John Chuckman
Guillermo Jimenez Presents Alfredo Lopez
Edward Snowden’s revelations on the voracious appetite of spying on all and sundry by the National Security Agency and allied agencies should not give pause for too much comment, other than to affirm a general premise: activists and non-government groups are to be feared. Non-profits are seen as potential threats, though what to is sometimes unclear. Any government worth its salt should be afraid of its citizens – the latter must make the former accountable; the former must hold to the contractual bargain with citizens.
Peter B. Collins Presents Young Journalist Ben Blum
One of the delightful things about America is that they have absolutely no historical memory.
— Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, 1898-1976
You may have learned this month, as I did, that Surveillance State shill "Dutch" Ruppersberger of Maryland has an energetic young primary opponent, Paul Rundquist. MD-02, most of which is part of Baltimore County (with pieces of Anne Arundel, Howard and Hartford), is solidly blue, with a PVI of D+10.
Some sights are so strange that you can’t stop to look: that corpse with rigor mortis on the roadside; the monkey butcher’s stand; the mummy-wrapped form balanced crosswise on that slow bicycle’s cargo rack. You just blink and proceed. We all have doubtful memories like that.
I met state Senator Ted Lieu at John Amato's birthday dinner a few weeks ago. I didn't know a lot about him-- just that he's one of the hard-working progressives in the state legislature and that he infuriated the banksters by writing and passing-- it took two sessions-- a consumer protection bill that stopped shady mortgage come-ons dead in their tracks.
Chris Hedges, in making the case that Edward Snowden is a hero: "With moral courage comes persecution. It is always defined by the state as treason." His presentation, which I beg you to watch above, is only 8 minutes, 8 minutes of brilliance.
Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it. “Your rights matter,” he say, “because you never know when you’re going to need them.” Chris Anderson interviews, with special guest Tim Berners-Lee.
