NSA chief General Keith Alexander’s comments last week that he wants to “make it stop,” where “it” is the journalism resulting from Edward Snowden’s leaks, were widely reported and commented on. Here is the actual video clip of him saying it.

Alexander is very frustrated, it seems, that journalism is protected unequivocally by the First Amendment. The point is lost on him that this was precisely the point of the First Amendment: to frustrate and hamstring those in power.

Russian Information Agency Novosti
October 28, 2013
Estonia Sends Over 130 Servicemen to NATO Drills in Poland
TALLINN, October 28 (RIA Novosti) – More than 130 Estonian servicemen flew to Poland Monday morning to take part in a NATO exercise, Estonia’s defense high command said.

Last year, with no help from the DCCC (unless you want to consider negative help of Steve Israel calling wealthy donors and telling them to not "waste" their money on Rob Zerban), Rob Zerban came closer to defeating Paul Ryan than any Democrat had before. Ryan represents a swing district in southeast Wisconsin, WI-01 (Kenosha, Racine, Janesville, Muskego, Elkhorn and southern Milwaukee suburbs like Oak Creek and Greendale.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
October 25, 2013
Rapid Reaction Corps France gears up for new tasks

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Arnold Zweig: Selections on war
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Arnold Zweig
From Education Before Verdun (1935)
Translated by Eric Sutton

Ni’lin Village | October 28, 2013

Ni’lin, Occupied Palestine – Since last week the village of Ni’lin is being targeted daily by midnight raids from the Israeli occupation forces. The soldiers have been shooting tear gas into people’s homes while they are sleeping. Only two people have been arrested but ten houses have been invaded by the soldiers.
The arrested are Naha Nafi, 21, and Tariq Kawaja, 24. Another three young men were sought but could not be found.

There was a definite "BS" and "AS" order to things at the major Stop Watching Us rally against government surveillance in Washington, DC, on Saturday. That’s Before Snowden and After Snowden, and though it doesn’t matter really which is which, it helps when charting the evolution of a protest movement, especially one that seems to […]

It wasn’t the US government breaking into the private communications of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to top secret documents unearthed by Edward Snowden and published in Le Monde – it was the Israelis. A four-page internal précis regarding a visit to Washington by two top French intelligence officials denies the NSA or any […]

The Debate (Topic Syria) Ken O’Keefe vs. Lee Kaplan
 
 

A young member of Congress, Don Young (R-AK), mostly senile these daysWhen Valerie Foushee replaced Ellie Kinnnaird in the North Carolina state Senate, she gave up her District 50 state House seat (Orange and Durham counties), Thursday, a 4 person selection committee, two Democrats from each county) voted to replace her with Graig Meyer.

In a cycle of habit borne out repeatedly in the mainstream western media, demonization and fear mongering against Iran is picking up pace again in the face of attempts by the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to rebuild relations with the west and work toward international cooperation.

My eldest daughter works as a billing specialist for a doctor here in Chicago. Her job more or less requires that she familiarize herself with the laws regulating doctors and the insurance industry. Unlike the layman who simply wants to see a doctor when illness strikes and be able to afford the treatments offered in order to get well again, she has to get into the guts of a system that requires 1500+ page tomes trying to determine the cost for treating every malady imaginable.

Press TV – October 27, 2013

Israel has agreed to free 26 Palestinian prisoners under the terms of the renewed so-called peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
“The release of 26 prisoners has been validated this evening,” said a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Sunday.
Israeli prison authorities say the inmates will be released at least 48 hours after their names are published.

Why not Nobel Prizes for one and all? says Professor Shiller -- "even if we sometimes seem to come from different planets.""Actually, I do not completely oppose the efficient-markets theory. I have been calling it a half-truth. If the theory said nothing more than that it is unlikely that the average amateur investor can get rich quickly by trading in the markets based on publicly available information, the theory would be spot on.

By David Swanson | War is a Crime | October 27, 2013

  This will not go down well – Germany is the Euro economic powerhouse! If you want to bug the other guys at the poker table OK…. just know what happens when you get caught. 

India Times

Sweet Jane:Sweet Jane was covered by the Cowboy Junkies also.to bad the credits roll over the video.........

At least 88 people were killed and 203 more were wounded in a series of coordinated bombings in Baghdad and other bloodshed. Mosul suffered a series of apparently unrelated attacks, while other towns experienced the usual background violence.

When I woke up this morning, there was a tweet from Lou, The Door. It made me want to say hello; I didn't. And now I never will be able to again. When I was in college, in the mid-60's I never missed a Velvet Underground show in NYC. If they did 4 shows in a week, I schlepped into Manhattan on the Long Island Rail Road 4 times. A Velvets show at the Dom, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, always trumped schoolwork.

Sunday...

By Damian Lataan | November 6, 2011

Maybe THIS gets to the reason that Cousin Barry and Crew have been “purging” the Brass?  This is the “Freedom” our men and woman fight for? “LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT – HOO AH!”

WT

Is the US going to make another push for unilateral action against Syria? Despite the fact that Syria has cooperated fully of it's own accord with the CW inspection?US Obduracy in Syrian Crisis Excerpt:

Yea – Freedom means capitulating to multi national Insurance Giants!
Would you buy a Used car from this man?
 
Washington Times

Apple didnt fall far from the tree I guess…
Photo by: Susan Walsh
FILE – In this Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, file photo, former Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., leaves federal court in Washington. Prison-bound Jackson plans to sell his home in Washington to help pay $750,000 in penalties stemming from his sentence for illegally spending campaign funds on personal items. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
WT

The Corbett Report | October 27, 2013

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?

Documentation

Steven Pinker on Noam Chomsky

Time Reference:
02:54

A Loyalist from Northern Ireland becomes Jewish, he plans to move to Israel and settle and start a new life. He exclaims that Palestine was a “political invention” and tells Palestinians who have lived there their whole life “you have had a nice holiday, time to go home”. This is an extremely valid argument as this man has never set foot on the Land of Israel or Palestine. This Snippet was taken from the BBC documentary called Shalom Belfast.

People see the world differently. If we're going to do more than preach to our respective choirs in the climate debate, we need to recognize this.

Today the NYT runs a front page article headlined “(Susan) Rice Offers A More Modest Strategy for the Middle East.” It should be headlined “Battle of the Titans: Israel Firsters versus China Haters.”

RT | October 26, 2013

Twenty-one countries, including US allies France and Mexico, have now joined talks to hammer out a UN resolution that would condemn “indiscriminate” and “extra-territorial” surveillance, and ensure “independent oversight” of electronic monitoring.
The news was reported by Foreign Policy magazine, which has also obtained a copy of the draft text.

RT | October 26, 2013

The German Chancellor’s mobile phone has been on an NSA target list since 2002 and was code-named “GE Chancellor Merkel”, according to Der Spiegel. The paper also reports that President Obama assured Merkel that he did not know her phone was tapped.
The monitoring operation was still in force even a few weeks before Obama’s visit to Berlin in June 2013.

I've been wondering if all the strum und drang over the typically glitchy launch of the Obamacare website isn't just a shiny object moment to distract attention from what the conservatives among our ruling elites have in mind for us.

The Banker Occupied Government in Washington has been imposing poverty on Americans by transferring wealth from the workers, farmers and small businessmen to the elite in New York and the City of London for more than 100 years. I have spoken many times of how the bankers steal our money. They create our money out of nothing and charge us interest for using their money. They also are allowed to steal billions of dollars every week from federal spending which we peasants are not allowed to audit.

As someone who has long known some basic truths about our sick world, and the scoundrels behind our demise... I am deeply troubled from time to time by those who call themselves "truth seekers" and cannot even see that one of the biggest "achievements" of mankind, the NASA Apollo Moon missions, were nothing more than complete frauds....It puzzles me that many can see that the official story behind the Israeli Mossad 9-11 attack on American is a complete lie and sham, and that all of our history is nothing more than a complete lie brought to us by our Jewish criminals....

Gunmen steal limelight in attacks that left 27 dead and 27 wounded.

In foreign places, the big news story at the end of the week wasn't about the Affordable Care Act website. It was about NSA spying. Government leaders, apparently, get a lot more angry when the spying isn't on their citizens but on they themselves.

I have been extremely busy these last few weeks, and today was an absolute rat race... I finally have been able this evening to spend some time surfing the Internet, and looking at what my friends in what I call the "real truth movement" have been up to.... I do recommend that everyone take a look at my friend Noor's latest weekly cartoons over at Snippits and Snappits (www.snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.com) for example..

Charts adapted by The New Yorker from the Organisation for EconomicCooperation and Development's Survey of Adult Skills [Click to enlarge]by KenRemember how The Newsroom's Will McEvoy caused that national shitstorm by refusing to play along with the bromide that America is No. 1?

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | October 26, 2013

When the largest donor to Republican political organizations urges the U.S. military to detonate a nuclear bomb in an Iranian desert with the explicit warning that “the next one is in the middle of Tehran,” you might expect that major American political figures and large U.S. media outlets would strongly denounce such genocidal blackmail.

By Sherwood Ross | October 26, 2013

At a time when a record 47-million Americans live in poverty, when cities are going bankrupt, when 10 million jobless can’t find work and millions more are too discouraged to look, when the infrastructure is crumbling, when schools are running down, when bridges,roads and water mains need urgent repair, and when the AP reports four out of five Americans are in the financial soup, President Obama’s plan to spend $60 billion to refurbish an aging nuclear weapons arsenal is an obscene waste of tax dollars.

ISRAEL BENEFITS AS WORLD LOSES
 
Paul Balles
 
Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think? --Peter Hitchens
 What started off as Arab Spring has turned morbidly into Arab Fall. What began as a seasonal description became directional and self-destructive.

From the October 24, 2013 CTV article, Amazon called on to pull books denying holocaust, glorifying rape and incest: “A number of groups, including the World Jewish Congress, are calling on Amazon to stop selling books that deny the Holocaust, as well as Nazi paraphernalia from its website. They say if the retailer refuses, the […]

350.org:

As scientific evidence shows that climate change is creating increasingly frequent and devastating storms, and with climate scientists declaring these extreme weather events as the new normal, we propose a new naming system. A system that names extreme storms caused by climate change, after the policy makers who deny climate change and obstruct climate policy.

Mises Institute of Canada founder, Redmond Weissenberger, was my guest on the October 13, 2013 episode of Exposing Faux Capitalism with Jason Erb. Redmond is also co-founder and organizer of the annual Liberty Now and Toronto Austrian Scholars conferences, which are now in their second year. Hour 1: Article on Coast to Coast AM banned […]

Hundreds of folks turned out today in DC to protest NSA surveillance.   The sign makers outdid themselves for this worthy cause –
[[ on Twitter - @jimbovard ]]
Marching from Union Station to the base of Capitol Hill…



 

 

POETRY REVIEW: Susan Abulhawa’s My Voice Sought The Wind

 
Vacy Vlazna
 
Susie Abulhawa, Palestinian poet, exile, mother, lover, friend, stands naked in My Voice Sought The Wind; her collection of trenchant and beautiful poems replete with honesties and literary seductions.
 

-by NoahSometimes satirists have a very hard time satirizing Congress. Case in point: the current Congressional hearings about glitches in the allegedly satanic, marxist, communist, Muslim jihad-influenced Affordable Care Act; aka, dare we say it out loud, Obamacare.How does one satirize a bunch of morons in suits who have but one discernable talent-- satirizing themselves, whether intentionally or not, better than anyone else could ever hope to?