Good Morning!
Photo by: joanneleon.
Tunes
Steve Miller Band - Jet Airliner
News & Opinion
Guardian liveblog for today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Update.
Putin confirms Edward Snowden is in Moscow airport transit zone – live
Russia denies aiding travel of the NSA whistleblower as the Obama administration steps up rhetoric in effort to find him
The New York Times' Moscow correspondent Ellen Barry flags a report in Russian in which President Vladimir Putin says Snowden is in a transit zone at Sheremetyevo International Airport.
Dianne Feinstein said that Snowden went in one car and his luggage was put in another. You'd think that we'd have intelligence on that. The foreign minister may be using semantics in making this statement. It's hard to know at this point.
Edward Snowden never crossed border into Russia, says foreign minister
Sergei Lavrov's comments about fugitive US whistleblower deepen mystery surrounding his whereabouts
Russia's foreign minister has said the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden never crossed the border into Russia, deepening the mystery over his suspected flight from Hong Kong.
"I would like to say right away that we have no relation to either Mr Snowden or to his relationship with American justice or to his movements around the world," Sergei Lavrov said.
[...]
Passengers arriving on the Hong Kong to Moscow flight that was suspected to be carrying Snowden said they saw police activity and at least one black car drive up to the plane before they were allowed to disembark.
Russia rejects U.S. Snowden pressure
MOSCOW — Russia's foreign minister on Tuesday said that U.S. demands to extradite U.S. spy leaker Edward Snowden were "ungrounded and unacceptable."
[...]
"We consider as absolutely unfounded and unacceptable the attempts we are seeing to accuse Russia of violating U.S. law and almost of conspiracy, accompanied by threats against us. There is no lawful basis for this kind of behavior from American officials."
[...]
Tuesday's statement from Russia came after a Chinese state newspaper praised Snowden for his decision to make public a government surveillance program, adding fresh pressure to increasingly strained U.S.-China relations.
You have to wonder how much of this reaction is related to the recent state visit by China where the president accused them of hacking the U.S., which nobody doubts, by the way, but which would be pretty embarrassing because it seemed like being summoned for a scolding, and which now looks pretty hypocritical (stating the obvious). It's pretty clear from this reporting that the Chinese are pissed.
China's state newspaper praises Edward Snowden for 'tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask'
State-run People's Daily says whistleblower has exposed US hypocrisy after Washington blamed Beijing for his escape
China's top state newspaper has praised the fugitive US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden for "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask" and rejected accusations Beijing had facilitated his departure from Hong Kong.
[...]
"Not only did the US authorities not give us an explanation and apology, it instead expressed dissatisfaction at the Hong Kong special administrative region for handling things in accordance with law," wrote Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Science in the People's Daily commentary.
"In a sense, the United States has gone from a 'model of human rights' to 'an eavesdropper on personal privacy', the 'manipulator' of the centralised power over the international internet, and the mad 'invader' of other countries' networks," the People's Daily said.
[...]
"The world will remember Edward Snowden," the newspaper said. "It was his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask".
[...]
A commentary in the Global Times, owned by the People's Daily, also attacked the US for cornering "a young idealist who has exposed the sinister scandals of the US government".
Yesterday's press briefing. After reading the articles above, it sounds like today's presser will be a must watch. I think they begin around noon. The Guardian article says that the Russian reporter "was shushed quiet by another reporter in the White House press room when attempting to ask a follow-up question". The presser was dominated by questions about NSA and Snowden.
Daily Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 6/24/2013
Andrei.
Q I was listening to the Assange presser before coming over, and they implied this physical threat to Snowden. So my first is very -- is there an implied physical threat to the safety, physical safety, of Mr. Snowden from the U.S. government?
MR. CARNEY: Of course not.
Q Now or in the future? Of course not. My real question was, you are -- (laughter) --
MR. CARNEY: That’s like a Chuck Todd special -- (laughter) -- before I get to my question, I have something to ask. (Laughter.)
Q You kept referring to how well we cooperated recently, and then right now you sort of made a critical remark about the “nature” of regimes in some countries, which seem to be a little contrary to what you’ve been saying.
MR. CARNEY: I think we’re just making factual statements in all cases.
Q Okay. When I look at this, I think the U.S. has been supporting people like Snowden throughout -- ever since the Soviet days. They were called dissidents, political dissidents. They were called political prisoners. I look at Snowden -- he’s a classical political dissident. And I look at Manning -- he’s a classical political prisoner. Why is that different? And if so, why don’t they deserve being supported for the desire to tell the truth about their own system?
MR. CARNEY: Well, Andrei, you feel very passionate about this, I can tell. But the distinctions, I think, are pretty evident if you look at them clearly. When it comes to Mr. Snowden, he’s been indicted for the unauthorized release of classified information. And, again, I think the point I made is that if his passion here is for press freedom and freedom of the Internet and the like, that he has chosen unlikely protectors.
But, again, I will let the case itself --
Q The political prisoners whom you -- the political dissidents whom you supported committed crimes all the time, including terrorist crimes. You probably remember the Brazinskas case, where they hijacked the plane and killed the air hostess, and came to the U.S. and were given refuge by the U.S. because they were dissidents.
MR. CARNEY: Again, Andrei, I think there are real distinctions between the legal regimes that have been in place in different countries at different times, the consequences of violating laws, either -- and being charged with laws in different countries at different times. I think you know that as well as I do and know the history as well I do.
We very clearly believe that Mr. Snowden ought to be returned to the United States to face the charges that have been set against him, through an open and clear legal process that we have in this country.
Thank you all very much.
The F word, with no hyperbole. Pilger, from Reader Supported News. I think it's a must read. In the past I've thought of Pilger as cautionary. This one is a bit too realistic in the present for comfort.
A New Fascism on the Rise
The power of truth-tellers like Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media.
Speaking about the National Security Agency (NSA), Senator Church said: "I know that the capacity that there is to make tyranny in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law ... so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
On 11 June, following the revelations in the Guardian by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg wrote that the US had now "that abyss".
Snowden's revelation that Washington has used Google, Facebook, Apple and other giants of consumer technology to spy on almost everyone, is further evidence of modern form of fascism - that is the "abyss". Having nurtured old-fashioned fascists around the world - from Latin America to Africa and Indonesia - the genie has risen at home. Understanding this is as important as understanding the criminal abuse of technology.
Fred Branfman, who exposed the "secret" destruction of tiny Laos by the US Air Force in the 1960s and 70s, provides an answer to those who still wonder how a liberal African-American president, a professor of constitutional law, can command such lawlessness. "Under Mr. Obama," he wrote for AlterNet, "no president has done more to create the infrastructure for a possible future police state." Why? Because Obama, like George W Bush, understands that his role is not to indulge those who voted for him but to expand "the most powerful institution in the history of the world, one that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings, mostly civilians, since 1962."
In the new American cyber-power, only the revolving doors have changed. The director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, was adviser to Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state in the Bush administration who lied that Saddam Hussein could attack the US with nuclear weapons. Cohen and Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt - they met in the ruins of Iraq - have co-authored a book, The New Digital Age, endorsed as visionary by the former CIA director Michael Hayden and the war criminals Henry Kissinger and Tony Blair. The authors make no mention of the Prism spying program, revealed by Edward Snowden, that provides the NSA access to all of us who use Google.
Control and dominance are the two words that make sense of this. These are exercised by political, economic and military designs, of which mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating propaganda in the public consciousness. [...]
I didn't (or don't remember) that Jared Cohen - Condi Rice connection. I have heard of the book, The New Digital Age, though. I saw it recently while reading about a think tank whose name keeps popping up. The last time I saw it was just last week when Rick Perlstein was writing hit pieces undermining Glenn Greenwald in The Nation. In the first and second article, he cited Karl Fogel as his tech expert. In the comments, Lambert exposed Fogel as a fellow for New America Foundation which gets a lot of funding from Eric Schmidt (who is heavily involved in the foundation) and Bill Gates, both of whom have an interest in pushing back against the disclosures about the PRISM program, which is exactly what Perlstein and Fogel were doing and which should have been disclosed as a potential conflict of interest. In the series of three hit pieces that he's written so far, Perlstein has never disclosed that, which is highly unprofessional.
On the home page of the New American Foundation's web site, The New Digital Age book is featured prominently in the right margin. I think I remember reading, about a year ago, that this think tank was one to watch because they had heavy influence over Obama's policies.
New America Foundation
The New America Foundation is an American non-profit, nonpartisan public policy institute and think tank focusing on a wide range of issues, including national security studies, technology, asset building, health, energy, education, and the economy. The organization is based in Washington, D.C., in addition to having a significant presence in New York City.
In 2007, Steve Coll, a former managing editor of The Washington Post, became President of the New America Foundation.[1] Google's Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, is chairman of the foundation's board of directors.[2]
In 2013 Anne-Marie Slaughter became President of the New America Foundation, replacing Steve Coll.[3]
[...]
Staff and fellows at New America are published regularly in leading national publications. Board members and fellows have written cover stories for a large number of periodicals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Wilson Quarterly, Wired, The New Republic, The New York Times, The National Interest, The American Conservative, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones.
[...]
New America receives funding from both the private and public sector. Seventy percent of its financing comes from private companies and individuals, while the rest comes from public institutions, including the U.S. government. The list of organizations and individuals that supported New America in 2010 includes more than 100 contributors.
This is a piece by Spencer Ackerman, who now works for the Guardian and no longer writes for the DangerRoom blog at Wired.com. I read somewhere that the traffic at DangerRoom is down severely. He left and started with the Guardian two weeks before they broke their biggest story in I don't know how long -- the NSA Files story. I wonder if we'll find out eventually if that was his reason for leaving and if he was given a heads up about the situation or if it was just luck, because he got a the position of national security editor at the Guardian, which is nothing to shake a stick at. Just as an aside, I've read his blog for years but I was never a huge fan because he seemed a bit hawkish to me for awhile there. In recent months he did a mea culpa, and said that he had been taken in by the
myth of Gen. Petraeus, and some other things, which impressed me. Since then he has done some book tour events with Jeremy Scahill, and he's now collaborated with Glenn Greenwald on NSA Files stories, so I've now been looking at him in a different light.
Anyway, about this story. This is not just any story, this whole thing with Wyden and Udall. They are doing us a great service with things like this, and I feel pretty sure that their colleagues are none too happy about it. I think that Alexander will be furious about the fact that this letter is public. Just look at what they are saying, and think about the implications of it. They use the word "inaccurate" here, but I'm pretty sure what they are saying is that the Alexander has been lying to Congess and to the public. I don't know if he was under oath during those hearings, but in my mind, that doesn't really matter. He represented himself as being there to tell the truth to the people. Now what I don't understand is that, given everything that has been revealed, why Wyden and Udall can't be more specific, and why they can't use the Senate floor do to so, since anything they read into the Congressional record, they can do with immunity, or so I thought. I'll put some links to a fact sheet and to the Wyden/Udall letter to Keith Alexander below so that you can have a look a them for yourself if you haven't done that already. Not to be a pain or a scold, but these are things that every American citizen should look at, even if you hate reading things like this. Neither of them is long or too hard to read.
Senators: NSA must correct inaccurate claims over privacy protections
Ron Wyden and Mark Udall write to head of NSA to correct portrayals of surveillance restrictions on website factsheet
Two senators on the intelligence committee on Monday accused the National Security Agency of publicly presenting "inaccurate" information about the privacy protections on its surveillance on millions of internet communications.
However, in a demonstration of the intense secrecy surrounding NSA surveillance even after Edward Snowden's revelations, the senators claimed they could not publicly identify the allegedly misleading section or sections of a factsheet [PDF] without compromising classified information.
[...]
"In our judgment, this inaccuracy is significant, as it portrays protections for Americans' privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are," the senators write. Yet they specified the "inaccurate" statement only in "the classified attachment to this letter", which the Guardian did not acquire.
NSA Fact sheet given to Congress last week (PDF):
Fact sheet
Letter to Keith Alexander:
Letter
Will Wyden and Udall be the modern Frank Church? Will anyone else step up? It sure doesn't look like Nancy Pelosi will. The thought of Harry Reid doing it is absurd. Feinstein, Durbin, Hoyer, forget it. All of Congress has been briefed (or offered a briefing, many of them went home for the weekend instead when the fact sheet was provided at a Saturday hearing a little over a week ago). We also know that there was some kind of briefing a few days before that, which is the one that Loretta Sanchez spoke about. She was on Meet the Press on Saturday, and seems to be fully back in line now, but at least she did make that "tip of the iceberg" statement on C-SPAN, I think it was, while she was still stunned about it all. And now Wyden and Udall say that Keith Alexander still hasn't told them the full truth. And even after that, there are the programs that are even more secret, and according to Russell Tice, under a higher level of security clearance -- and he was cautioned not to disclose certain things to Congress because they were at a secrecy/clearance level higher level than any member of Congress has. Nobody has talked about those yet, except Tice, in a recent interview with Sibel Edmonds (the FBI whistleblower whose credibility on the information she disclosed was confirmed by Director Mueller, and who was placed under a court gag order) as far as I know. It's pretty hard to argue that all of those Special Access Programs (SAP) are overseen by Congress, even though the wikipedia entry on them says that the most secret ones are overseen by various "gang" in Congress. I don't know if any secret court is involved. I don't think so.
Special access program
Special access programs (SAPs) in the federal government of the United States of America are security protocols that provides highly classified information with safeguards and access restrictions that exceed those for regular (collateral) classified information. It may be a type of black project. A SAP can only be initiated, modified, and terminated within their department or agency; the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Homeland Security, the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence; their principal deputies (e.g. the Deputy Secretary of State in DoS and the Deputy Secretary of Defense in DoD); or others designated in writing by the President.[1] In addition to collateral controls, a SAP may impose more stringent investigative or adjudicative requirements, specialized nondisclosure agreements, special terminology or markings, exclusion from standard contract investigations (carve-outs), and centralized billet systems.[2]
Two types of SAP exist: acknowledged and unacknowledged. The existence of an acknowledged SAP may be publicly disclosed, but the details of the program remain classified. An unacknowledged SAP (or USAP) is made known only to authorized persons, including members of the appropriate committees of the United States Congress. Waived SAPs are a subset of unacknowledged SAPs in the Department of Defense. These SAPs are exempt by statutory authority of the Secretary of Defense from most reporting requirements and, within the legislative branch, the only persons who are required to be informed of said SAPs are the chairpersons and ranking committee members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senate Armed Services Committee, House Appropriations Committee, and the House Armed Services Committee.[3]
There are three categories of SAPs within the Department of Defense:[4]
Acquisition SAPs (AQ-SAPs), which protect the "research, development, testing, modification, and evaluation or procurement" of new systems;
Intelligence SAPs (IN-SAPs), which protect the "planning and execution of especially sensitive intelligence or CI units or operations";
Operations and Support SAPs (OS-SAPs), which protect the "planning, execution, and support" of sensitive military activities.
Only the Director of National Intelligence may create IN-SAPs. Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) control systems may be the most well-known intelligence SAPs. The treatment of SCI is singular among SAPs, and it seems there is some disagreement within the government as to whether or not SCI is a SAP. Defense Department sources usually state that it is,[5] and at least one publication refers to a separate SCI-SAP category alongside the three listed above.[6] The Intelligence Community, drawing on the DNI's statutory responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods, finds a legal basis for SCI separate from that of SAPs, and consequently consider SCI and SAPs separate instances of the more general controlled access program.[7]
The Guardian ran a long live blog all day yesterday, and hopefully will be running another one today. They do a really good job of it, and provide periodic summaries. This is the last summay of the day, posted around 11pm BST. I assume that is British standard time, same as Greenwich mean, or 5 hours ahead of our Eastern time zone, so around 6pm eastern.
Edward Snowden whereabouts unknown as US presses Russia – as it happened
• The whereabouts of Edward Snowden were unknown, although White House spokesman Jay Carney said "it is our understanding that Mr. Snowden remains in Russia." Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conference call with reporters claimed to know where Snowden is and said he is "safe and healthy."
• Ecuador said it had received an asylum request from the former NSA contractor. Wikileaks also said it had applied to Iceland on Snowden's behalf. Ecuador's foreign minister, speaking on a trip to Vietnam, signaled support for Snowden.
• Carney said the White House "does not buy" Hong Kong's explanation for the decision to allow Snowden to depart. "That decision unquestionably has a negative impact on US-China relations," he said. Carney also said, without explanation, that it was "safe to assume" that any information Snowden had with him was "compromised."
• Carney paid tribute to the "strong cooperative relationship" between the US and Russia "on law enforcement matters." Secretary of state John Kerry said it would be “deeply troubling” if either China or Russia had had advance notice of Snowden’s travel plans and let him fly.
• Vermont senator Patrick Leahy introduced a bill to unravel the Patriot Act, which knocked out protections against intrusive government surveillance, by 2015.
• Former vice president Dick Cheney said he was proud of NSA surveillance programs he'd helped install. He said he offered Congress more oversight but they didn't want it. "I said, 'Do you think we ought to come back to the Congress in order to get more formal authorization?' and they said, 'Absolutely not.' Everybody, Republican and Democrat, said, 'Don't come back up here, it will leak'," Cheney said.
Encouraging to see this in the NYT.
The Other Snowden Drama: Impugning the Messenger
Mr. Gregory may have thought he was just being provocative, but if you tease apart his inquiry, it suggests there might be something criminal in reporting out important information from a controversial source.
In using the term “aided and abetted,” Mr. Gregory adopted the nomenclature of Representative Peter T. King, a Republican of New York who has argued that Mr. Greenwald should be arrested, lately on Fox News.
[...]
The press is frequently accused of giving itself a pass, but the present moment would seem like a good time for a bit of solidarity. The current administration’s desire for control of information is not a new phenomenon, but at this juncture, there is a clear need for a countervailing force in favor of openness.
[...]
Politicians would like to conflate the actions of reporters and their sources, but the law draws a very clear and bright line between the two in an effort to protect speech and enable transparency. Mr. Greenwald may have a point of view and his approach to journalism is through the prism of activism, but he functioned as a journalist and deserves the protections that go with the job.
Encouraging to see this in WaPo.
David Gregory whiffs on Greenwald question
David Gregory’s logic has a cursory appeal. Why wouldn’t Greenwald have the courage to take on the issues swirling around his reporting? Shouldn’t a Sunday talk show host have the latitude to pose tough questions to another journalist?
Of course. Too bad, however, Gregory didn’t do that. Rather, he seeded his question with a veiled accusation of federal criminal wrongdoing, very much in the tradition of “how long have you been beating your wife.” To repeat the question: “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
Bolded text added to highlight a clause loaded with assumption, accusation, baselessness and recklessness. A simple substitution exercise reveals the tautological idiocy of the query: “To the extent that you have murdered your neighbor, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
Monday morning, Andrew Ross Sorkin, the golden Wall Street journalist, went after Greenwald on CNBC.
When Glenn found out about it, he confronted Sorkin on Twitter. From what I could see, Sorkin first tried to weasel out of it and then when others jumped in and called him on it, telling everyone to refer to the video, he didn't respond.
And then we have Josh Marshall, who has been spitting out frequent posts about Snowden in his editor's blog, and wants to see him prosecuted. Here's one of numerous posts about Snowden from Monday. Most of the things he writes seem to be about Snowden, not about the subject of the documents he released, and the posts are directed right to his readers and written in a persuasive form. He's working furiously to turn people against Snowden.
Go see for yourself and let me know if you come to the same conclusion. Anyway, here is one where he's doing something more like musing and maybe trying to figure out why he's out of synch with peers? It's the only post in the first two pages that is not trying to convince the reader that (s)he should turn against Snowden, IMHO. As for the question he asks, I saw a recent poll report saying that Pres. Obama's approval rating among youth has dropped 17% and IIRC it had been declining before that too, but not this rapidly.
Is It Generational?
I certainly don’t think it’s totally generational. But I think there’s an element of it that is. TPM Reader MB shares his thoughts …
What I find most compelling about the Snowdon affair is what it says about changing generational attitudes toward foreign policy—in particular, I feel that it’s the first major salvo in Generation Y’s war on realist foreign policy.
I think that over the next few decades, as more and more members of Gen Y reach maturity and begin taking the reigns of power in government, we’re going to see fewer and fewer people willing to swallow that kind of cynical, game-theory worldview. While Baby Boomers and Generation X are killing themselves trying to figure out how to beat their opponent in the prisoner’s dilemma, Gen Y wants to break out of the prison.
John Cassidy from the New Yorker.
DEMONIZING EDWARD SNOWDEN: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Snowden took classified documents from his employer, which surely broke the law. But his real crime was confirming that the intelligence agencies, despite their strenuous public denials, have been accumulating vast amounts of personal data from the American public. The puzzle is why so many media commentators continue to toe the official line. About the best explanation I’ve seen came from Josh Marshall, the founder of T.P.M., who has been one of Snowden’s critics. In a post that followed the first wave of stories, Marshall wrote, “At the end of the day, for all its faults, the U.S. military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does.”
I suspect that many Washington journalists, especially the types who go on Sunday talk shows, feel the way Marshall does, but perhaps don’t have his level of self-awareness. It’s not just a matter of defending the Obama Administration, although there’s probably a bit of that. It’s something deeper, which has to do with attitudes toward authority. Proud of their craft and good at what they do, successful journalists like to think of themselves as fiercely independent. But, at the same time, they are part of the media and political establishment that stands accused of ignoring, or failing to pick up on, an intelligence outrage that’s been going on for years. It’s not surprising that some of them share Marshall’s view of Snowden as “some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law.”
Mea culpa. Having spent almost eighteen years at The New Yorker, I’m arguably just as much a part of the media establishment as David Gregory and his guests. In this case, though, I’m with Snowden—not only for the reasons that Drake enumerated but also because of an old-fashioned and maybe naïve inkling that journalists are meant to stick up for the underdog and irritate the powerful. On its side, the Obama Administration has the courts, the intelligence services, Congress, the diplomatic service, much of the media, and most of the American public. Snowden’s got Greenwald, a woman from Wikileaks, and a dodgy travel document from Ecuador. Which side are you on?
Rachel Maddow is helping bang the drums for war with Iran. Such a good state journalist she's become. I hope it's worth it for you, Rachel.
USA Today, Maddow and Iran Misinformation
But the notion that Iran has a weapons program is widely accepted in corporate media. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow (6/10/13) went farther in spreading misinformation:
The current president of Iran has had the job for the last eight years. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he's known around the world for defending Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Far from "defending Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons," Ahmadinejad regularly did the opposite, insisting that Iran had no such program, as a simple Web search would reveal--see a CBS interview (9/24/12) from last year, helpfully titled "Iranian President Denies Iran Developing a Nuclear Weapon." Or as Reuters (11/8/12) quoted him, "The Iranian nation is not seeking an atomic bomb, nor do they need to build an atomic bomb."
Alexis is a fantastic and persistent activist on the topic of foreclosure fraud and Occupy Wall Street. There is an MP3 interview with her in this FAIR article that's well worth listening to. Alexis has a knack for explaining things well. She's also a tech instructor with a very cool organization called Girl Develop It, which I've connected with in their Philadelphia chapter. They're awesome.
CounterSpin June 21 2013 Alexis Goldstein and Deepa Kumar
This week on CounterSpin: Big banks' troubling and sometimes illegal practices pushed thousands of people into foreclosure and out of their homes. Revelations from a new lawsuit suggest the same sorts of practices have turned what was supposed to be the government's fix of the previous scandal into yet another scandal--or they would, if they got enough attention. Activist Alexis Goldstein has been talking about the story; we’ll talk with her.
From the JFK presidential library.
President John F. Kennedy’s Trip to Europe June 23-July 2, 1963
Title: President John F. Kennedy’s Trip to Europe June 23-July 2, 1963
Description: Motion picture covering President John F. Kennedy’s European trip in the summer of 1963. President Kennedy arrives in West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) and travels to various sites. Included are appearances with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of the Federal Republic of Germany and Mayor of West Berlin Willy Brandt. President Kennedy then arrives in Ireland and is greeted by Irish President Eamon de Valera. Among President Kennedy's travels are a visit to the Kennedy Homestead with Jean Smith and Eunice Shriver. President Kennedy then arrives in England and is greeted by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan before traveling to various sites. President Kennedy then arrives in Italy and is greeted by Italian President Antonio Segni before visiting various sites. President Kennedy visits the Vatican and meets Pope Paul VI. Source: White House # D-3618. Photographed by: Cecil W. Stoughton. Sound by: Alfred J. Storey.
There is a video interview with someone from the museum inside the BBC link below and I've also included the time-lapse video from YouTube.
Manchester Museum time-lapse 'shows Egyptian statue move'
Time-lapse footage shows an Egyptian statue moving in its glass display cabinet, according to a Manchester Museum
In memoriam, Michael Hastings. January, 2013.
Lies of Zero Dark Thirty (w/ Michael Hastings)
Action
White House Petition: "Pardon Edward Snowden"
Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.
Created: Jun 09, 2013
As of June 24, 2013: 114,068 signatures
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
|
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Evening Blues
Coup? Putsch? What the Hell is going on at OutServe-SLDN?
More Tunes
Jim Lauderdale "Looking for a Good Place to Land"