Common Dreams – by Jon Queally

“I don’t know a better way to do it,” said General Keith Alexander, director of the National Intelligence Agency, to a Senate oversight panel on Wednesday.

NSA director General Keith Alexander. He and his colleagues are fighting a push to end bulk collection of Americans’ phone data. (Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)Referring to the bulk-collection of personal data that the NSA sweeps up in a series of domestic and global surveillance programs that have been disclosed to the public through a trove a leaked internal documents this year, Alexander defended the practices of his agency as necessary to save lives.   Continue reading “Paraphrasing the NSA: ‘Let Us Spy on You, Or Terrorists Win’”

Washington’s Blog

CIA Central In Mandela’s Arrest … Kept Him On Terrorist List Until 2008

Everyone from President Obama to the mainstream news is lionizing Nelson Mandela.

But the New York Times reported in 1990:   Continue reading “U.S. Lionizes Mandela In Death … But Labeled Him a Terrorist While He Was Alive”

Common Dreams – by Abby Zimet

Okay, all done. After months of impassively, unthinkingly trashing each morning’s florid email from the black hole of greed and profiteering that is Walmart – “Map Out Your Black Friday Shopping Trip! New Value of the Hour! Save More With Home Value Bundles! – we just had one of those Network-inspired “I’m mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore” moments.   Continue reading “Great Gifts! Save More! Don’t Wait! Special Buys! 1,800 Dead! Evil Scumsuckers Go Home!”

Washington’s Blog

Scientists Warn of Extreme Risk

We’ve long said that the greatest short-term threat to humanity is from the fuel pools at Fukushima.

The Japanese nuclear agency recently green-lighted the removal of the spent fuel rods from Fukushima reactor 4′s spent fuel pool. The operation is scheduled to begin this month.   Continue reading “We’re In The Most Dangerous Moment Since the Cuban Missile Crisis”

Common Dreams – by Caroline Arnold

Today is Guy Fawkes Day in England, celebrating the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament and kill King James I in 1605.

Fawkes was one of a group of Roman Catholics who feared they were mortally threatened by a Protestant authoritarian king and government. The plotters planned to destroy Parliament and kill the king by exploding 1800 lbs of gunpowder in a cellar beneath the House of Lords.   Continue reading “Masks, Memes, the Torturers, and the Witches”

Kitchen espionage: Kettles imported to Russia from China with hidden microchips which can send spam data and possibly steal information have allegedly been found by authorities in St PetersburgDaily Mail – by SIMON TOMLINSON

Russian investigators claim to have found household appliances imported from China which contain hidden microchips that pump spam data and malware into wi-fi networks.

Authorities in St Petersburg allegedly discovered 20 to 30 kettles and irons with ‘spy microchips that send some data to the foreign server’, according to Russian media.   Continue reading “China is spying on you through your KETTLE: Bugs that scan wi-fi devices found in imported kitchen gadgets”

Washington’s Blog

Argues Spying Okay As Long As Government Doesn’t Get Caught

The chair of the House Intelligence Committee – Mike Rogers – said yesterday in an NSA spying hearing which he led that there is no right to privacy in America.

Constitutional expert Stephen I. Vladeck – Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Scholarship at American University Washington College of Law – disagreed.   Continue reading “Head of Congressional Intelligence Committee: “You Can’t Have Your Privacy Violated If You Don’t KNOW Your Privacy Is Violated””

Common Dreams – by Lauren McCauley

Regulators with Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority gave the final OK Wednesday for the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to begin to remove the 1300 spent fuel rods from the badly damaged Unit 4 pool, thus initiating a decommissioning process which anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman describes as “humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”   Continue reading “Japan Greenlights ‘Perilous’ Cleanup at Fukushima’s Reactor 4”

Washington’s Blog – by Jim Q

Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
– Thomas Edison

The kabuki theater that passes for governance in Washington D.C. reveals the profound level of ignorance shrouding this Empire of Debt in its prolonged death throes. Ignorance of facts; ignorance of math; ignorance of history; ignorance of reality; and ignorance of how ignorant we’ve become as a nation, have set us up for an epic fall. It’s almost as if we relish wallowing in our ignorance like a fat lazy sow in a mud hole. Continue reading “Culture of Ignorance”

https://i0.wp.com/www.crestock.com/uploads/blog/2008/propagandaposters/us_propaganda-21.jpg?resize=183%2C240Aletho News

A few decades ago, there were thousands of independent media outlets in the US. Today in America, six multinational global media mega corporations run by six individuals control 96% of the content Americans see on TV and watch at the movies; read in books, magazines and newspapers, and hear on the radio.

Truth Dig – by Chris Hedges

The final days of empire give ample employment and power to the feckless, the insane and the idiotic. These politicians and court propagandists, hired to be the public faces on the sinking ship, mask the real work of the crew, which is systematically robbing the passengers as the vessel goes down. The mandarins of power stand in the wheelhouse barking ridiculous orders and seeing how fast they can gun the engines. They fight like children over the ship’s wheel as the vessel heads full speed into a giant ice field. They wander the decks giving pompous speeches. They shout that the SS America is the greatest ship ever built. They insist that it has the most advanced technology and embodies the highest virtues. And then, with abrupt and unexpected fury, down we will go into the frigid waters.   Continue reading “The Folly of Empire”

Common Dreams – by Norman Solomon

To the people in control of the Executive Branch, violating our civil liberties is an essential government service. So — to ensure total fulfillment of Big Brother’s vast responsibilities — the National Security Agency is insulated from any fiscal disruption.

The NSA’s surveillance programs are exempt from a government shutdown. With typical understatement, an unnamed official told The Hill that “a shutdown would be unlikely to affect core NSA operations.”  Continue reading “The NSA Deserves a Permanent Shutdown”

Common Dreams – by Abby Zimet

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were both right. Rich people, and most notably CEOs of rapacious companies, are different from us: They have not just more money, but more arrogance, grandiosity, moral blindness and self-delusion. Thus do we have Robert Benmosche, the CEO who took over AIG after it helped crash the global economy and then got bailed out by $700 billion from taxpayers, telling the Wall Street Journal that the uproar over insane bonuses to executives despite their utter incompetence was “just as bad and just as wrong” as lynching blacks in the South, and why were all those people “out there with their pitchforks and their hangman nooses” calling them bad names which is pretty much the same as being brutally murdered.    Continue reading “AIG CEO Says Getting Yelled At On Blogs For Obscene Bonuses Is Just Like Getting Hanged From A Tree By Your Neck Till You’re Dead”

Common Dreams – by Bill Quigley

While Colorado and Washington have de-criminalized recreational use of marijuana and twenty states allow use for medical purposes, a Louisiana man was sentenced to twenty years in prison in New Orleans criminal court for possessing 15 grams, .529 of an ounce, of marijuana.

Corey Ladd, 27, had prior drug convictions and was sentenced September 4, 2013 as a “multiple offender to 20 years hard labor at the Department of Corrections.”    Continue reading “Reefer Madness Continues: Half Ounce of Pot Gets Louisiana Man Twenty Years in Prison”

Common Dreams -by Harvey Wasserman

We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focused on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.

Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.   Continue reading “The Crisis at Fukushima’s Unit 4 Demands a Global Take-Over”