I hardly ever go out in the morning, the first 7-8 hours of every single day are taken up by reading and writing. But today I did, to feel the mood in the city. Not sure I got it, though. Everything's quiet. It may not help that I'm staying smack in the middle of the Acropolis tourist area (still haven't figured out why 90% of them are American).

Not sure if many Greeks even really understand what is going on, and who can blame them, they have every reason to be scared more than anything else.

And I'm still trying to wrap my head around the trouble just about everyone seems to have with the simplest and most basic exercise in direct democracy that's taking place right now. The referendum here today has been called manipulative, opaque, some say there's not enough time, others claim Tsipras is merely trying to save face in the face of defeat, courts have been called in to rule on its legality.

It's Independence Day! The 4th of July! Burgers! Picnics! Fireworks!

That's what it's all about, right? Go, America!

Actually, no, there probably weren't any hotdogs cooking on the grill on Independence Day in 1776. When the founding fathers of our nation signed the Declaration of Independence, they probably weren't wondering if the beer was cold yet, if Ben was going to burn the burgers again, or whether Thomas remembered the lighter for the fireworks.

They were thinking about freedom.

The whole purpose of the gesture was that these men were tired of bowing down to someone who did not have their best interests at heart. They were determined to no longer be the subjects of a King who looked at them as a way to make himself wealthy.

And, sadly, here we are a couple hundred years later, dependent yet again.

Our culture is just so incredibly dependent. Freedom is terrifying to most people because it means that they and they alone, are responsible for the actions that they take. An independent person succeeds or fails on his or her own merit. Independence by its very nature means that the possibility of failure exists. It requires a sense of adventure, confidence, and the ability to fail and get right back up again, and it seems like these things are being bred out of the American people.

The fourth of July. This is the day for Americans to go down to the beach with a picnic basket loaded up with ham sandwiches and to drink more beer than can possibly be recommended during the work week. This is the day to gather with friends and family and to ooh and aah at pyrotechnics dazzling the sky. It is a day, if we stop to think, to be grateful that we are not living in a country which produces lock-step conformity and fear in its citizenry. It is a day, traditionally, to be thankful for our freedoms.

This July 4th, it would be useful to take a look at what we have lost, in terms of freedoms, and what we still stand to lose. Like some other institutions in America, the July 4th celebration of freedom has become something of an obligatory exercise of patriotic fervor. And given the developments of the last few years, it may now be relatively empty of meaning.

For the first time in US history, we have a President who has created—and invoked — the executive privilege of ordering the murders of US citizens without due process. While this has only been exercised a few times (to our knowledge), most notably with the 2011 assassination by drone strike of US born Muslim cleric Anwar al -Awlaki and subsequently of his son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the precedent now exists. This is not a privilege generally granted to a President in a free society. In fact, it is an action that is more redolent of a dictator, a Hitler or a Pol Pot whose purges of not only "enemies of the state," but also of whomever pissed off the dictator, became part of our collective awareness that we, as Americans, were very fortunate not to live under these sorts of rulers.

Today I want to openly declare to the current control system what Independence Day means to me and why it is the most important holiday of the year.
Dear controlling (federal) government,

Do you know what today is? That's right. It's the one day of the year where we the little people celebrate Independence from you the larger control system. That is after all at the heart of Independence Day. This is the day when individuals with a conscience, not groups like government and corporations but individual human beings get to reminisce on the idea of freedom. And how can we blame humans for doing that? Freedom, after all is the most prized right to yearn for. It's a right, it's a moral code, it's an expectation and desire that all humans quietly yearn for, hope for and dream of. Freedom from you, the government. Freedom from external control and manipulation. Freedom from coercion, intimidation and forced slavery based on fear of harm, fear of being robbed and fear of being locked up. All three of these threats are the essence of what government does, but you already know that.

Five people have been fatally shot and seven others wounded across Chicago since Thursday, as the Fourth of July weekend opens with violence.

On Friday evening, a 17-year-old was shot to death while playing basketball at a Bronzeville park named after slain teen Hadiya Pendleton.

Vonzell Banks, who would have started a summer job on Monday before entering his senior year at Dunbar Vocational High School, was shot in the back. His 19-year-old cousin was shot in the foot.

According to witnesses, a gunman opened fire before jumping into an SUV which sped away.

The proportion of households facing financial difficulties in Japan hit a record high of 62.4 percent as of July 2014, a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey showed Thursday.

The result partly reflects the consumption tax hike from 5 percent to 8 percent in April last year, the ministry said. The previous record high was 61.5 percent in July 2011.

The proportion of households having "severe difficulty" in living came to 29.7 percent, and 32.7 percent said their financial conditions are "somewhat difficult."

Meanwhile, 34.0 percent said their living is "normal." The proportion of households which said they are "somewhat well-off" stood at 3.2 percent, and 0.4 percent said they are "very well-off."

The survey also showed that the average household income in 2013 fell ¥83,000, or 1.5 percent, from the preceding year to ¥5,289,000, the fourth-lowest level since comparable data became available in 1985. The fall is partly due to an increase in nonregular employees, according to the ministry.

The average income fell 2.8 percent to ¥3,005,000 at elderly households, consisting only of people aged 65 or over, or of elderly people and children under 18.

The average income at all households with children under 18 increased 3.4 percent to ¥6,963,000.

Heartwarming parent-daughter selfies have gone viral on Twitter, thanks to a social media campaign called #SelfieWithDaughter launched by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an effort to promote gender equality.

During his Sunday radio address, Modi asked parents to tweet photos of themselves with their daughters to highlight the importance of girls and women. The campaign is called "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana" and is roughly translated to "Save Daughters, Educate Daughters." Modi credits the online hit to a local politician in the small Indian village of Haryana. According to a story published in the New York Times, baby boys are valued in Indian society, resulting in nearly 2,000 girls being killed at birth. And while laws exist to prevent expecting couples from using prenatal tests to learn the sex of their unborn baby, per the Wall Street Journal, many parents hold out hope for a son.

A pair of Georgia parents are infuriated by the method a dentist employed to restrain their daughter during a routine procedure.

James Crow told WSB-TV that he and his mother took his daughter, Elizabeth, to a Caarrollton dentist to have a tooth pulled. What ensued he could have never imagined.

Not allowed inside the exam room, Crow waited with his mother in the lobby.

"We were sitting out in the waiting room and all of a sudden, we heard somebody screaming," Evelyn Crow told WBS.

The father rushed into the room and found his daughter bound with a tool called a "papoose board."

"I couldn't see my kid in the body bag just strapped down to the bed, I couldn't handle it," Crow told WSB.

"This little girl was frightened. I had to carry her out, she was shaking so bad," his mother added to the local news station.

An employee of the office told WSB that parents are required to sign a release form before the papoose board is used. Crow said he didn't recall being notified.

Long ago, American colonists took a stance against a government that didn't represent the voice of the people. Fast forward to today and the recent TPP and TTIP treaties essentially silence the voice of the people once again. But is anyone paying attention?

The men, unhappy with the decisions that had been forced upon them by people they had never seen before, decided to do something. Waiting until sunset, they dressed up as Indians, painted their faces, and marched down to the harbor. Upon reaching it, they stormed a ship, grabbed the cargo and threw it overboard. Shouting into the night, "no taxation without representation!" the men made a defiant stance against what they felt was an overreaching government that only saw them as streams of income. In response, the government attempted to crack down on society in a desperate attempt to remain in control. It didn't work and today historians note that the event, which came to be known as the Boston Tea Party, was one of the first shots of the War for Independence.

Of course, if this event were to happen today, media would report it like this —"A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation's busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country's government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens."

Although these two tales tell the same story, perception is key. And when 90% of American media is controlled by 6 companies, the narrative is tightly controlled. Not for the benefit of the people, of course, but for the benefit of the government. But not even for the government so much any more, as the recent buzz surrounding the TPP and TTIP have revealed. In fact, numerous stories over the last couple of weeks have shed light on just who was behind the treaties, and it reads like a list of who's who in the world of big business.That's right. Corporations wrote the treaties and the politicians, which are elected by the people to represent the people, either didn't read the treaties at all, or chose to play buzzword bingo when publicly discussing the matter. Of course, as the Guardian reports, the tens of thousands of dollars that went to the "yea" votes helped to convince those fence sitters which direction the wind was blowing and more importantly, helped their future re-election campaigns. Addressing this issue, Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent. US noted -"It's a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days. They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist." He went on to ask - "How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?"

The Caribbean territory, whose residents are US citizens, is groaning under $73bn debt forcing it to ration water, close schools and watch its health system collapse.

Facing a crisis of monumental proportions at home, tens of thousands of people are fleeing a Caribbean island in search of a better life in the United States only to find hardship and struggle on American shores. Their stories sound like those of millions of migrants - poverty at home, where the economy lies in tatters - but they differ from millions of others: they're already American.

Unable to pay its $73bn debt, Puerto Rico has begun rationing water, closing schools and watching its healthcare system collapse and 45% of its people living in poverty. Emigration to the mainland has accelerated in recent years, activists say, and data shows that from 2003 to 2013 there was a population swing of more than 1.5 million people.