An existential threat, and our responsibility.

Putin’s One Weapon: The ‘Intelligence State’ ,Russia’s leader has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries.By John SipherMr. Sipher, a former chief of station for the C.I.A., worked for more than 27 years in Russia and other parts of Europe and Asia.…

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Food for thought. There will be a lot more ahead of us. We need to pay attention.

“This planet will not be secure or peaceful when so few have so much, and so many have so little — and when we advance day after day into an oligarchic form of society where a small number of extraordinarily powerful special interests exert enormous influence over the economic and political life of the world…

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The Dark Side of Politics . . . The Corruption in Campaign Finance Made Simple in a Five-minute Video.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez This is probably why freshman lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grates on the good ol’ boys club in Congress. Watch this short but riveting video in which she uses a little game of Q & A to create a brutal takedown of Congress’ absurd campaign finance laws. This sharp-witted clarity revealing the ruse behind the…

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Little guy says “No” to the big guy, and a wail of anguished doom rises from an industrial giant.

“BATON ROUGE, La. — It was a squabble over $2.9 million in property-tax breaks — small change for Exxon Mobil, a company that measures its earnings by the billions. But when the East Baton Rouge Parish school board rejected the energy giant’s rather routine request last month, the “no” vote went off like a bomb…

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