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Janelle Monáe: Dance Apocalyptic
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I think this is going to be a big deal, for a few reasons, not the least of which is that the NYT reported that Obama did not know that Merkel's phone was being tapped. This article reports a phone call last Wednesday in which Obama personally told her he didn't know about it. But a current NSA official talked to a German news org, Bild, and told them he did know and he was personally informed about it by Keith Alexander and in fact he escalated the monitoring. This isn't the Bild article, for which I've only seen a pretty bad translation but presumably the person who wrote this article is much better at both German and English.
New media report suggests Obama knew NSA spied on Merkel
On Saturday, Spiegel magazine reported that the NSA's Special Collection Service (SCS) had listed Merkel's mobile telephone since 2002, beginning under the George W. Bush administration, and that it had remained on the list weeks before Obama visited Berlin in June.
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Obama had told Merkel during a phone conversation on Wednesday that he had not known of the bugging. However, a report in Bild am Sonntag published Sunday cites an unnamed NSA official who said that the US leader instead ordered the program be escalated.
The newspaper reports that Obama knew that the NSA had been spying on Merkel's mobile phone since at least 2010, when NSA chief Keith Alexander personally informed him of the operation.
NYT does a good, but perhaps a bit mocking at the beginning, endorsement of de Blasio.
Bill de Blasio for Mayor
The rise of Bill de Blasio, New York City’s public advocate, has been remarkable. In a clamorous primary campaign against better known, more seasoned candidates, he won the Democratic nomination without a runoff, by appealing directly and doggedly to struggling New Yorkers who see a city of lofty wealth rising out of their reach. With the election only 10 days away, Mr. de Blasio is polling so far ahead of the Republican, Joseph Lhota, that commentators have already anointed him leader of a national rebirth of left-wing populism.
Hold on. We’re electing a mayor here, someone to keep streets plowed and safe, budgets balanced, schools working well and constituents of five boroughs satisfied. Someone to sustain and build on the 12-year legacy of Michael Bloomberg, while realizing his own vision for New York. It’s a huge job, never mind the revolution.
Luckily, Mr. de Blasio is up for it.
Just about every article I've seen on the Stop Watching Us rally yesterday makes a point of noting the right/left coalition that supported it. In fact, that seems to be, to the media at least, as big a news issue as the rally itself. Watching it via livestream, this aspect did not seem to be that big a deal. joe shikspack went to the rally so we can get a first hand account of whether this was the earth shattering thing that the establishment seems to think it was. Also, there's a, in my opinion ridiculous effort on the left to keep people from supporting this movement. It's very telling. On Twitter there were people from the left and right who are apologists for the NSA, trolling the #StopWatchingUs hashtag. But at the rally, it looked like a bunch of people who agree on an issue.
Thousands gather in Washington for anti-NSA 'Stop Watching Us' rally
Statement from whistleblower Edward Snowden read to crowd featuring groups from left and right of political spectrum
Thousands gathered by the Capitol reflection pool in Washington on Saturday to march, chant, and listen to speakers and performers as part of Stop Watching Us, a gathering to protest "mass surveillance" under NSA programs first disclosed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Billed by organizers as "the largest rally yet to protest mass surveillance", Stop Watching Us was sponsored by an unusually broad coalition of left- and right-wing groups, including everything from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Green Party, Color of Change and Daily Kos to the Libertarian Party, FreedomWorks and Young Americans for Liberty.
Updates:
NYT Op-ed.
What If We Just Gave the Poor Money?
Can we reduce poverty simply by giving the poor money, with no strings attached? A new study from Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit research organization, found that cash transfers of $300 or $1,100 to 500 poor Kenyan families helped reduce hunger, improve living conditions and increase investment in livestock and small businesses.
The study was conducted by Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro in 2011, 2012 and the early part of this year. Its relatively short duration means that there is a lot it cannot tell us. For instance, what happens when families become used to getting handouts? Or when the money is cut off? Still, it adds to the growing body of knowledge on cash transfers.
The use of cash transfers as an anti-poverty tool is not new. Transfer programs have been used by governments around the world, most notably in Brazil and Mexico, to improve the lives of many millions of people. These programs typically provide cash to the poor if the recipients meet certain conditions, like having their children immunized against diseases or enrolled in school. In the latest study, however, researchers provided cash without conditions.
An example of some of the kinds of things that were going on prior to the Stop Watching Us rally. This is by Tom Watson. I'm not familiar with him. I've said before that the Amash-Conyers coalition scared the hell out of the military/intelligence complex and the establishment and that I thought we'd see all kinds of, I don't have a name for it, manipulations and propaganda to prevent any kind of unity between the right, left and middle. I think that we're seeing it with Russell Brand too. They are both disruptive and don't fit the two-party kabuki, blah blah. Wish I had a short name or meme for all of this. You know what I'm talking about. Well they've been working overtime lately. Get in line! It's fun to observe and pick out the new talking points and then watch them spread and particularly to see who, exactly, uses them, especially in the progressive blogosphere.
Don’t ally with libertarians: Ideologues co-opt an anti-NSA rally
Hard-right, anti-government ideologues make poor coalition partners, even if they're right on surveillance
This is a vital cause, and I agree with it.
Yet I cannot support this coalition or the rally. It is fatally compromised by the prominent leadership and participation of the Libertarian Party and other libertarian student groups; their hardcore ideology stands in direct opposition to almost everything I believe in as a social democrat.
The Libertarian Party itself — inaccurately described by Stop Watching Us as a “public advocacy organization” — is a right-wing political party that opposes all gun control laws and public healthcare, supported the government shutdown, dismisses public education, opposes organized labor, favors the end of Social Security as we know it, and argues in its formal political manifesto that “we should eliminate the entire social welfare system” while supporting “unrestricted competition among banks and depository institutions of all types.”
Yeah, this was pretty terrifying and real. I suggest that you read it though when you have the stomach for it. Not that you can do much about some of these things, but you should at least be aware of the particulars. Hat tip to DSWright.
I challenged hackers to investigate me and what they found out is chilling
It’s my first class of the semester at New York University. I’m discussing the evils of plagiarism and falsifying sources with 11 graduate journalism students when, without warning, my computer freezes. I fruitlessly tap on the keyboard as my laptop takes on a life of its own and reboots. Seconds later the screen flashes a message. To receive the four-digit code I need to unlock it I’ll have to dial a number with a 312 area code. Then my iPhone, set on vibrate and sitting idly on the table, beeps madly.
I’m being hacked — and only have myself to blame.
Two months earlier I challenged Nicholas Percoco, senior vice president of SpiderLabs, the advanced research and ethical hacking team at Trustwave, to perform a personal “pen-test,” industry-speak for “penetration test.” The idea grew out of a cover story I wrote for Forbes some 14 years earlier, when I retained a private detective to investigate me, starting with just my byline. In a week he pulled up an astonishing amount of information, everything from my social security number and mother’s maiden name to long distance phone records, including who I called and for how long, my rent, bank accounts, stock holdings, and utility bills.
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
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Janelle Monae- Electric Lady