBGT persons as a crime and lifetime imprisonment for gay sex passed by the Uganda parliament has strengthened activists' resolve, Uganda
789. "Sadly, our nation has ignored the lessons from the high-performing nations. These countries deeply respect public education, work to ensure that teachers are well-prepared and well-supported, and provide students not just with standards but with tools to meet them--such as ensuring a robsut curriculum, addressing equity issues so children with the most needs get the most resources, and increasing parental involvement."-Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, USA
     
790. "A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on NSA spying, in a holiday message broadcast in the UK, granted temporary asylum in Russia
791. "Hunger is biased towards women and kids. A divorce, a separation can put a lot of women in poverty.”-Eric Cooper, CEO, San Antonio (TX) Food Bank, commenting on the effects of federal cuts to already meager SNAP food stamp benefits, USA
792. "The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying."-Edward Snowden, in a holiday message broadcast in the UK, granted temporary asylum in Russia
793. "Whether or not patterns like this are the result of coordination between would-be censors across the country is impossible to say, but there are moments, when a half-dozen or so challenges regarding race or LGBT content hit within a couple weeks, where you just have to ask 'what is going on out there?'"-Acacia O'Connor, Kids' Right to Read Project Coordinator, National Coalition Against Censorship, on the rise in banned books including classics such as Rudolfo Anaya's Bless me, Ultima, Isabel Allende's The house of the spirits, Ralph Ellison's Invisible man, Sherman Alexie's The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian, Alice Walker's The color purple, and Toni Morrison's The bluest eye,  USA
794. "My career happened because the booksellers at independent bookstores hand-sold my book"-Sherman Alexie, filmmaker and author, The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian, Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Nations
     
795. "A decade of top-down policies focused on hypertesting students, sanctioning teachers, and closing schools has failed to improve the quality of American public education."-Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, USA
     
796. "Thought experiment: You're the NSA, you have $250 mil to spend on tech industry backdoors. They're $10mil each. What is on your shopping list?" -Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D. security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
797. "The youth of the revolution who call for freedom, democracy and their right to protest ... are today tried unfairly and according to a dictatorial law that reflects this current regime and this current phase— basically turning against the ideals of the revolution"-Amr Ali, Coordinator of the April 6 youth Movement after being sentenced to 3 years in prison on trumped up charges by the military junta, Egypt
798. "US and UK spies infiltrate online fantasy realms, World of Warcraft and Second Life to conduct surveillance"-Sharif Kouddous, independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, The Nation Institute fellow, Egypt
     
799. "If I asked people to live as I live they would kill me."-Jose Mujica, former political prisoner and President, Uruguay
800. "We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means – by being prudent – the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction, but we think as people and countries, not as a species."-Jose Mujica, former political prisoner and President, Uruguay
801. "The ultimate goal of the NSA is, along with its most loyal, one might say, subservient junior partner, the British agency GCHQ, when it comes to the reason why the system of suspicionless surveillance is being built — and the objective of this system is nothing less than the elimination of individual privacy worldwide."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, living in Brazil
802. "The US loves international conventions and international law when it benefits the US government. Rest of the time? Not so much."-Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater; Dirty Wars; and journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now!, and First Look media, USA
803. "I am deeply committed to the long–term effort to build a new and exciting platform for journalism--one that not only provides the innovation and infrastructure journalists need to do their best work, but that brings their reporting and storytelling to the widest possible audience.”-Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, First Look Media, and philanthropist, USA
804. "How about this question: President Obama, why does the US keep drone bombing weddings?"-Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater; Dirty Wars; and journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now!, and First Look Media, USA
805. "In my opinion, however, the view that this Court will take of state prohibition of same-sex marriage is indicated beyond mistaking by today’s opinion. As I have said, the real rationale of today's opinion ... is that DOMA is motivated by 'bare ... desire to harm' couples in same-sex marriages. How easy it is, indeed how inevitable, to reach the same conclusion with regard to state laws denying same-sex couples marital status."-Richard Shelby, J.D., federal district judge striking down Utah's ban on same-gender marriage, USA
806. "As you can tell, I'm visibly shaken. I guess when I went into the hearing this morning with the board of ordained ministry, I was hopeful that it wouldn't come to what it has come to--my defrockment. I am a very positive person, I'm an optimist. You can say I always look at the glass half full. I said to myself, I just can't see them take my credentials. I mean, what I did was an act of love for my son. And they did anyhow."-Rev. Frank Schaefer, former United Methodist church minister who peformed a gay wedding for his son and thereby refused to uphold the church's homophobic teachings, a parishoner complained, and the church kicked him out of ministry, USA
807. "We have to thank a person for bringing us the truth and helping us fight the aggressive American espionage: Edward Snowden. He is public enemy No 1 in the US. He is someone I admire...Edward is running out of time. He is on a temporary visa in Russia, and as a condition of his stay there he cannot talk to the press or help journalists or activists better understand how the US global spying machine works. The term of his visa is running out, and we know what the US wants anyway: to bring him back to North American soil and put him in jail for the rest of his life--or worse. If Snowden was in Brazil, it is possible that he could do more to help the world understand how the NSA and its allies are invading the privacy of people around the world, and how we can protect ourselves."-David Miranda, Brazil, life partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, USA, from an AVAAZ website petition he created urging Edward Snowden be given permanent asylum in Brazil: https://secure.avaaz.org/po/petition/Asilo_ja_para_o_Inimigo_Publico_Numero_1_dos_EUA/
808. "Edward Snowden is a patriot. As a whistleblower of illegal government activity that was sanctioned and kept secret by the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government for years, he undertook great personal risk for the public good. And he has single-handedly reignited a global debate about the extent and nature of government surveillance and our most fundamental rights as individuals. Monday's court ruling declaring the NSA surveillance program unconstitutional highlights the irony of the government’s prosecution of Snowden. For more than 12 years, the ACLU has raised concerns about the massive changes occurring in our democracy: the rubber stamping of expansive surveillance powers by the judiciary, the clandestine nature of programs that invade the rights and lives of millions of Americans with virtually no oversight, and the quiet acquiescence of a public that believed that individuals had nothing to fear if they had done nothing wrong. That was true until Snowden awakened the American people – and others across the globe – from complacent lethargy. For his actions, Snowden should be applauded, not vilified.  He should be granted full immunity from prosecution. And he should be allowed to resume his life in the United States as a proud American citizen."-Anthony Romero, J.D., Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), USA
809. "They say it is done to keep you safe. They're wrong. There is a huge difference between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement — where individuals are targeted based on a reasonable, individualized suspicion — and these programs of dragnet mass surveillance that put entire populations under an all-seeing eye and save copies forever. These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power."-Edward Snowden, in an open letter to the people of Brazil, whistleblower on National "Security" Administration (NSA) Spying, USA, granted temporary asylum in Russia, seeking permanent asylum in Brazil
810. "Six months ago, I revealed that the NSA wanted to listen to the whole world. Now, the whole world is listening back, and speaking out, too. And the NSA doesn't like what it's hearing. The culture of indiscriminate worldwide surveillance, exposed to public debates and real investigations on every continent, is collapsing. Only three weeks ago, Brazil led the United Nations Human Rights Committee to recognize for the first time in history that privacy does not stop where the digital network starts, and that the mass surveillance of innocents is a violation of human rights."-Edward Snowden, in an open letter to the people of Brazil, whistleblower on National "Security" Administration (NSA) Spying, USA, granted temporary asylum in Russia, seeking permanent asylum in Brazil
811. "Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.”-Richard Leon, J.D., federal judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruling that the NSA phone surveillance program is unconstitutional, USA 
812. “Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their privacy interests outweigh the government’s interest in collecting and analysing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA’s bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment.”-Richard Leon, J.D., federal judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruling that the NSA phone surveillance program is unconstitutional, USA
813. "We need to get more good images in the media, so people can see us as regular people, not as predators." -Tiq Milan, trans activist with GLAAD's Trans Education and Media Program, USA
814. "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."-Nelson Mandela (1918-2013); Nobel peace prize winner, political prisoner, human rights/anti-apartheid activist, father of Modern South Africa, father, grandfather, great grandfather, South Africa
815. "In retrospect, the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong. We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked [on 9/11] by our actions in Guantánamo, both in terms of detention and torture. Our decision to keep Guantánamo open has helped our enemies because it validates every negative perception of the United States." -Retired Major General Michael Lehnert, who opened Guantánamo prison in Cuba in 2002 stating it should now be shut in 2013, USA
816. "Education is the most powerful powerful weapon you can use to change the world."-Nelson Mandela (1918-2013); Nobel peace prize winner, political prisoner, human rights/anti-apartheid activist, Father of Modern South Africa, father, grandfather, great grandfather, South Africa
817. "What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead."-Nelson Mandela (1918-2013); Nobel peace prize winner, political prisoner, human rights/anti-apartheid activist, father of modern South Africa, father, grandfather, great grandfather, South Africa
818. "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural."-Nelson Mandela (1918-2013); Nobel peace prize winner, political prisoner, human rights/anti-apartheid activist, father of modern South Africa, father, grandfather, great grandfather, South Africa
819. "What you see from this is that the claim that this is all about national security or terrorism is completely belied by what these agencies are actually doing in secret. And these two documents are very conclusive about the fact that part of what they are doing is spying on energy companies, obviously for economic advantage.  And has nothing to do with national security. If you look at what western countries have said, about China in particular, they’ve said that the Chinese are using their surveillance powers to spy on western companies in order to gain unfair economic advantage for Chinese industry and Chinese companies. And that this undermine (sic) the ability of countries to freely compete with one another, that it’s an abuse of surveillance power, that it breaks international trust in institutions and that it violates international law. And yet here you find the United States and its closest allies in the espionage world, including Sweden, doing exactly that which they have long vehemently accused China of doing and have rigorously condemned over and over.”-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, First Look media, USA, quoted in Sweden-based newspaper Uppdrag granskning, living in Brazil
820. "And the result is an economy that’s become profoundly unequal and families that are more insecure. Just to give you a few statistics: Since 1979, when I graduated from high school, our productivity is up by more than 90 percent, but the income of the typical family has increased by less than 8 percent. Since 1979 our economy has more than doubled in size, but most of the growth has flowed to a fortunate few. The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income; it now takes half. Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today’s CEO now makes 273 times more. And meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family, which is a record for this country. So the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed."-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, 44th President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, parent, USA
821. "Many of the world’s largest corporations and their trade associations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Walmart, Monsanto, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Kraft, Coca Cola, Chevron, Burger King, McDonald’s, Shell, BP, BAE, Sasol, Brown & Williamson, and E.ON have been linked to espionage or planned espionage against nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers."-Gary Ruskin, Director, Center for Corporate Policy at Essential Information, from his report: Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations, USA
822. "As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems."-Pope Francis, Vatican City
     
823. "Under President Obama the US justice department has authorized the seizure of the phone records of journalists; they are tracking the meta-data of journalists; they're prosecuting whistleblowers in record numbers under the Espionage Act; there really is a war against journalism. For everyone who does this kind of work, where you're taking on powerful institutions, the responsible posture to take is to assume they're monitoring your communications. It's a part of doing this work."-Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater; Dirty Wars; and journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now!, USA
824. “(the US is) virtually alone in its willingness to sentence non-violent offenders to die behind bars."-Jennifer Turner, author of ACLU report A Living Death, USA
     
825. “I have a little bit of concern about about traveling to the USA [and the] UK, Australia, and Canada. I haven’t done anything wrong. We know we haven’t done anything. But those in power really, truly believe what we are doing is wrong. Our lives have changed a lot. We are concerned about traveling. But we're not afraid. We’re not sure what would happen. So we’re avoiding traveling right now.”-David Miranda, life partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the stories on NSA and NCHQ mass surveillance and was illegally detained in the UK for nine hours with materials confiscated and now suing the UK government, Brazil
826. "Where are we in making sure behemoth institutions on Wall Street can't bring down the economy again? And make wild gambles that suck up all the profits in the good times? And stick the taxpayer with the bill when it goes wrong? Three years since Dodd-Frank was passed, the biggest banks are bigger than ever, the risks to the system have grown and the market distortions continue."-Elizabeth Warren, J.D., Senator, (D-Massachusetts), attorney, professor, consumer rights activist, parent, USA
827. "Already, in the few days I have spent in Germany, it is heartening to see the people joining together and calling for their government to do what must be done – to investigate NSA spying revelations, and to offer Edward Snowden asylum. The United States should no longer be able to continue spying on every person around the globe, or persecuting those that speak the truth. Snowden is currently safe in Russia, but there are whistleblowers and sources to whom this does not apply. Chelsea Manning has been subject to abusive treatment by the United States government and is currently serving a 35-year sentence for exposing the true nature of war. Jeremy Hammond is facing a decade in a New York jail for allegedly providing journalists with documents that exposed corporate surveillance. I hope I have shown a counter example: with the right assistance whistleblowers can speak the truth and keep their liberty. Aggressive tactics are being used against journalists, publishers and experts who work so courageously to bring truth to the world. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum are all in effective exile. Barrett Brown is indicted for reporting on unethical surveillance practices. My editor Julian Assange has asylum over US threats, but the United Kingdom refuses to allow him to fully exercise this right, violating the law. The UK government also detained David Miranda under the UK Terrorism Act for collaborating with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. The UK Terrorism Act defines terrorism as the action or threat of action "designed to influence" any government "for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause". It prescribes actions that interfere with the functioning of an "electronic system" (i.e. the NSA’s bulk spying program) or which the government alleges create a "risk" to a section of the public. It should be fanciful to suggest that national security journalism which has the purpose of producing honest government or enforcing basic privacy rights should be called "terrorism", but that is how the UK is choosing to interpret this law. Almost every story published on the GCHQ and NSA bulk spying programs falls under the UK government’s interpretation of the word "terrorism". In response, our lawyers have advised me that it is not safe to return home. The job of the press is to speak truth to power. And yet for doing our job we are persecuted. I say that these aggressive and illegal tactics to silence us – inventing arbitrary legal interpretations, over-zealous charges and disproportionate sentences – must not be permitted to succeed. I stand in solidarity with all those intimidated and persecuted for bringing the truth to the public. In these times of secrecy and abuse of power there is only one solution – transparency. If our governments are so compromised that they will not tell us the truth, then we must step forward to grasp it. Provided with the unequivocal proof of primary source documents people can fight back. If our governments will not give this information to us, then we must take it for ourselves. When whistleblowers come forward we need to fight for them, so others will be encouraged. When they are gagged, we must be their voice. When they are hunted, we must be their shield. When they are locked away, we must free them. Giving us the truth is not a crime. This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it. Courage is contagious." -Sarah Harrison, Journalist, Wikileaks, living and working in Germany due to fears she would be illegally detained returning to UK
828. "The only consistency today is that the people who are executed are almost always poor, from a racial minority or mentally deficient. In America today, if you have a good attorney you can avoid the death penalty; if you are white you can avoid it; if your victim was a racial minority you can avoid it. But if you are very poor or mentally deficient, or the victim is white, that’s the way you get sentenced to death. It’s almost inconceivable in these modern days to imagine that a rich white man would be executed if he murdered a black person.”-Jimmy Carter, Former peanut farmer, Naval officer, and President; current Habitat for Humanity home-building volunteer, father and grandfaher, USA
829. "Though the outcome of my efforts has been demonstrably positive, my government continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense. However, speaking the truth is not a crime. I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior. I hope that when the difficulties of this humanitarian situation have been resolved, I will be able to cooperate in the responsible finding of fact regarding reports in the media, particularly in regard to the truth and authenticity of documents, as appropriate and in accordance with the law."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on National "Security" Administration (NSA) spying, in an open letter to German chancellor Angela Merkel on willingness to speak in Germany about NSA spying on her, USA, granted temporary asylum in Russia
     
830. "When parents are respected as partners in the education of their chidren and when they are provided with organizational support that enables them to channel their interest to the benefit of the school, the entire culture of the organization can be transformed. Parents have knowledge of children's lives outside school, which teachers typically do not have, and that knowledge can prove helpful in developing effective pedagogical strategies...more important, the familiarity between school and parent that develops as a result of such partnerships can also begin to generate social closure and transform urban schools from alien and hostile organizations into genuine community assets."-Pedro Noguera, Ph.D., sociologist, professor of education, urban schools researcher, social critic, parent, USA
831. "Third, is there any doubt at all that the US government repeatedly tried to mislead the world when insisting that this system of suspicionless surveillance was motivated by an attempt to protect Americans from the terrorists™? Our reporting has revealed spying on conferences designed to negotiate economic agreements, the Organization of American States, oil companies, ministries that oversee mines and energy resources, the democratically elected leaders of allied states, and entire populations in those states. Can even President Obama and his most devoted loyalists continue to maintain, with a straight face, that this is all about terrorism? That is what this superb new Foreign Affairs essay by Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore  means when it argues that the Manning and Snowden leaks are putting an end to the ability of the US to use hypocrisy as a key weapon in its soft power. Speaking of an inability to maintain claims with a straight face, how are American and British officials, in light of their conduct in all of this, going to maintain the pretense that they are defenders of press freedoms and are in a position to lecture and condemn others for violations? In what might be the most explicit hostility to such freedoms yet – as well as the most unmistakable evidence of rampant panic – the NSA's director, General Keith Alexander, actually demanded Thursday that the reporting being done by newspapers around the world on this secret surveillance system be halted."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Guardian, reporting with filmmaker Laura Poitras on USA's NSA and UK's NCHQ illegal spying on their own and world citizens via surveillance, USA (living in Brazil)
832. "Since Anonymous has gotten involved, everything has changed. #justice4Daisy has trended on the Internet, and pressure has come down hard on the authorities who thought they could hide what really happened. I not only survived, I didn't give up. I've been told that a special prosecutor is going to reopen the case now. This is a victory, not just for me, but for every girl. I just hope more men will take a lesson from my brothers. They look out for women. They don't prey on them."-Daisy Coleman, 14 year old rape survivor fighting back against her attacker and the prosecutors who dropped charges against the alleged popular football player teen who allegely raped her and left her for dead in below-freezing weather, Missouri, USA
833. "The disparity between rich people and poor people in America has increased dramatically since when we started. The middle class has become more like poor people than where they were 30 years ago. So I don't think it's getting any better." -Jimmy Carter, Former peanut farmer, Naval officer, and President; current Habitat for Humanity home-building volunteer, parent and grandparent, USA
834. "It's kind of declaring war on the whole rigamarole of college admissions and the failure to foreground the curriculum and learning."-Leon Botstein, Ph.D., Orchestral Conductor, Professor of Music Theory and History, German Studies, Historical Studies, and Music; President, Bard College, in response to Bard's test-optional college admissions strategy of instead requiring 4 2.500 word research paper essays with Bard supplied topics and electronic research access to create equity in admissions, USA
835. "It’s a dangerous time for whistleblowers in the United States, but the effect, the Snowden effect, has been the opposite. We have more and more whistleblowers coming to the Government Accountability Project than we have had before. So I think if the U.S. is trying to clamp down and send a message by making an example, courage is contagious, and I really think he has had a wonderful effect for the U.S. and for the world."-Jesselyn Radack, J.D., Attorney, Government Accountability Project, on the announcement of a whistleblowing award given by GAP in Russia to Edward Snowden, USA, living in temporary asylum, Russia
     
836. "In many parts of the world especially Pakistan and Afghanistan; terrorism, wars and conflicts stop children to go to their schools. We are really tired of these wars. Women and children are suffering in many parts of the world in many ways. In India, innocent and poor children are victims of child labour. Many schools have been destroyed in Nigeria. People in Afghanistan have been affected by the hurdles of extremism for decades. Young girls have to do domestic child labour and are forced to get married at early age. Poverty, ignorance, injustice, racism and the deprivation of basic rights are the main problems faced by both men and women. Dear fellows, today I am focusing on women's rights and girls' education because they are suffering the most. There was a time when women social activists asked men to stand up for their rights. But, this time, we will do it by ourselves. I am not telling men to step away from speaking for women's rights rather I am focusing on women to be independent to fight for themselves.Dear sisters and brothers, now it's time to speak up. So today, we call upon the world leaders to change their strategic policies in favour of peace and prosperity. We call upon the world leaders that all the peace deals must protect women and children's rights. A deal that goes against the dignity of women and their rights is unacceptable. We call upon all governments to ensure free compulsory education for every child all over the world. We call upon all governments to fight against terrorism and violence, to protect children from brutality and harm. We call upon the developed nations to support the expansion of educational opportunities for girls in the developing world. We call upon all communities to be tolerant – to reject prejudice based on cast, creed, sect, religion or gender. To ensure freedom and equality for women so that they can flourish. We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back. We call upon our sisters around the world to be brave – to embrace the strength within themselves and realise their full potential. Dear brothers and sisters, we want schools and education for every child's bright future. We will continue our journey to our destination of peace and education for everyone. No one can stop us. We will speak for our rights and we will bring change through our voice. We must believe in the power and the strength of our words. Our words can change the world....So let us wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism and let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education First."-Malala Yousafzai, adolescent activist for peace and the education of Pakistan girls and women after being shot by the Taliban for her activism in Pakistan, from her speech to the United Nations, living in the UK
     
837. "The general revelation that the objective of the NSA is literally the elimination of global privacy: Ensuring that every form of human electronic communication--not just those of 'the terrorists'--is collected, stored, analyzed, and monitored. The NSA has so radically misled everyone for so long about its true purpose that revealing its actual institutional function was shocking to many, many people, and is the key context for understanding these other specific revelations."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Guardian, USA, reporting with filmmaker Laura Poitras on NSA and NCHQ illegal spying on USA, UK, and world citizens via surveillance in response to a question about Edward Snowden's revelation, living in Brazil
838. “Drug companies take marketing advantage of the loose DSM definitions by promoting the misleading idea that everyday life problems are actually undiagnosed psychiatric illness caused by a chemical imbalance and requiring a solution in pill form. This results in misallocation of resources, with excessive diagnosis and treatment for essentially healthy persons (who may be harmed by it) and relative neglect of those with clear psychiatric illness (whose access to care has been sharply reduced by slashed state mental health budgets.)...We’re treating childhood like a disease...We’re medicalizing what’s basically for many kids a problem in the school. School budgets have cut out physical education in many parts of the country....Parents need to protect their kids from quick and careless diagnosis. A diagnosis of ADD should take place over weeks or months. Very often other interventions rather than medicine will better serve the child."-Allen Frances, M.D., psychiatrist, professor emeritus, and chair of the DSM-IV task force criticizing DSM-V for high false-positives and unnecessary treatment including the overmedication of people, particularly children, by primary care M.D.s without appropriate training in children's mental health, USA
839. "Everyone is talking about the effect of Qatar's extreme heat on a few hundred footballers. But they are ignoring the hardships, blood and sweat of thousands of migrant workers, who will be building the World Cup stadiums in shifts that can last eight times the length of a football match."-Umesh Upadhyaya, general secretary of the General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions, on the human slavery Nepalese nationals are facing at the hands of Qatar corporations building stadiums and infrastructure for the World Cup, Nepal
     
840. "Look, pension funds are sort of the last great big unguarded piles of money in this country and there are going to be all sorts of operators who trying to get their hands on that money. During the crisis era, it was Wall Street banks who were essentially looting these funds by selling them toxic, fraudulent mortgage backed securities. In Detroit, it was the workers themselves who were taking the money. They’re giving themselves what they called 13th checks, taking advances of their own money. But across the country the more typical narrative is not some worker who is making $19,000 who is really making out in this kind of corruption. It is the hedge fund who is making $50 and $60 million in fees managing state funds"-Matt Taibbi, contributing editor, Rolling Stone, USA
841. "The NSA leadership built an intelligence data collection system that repeatedly deceived the American people. Time and time again the American people were told one thing in a public forum, while intelligence agencies did something else in private."-Ron Wyden, J. D., (D-OR), Senator, parent, on confronting the lies of NSA chief James Clapper about illegal cell phone, internent, and other electronic surveillance of all US citizens, USA
842. "Tampering in such a manner in the affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and is an affront of the principles that must guide the relations among them, especially among friendly nations. A sovereign nation can never establish itself to the detriment of another sovereign nation. The right to safety of citizens of one country can never be guaranteed by violating fundamental human rights of citizens of another country."-Dilma Rouseff, torture survivor, political prisoner, and President of Brazil at UN speech denouncing USA's NSA spying on Brazil disclosed through Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing, Brazil
843. "It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences." -Audre Lorde (1934-1992),  Afra-Caribbean lesbian poet, anti-oppression activist, parent, USA 
     
844. “When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet.”-Eve Ensler, survivor, activist, playwright, performer, V-day co-founder, author, The vagina monologues and I am an emtional creature: The secret lives of girls around the world, USA
845. "Whenever you hear a politican carry on about what a mess the schools are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit."-Molly Ivins (1944-2007), columnist, humorist, commentator, author, USA
846. "We don't want nuclear weapons, not because of pressure from the U.S. or others but because of our belief that no one should have nuclear weapons. When we say no one should have nuclear weapons that means not for them and not for us either."-Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader, Iran
847. "Since the recovery, almost all of the gains have gone to the very, very top. People who are in the top 1 percent are doing even better than they did before the Great Recession, better than they have done since 1928...Most Americans are on a downward escalator. Median wage in the United States, adjusted for inflation, keeps on dropping,” Robert Reich, J.D., former USA Labor Secretary, chair of Common Cause, professor of public policy, featured in the film Inequality for All, USA
848. "I think my generation, and those who followed, have changed the understanding of what school is and what it does in society. That is, I believe we have substantially changed the conversation. I don't think mainstream scholars, politicians or reformers could argue with legitimacy today that education has nothing to do with the political-economic contexts of schools and neighborhoods. And it would be difficult to assert convincingly that race, social class and gender do not impact learning in significant ways. School, it is now widely understood, is an institution that is not socially neutral, but tends to be strongly supportive of the system and its mainstream ideas--and thus, those who profit most from these."-Jean Anyon, Ph.D., (1943-2013) author, professor of Social and Education Policy, social critic, parent, USA
     
849. "Your silence will not protect you."-Audre Lorde (1934-1992), Afra-Caribbean lesbian poet, anti-oppression activist, parent, USA 
     
850. "One trope of the White progressive pushback has been that there was no crisis in education until the most recent wave of corporate school reform. That argument won’t cut it with parents and community who couldn’t find a local school they trusted, whose kids were told by counselors that they weren’t college material.  While teachers cannot be held responsible for the structural inequality in schools, well-documented by a generation of sociologists and anthropologists, we must start our critique by acknowledging that many public schools did not serve poor kids of color well. Inequality has been exploited by powerful elites who aim to marketize public education, eliminate democratic oversight, turn teaching into contract labor, and destroy teachers unions (perhaps allowing them to remain as dues-collectors but without any clout.) To defeat them we must be forthright that there was no “golden age” to which we can return. Unequal schools are imbedded in an unequal society, and we have to face that uncomfortable (for liberals) reality."-Lois Weiner, Ph.D., professor of teacher education and co-author, The global assault on teaching, teachers, and their unions, USA
     
851. “But if in the process they degrade the security of the encryption we all use, it’s a net national disservice.”-Rush Holt, Ph.D., research scientist, professor of physics and public policy, congressional representative (D-NJ), sponsor of Surveillance State Repeal Act legislation to stop the NSA from security encryption degredation and other overreaches by curtailing Patriot Act spying, parent, USA
852. "Use the NSA's massive spying apparatus to read your ex's emails? Slap on the wrist. Blow the whistle on illegal surveillance? Prosecution." -Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D. security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
853. "Why should everyday people spend our time looking worshipfully at the sites of power we have no access to: the White House, the Pentagon, Wall Street, and Congress? We spend too little time looking at the power we do have access to: the community, the classroom, the streets, the farm, and the workplace—and that’s where we ought to spend our energy. Voting for someone in the two great war-making, capitalist parties? Why would they do what you think they ought to do?"-Bill Ayres, Ph.D., teacher, education professor emeritus, anti-war activist, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
854. "The American empire has not changed. American militarism has not changed. We spend $1 trillion a year in this country on war. It’s disgusting. That the U.S. considers itself, in the words of Madeleine Albright, the “indispensable nation”—that kind of arrogance leads straight down the path to hell."-Bill Ayres, Ph.D., teacher, education professor emeritus, anti-war activist, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
855. "But certain polls that have been released since we began our reporting show some very radical changes in how Americans think about threats to their privacy. They now fear government assault on their civil liberties more than they fear the threat of terrorism, something that has never happened, at least since the 9/11 attacks."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Guardian, USA, reporting with filmmaker Laura Poitras on NSA and NCHQ illegal spying on their own and world citizens through illegal surveillance, social critic living in Brazil
856. "Democracy should be a brake on unbridled greed and power."-Bill Moyers, author, journalist, PeaceCorps founding organizer, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
857. "Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair ... rather than winning the hearts and minds of Yemeni civilians, America is alienating them by killing their relatives and friends."-Ibrahim Mothana (1989-2013), youth anti-drone activist, Yemen
858. "Tally from constituents calling my office, emailing, and writing about #Syria: 1135 opposed to U.S. action, 18 for."-Peter DeFazio, congressional representative (D-OR), USA
859. "Even as the NSA demands more powers to invade our privacy in the name of cybersecurity, it is making the internet less secure and exposing us to criminal hacking, foreign espionage, and unlawful surveillance. The NSA's efforts to secretly defeat encryption are recklessly shortsighted and will further erode not only the United States' reputation as a global champion of civil liberties and privacy but the economic competitiveness of its largest companies." -Christopher Soghoian, Ph.D., security and privacy researcher; principal technologist and senior policy analyst, American Civil Liberties Union, USA
860. "I don't know a member of Congress whose e-mails and phone calls are in favor of this (US war with Syria)"-Brad Sherman, J.D., congressional representative (D-CA), father, USA
861. "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." -Leonard Matlovich, epitaph of gay and dishonorably discharged solider prior to military allowing openly LBGT troops to serve, USA
862. "Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake. War begets war, violence begets violence.” -Pope Francis challenging the USA government's rush toward Syrian war, Vatican City
     
863. "(the Barrett Brown case) could criminalize the routine journalistic practice of linking to documents publicly available on the internet, which would seem to be protected by the first amendment to the US constitution under current doctrine."-Geoffrey King, Internet Advocacy Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, responding to the court order imposing a gag on the journalist/activist who was arrested on charges related to his reporting about illegal government surveillance by private military contractors using linking, USA
864. "We want Articles 3 and 73 to be repealed. The current government, the PRI government, has wrongly called this education reform, but really it is labor reform. Why? Why? Because it goes after our rights as workers. Educational reform would be structural and related to the curriculum and directly related to the students. This wrongly called labor reform is changing constitutional articles and putting into risk all of the labor rights that the national union and the national coordinator has gained with 30 years of struggle."-Alfonso Arellano, Oaxaca teacher, union organizer, at two-week Mexico City sit-in by teachers protesting corporate "reforms" to lessen teacher rights, inadequate rural school funding, and policies disrespecting indigenous cultures, Mexico
865. "They shoot people in the head, but that's ok because they let us shoot people in the head, too. And that's how it works in the Middle East for the U.S."-Jeremy Scahill, author and journalist, The Nation, Democracy Now! correspondent, USA
866. "When you go from large families with a short life span, like in these countries, to small families with a large life span, that's how you get democracy. We'd be acutally better off dropping condoms than bombs."-Bill Maher, talk show host, comedian, satirist, actor, social critic, USA
867. "I have three messages: One is we should never ever give up, two is you are never too old to chase your dreams, and three is it looks like a solitary sport but it takes a team."-Diana Nyad, sexual abuse survivor and distance swimmer, upon completing her longest swim between Havana, Cuba and Key West, FL, USA
868. "We must consider the impact of any punitive measure on efforts to prevent further bloodshed and facilitate a political resolution of the conflict. The turmoil in Syria and across the region serves nobody. The use of force is lawful only when in exercise of self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Chater and/or when the United Nations Security Council approves such action." -Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General on the threat of a USA-led Syria strike, parent, grandparent, Korea
869. "As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-disgnated policeman of the world." -Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor emeritus, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
870. "In particular, there are evidently a lot of wealthy people in America who consider anyone who isn’t wealthy a loser — an attitude that has clearly gotten stronger as the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else has widened. And such people have a lot of friends in Washington."-Paul Krugman, Ph.D., professor, author, economist, social critic, Nobel Prize winner, USA
871. "...very pleased my book is being published in English, so it can be read in London and New York where drugs are being sold and taken on every corner, and people can know where every gram of cocaine comes from – corruption and death. I want it published in Britain and America, where the profits are laundered. In your country, where HSBC took Chapo Guzman's money to 'look after it,' and then said said they didn't know where it came from. I have studied the laundering networks in depth, and I cannot believe them....the violence and the cartels are not the disease. They're a symptom of the disease, which is corruption. The cartels cannot operate without the support of officials, bureaucrats, politicians and police officers – and bankers to launder their money. These people let the narcos do what they do and they are the issue, this is the cancer. I met these people, the narcos. They have no scruples, they're cruel – but in the end, they're just businessmen, all they can see is money. Life, they cannot see."-Anabel Hernandez, journalist and author, Narcoland: The Mexican druglords and their godfathers, Mexico
872. "Well, I’ve been now investigating for years, really, the spread of charter schools across New York City and the nation, and in particular I’ve been focusing on the fastest-growing chain here in New York City, the Success Academies charter network, which now has about 20 schools and is planning to expand to a hundred schools after receiving this week a $5 million grant from the Eli Broad Foundation. And one of the things that I’ve been uncovering is the enormous suspension rates of the charter schools, as more than two dozen parents have come to me complaining about their children, who are special needs, special education children, or children with behavior problems, that they feel are being pushed out or forced out by the charter school in an effort to improve its test scores, because the charter school, Success Academy, has one of the highest test scores of schools in the City of New York, and that’s part of its selling points to continue to seek corporate foundation funding and to attempt to grow the charter model....the problem is that so many of the charter schools are not subject to monitoring or auditing on a—at the same level as public schools are, so it’s hard, really, to get a lot of the facts."-Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now! co-host and New York Daily News columnist, USA

873. "We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable."-Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) gay, civil rights, and anti-violence organizer including 1963 March on Washington, USA

874. "Well, as we heard from Montreal, the attack on public education is taking place all over the world. In Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, like many states around the country, has suffered from major cuts to education. Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican governor, in the current fiscal year cut a billion dollars to public education throughout the commonwealth. In Philadelphia, the state-controlled School Reform Commission has taken advantage of that fiscal crisis, created by the very same state government, to propose the—one of the most radical efforts to privatize and dismantle a public school system. It would close 64 schools through 2017, potentially privatize all blue-collar work in the district, and would see charter school growth grow to educating 40 percent of district students."-Daniel Denvir, Reporter, Philadelphia City Paper and Salon.com, USA

875. "Well, the problem is that the whole idea of the business model doesn’t work in education. In the business model, you can select how you want to do something. You have an opportunity to innovate in a way that discriminates. It’s very easy to do. Whereas in a public school system, where we do not select our children — we take whoever comes to the door — what we need is actually more resources and more support for the people that are there and the work that’s being done. However, again, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein — I don’t know about Joel Klein — none of these people are superintendents. You have to have, again, credentials for that. These are business folks. Look, the business model took this country to the brink of Armageddon in 2008. And yet, we want to follow a failed business model and imprint that on top of public education? No. And these things are not innovative. What they are is they’re terrorism. They’re 'my way or the highway.' And they’re still not producing, quote-unquote, "results." Nobody disagrees with accountability. That’s not the issue. The issue is, what do you use? We still know that high-stakes testing basically tell us more about a student’s socioeconomic status than it does anything else. And until we’re honest about that and want to deal with the fact that we have neighborhoods in our cities and across the nation that have been under-resourced, have been devalued for decades, and for some reason or other, the schools are supposed to fix all that and change that."-Karen Lewis, teacher and president, Chicago Teachers Union, USA
876. "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." -Albert Einstein, professor, physicist, developer of general theory of relativity, parent, grandparent, USA
877. "No standardized tests, no written homework, no tracking. These are some of the new actions China is taking to lessen student academic burden. The Chinese Ministry of Education released Ten Regulations to Lessen Academic Burden for Primary School Students this week for public commentary. The Ten Regulations are introduced as one more significant measure to reform China’s education, in addition to further reduction of academic content, lowering the academic rigor of textbooks, expanding criteria for education quality, and improving teacher capacity. The regulations included in the published draft are: Transparent admissions. Admission to a school cannot take into account any achievement certificates or examination results. Schools must admit all students based on their residency without considering any other factors. Balanced Grouping. Schools must place students into classes and assign teachers randomly. Schools are strictly forbidden to use any excuse to establish “fast-track” and “slow-track” classes. “Zero-starting point” Teaching. All teaching should assume all first graders students begin at zero proficiency. Schools should not artificially impose higher academic expectations and expedite the pace of teaching. No Homework. No written homework is allowed in primary schools. Schools can however assign appropriate experiential homework by working with parents and community resources to arrange field trips, library visits, and craft activities. Reducing Testing. No standardized testing is allowed for grades 1 through 3; For 4th grade and up, standardized testing is only allowed once per semester for Chinese language, math, and foreign language. Other types of tests cannot be given more than twice per semester. Categorical Evaluation. Schools can only assess students using the categories of “Exceptional, Excellent, Adequate, and Inadequate,” replacing the traditional 100-point system. Minimizing Supplemental Materials. Schools can use at most one type of materials to supplement the textbook, with parental consent. Schools and teachers are forbidden to recommend, suggest, or promote any supplemental materials to students. Strictly Forbidding Extra Class. Schools and teachers cannot organize or offer extra instruction after regular schools hours, during winter and summer breaks and other holidays. Public schools and their teachers cannot organize or participate in extra instructional activities. Minimum of One Hour of Physical Exercise. Schools are to guarantee the offering of physical education classes in accordance with the national curriculum, physical activities and eye exercise during recess. Strengthening Enforcement. Education authorities at all levels of government shall conduct regular inspection and monitoring of actions to lessen student academic burden and publish findings. Individuals responsible for academic burden reduction are held accountable by the government."-Yong Zhao, Ph.D., professor of international education, entrepreneur, and social critic, USA
878. “Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.”-Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., professor of education, former US Secretary of Education, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
879. "I would say it was not a raid, but rather a pogrom, because the whole flat has been dug up." -Nikolai Alexeyev, LBGT rights activist, after Russian police illegally raided his home as part of an increasing legal crackdown on LBGT persons and rights and educating minors about LBGT issues, Russia
880. "Most of the individuals who work in fast-food restaurants, which is one of the growing--fastest-growing industries in the city of New York, it's a race to the bottom. A significant number of them in retail and in the fast-food restaurants are women of color who look like me. And so, there is a feminization of poverty. It's a term which describes most women who live below the poverty level who are struggling to make ends meet."-Letitia "Tish" James, J.D., attorney, former NYC City Council member, NYC Public Advocate, first African American woman elected to citywide office in NYC, USA
881. "The rungs on the ladder of opportunity are feeling further and further apart."-Thomas Perez, J.D., civil rights attorney, consumer advocate, Secretary of Labor, on the organizing by fast-food workers and retail workers for a living wage, parent, USA
882. "Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction,"-Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now! co-host and New York Daily News columnist, USA
883. "Brother Martin (Luther King Jr.) would not be invited to the very march in his name, because he would talk about drones. He’d talk about Wall Street criminality. He would talk about working class being pushed to the margins as profits went up for corporate executives in their compensation. He would talk about the legacies of white supremacy. Do you think anybody at that march will talk about drones and the drone president? Will you think anybody at that march will talk about the connection to Wall Street? They are all on the plantation."-Cornel West, Ph.D., professor, author, minister, social critic, USA
     
884. "For over a decade, working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate, even as corporate profits soar, even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes. Inequality has steadily risen over the decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities across this country, in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and perennial violence."-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, 44th President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, parent, USA
885. "We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability. In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror. Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission. Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light. As the late Howard Zinn once said, 'There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.'"-Chelsea Manning, whistleblower, soldier, political prisoner, USA
886. "Contrary to some foreign governments' current policies of arming the rebels and pushing for military intervention, the people of Syria are calling out for peace and reconciliation and a political solution to the crisis, which continues to be inflamed by outside forces with thousands of foreign fighters funded and supported by outside countries for their own political ends."-Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize winner, peace activist, co-founder, Community of Peace People, Northern Ireland 
     
887. "As a doctor, as well as a mother and a world citizen, I wish to practice the ultimate form of preventive medicine by ridding the earth of these technologies that propagate disease, suffering, and death."-Helen Caldicott, M.D., Co-founder, Physicians for Social Responsibility & Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, parent, Australia 
     
888. "The most important thing for all of us...is to get organized. I often tell people I don't care whether they join the NAACP or some other group, but you better join something, because the reality is in a democracy there are only two types of power, there's organized people and organized money and organized money only wins when people aren't organized."-Benjamin Jealous, President, NAACP, on gathering over 1 million signatures delivered to the Justice Department asking civil charges be filed against George Zimmerman, parent, USA
889. "I gave a little blood on that bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the right to vote. I am not going to stand by and let the Supreme Court take the right to vote away from us. You cannot stand by. You cannot sit down. You've got to stand up. Speak up, speak out and get in the way."-John Lewis (D-GA), congressperson, the surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington at 50th anniversary march challenging the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act, parent, USA
890. "My message to you is please use my story, please use my tragedy, please use my broken heart to say to yourself we cannot let this happen to anybody else's child,"-Sybrina Fulton, mother of murdered teen Trayvon Martin, asking for an end to Stand Your Ground gun laws, USA

891. "This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process. To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere. But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Guardian, USA, on the day UK authorities illegally held his partner, David Miranda, for nine hours questioning and confiscated all his electronics on suspicion of terrorism, living in Brazil

892. "We all depend upon the very finite, increasingly finite, fresh, uncontaminated water resources. We depend upon uncontaminated and non-toxic soil. We depend upon an atmosphere and air that is not polluted. And we depend upon a somewhat stable climate. And fracking is anathema to all of those things."-Daryl Hannah, actress, environmental rights activist, USA
893. "Sometimes we just killed people because they were in the wrong place. And no one asks questions. And no one investigated to see did we do something wrong. And when we did do something wrong, we didn’t come forward with that information. We didn’t readily admit the mistake, say we’re sorry, and show how we’re going to prevent this from happening again in the future. We owe that to American public. We owe that to the publics that we go to protect and to help them build a good country. And yet we didn’t do that."-David Coombs, J.D., Chelsea Manning's attorney interviewed on why she released the documents to Wikileaks after the trial, USA
894. "Second point is no one here could predict or know that Israel was involved or started producing the hydrogen bomb - the most advanced and powerful atomic bomb that can kill millions of people."-Mordechai Vanunu, former nuclear technician, whistleblower who alerted the world to Israel's nuclear weapons, political prisoner, kidnapee, Israel
895. "The dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal—the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008....Throw off the mystery and what you’ll uncover is a shameful and oppressive outrage that for years now has been systematically perpetrated against a generation of young adults."-Matt Taibbi, journalist and editor, Rolling Stone, USA
896. "Student-loan debt collectors have power that would make a mobster envious"-Elizabeth Warren, J.D., Senator, (D-Massachusetts), attorney, professor, consumer rights activist, parent, USA
897. "Bradley (Chelsea) Manning acted on the belief that he could spark a meaningful public debate on the costs of war, and specifically on the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. His (her) revelations included reports on battlefield detentions and previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks, information which should always have been subject to public scrutiny. Instead of fighting tooth and nail to lock him (her) up for the equivalent of several life sentences, the US government should turn its attention to investigating and delivering justice for the serious human rights abuses committed by its officials in the name of countering terror."-Widney Brown, Senior Director, Amnesty International, USA
898. "But if these attacks on teachers aren’t about ending the systemic racism that continues to undermine our education system, what is the goal?  With forces as seemingly disparate as the Obama administration, the Walton Foundation, the late Milton Friedman, and the New York Times all pushing the same ideas, this is a complicated question, but there are at least two major goals: destroy the power of the teachers’ unions, and turn the public school system from a public trust into a new market for corporate development. From the time of Reagan, who used his “welfare queen” stories to scapegoat the poor as a basis on which to destroy the welfare system, this has been a tried-and-true approach to privatization: use visceral anecdotes to whip up hysteria that a system is “broken,” argue that only market competition can fix the situation, and then sell off pieces of the public sector to private corporations. This time, teachers are the scapegoats."-Rethinking Schools editorial, USA
899. "Independent media can go where the silence is and break the sound barrier, doing what the corporate networks refuse to do."-Amy Goodman, independent journalist, co-founder, Democracy Now!, & Right Livelihood Laureate, USA
900. "'Despair is betrayal' is our saying during tough times in the revolution. I am trying not to feel like a traitor, but it is very difficult"-Sharif Abdel Kouddous, independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, Nation Institute fellow, Egypt
901. "No one should live in fear of being stopped whenvever he (or she) leaves his (or her) home to go about the activities of daily life."-Shira A. Scheindlin, J. D., Federal District of New York Court Judge, ruling NYPD's stop-and-frisk violates The Constitution, USA
902. "I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity." -Edward Snowden, whistleblower on National "Security" Administration (NSA) Spying, USA, granted temporary asylum in Russia
903. "DOMA was the last law on the books that mandated discrimination against gay people by the federal government simply because they are gay. The days of 'skim milk' or second-class marriages for gay people are now over."-Edith (Edie) Windsor, lesbian widow and victorious plaintiff against the USA in Supreme Court decision overturning DOMA and ensuring federal same-gender marriage rights, USA
904. "We’re concerned about the Earth, seven generations hence, and the conduct of people. And so, we wonder, how do you instruct seven billion people as to the relationship to the Earth? Because unless they understand that and relate the way they should be, future is pretty dim for the human species."-Oren Lyons,  faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation; co-founder, United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples,  speaking on World Indigelous People's Day and the 400th anniversary of indigenous-European contact on Turtle Island, Onondaga Nation
905. "Is an unlimited, no-questions-asked police state America’s current trajectory? Is Big Brother now the new norm? Given Washington’s current standards, what are the limits, exactly, of how far the federal government can intrude into the private lives of American citizens? The simple answer is found in our Constitution. But as with the NSA scandal, we now see a political establishment that treats the document most of them swore to uphold as a dead letter."-Rand Paul, Senator (R-KY), parent, USA
906. "What you have here is the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) tapping into the vast NSA spying program and using it to launch criminal cases on Americans. Not in national security cases, but other cases."-Ezekiel Edwards, J.D., Director, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project, USA
907. "I have been looking for leaders but I realized leadership is about being the first to act."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on National "Security" Administration (NSA) Spying, USA, granted temporary asylum in Russia 
908. "Attempts to single out particular texts for suppression from a school or university curriculum have no place in a democratic society."-American Historical Association response deploring Purdue University President and former Republican Indiana governor Mitch Daniels' attempt to censor Dr. Howard Zinn's A people's history of the United States from use in any Indiana K-12 or college classroom, USA
     
909. "Here we are in the midst of one of the most intense debates and sustained debates that we’ve had in a very long time in this country over the dangers of excess surveillance, and suddenly, an administration that has spent two years claiming that it has decimated al-Qaeda decides that there is this massive threat that involves the closing of embassies and consulates around the world. … The controversy is over the fact that they are sweeping up billions and billions of emails and telephone calls every single day from people around the world and in the United States who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.”-Glenn Greenwald, J.D., attorney and journalist, The Guardian, USA, living in Brazil
910. "Over the past eight weeks we have seen the Obama administration show no respect for international or domestic law, but in the end the law is winning."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on National "Security" Administration (NSA) Spying, USA, granted temporary asylum in Russia
     
911. "...I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."-Edward Snowden, whistleblower on National "Security" Administration (NSA) spying, USA, granted temporary asylum in Russia
     
912. "His (Edward Snowden's) disclosures have changed the course of human history."-Thomas Massie, (R-Kentucky), Member, House  of Representatives, engineer, parent, USA
913. "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."-Ang San Suu Kyi, author, academic, member of Burma parliament, leader of democracy movement; political prisoner; Nobel Peace Prize Winner, parent, Burma
     
914. "The media, itself an arm of mega-corporate power, feeds  the fear industry, so that people are primed like pumps to support wars on rumor, innuendo, legends, and lies."-Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist and political prisoner, USA
915. "I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the debate—that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment every day." -Chelsea Manning, whistleblower on USA military war crimes and abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, political prisoner, USA
916. "You can't be neutral on a moving train."-Howard Zinn, Ph.D. (1922-2010), Human rights activist, professor emeritus, & author, A people's history of the United States, parent, grandparent, USA
917. "Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live in.”-Harry Belafonte, Jamaican-American singer, human rights activist, & social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
918. "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."-Arundhati Roy, author & human rights activist, India
919.  "It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees."-Wangari Maathai, Ph.D., (1940-2011), founder, Greenbelt Movement; professor; member of Kenyan Parliament; Right Livelihood Laureate & Nobel Peace Prize winner, parent, Kenya
920.  "I really do think that if for one week in the U.S. we saw the true face of war, we saw people's limbs sheared off, we saw kids blown apart, for one week, war would be eradicated. Instead, what we see in the U.S. media is the video war game. Our mission is to make dissent commonplace in America."-Amy Goodman, independent journalist, co-founder, Democracy Now! & Right Livelihood Laureate, USA
921. "Hope will never be silent."-Harvey Milk (1930-1978), human rights activist; first out gay elected politician, USA
922. "It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abuses." -Julian Assange, journalist & founder, Wikileaks, parent, (currently living in the Ecuadorian embassy in England due to fears he would be illegally extradited to the USA via UK and/or Sweden governments), Australia
     
923. "China in many ways is just like the middle ages. China's control over people's minds and the flow of information is just like the time before the Enlightenment. Writers, artists, and commentators on websites are detained or thrown into jail when they reflect on democracy, opening up, reform, and reason. This is the reality of China."-Ai WeiWei, artist, dissident, political prisoner, parent, China
924. “The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself."-Noam Chomsky, Ph.D., linguist, professor emeritus, author, social critic, parent, grandparent, USA
925. "We should be inspired by people....who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong-even in the most difficult circumstances."-Rachel Corrie  (1979-2003), peace activist & International Solidarity Member crushed to death by Israeli Defense Forces, USA
926. "The solution is inclusion of all Haitians as human beings...Today may the Haitian people mark the end of exile and coups d'etat while peacefully moving from social exclusion to inclusion."-Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Ph.D., Catholic priest and first democratically elected President; twice deposed; kidnapped by USA government; banished to South Africa; returned 3/18/11, Haiti
927. "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."-Audre Lorde (1934-1992),  Afra-Caribbean lesbian poet, anti-oppression activist, parent, USA
928. "As the years progress, what women and men will discover is that the most lasting and rewarding educational experiences come not from specific information provided in classroom lectures or assigned textbooks, but from the values obtained in active engagement in meaningful issues. We achieve for ourselves only as we appreciate the problems and concerns of others—and only as we see our own lives as part of a much greater social purpose."-Manning Marable, Ph.D., (1950-2011) professor of public affairs, history and African-American studies, activist, Pulitzer Prize winner, parent, USA
929. "Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, and the mother of truth."-Liu Xiao-Bo, Ph.D.,  professor, literary crictic, human rights & democracy activist; political prisoner; Nobel Peace Prize winner, China
930. "This idea of government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations has actually taken hold...Unions are one of the last lines of defense against a corporate plutocracy."-Rep. Dennis Kucinich, social critic and former U.S. House member (D-OH), political commentator, parent, USA
931. "Most civilizations of the world, for most of human history, have seen the world in terms of relatedness and connection, and if there’s one thing the rights of Mother Earth is waking us to (it) is: we are all connected."-Vandana Shiva, Ph.D.  environmentalist, social critic, anti-globalization activist, India
932. "You vote for Democrat, you vote for Republican, you get the same thing on state murder, on preventable death. But we here have the right to rebel. We have to use it.''-Alan Nairn, journalist & human rights activist who survived assault and imprisonment by Indonesian military, USA
933. "Trabajemos juntos para crear un mundo donde se respeten los derechos básicos de todos los individuos y en donde los niños puedan  vivir en un ambiente seguro. ¿Los niños son nuestro futuro? No, son nuestro presente. La trata humana no tiene lugar, ni espacio en este mundo."-Enrique Martin Morales, a.k.a., Ricky Martin, gay singer, human rights activist, parent, Puerto Rico
934. "People say that crude oil is an easy and cheap form of energy. But it's not the truth. Crude oil may be cheap but because people are not paying the price. If you see what is going on in the oil fields: The pollution, the degradation, the human rights abuses, the murders and the killings - I would like you to tell me how much one drop of oil should cost." -Nnimmo Bassey,  Director, Environmental Rights Action; Chair, Friends of the Earth International; Right Livelihood Laureate, Nigeria 
935. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."-Martin Luther King, Jr. (1927-1968), civil and human rights activist, minister, parent, USA
936. "Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions.  One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts."-Molly Ivins (1944-2007), columnist, humorist, commentator, author, USA
937. "Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation." -Eugene Debs (1855-1926), labor organizer, anti-war activist, socialist, political prisoner, USA
938. "The American people have realized that the American dream has been assassinated and the murderer is still on the loose."-Patrick Bruner, spokesperson, Occupy Wall Street, USA
939. "The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate."-Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), feminist lesbian Jewish poet and social critic, USA
940. "Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours."-Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), Mexican-American union activist & United Farm Workers founder, parent, grandparent, USA
941. "We, collectively, find that we are often in the role of the prey, to a predator of society, whether for sexual discrimination, exploitation, sterilization, absence of control over our bodies, or being the subjects of repressive laws and legislation in which we have no voice. This occurs on an individual level, but equally, and more significantly on a societal level. It is also critical to point out at this time, that most matrilineal societies, societies in which governance and decision making are largely controlled by women, have been obliterated from the face of the Earth by colonialism, and subsequently industrialism. The only matrilineal societies which exist in the world are those of Indigenous nations. We are the remaining matrilineal societies, yet we also face obliteration." -Winona LaDuke, environmentalist, political activist, high school principal, author, co-founder, Indigenous Women's Network, Honor the Earth Executive Director, parent, grandparent, Anishinaabekwe Nation
     
942. "Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years; The Tempest; Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Occupied America: A History of Chicanos; Chicano! A History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement," -List of books banned by Arizona's State Superintendent of Instruction in the Tuscon City Schools Ethnic Studies program along with any mention of the terms, "ethnicity, race, or oppression," USA
     
943. "They still don't want to admit to the world that this isn't the best and the fairest and the most equal justice system. And they are guilty of railroading people into jail. They don't want to, or never will, admit these things."-Leonard Peltier, activist, American Indian Movement member, political prisoner, Ojibwe/Lakota Nation
     
944. "...in the last six years, globally, more children have died of malnutrition and easily preventable illnesses than the number of adults who were killed in the six years of the Second World War. Every three seconds another child dies from malnutrition and preventable diseases. In that three seconds, globally, 120,000 dollars are spent on arms and a militarization that specifically targets civilian populations asserting their rights to equity, and protesting against inequity....inequity is a major feature of the global political architecture....inequity is not a default option, and keeping inequity in place requires diligent and sustained international effort, supplemented where necessary by military intervention. The state of Chhattisgarh from where I come presents a glaring example of this."-Dr. Binayak Sen, medical doctor; anti-famine and anti-genocide activist, India
945. "...gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white."-Kate Bornstein, transgender author and activist, USA
946. "It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law - for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm."-Barack Obama, J.D., community organizer, attorney, professor, 44th President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, parent, USA
947. "We can’t look passively for “leaders” to make the world a better place. In order to achieve those positions of power and privilege, you have to have been pretty ruthless, and in order to get to the top, you have to ultimately be serving the interests of those at the top. And the interests of those at the top are not the interests of most of humanity. Most of humanity, regrettably or not, has to fight its own struggles to get its place at the table, and not just be there waiting for a few crumbs."-Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D., academic, political scientist, author, social critic, USA
948. "I resolutely believe that respect for diversity is a fundamental pillar in the eradication of racism, xenophobia and intolerance. There is no excuse for evading the responsibility of finding the most suitable path toward the elimination of any expression of discrimination against indigenous peoples."-Rigoberta Menchu Tum, indigenous activist, author, & Nobel Peace Prize winner, Guatemala
949. "I’m talking about the blind bombardment of the U.S.A.-NATO forces, these occupiers, about the occupation of my country... These are, I think, the reasons that the U.S. and NATO, they’re afraid of me."-Malalai Joia, Afghani anti-war campaigner, former Afghan parliament member, initially denied USA visa, Afghanistan
950. "We may feel powerless in the face of the ruthless corporate destruction of our nation, our culture, and our ecosystem. But we are not. We have a power, as the Occupy encampments demonstrated, that terrifies the corporate state. Any act of rebellion, no matter how few people show up or how heavily it is censored, chips away at corporate power. Any act of rebellion keeps alive the embers of larger movements that follow us. It passes on another narrative. It will, as the state consumes itself, attract larger and larger numbers."-Chris Hedges, author, journalist, social critic, parent,  USA
     
951. "Fabulous. If you possess it, you don’t need to ask what it is. When you attempt to delineate it, you move away from it. Fabulous is one of those words that provide a measure of the degree to which a person or event manifests a particular oppressed subculture’s most distinctive, invigorating features. What are the salient features of fabulousness? Irony. Tragic History. Defiance. Gender-fuck. Glitter. Drama. It is not butch. It is not hot. The cathexis surrounding fabulousness is not necessarily erotic. The fabulous is not delineated by age or beauty. It is raw materials reworked into illusion. To be truly fabulous, one must completely triumph over tragedy, age, and physical insufficiencies. The fabulous is the rapturous embrace of difference, the discovering of self not in that which has rejected you but in that which makes you unlike, the dislike, the other."-Tony Kushner, gay Pulitzer-prize winning playwright, USA