THE SHADOWY and secretive National Security Agency (NSA) has been exposed to the light of day by revelations that show the vast extent of U.S. government spying, at home and around the globe.

Under one program, called Prism, the NSA has gained access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype and other giant Internet companies, allowing it to examine all kinds of information at will, including browser histories and the content of e-mails, live chats, file transfers and more.

Last week, Angelina Jolie recently wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times where she revealed that she had a double mastectomy. She had tested positive for a faulty BRCA1 gene, which, she thought, gave her an 87 % risk of breast cancer and a 50 % risk of ovarian cancer.

The fact that her mother died of ovarian cancer after a nearly 10-year struggle at the age of 56 was another major factor in her decision.

Jolie herself noted that:

THE NYPD has murdered another young Black man, and now the cops are trying to smear his name to justify their actions. But activists and members of the community where the victim lived have seen how police murder with impunity--and they're speaking out.

After two plainclothes officers shot and killed 16-year-old Kimani "Kiki" Gray late on Saturday night, anger rippled through the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the broader New York activist community. A vigil two nights later grabbed headlines when a crowd of young people from East Flatbush angrily confronted police.

BRADLEY MANNING spent his 1,000th day in prison on February 23.

Manning is the U.S. soldier who blew the whistle on torture and murder in Iraq and Afghanistan and who, as a result, has been hailed by U.S. politicians and media, not as a hero who took a stand against atrocity, but as a traitor who aided the enemy.

Held since May 29, 2010, Manning spent 10 months in solitary confinement in conditions described by the UN Rapporteur on Torture as "cruel, inhuman and degrading." This included being made to stand at attention naked for roll call.

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role and expected to sweep the Oscars, concentrates on elite political maneuvering around the 13th Amendment to the US constitution, which sealed the demise of slavery in January of 1865—less than three months before the end of America’s bloody Civil War.

Will the US economy fall over the “fiscal cliff”? Whatever happens, the crisis represents the paralysis of the political process in America.

This paralysis is all the more remarkable given that both Barack Obama and his Republican opponents in Congress are fully signed up to neoliberalism.

Our story starts in July 2011, when the Republicans, swept to victory in Congress by the Tea Party movement, refused to raise the limit on federal government debt.

THE NEWS was heartbreaking: 20 children, all aged 6 and 7, shot and killed, along with four teachers, a principal and a school psychologist at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The gunman, Adam Lanza, killed his mother earlier in the day, before later killing himself.

On November 28, 900 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 63A-OCU (Office Clerical Unit) walked off the job at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in an effort to stop the outsourcing of their jobs.

By the next day, most of the two ports--together, the busiest shipping complex in the U.S.--were shut down when other workers on the docks honored picket lines, including both full-timers and part-timers with ILWU Local 13, the marine clerks of Local 63 and the ports' predominantly nonunion truckers.

Jonathan Neale writes on why he was one of the 84 million American citizens who could have voted, but didn’t. Romney lost. Good. I’m relieved. I’m American, and I could have voted for Obama. I didn't. But I’m still relieved.

I know there’s a contradiction here. But if I’d voted for Obama I would be telling myself stories about him right now. Stories that would blind me to what’s coming.

Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis, examines the man-made factors contributing to the disaster of Hurricane Sandy.