Jay Stanley over at the ACLU blog posts an illustrative table that gets to the heart of the NSA controversies these days. As he makes note, when defenders of the NSA’s surveillance state are confronted with allegations of unlawfulness, overreach, or scandal as a result of Edward Snowden’s leaks, they like to emphasize their deep commitment to “keeping the country safe.”
By Yousef Munayyer | The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development | October 28, 2013
It is said that naturalized United States citizens often have a greater appreciation of their adopted country than those born on American soil.
As a naturalized U.S. citizen who has traveled extensively, particularly across borders where the very notion of citizenship can be a contentious political idea, I have a deep appreciation for my navy blue passport.
Sometimes I get confused between the national committees-- the DCCC, DSCC, DNC, RNC, NRSC and NRCC-- and the Beltway pundits that service them, particularly Cook and Rothenberg. Rothenberg's column for Roll Call Monday was a riot. I especially laugh when he and Cook defer to the DCCC and call their ridiculous side-show races "top tier" which fools no one (except, apparently Nancy Pelosi) as the money is flittered away on absurd candidates in absurd races.
The actual details of the NSA’s expansive surveillance programs are infuriating enough on their own. Civil libertarians and ordinary Americans are and should be angry at the NSA’s disrespect for the law, the Fourth Amendment, and privacy rights in general.
We might as well rename Cousin Barry Obama, “The Precedent and Thief” —- thank you thank you…. THIS IS WHAT WE DO!
Godfather Politics
James Corbett joins Joyce Riley on The Power Hour every other Monday to discuss matters financial, economic, geopolitical and social. This time they talk about Fukushima, the dollar as reserve currency, the ramifications of shale oil on geopolitics, and the latest from China. We also take your calls on a number of issues.
This week on Radio Liberty, James and Dr. Stan discuss the latest economic and financial news from around the world, including the breakdown of the yen, the phoney Chinese growth numbers, bad news out of Europe, and the latest round of waiting for the FOMC in the US. We also take your calls on a range of different issues.
The U.S. benefit from the war in Iraq was that we eliminated the potential for al-Qaeda to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein, according to Dick Cheney…weapons he did not have to begin with.
A couple weeks ago we looked at the congressional race in Iowa's first district and have slowly and carefully come to the conclusion that state Rep. Pat Murphy is, by far, the best candidate for the seat. A strongly Democratic district-- PVI is D+5-- it is a perfect place for a strong and effective progressive leader.
CLICK HERE to continue watching the report on BoilingFrogsPost.com
by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com
October 29, 2013
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
October 28, 2013
Deputy Secretary General attends ballistic missile defence groundbreaking in Romania
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
October 28, 2013
NATO AWACS marks 10,000 flight hours in support of Afghanistan mission
NATO’s fleet of E-3A Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft surpassed a significant milestone this past weekend after reaching 10,000 flight hours in support of the Alliance’s mission in Afghanistan.
RT | October 29, 2013
Brazil is urging a plan to introduce local data storage for Internet giants like Facebook and Google in order to keep the information they get from Brazilian users safe –as part of a complex of measures to oppose US spying.
The new law could impact Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Internet global companies that operate in Brazil, Latin America’s biggest country and one of the world’s largest telecommunications markets.
RT | October 29, 2013
An Oakland, CA activist says local police officers sent surveillance footage of him participating in a protest last week to his employer, resulting in his firing Monday.
The activist, who goes by @Anon4Justice on Twitter, tweeted the details Monday morning in what appears to be police use of surveillance footage in combination with private and public records that identified @Anon4Justice and led to his employer.
United States European Command
October 28, 2013
European Partnerships Vital to Global Security, Breedlove Says
Claudette Roulo, American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON: It makes fiscal and strategic sense for the United States to continue to base troops in Europe, the officer who serves as NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe and commander of U.S. European Command said today.
An Energy Minister who boasts that his decision is supported by Greenpeace is an Energy Minister spectacularly out-of-touch with ordinary voters.
Switching gears.I would think we are going to be reading and/or hearing much more about Georgia in the near future.NATO is not going to stay hands off on this prime bit of global property. Key to destabilizing Russia. Leading towards a western goal of balkanization. Georgia is after all pipeline central. Pipelines for oil.
Many progressives fear that conservative Democrats are working with Boehner, McConnell and the Republicans to undermine the inviolability of Social Security-- the Third Rail aspect-- by including Chained CPI in a so-called "Grand Bargain" which would see the GOP give a tiny bit on taxes-- raising taxes on the rich slightly which could be easily lowered as soon as they regain power-- in return for forever decoupling Social Security from the Third Rail.
by Marcia Wyatt UPDATE: Addendum from Marcia Wyatt UPDATE: Giff Miller responds Miller et al.’s 2013 paper – Unprecedented recent summer warmth in Arctic Canada – splashed into the public eye last week with the declaration that current average summer … Continue reading →
Rafiq ur Rahman – a teacher at a primary school in North Waziristan, Pakistan – appeared at a briefing called by Representative Alan Grayson (FL-09), along with his children Nabila and Zubair, who were both injured in a drone attack in October 2012, Robert Greenwald, president of Brave New Foundation, and Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney with Reprieve. This event marked the first opportunity for Congress to hear from drone victim survivors.
Watch a video of the hearing here.
The first reports in early May of 1960 were that a U.S. weather plane, flying out of Turkey, had gone missing. A silent Moscow knew better. After letting the Americans crawl out on a limb, expatiating on their cover story, Russia sawed it off. Actually, said Nikita Khrushchev, we shot down a U.S. spy plane […]
When the 193-member General Assembly adopts a resolution next month censuring the illegal electronic surveillance of governments and world leaders by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.N.’s highest policy-making body will spare the United States from public condemnation despite its culpability in widespread wiretapping. A draft resolution currently in limited circulation – a […]
Teabaggers are running wild, encouraged by all the media coverage Ted Cruz's infantile nihilism and extremism is getting.
At least 26 people were killed and 27 were wounded in today's violence. One of the fatalities was a Syrian gunman.
Blacked-out lower Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, looking northeast, with the tower of the Empire State Building poking up in the backgroundby KenIt's an anniversary that has been looming ominously for, well, going on a year.As it happened, yesterday I was in New Jersey's "Mile-Square City" of Hoboken, on the mostly flatland lip of land below the southern end of the bluffs that rise above the state's Hudson River shoreline, on a wonderful 5½-hour
The director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) now recognizes what treatment reform activists have been talking about for years—people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses are a diverse group who need diverse approaches. NIMH director Thomas Insel recently acknowledged:
The White House Intelligence Review Will Come by Year's End By Matt Vasilogambros | The National Journal October 28, 2013The United States is reviewing the way it gathers intelligence. This has now become a tired and oft-repeated phrase coming from the Obama administration, as disclosures continue to reveal the far-reaching extent to which the U.S. spies on its allies....While U.S.
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D. TARPLEY.net – World Crisis Radio October 28, 2013 [download audio]
As the gap between its models and reality has grown, the IPCC has become more adamant that its conclusions are correct - rather than more cautious.
The Ted Cruz/Koch brothers-inspired government shutdown cost the American taxpayers an unfocused and gratuitous $24 billion. Conservatives in Congress can at least tell them selves they're recouping part of that loss by cutting back on food stamps.
A question for readers: which of the following proxies are used to reconstruct past Southern Hemisphere temperature in the IPCC’s graphic (Figure 5.7b) showing SH reconstructions:
1. Graybill’s California strip-bark bristlecone chronologies
2. upside down and contaminated Finnish lake sediments
3. European instrumental temperature data
4. Antarctic ice core d18O isotope data covering the medieval period
By Willis Eschenbach | Watts Up With That? | October 27, 2013
The US has some of the world’s most boring looking money—it’s all green. So we have terms like “greenbacks” for dollars, and “long green”, meaning lots of money.
In U.S. foreign policy, there are bogeymen and allies. Bogeymen are evil tyrants who oppose freedom. Allies are stable international partners. What one realizes (once they stop watching cable news) is that whether the U.S. considers you a bogeyman or an ally is entirely independent of how those regimes treat their own people.
Here’s a tweet from CFR’s Micah Zenko, based on data from Amnesty International:
David Adesnik over at the hawkish conservative think tank AEI asks, ”why has the isolationism of Ron Paul and his admirers taken such a sharp turn toward amoral realism?”
I cannot, for the life of me, yet again explain to a right wing hawk the difference between isolationism and non-interventionism, so we’ll leave that to the side.
Press TV – October 28, 2013
Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has reportedly described the “unlimited” funds available to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the main obstacle to Middle East peace.
I can picture DCCC Chairman Steve Israel, an "ex"-Blue Dog from Princesses: Long Island, drooling when he saw the MoveOn/PPP survey a couple weeks ago for CA-31, the new Inland Empire district southeast of L.A.
By CHRIS COLE | CounterPunch | October 25, 2013
While there is rightly much media attention on the US drone war in Pakistan and Yemen, there is a very different but over-looked “drone war” taking place in Europe right now. In parliamentary committee rooms, in company boardrooms, and in packed public meetings, arguments rage about whether Europe should embrace or reject the use of armed drones.
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | October 27, 2013
Christian Zionists are apparently planning to bring “enlightenment” to the poor, benighted indigenous inhabitants of Occupied Palestine. Governor Rick Perry of Texas, with help and assistance from John Haggee of Christians United for Israel, has struck a deal whereby Texas A&M University will open a branch campus in Israel.
Is Noam Chomsky an anarcho-syndicalist or proponent of the Federal Reserve? A fearless political crusader or defender of the Warren Commission JFK orthodoxy? A tireless campaigner for justice or someone who doesn’t care who did 9/11? Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we examine some of the subjects that Chomsky would prefer you didn’t think about.
CLICK HERE for the mp3 audio of this podcast.
Israel and the NSA: Partners in Crime
Israel and the NSA: Partners in Crime
