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Longwood Gardens. Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
Longwood Gardens. Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
Longwood Gardens. Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
Longwood Gardens. Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
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Wow, Barney Frank shows his true colors. Alexis Goldstein rocks again. Must see. Just make sure you watch this and watch how Barney tries to use his loud voice and status to shout her down when he's got nothing and she's got all the facts. I would argue that this is a typical way that some men try to get women to shut up too, but Barney should know better. I'm sure he's familiar with Alexis because she's been all over the failed Dodd-Frank legislation and in fact she's tried harder than anyone else to get parts of it implemented. But women are supposed to defer and shut up when men shout them down like this. Whoever thinks that Ms. Goldstein will do that has another thing coming. You go girl, Alexis, and you've got a hell of a lot of people, the 99%, I would say, behind you (not to mention the audience at Maher's show). Shame on you, Barney Frank, tool of Wall Street. Unfortunately for you, you're going to have to face a lot of people who have the ethics, the law, and the facts on their side when you don't and they're not the kind of "dining room table" that you like to smack down as opponents. History will not be kind to you or those "dining room tables" but it will be kind to Alexis Goldstein re: the heist of the century that you and Chris Dodd and Barack Obama helped to sweep under the rug.
Bill Maher: Barney Frank Erupts Over Whistleblowers 8/2/13
So that drone speech in May was just meaningless, which is a huge surprise to us (NOT) but which so many people lauded as a great achievement for this president. Or rather his platitudes about scaling down the murderous drone wars was bullshit. Kerry told the Pakistanis that we'd be "winding down the drone wars there" and then the State Dept. issued a contradictory statement right afterward. Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? What about John Brennan's claims that he would be scaling down the CIA's disastrous drone strikes and returning to more traditional human intel at the CIA? Well that was before he actually got the job, and while he was at the White House, he was running his own little special forces army out of the WH so maybe he just can't quit his killing habit. The secret drone base in Saudi Arabia used for the Yemen drone strikes was likely Brennan's baby, given his former position as chief of station there. This NYT article says the Saudis are not likely to allow the Pentagon to run that base.
The U.S. backed (and propped up) president in Yemen was a the White House last week saying that the cooperation with the U.S. on drone strikes was in Yemen's best interest because the country and economy (tourism, oil, etc) is a mess because of the havoc wreaked by Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Which is weird, because we know for a fact that our drone and missile strikes in Yemen have exacerbated the problems there and have stirred up hatred for Americans for some people who did not hate Americans before, and our drone war has become an AQAP recruiting tool. There's a name for that kind of thing that I can't think of at the moment, a negative spiral that feeds itself. The article then talks about how the furor over drones at home has subsided and how that's probably a factor in the administration's decision not to ramp down the drone war as promised in a major speech by the president. WTF?
Despite Administration Promises, Few Signs of Change in Drone Wars
WASHINGTON — There were more drone strikes in Pakistan last month than any month since January. Three missile strikes were carried out in Yemen in the last week alone. And after Secretary of State John Kerry told Pakistanis on Thursday that the United States was winding down the drone wars there, officials back in Washington quickly contradicted him.
[...]
Most elements of the drone program remain in place, including a base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia that the Central Intelligence Agency continues to use to carry out drone strikes in Yemen. In late May, administration officials said that the bulk of drone operations would shift to the Pentagon from the C.I.A.
But the C.I.A. continues to run America’s secret air war in Pakistan, where Mr. Kerry’s comments underscored the administration’s haphazard approach to discussing these issues publicly. During a television interview in Pakistan on Thursday, Mr. Kerry said the United States had a “timeline” to end drone strikes in that country’s western mountains, adding, “We hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”
[...]
“Pakistan’s leaders often say things for public consumption which they don’t mean,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States. “It seems that this was one of those moments where Secretary Kerry got influenced by his Pakistani hosts.”
Congressional pressure for a public accounting of the drone wars has largely receded, another factor allowing the Obama administration to carry out operations from behind a veil of secrecy.
Wrongfully foreclosed homeowners get $300?!?! Consultants get $10,000 per home. Alexis Goldstein rocks. We need to shine more of a light on this subject in general and on that sham of a fraud of a settlement that Schneiderman settled for and Obama announced as a real solution. That was one of the most despicable actions this government has made in the entire five years in office, and as you know, that is really saying something. I'll be watching David Dayen on this and including more information about that topic which I had my eye on for years but got distracted from because of the constant bombardment of development on major issues that are important to me in recent months. Elizabeth Warren, we need you to step up in a major way. IIRC, she supported this settlement. The consultants and the banks made out like criminal bandits and the homeowners are left with no homes and a pittance. This can't stand. They can still sue. People need to help them get together and sue and this government needs to step up this time and not just with a fraud of a deal sold by the president to calm things down so he could get reelected and still protect the banks and the FIRE industry. That was low, despicably low.
English News Today - Wrongly foreclosed on? Here's a few bucks from the billion-dollar banks
The unpredictable Bill Maher was really good this week. He goes on vacation now and the new shows begin again in September. It was an excellent show for a lot of reasons and if you can, try to watch it or catch as many clips as you can. They're all over YouTube. I'm not very familiar with Jay Z except his name, and I don't know his politics, but I thought he did a really good job last night on Maher and he could be a real force for good for the 99% and especially the victims of the injustice of our criminal "justice" system, particularly young black and Latino males, should he decide to use his 1% wealth and power to try to make things better, and it looks like he intends to try to do that, instead of just folding into the 1% club and kicking the rungs of the ladder out behind him, like most do. This discussion about the need for more police was stunningly good with Jay Z, Maher and Goldstein pushing back against Barney Frank's 1% arguments that "people" still want more police. Yes, I'm sure your banker friends want to keep pouring more money into police that look like armies, Barney. Jay Z just destroyed his arguments, with everyone else at the table chiming in and Barney was the poster child for what is wrong with our government. They don't listen to the people. They work for the 1% and when in an open honest debate, they can't justify it at all, which is the reason why they constantly invoke Terra! Terra! Terra! which to his credit, Barney Frank didn't pull out very much last night, but his friends in Washington have been doing Cheney impressions with it all week long. Anyway, enough from me, make sure you watch this.
Maher Panel Rips Fox’s ‘Concern-Trolling’ On Black Crime, Jay Z Battles Barney Frank Over Stop-And-Frisk
Frank said the GOP does a disservice by cutting budgets that leads to police forces getting cut, while Jay Z argued the real problem is social and economic imbalance, “a problem that no amount of police can solve.” Occupy activist Alexis Goldstein brought up stop-and-frisk, but Frank argued that while it may be abusive, black people want more and better policing.
Jay Z shot back, “More jobs would be better than police.” He tussled with Frank for a while, only for Goldstein to jump in to decry “institutionalized racism” in the police and reminding the audience about police crackdowns on OWS and no one “stopping and frisking Wall Street bankers.”
Speaking of terra terra terra, today a lot of embassies are closed and a worldwide travel advisory has been issued by the State dept. I'll have more commentary and articles and tweets on this tomorrow, and I'm not saying there aren't real dangers but boy, it feels a lot like that terrorism color code days and convenient use of fearmongering. How often do you hear any news about Yemen in the U.S. media? They have horrific problems with lack of food, drought, civil war, and drone strikes that kill civilians. But we don't hear about that. However when the NSA and the White House and their massive surveillance state are in really hot water, the media is all over it with news about Al Qaeda threats in Yemen.
Officials: Chatter among al Qaeda operatives in Yemen led to U.S. warnings
Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) -- Fresh intelligence led the United States to conclude that operatives of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were in the final stages of planning an attack against U.S. and Western targets, several U.S. officials told CNN.
The warning led the U.S. State Department to issue a global travel alert Friday, warning al Qaeda may launch attacks in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond in coming weeks. The U.S. government also was preparing to close 22 embassies and consulates in the region Sunday as a precaution.
The chatter among al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula operatives had gone on for weeks but increased in the last few days, the officials said.
Greenwald.
Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA
Documents provided by two House members demonstrate how they are blocked from exercising any oversight over domestic surveillance
[Links to those documents are provided in the article]
Members of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate.
From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over them. "These programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate," President Obama said the day after the first story on NSA bulk collection of phone records was published in this space. "And if there are members of Congress who feel differently, then they should speak up."
But members of Congress, including those in Obama's party, have flatly denied knowing about them. On MSNBC on Wednesday night, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct) was asked by host Chris Hayes: "How much are you learning about what the government that you are charged with overseeing and holding accountable is doing from the newspaper and how much of this do you know?" The Senator's reply:
The revelations about the magnitude, the scope and scale of these surveillances, the metadata and the invasive actions surveillance of social media Web sites were indeed revelations to me."
A few of these are graphic, but most are not and many are just stunningly beautiful, others stunningly sad. Really just an amazing set of pictures. In the movie Dirty Wars, you meet some Afghan children and I was so touched by them. The image and words of one young girl still haunt me (the one whose family was killed in al Majala). Anyway, these photos are just amazing.
Afghanistan's Children of War
The United Nations issued a report on Wednesday stating that the number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan rose by 23 percent in the first six months of 2013, with women and children faring the worst -- killed by roadside bombs almost every day. An earlier UN report noted that "Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child". Over a third of Afghans are living in abject poverty, violence is escalating as NATO forces withdraw, and years of international aid has done little to decrease the abuse of women and children. These children, growing up in a country torn by warfare for decades, do their best to live normal lives -- learning to cope with the dangers, finding time to play when they can, and learning lessons from the adults all around them. The photos below are part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.
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