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Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stone
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And all you libruls said the War on Christmas ™ was just a figment of O'Reilly's fevered imagination... !
More evidence of the War on Christmas ™ O'Reilly, are you getting this? We expect a full report on Monday! Oh, and Walmart? Philadelphia is officially passing the baton to you. The burden that Philly has borne for decades for snowballing Santa at an Eagles game has now been surpassed by the cops in riot gear arresting him. Congratulations on this dubious distinction.
Five years of lies and secrecy catch up with the best president evah. How do you think he will respond to this? A big marketing campaign? Another puppy? Singing in public? Will he decide that change is needed and clean up his act? Or will we just get more lies and deeper secrecy? Maybe he'll frog march a banker or withdraw from Afghanistan so that his 2012 promises to withdraw all the troops won't be a lie too. Or maybe OFA will flood us with a new talking point campaign about how Republicans are bigger liars! Lesser of two liars or some such? We should do a prediction poll. One thing is sure, the political "crisis management" consultants will have a good year $$$.
Poll: Independents think Obama ‘knowingly deceived’ public
A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday found 46 percent of people believe Obama knowing deceived the public, while 47 percent think the opposite. Eight percent of voters are unsure.
While the numbers break down on party lines, 51 percent of independents believe he knowingly deceived the public, while 42 percent disagree.
In a similar question that does not specifically address healthcare, a majority of voters, 52 percent, said the president is not honest or trustworthy — a spike of 11 percent in a month. Another 44 percent believe he does possess those qualities.
Wall Street Journal's Alastair MacDonald.
Greenwald.
Wall Street Journal's Alistair MacDonald "reports" an outright lie
Does MacDonald write his articles for free for the Wall Street Journal, or is he paid for his work? How much is he paid? Why has he not disclosed this? What is he hiding? Let the journalists who write articles for big media outlets without being paid for their work step up and be the first to support this attack.
MacDonald's claim that CBC paid for "access to Snowden's documents" is equally false. The CBC does not have "access to Snowden's documents". They only have access to the specific, carefully selected documents that we are reporting on together. What they're paying for - under a standard joint freelance contract with both me and my freelance colleague Ryan Gallagher - is the work that freelance reporters always do: selecting and analyzing the material to be reported and then participating in the drafting and finalizing of the article and reporting (for both TV and print): extensive work we all did together.
Aside from being completely standard, having a genuine freelance contract with media outlets is the only way to report on these documents. If we did not have such a contract, then the US government and its apologists (the very same people now criticizing us for having these contracts), would claim (dubiously but aggressively) that we were acting as a "source" or a distributor of documents, rather than as journalists in reporting them, and thus should lose the legal protections accorded to the process of journalism. As a result, we ensure that we negotiate a standard freelance contract so that nobody other than charlatans (such as those employed by the Wall Street Journal) could contest their authenticity and normalcy (for the extensive work we did in reporting and writing this story - one that broke news all over Canada and then the world - Ryan Gallagher and I were paid a joint freelance fee of $1,500).
Russell Brand.
The Sun on Sunday lied about me last week. Have they learned nothing?
Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but it's still the same fecund bone-yard of gossip, poison and lies
In the general scheme of things, the crumbling economy, the savaged environment, the treacherous, inept, deceitful politicians that govern us, the corrupt corporations that exploit us, it might not seem like a big deal. That's because it isn't to anyone, except me or my girlfriend. The pain, disruption and distress, that the Sun inflicted by falsely claiming that I cheated on my girlfriend, in the context of such awesome corruption, is a pale liver-spot on the back of Murdoch's glabrous claw. Still though, it's a tiny part of the demon's dermatology and as such, connected to all the other pestilence. Here's how.
Storytelling is important, whether it's a ruddy and robust town crier or Homer (I mean the Greek one but the other one counts too). The manner in which we receive information can affect us as much as the information itself. There is a certain duty that comes with being the anointed purveyor of truth. Can we trust that our media is fulfilling that duty? Who do they really serve? Everyone knows papers like the Daily Mail and the Sun can't be trusted, we've come to accept their duplicity as part of their charm, and their defence, that it's only really celebrities and people that deserve intrusion who are affected, while superficially true in this case, is actually the biggest lie of them all.
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Do any of us really think that these transgressions would have been freely admitted if not unwittingly revealed? No we do not. I wonder then what abominations lie uncovered beneath the tit and glitter lacquered grime and scum they serve up daily? We will never know the true extent of their dishonesty. We are dealing with experts in propaganda who will stop at nothing to see their version of events prevail, and on the rare occasions when the truth emerges, like a hernia popping through gorged corpse, they apologise discreetly for their ignoble flatulence in a mouse-sized font for hippo-sized lies. They dispose of the truth as expertly as Pulp Fiction's "Wolf" disposed of Marvin's body, these wolves of pulp fiction.
Meditations On Law and Denial While Painting Sibel Edmonds
Editor's note: The artist's essay that follows accompanies the 'online unveiling'—exclusive to Common Dreams—of Shetterly's latest painting in his "Americans Who Tell the Truth" portrait series which present citizens throughout U.S. history who have courageously engaged in the social, environmental, or economic issues of their time. This portrait of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds* follows one of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden unveiled on these pages in July.
“Senator Humphrey, I been praying about you, and I been thinking about you, and you’re a good man. The only trouble is, you’re afraid to do what you know is right.”
Those words were spoken by Fannie Lou Hamer in Atlantic City in 1964. Hubert Humphrey, the soon-to-be running mate of Lyndon Johnson, had informed Ms. Hamer that her integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation would not be seated at the Democratic Convention, nor would they replace the all-white delegation sent to the convention by the Mississippi Democratic Party.
The reason I quote them here is that the problem she identifies—a good man afraid to do what he knows is right— haunts our history. It haunts it because moral cowardice, euphemistically called political expediency, leads to injustice, denial and corruption.
When I was painting the portrait of the FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, those words came back to me. [...]
Really good article at Just Security by Jennifer Granick. Hard to excerpt. She makes a lot of excellent points. The thing that bothers me most is that it seems that the law is not really clear about whether or not it's legal to collect and then leak this kind of information which could be used for extortion or blackmail.
NSA SEXINT is the Abuse You’ve All Been Waiting For
The Huffington Post story does not show that the NSA ever actually blackmailed the targets or revealed the embarrassing information. Of course, this practice–and the identities of the people–are secret. We simply wouldn’t know whether the NSA ever carried out this plan. In fact, the target would probably never know either. As Julian Sanchez points out,
Often, the point [of intelligence work] is precisely to make use of information from intercepts in ways that can never be directly or publicly traced to government. A target whose reputation or career is torpedoed by embarrassing disclosures may never know whether they were the victim of an intelligence operation or simple bad luck.
Further, when an individual holds views that are radical, but not necessarily violent, empirical studies have proven there is no predictable connection with terrorism. As the ACLU’s Mike German has pointed out, the concept that the adoption of a particular belief set is a precursor to violent action has been refuted in multiple empirical studies. One report published by the British think-tank Demos in 2010 found that:
“[c]ertain ideas which are sometimes associated with terrorism were, in fact, held by large numbers of people who renounced terrorism.” The authors pointed out that holding radical views and rebelling against the political and social status quo was a normal part of being young, and that “[r]adicalization that does not lead to violence can be a positive thing” when it leads to greater involvement in political and community affairs. It argued that censorship of radical ideas would be ineffective and counterproductive, and the government should ensure “that young people can be radical, dissenting, and make a difference, without it resulting in serious or violent consequences.
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Case law on the subject lends little further guidance on whether using personal foibles to undermine “radicalizers” would be lawful, even if the target is a U.S. person. Kris and Wilson cite the case of U.S v. Singleton suggesting it implies that anti-blackmail laws do not apply to the federal government acting in its sovereign capacity. Nor is it clear that the statute prohibiting official extortion applies to efforts to sway individuals away from even lawful political advocacy. The cases interpreting the law talk about the official obtaining money or something of value from the victim, not about dissuasion or even recruitment as a foreign agent. (See also Kris and Wilson §28.3.)
Julian Sanchez at ZOMG ZOMG Cato. Don't read it! You'll go blind! Don't form coalitions with evil libertarians! They trick the libruls on purpose! Shun! Shun the unbelievers!
Operation Sex Deviate 2.0
While it’s not clear whether the NSA—or one of its client agencies—ever carried through on this plan, even compiling and disseminating such derogatory information about a U.S. person guilty of no more than vile (but nevertheless First Amendment protected) speech would be, prima facie, illegal. But given the breadth of NSA’s collection, records of the online sexual habits of millions of others who might one day be deemed “radicalizers” of one stripe or another are almost certainly sitting in a database waiting to be mined and deployed.
The report underscores one of the primary reasons intelligence surveillance in particular is so susceptible to abuse. In criminal investigations, the paradigmatic government use of information gleaned from wiretaps or other forms of spying is as evidence in a criminal trial, where the government’s actions are subject to eventual scrutiny and legal accountability. But in the realm of intelligence, only rarely are the fruits of surveillance used in criminal prosecution—eliminating the primary “back end” institutional check on government spying. Often, the point is precisely to make use of information from intercepts in ways that can never be directly or publicly traced to government. A target whose reputation or career is torpedoed by embarassing disclosures may never know whether they were the victim of an intelligence operation or simple bad luck.
The U.S. legal system is ill-designed to guard against such tactics: Our primary safeguard—indeed, in most cases the only safeguard—against violations of the Fourth Amendment is the “exclusionary rule,” which prohibits evidence derived from illicit surveillance from being used against a defendant at trial. When, instead, intelligence agencies use surveillance to attack their targets through means other than prosecution, no court or judge is ever likely to review their work. You may not be engaged in any criminal conduct, but does that really mean you have “nothing to hide” from government? Check your browser history before answering too confidently.
I'm putting this video here (recent IMF forum) because it's the forum that Paul Krugman was referring to in his recent, controversial column. I listened to the Q&A segment, which begins around the 1 hour mark. There are a lot of things that strike me about it, but one of them is that I find it amazing to hear Summers and Bernanke speak now about things that they could have done something about when they both were in positions of great power but it seems to me that their attitudes were significantly different then.
One part that I think everyone should listen to begins around the 1 hour 20 minute mark where Summers makes excuses about why they didn't just bail out the individual mortgages rather than allowing the defaults to occur, triggering the credit default swaps, resulting in trillions in bail outs for the banks. He gives a pathetic, absolutely pathetic excuse about how for every one family that would have been greatly helped by doing mortgage modifications, writing down their mortgages, there were six families who didn't need a bail out, and lots of people might have done things to get a write down for themselves too, and how it just wouldn't have been fair to those six families. So instead, they threw trillions at the reckless, criminal banks, who remain reckless, criminal banks, and the families got screwed, and more of those other six families went underwater, and defaulted, and lost their homes, and the economy was wrecked, and the Fed continues to spend tens of billions every single month buying up toxic bank assets. Summers shrugs it off with a 'well now in hindsight maybe it could have been done differently' blah blah blah. It strikes me that he is sitting there on that stage, still very wealthy. Disgraced and hated, yes, but still very wealthy, as are all of his friends, while those some significant number of those seven families have been ruined. Oh.. meh... is the Larry Summers attitude. He refers to helping those American voters in such a way as to just cheapen and minimize the humanity of the masses... I can't really describe it. You have to listen to it for yourself.
Despicable creatures who toy with people's lives and, in the end, only care about the 1% and as a result of their policies, who have thrived and gotten more and more wealthy at the expense of everyone else. The amount of suffering, perhaps not caused by these men, but certainly exascerbated and not relieved by these men who had the power to craft and implement more populist solutions rather than the elite solutions that they did create are not forgiveable. They are just never forgiveable. The way they shrug it off and even show their faces in public is astounding. Summers, rather than pontificating, should be begging for forgiveness, as should Bernanke but truthfully, I've always gotten the sense that Bernanke was not a free man when it came to running the Fed. That's not an excuse though. He could have resigned and disclosed such a fact if that was the case.
They are pompous, elite, and utterly immoral and callous cowards in robes, hoods, scarves and tams who, after their disastrous actions and lack of action, should never again show their faces in public, let alone offer any kind of advice to the IMF. They will always serve their own interests and the interests of the circle of greed in which they live, and the people with whom they interact on a daily basis, who are the only people to which they feel accountable, clearly. The assets of that circle are largely intact, or in most cases have grown significantly, and that's all that ultimately matters. As long as we continue to elect people who will, every time, appoint people like Larry Summers, they will always take care of their own, and in difficult financial times when sacrifices have to be made, will inflict the sacrifice on the nameless, anonymous mass of "voters" who they'll never have to deal with in person, behind their gated walls and protected by their guards, rather than on the people who caused the problems through their reckless, criminal acts. It will always be so, until we're represented by people who understand and live by the meaning of representing the interests of the people.
[IMF] Economic Forum: Policy Responses to Crises
I can hardly read things like this BI post, summarizing the Summers speech at the IMF, without losing it. Why? Well because I knew this already. I knew it several years ago. And when someone like me knows this and the geniuses who are running the world economy are only coming to that realization right now, or only admitting it right now, Houston, we have a serious f'ing problem and these guys should not be up on that f'ing stage. The people who should be on that stage are the ones who I learned that information from, various progressive leaning economists, but who are still ignored and essentially shunned in the world of very important people of banking and economics.
I find it very hard to believe that Larry Summers didn't know this too. But the last five years have been focused on propping up the criminal banks and restoring the wealth of the wealthiest few, at the expense of the many. None of these things could be admitted until they were guranteed to be even wealthier than before the crash. That has to be the explanation. There's no way that he could just be realizing this now, could there?
We're talking about the guy who was the top advisor of the president and the gatekeeper on all solutions, by the way, who handled the 2008 crash, during his transition period and the critical first years of his term, and we're talking about the guy who has also served as Treasury Secretary when the foundation for such a crash and crisis was laid, or rather undermined. It's also simply stunning... (is there a stronger word than stunning? Since I can't think of the perfect word let's say MF'ing stunning) that this president wanted to put this guy into an even more mega powerful job as Fed chair. There are no words to describe how MF'ing stunning that is. This was yet another case when the country stood up and said Hell No to Barack Obama and thank FSM, he's so used to adoration and not anger and opposition from people on his side that he was stunned by the outcry, and after ranting and pouting a bit, but then did not appoint the cretin to run the Fed. As we know from the accounts of his long bull sessions with MSM columnists like Tom Friedman, he loves to go on and on about how he's right and his opponents are wrong. The outcry on Summers was so loud and so persistent that he backed down, but he's probably still going on about it in the thrice monthly bull sessions with his columnist buddies. Thank FSM for big, loud favors.
To borrow a sentence from Russell Brand: "they apologise discreetly for their ignoble flatulence in a mouse-sized font for hippo-sized lies". But these monsters, Summers and Bernanke, don't even apologize. They are still out there spreading their toxic world view, as if it's worth a bloody thing. Worse than that, by adopting the view of the people who were ignored, shunned when they were right and he was disastrously wrong, when he was blocking and demeaning others in the administration pushing for larger stimulus and genuine relief for homeowners, etc., who were right when he was so bloody wrong with a head so big that his listening ears failed to function and an ego so gigantic that there was no room for any other in the room, and with an attitude so vicious that there were probably few others who even risked it... where was I? Oh, by adopting this position now, and by failing to mention that people tried to get this through his thick head five years ago, he implies that he's held this position all along. So it's even worse than not apologizing and crawling into a hole, never to advice on things economic until the end of his pathetic, ruinous life. That would at least be the honest thing to do. But this guy's bizarre ego is still driving him to try to wreck more lives.
People Are Still Talking About That Amazing Larry Summers Speech — And It Can Be Summarized In Two Sentences
If you haven't read it yet, have no fear, Citigroup FX analyst Steven Englander has published a note on the speech wherein he summarizes it in two sentences:
The ability of the economy to generate adequate demand is so impaired that we are getting financial bubbles before we get full employment. In consequence, under current policies episodes of full employment are fleeting and unsustainable.
That's pretty disturbing and you can see why everyone's so interested.
Do Negative Rates Call For a Permanent Expansion of the Government?
I would normally edit a transcript a bit more, but I wanted to make sure you saw that Summers has a triple hedge ("it's sort of the point that there may be a case for what, in some ways of thinking") before he says that we may need a permanent, or at least a permanent enough, fiscal expansion. This is a long way away from the "timely, targeted, and temporary" mantra Summer had for fiscal stimulus in 2008. Stimulus should still be very well targeted, but now temporary and perhaps even timely are up for grabs.
Of course, if we needed to expand government for our new era, we have a lot of projects, like fighting global warming and rationalizing our safety net with some kind of basic income, with which we could start. So we aren't lacking for genuine investment opportunities. But would a serious and sustained expansion of the size of government be a necessary or sufficient condition for combating the issue of secular stagnation? I'm curious what everyone thinks and why.
Olivier Blanchard: Monetary Policy Will Never Be the Same
Yves here. Even when Blanchard takes pains to characterize his remarks as personal, they can at least be assumed to have a solid following at the IMF. His effort to summarize findings from a recent IMF conference, the one that garnered a great deal of attention due to Larry Summer’s remarks on secular stagnation, can also be seen as a statement of what I call leading edge conventional wisdom among mainstream economists. What caught my eye was his defense of budgetary orthodoxy, in his “fiscal house in order” aside at the top, and his more encouraging defense of higher levels of inflation, which would be consistent with a stronger pro-employment monetary stance.
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The standard argument in favour of letting the exchange rate adjust was stated by Paul Krugman at the conference. If investors want to take their funds out, let them: the exchange rate will depreciate, and this will lead, if anything, to an increase in exports and an increase in output.
Three arguments have traditionally been given, however, against relying on exchange rate adjustment. The first is that, to the extent that domestic borrowers have borrowed in foreign currency, the depreciation has adverse effects on balance sheets, and leads to a decrease in domestic demand that may more than offset the increase in exports. The second is that much of the nominal depreciation may simply translate into higher inflation. The third is that large movements in the exchange rate may lead to disruptions, both in the real economy and in financial markets.
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In short, monetary policy will never be the same after the crisis. The conference helped us understand how it had moved, and where we have to focus our research and policy efforts in the future.
Action
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.
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