March 2013
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Remember: Sequestration was Obama’s Idea | Black... →
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“Manning is absolutely right when he said today that the documents he leaked ‘are...”
– Bradley Manning: the face of heroism
February 2013
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Bradley Manning pleads guilty to 10 charges but... →
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Honduras: the Killings Continue | Counterpunch →
… Honduras is one of the latest countries to experience the terror familiar in Colombia and Mexico. In late June 2009, the Honduran military, led by two School of the Americas (SOA) graduates, overthrew President Manuel Zelaya. There were few illusions about the ouster: the Honduran military lawyer who advised the coup plotters—and who was himself an SOA alumnus—admitted Zelaya’s removal...
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“Kiriakou is the sole CIA officer to face jail time for any action involving the...”
– CIA/Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou Reports to Prison Today | Government Accountability Project (2/28/2013)
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Anonymous Hack Of Bank Of America | Business... →
Anonymous hackers have released 14 gigabytes of information allegedly related to Bank of America and a web intelligence firm it hired to spy on hackers and social activists last year.
Emails detail how employees of TEKSystems actively watched hacker forums and social media sites for any remotely relevantpieces of “intelligence.”
The leak includes a list of more than 10,000 words, phrases, and...
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“The blame game only makes sense in a two party political culture. Negative...”
– Sequestration and the need for emergent parties
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thepeoplesrecord:
10,000 Quebec students clash with police after rejecting tuition increase February 28, 2013
A tuition-fee compromise by Quebec’s premier couldn’t prevent a violent protest that rekindled memories of last year’s Quebec Spring.
The window-smashing rally of 10,000 people took place despite Pauline Marois’s efforts to appease student hardliners with a bilateral meeting.
The...
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White House Pledges More Aid to Syrian Rebels →
canadian-communist:
Officials are confirming, on condition of anonymity, that the White House has already pledged additional aid to the Syrian rebels, and that this aid will primarily include food and medical supplies.
Secretary of State John Kerry has been hinting at plans to increase US aid to Syrian rebel factions, but officials insist that reports from last night that this would include...
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The Only Ones Who Recovered from the Recession are... →
Saez lays blame for the increasing income inequality in the United States on the attack on so many New Deal and WWII policies, programs and laws made during the FDR administration. The never ending attack on labor, progressive tax policies, social security, wages and low cost education have taken their toll. We could throw into the mix global labor arbitrage, where corporations have an unlimited...
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“As President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, Brennan was...”
– Aide: Senate committee vote on Brennan to be held Tuesday | CNN.com
Nice editing, CNN.
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Iran tells Zardari pipeline must advance despite... →
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Revealed: British Citizens Stripped of Status Then... →
The British government has secretly been stripping citizenship status from British nationals it suspects of terrorism, some of whom were later targeted and killed by drone attacks abroad.
According to an report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and published in the UK’s Independent on Thursday, the investigation “has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has...
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4 States Advance Anti-NDAA Legislation | People... →
And 9 more states are working on similar legislation.
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Handcuffing Seven-Year-Olds Won't Make Schools... →
[…] Truth be told, we were already well on our way to turning schools into carceral fortresses before the Sandy Hook slaughter even happened. In fact, the great national infrastructure project of the past 20 years may be the “school-to-prison pipeline.” After all, we are the nation that arrested Isamar Gonzalez for being in her high school early to meet with a teacher, then arrested her...
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A Little More From The Chambers | Charles Pierce →
It’s become clear that Antonin (Short Time) Scalia’s “racial entitlement” is going to be the primary noise-bite out of the Supreme Court today. It doesn’t matter that whatever point Scalia was making was completely incoherent. By what possible standard is Section V of the Voting Rights Act a “racial entitlement”? Who, precisely, is being entitled? And to what? The Voting Rights Act does not...
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House Hearing Fails to Address Major Concerns With... →
The House Judiciary Committee held a full member hearing today on when it is acceptable for the government to designate a U.S. citizen for targeted killing – the first hearing to focus specifically on this hot-button issue. Despite the session’s serious shortcomings, it was a small step towards some modicum of Congressional oversight of a program that remains shrouded in secrecy. The hearing...
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“Absent a radical sea change from the courts, or more likely intervention from...”
– Stephen I. Vladeck, law professor at American University
Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Surveillance Law | NYT
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“The American-led military coalition in Afghanistan backed off Tuesday from its...”
– AP Newsbreak: Drop in Taliban attacks incorrect
Oops!
h/t
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“‘These agencies are good at killing people, targeted assassinations and...”
– The CIA has nothing on Noam Chomsky (no, really) | FP Passport
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Glenn Greenwald: Supreme Court shields warrantless... →
In sum, the US government has constructed a ubiquitous Surveillance State. It has repeatedly demonstrated that it intends to eavesdrop on the communications of exactly the people who have brought this lawsuit. To prevent them from suing on the ground that the US government’s secrecy precludes them from proving with certainty that they are being targeted is to remove the US government’s...
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Afghan health organizations demand stop to... →
February 26, 2013
From the press release:
The Alliance of Health Organizations demands an immediate stop to intrusions into medical facilities by armed forces in Afghanistan, both foreign and national. The urge comes after the latest incident when ISAF troops searched, occupied and damaged a clinic in Saydabad district of Wardak province, supported by the Swedish Committee for...
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Obama Administration Stokes Embers of GOP Interest... →
Boy, what fucking idiots run DOJ (and, presumably, the Obama Administration generally).
As I noted when I first remarked on Bob Goodlatte, the new Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, showing some interest in the targeted killing memo, a perceived slight on Congressional prerogative (and perhaps a suspicion that paranoid levels of secrecy tends to indicate misconduct somewhere) seemed to get...
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“It is unlikely that the full story of the prosecution of [Aaron] Swartz will be...”
– Disgrace: Swartz’s prosecutors sought jail time to justify their original charges
Some seriously ham-fisted shit:
… apparently a DOJ representative has admitted that part of the reason it insisted on having Swartz plead guilty to a felony and go to jail, no matter what, was that it feared...
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“No Iranian character in the film who has a legitimate grievance against US...”
– “Argo” as Orientalism and why it Upsets Iranians
(via fariyah)
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Revealed: Stuxnet “beta’s” devious alternate... →
Researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen version of Stuxnet. The discovery sheds new light on the evolution of the powerful cyberweapon that made history when it successfully sabotaged an Iranian uranium-enrichment facility in 2009.
Stuxnet 0.5 is the oldest known version of the computer worm and was in development no later than November of 2005, almost two years earlier than previously...
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“When I went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the things,...”
– White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs referring to the Obama Administration banning him from speaking about drones. (via anarcho-queer)
“And I obeyed. And beyond that, I’ll never talk about it as a contributor to MSNBC except to defend it or try to justify it,” he added....
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“The ACLU declares that ‘it is unconstitutional for the government to put...”
– What do Kill lists and No Fly lists have in common?
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Flawed F-35 Fighter Too Big to Kill as Lockheed... →
braddogott:
Instead, the Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) aircraft has been plagued by a costly redesign, bulkhead cracks, too much weight, and delays to essential software that have helped put it seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial cost estimate. At almost $400 billion, it’s the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history.
It is also the defense project too big to kill....
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The Drone War Doctrine We Still Know Nothing About... →
The nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director has prompted intense debate on Capitol Hill and in the media about U.S. drone killings abroad. But the focus has been on the targeting of American citizens – a narrow issue that accounts for a miniscule proportion of the hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen in recent years.
Consider: while four American citizens are known to have...
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Bradley Manning judge rules length of soldier's... →
The judge presiding over the prosecution of the WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning has ruled that the US soldier was brought to trial in good time within the military rules governing a court martial.
The ruling dashes the defence team’s hopes of having the charges against Manning dismissed. His lead lawyer, David Coombs, had argued in legal argument to the court that “extreme foot-dragging” by...
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One Nation, Under Monsanto | Paul Craig Roberts →
In the United States everything is polluted.
Democracy is polluted with special interests and corrupt politicians.
Accountability is polluted with executive branch exemptions from law and the Constitution and with special legal privileges for corporations, such as the Supreme Court given right to corporations to purchase American elections.
The Constitution is polluted with corrupt legal...
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Gas Association busted for falsifying signatures... →
climateadaptation:
Gas drillers were caught lying to public officials. About 66% of the signatures were falsified. Company blames a PR firm, which, it seems, specializes in fudging petitions.
The drillers used the petition to lobby a local government in Colorado to pass fracking laws. Shit is fracked up and bullshit.
Pro-fracking petition with fake signatures embarrasses gas association
A...
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“[Nominee for Treasury Secretary, Jack] Lew is a member of a protected class. The...”
– Yves Smith, Jack Lew’s Grotesque Citi Employment Deal and the Institutionalization of Corruption | naked capitalism
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Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Surveillance... →
In a 5-to-4 decision that broke along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Tuesday turned back a challenge to a federal law that authorized intercepting international communications involving Americans.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates who challenged the constitutionality of the law could not show they had...
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Deepwater oil spill a 'classic failure' of BP... →
A culture of “every dollar counts” at BP led to the fatal Deepwater Horizon disaster and the US’s worst ever oil spill, a court heard on Tuesday.
Bob Bea, an expert in catastrophic engineering failures and a former BP consultant, said the disaster was a “classic failure of leadership and management in BP”.
On the second day of a civil trial in New Orleans, Robert...
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The Greek Economy is Kaput | Mike Whitney →
After 5 years of negative growth, record-high unemployment and savage cuts to essential safety-net programs, Greek society is beginning to buckle. Diabetics cannot afford their insulin, suicides and anti-depressant usage is off-the-chart, tuberculosis and HIV rates are soaring, and desperate pensioners in Athens have been reduced to dumpster diving outside grocery stores for a few scraps of...
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Is the US maintaining death squads and torture... →
“[In] the name of restoring the rule of law, heavily-armed internationals and their Afghan counterparts are wandering around conducting raids that too often result in killings and being held accountable by no one.” — UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, 2009
Greenwald:
[In] 2010 … US forces in the Paktia Province, after surrounding a home...
