Jacob Chamberlain Posts

An amendment dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act," which currently allows large agriculture and biotech corporations to ignore court orders involving the safety of genetically modified seeds, has been stripped from Senate's spending bill.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv on March 20.(Reuters/Nir Elias)The National Security Agency openly shares unfiltered intelligence files with the Israeli government, according to a classified document leaked to the Guardian newspaper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Internet privacy safeguards known as encryption technologies promised by email, online banking, and other such online databases have been virtually 'defeated' by the U.S. National Security Agency.

Walmart workers across the country are protesting nationwide on Thursday with actions at big box locations in at least 15 cities. The protest is the largest since Walmart employees walked off the job on Black Friday last year in a national effort to draw attention to the abysmal working conditions at the nation's largest retail employer.

Despite claims by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that they are barred from publicly exposing dragnet surveillance practices at the National Security Agency, a closer look at Senate rules shows that the group actually has it in their power to actively push for greater transparency. They have just opted not to use that power.

Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist who was kept in prison for three years at the request of the Obama administration after he uncovered a deadly U.S. drone strike in which dozens of innocent Yemeni civilians were killed, was finally released from prison on Tuesday.

Major biotech corporation Monsanto announced Wednesday that it is throwing in the towel in its fight to cultivate new genetically modified foods in the European Union—a move that could create the chance for European farming to focus on sustainable practices "that offer real advances for food production and rural communities," said Greenpeace's Mark Breddy.

There is still a major lack of solid evidence showing that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces, chemical weapons experts warned on Friday, saying "they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack." The White House claimed Thursday that they have evidence of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, including the use of sarin, but has not yet published their evidence.

In a statement released Thursday evening, the Obama administration is claiming to have proof that Syrian president Bashir al-Assad has been using chemical weapons—crossing Obama's "red line" established to justify U.S. military action.

In the statement, the White House said the President is weighing his options in the coming weeks, which include direct U.S. military support to groups within the Syrian opposition.

'Acid jobs,' a highly toxic method of fossil fuel extraction, have gone vastly unregulated by lawmakers, particularly in California where the method is commonly used.

An 'acid job' is a process whereby companies pump chemicals such as hydrofluoric acid into an already built gas and oil well to "melt rocks" and objects that are obstructing oil flow.

While Oklahomans continue the painful recovery and begin rebuilding efforts following the massive tornado that devastated communities on Monday, the politics of federal emergency aid will likely be focused on the past positions from the state's two Republican Senators, Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn.

Chicago Teachers are taking a stand once again in protest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to close dozens of schools in low income Chicago communities—this time with a three day march for "education justice."

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management released new draft rules for fracking on public lands Thursday afternoon that would vastly weaken safeguards against the highly toxic gas extraction process, which has already done untold damage to public water, land and air.

"Comparing today’s rule governing fracking on public lands with the one proposed a year earlier, it is clear what happened: the [BLM] caved to the wealthy and powerful oil and gas industry and left the public to fend for itself," Legislative Representative for Earthjustice Jessica Ennis stated.

The U.S. State Department does the bidding of biotech giants like Monsanto around the world by "twisting the arms of countries" and engaging in vast public campaign schemes to push the sale of genetically modified seeds, according to a new report released Tuesday by Food & Water Watch.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of biotech giant Monsanto, ordering Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, 75, to pay Monsanto more than $84,000 for patent infringement for using second generation Monsanto seeds purchased second hand—a ruling which will have broad implications for the ownership of 'life' and farmers' rights in the future.

In an interview with the Guardian published on Sunday, renowned professor and prolific critic of the "military-industrial-complex" and rampant "plutocracy" in the U.S. and around the world, Dr. Cornel West explained his views on the state of America today and his fall from grace, by design, with President Barack Obama: "He's just too tied to Wall Street. And at this point he is a war criminal."

"He talked about Martin Luther King over and over again as he ran," West said of their campaign stops together, adding later, "You can't just invoke Martin Luther King like that and not follow through on his priorities in some way."

Despite widely held assumptions by the US public that a search warrant would be needed in order for law enforcement officials to search personal email accounts, newly discovered documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, reveal just how far off those assumptions have become.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his political umbrella group, FWD.US, came under fire this week for funding a set of ads that promotes the proposed tar sands-carrying Keystone XL pipeline among other desires of the fossil fuel industry.

Guards at Guantanamo Bay fired four "non-lethal" rounds at prisoners on Saturday after attempting to force prisoners from communal cellblocks into isolated one-man cells—in an attempt to end an ongoing hunger strike in the secretive prison.

Nancy Zorn, 79, locked herself to a piece of heavy machinery Tuesday morning in protest of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline construction, halting work on a construction site of the tar sands harbinger for several hours.