Author: Millard

Common Dreams – by Michael Winship

Back in January, a month after the Newtown school slayings and just a few days before his second inauguration, Barack Obama announced he would “put everything I’ve got” into the fight against gun violence.

Part of his effort – and an end run around a Congress reluctant to make any move that might rile the National Rifle Association – was a group of 23 executive actions that, according toThe New York Times, “he initiated on his own authority to bolster enforcement of existing laws, improve the nation’s database used for background checks and otherwise make it harder for criminals and people with mental illness to get guns.”   Continue reading “Guns Lost, Stolen or Strayed”

End the Lie – by Richard Cottrell

Points of detail are important.

Edward Snowden is not an NSA sub contractor. He worked for the ‘consultancy’ Booz Allen Hamilton which is a shop front for the CIA, not the NSA. First warning.

Second. None of the ‘secrets’ he revealed are even vaguely secret, since the information concerning NSA snooping on foreign powers was already in the public realm, many times over. The problem is that newspapers and journalists intoxicate themselves with spy stories and rarely bother to sift through all the parallel information. Takes too long.   Continue reading “Edward Snowden: the Manchurian Candidate”

Common Dreams – by Tom Gitlin

Only Martians, by now, are unaware of the phone and online data scooped up by the National Security Agency (though if it turns out that they are aware, the NSA has surely picked up their signals and crunched their metadata).  American high-tech surveillance is not, however, the only kind around.  There’s also the lower tech, up-close-and-personal kind that involves informers and sometimes government-instigated violence.  Continue reading “The Wonderful American World of Informers and Agents Provocateurs”

Common Dreams – by Julian Assange

It has now been a year since I entered this embassy and sought refuge from persecution.

As a result of that decision, I have been able to work in relative safety from a US espionage investigation.

But today, Edward Snowden’s ordeal is just beginning.   Continue reading “On 1 Year, Snowden, Manning and More”

Common Dreams

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has cheered NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and admonished the rise of the surveillance state.

Speaking with CNN‘s Piers Morgan on Thursday, Wozniak expressed support for the whistleblower and said, “I felt about Edward Snowden the same way I felt about Daniel Ellsberg, who changed my life, who taught me a lot with a book he wrote…” He continued:   Continue reading “Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Slams Surveillance State, Hails NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden”

TPM Livewire – by Perry Stein

Words got heated on Meet The Press Sunday when host David Gregory asked Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald — one of the reporters to whom Edward Snowden leaked classified NSA documents — if he should be charged with a crime for “aiding and abetting” Snowden.

Greenwald strongly responded that it was “pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse” about that, adding that he was acting as an investigative journalist and there was no evidence he aided Snowden.   Continue reading “David Gregory To Greenwald: Should You Be Charged For ‘Aiding’ Snowden?”

Buzz Feed – by Michael Hastings, June 7, 2013

Besides Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, most Democrats abandoned their civil liberty positions during the age of Obama. With a new leak investigation looming, the Democrat leadership are now being forced to confront all the secrets they’ve tried to hide.

For most bigwig Democrats in Washington, D.C., the last 48 hours has delivered news of the worst kind — a flood of new information that has washed away any lingering doubts about where President Obama and his party stand on civil liberties, full stop.   Continue reading “Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans”

RT News

A new Canadian law forbids people from wearing a mask or covering their face during a riot or so-called “unlawful assembly” in the country. The law carries a maximum ten-year sentence for anyone convicted of physically concealing their identity.

Current Canadian law already forbids covering the face during a criminal act, although CBC reported that the statue, which criminalizes “disguise with intent,” generally applies to robberies. Police departments across the nation have called on lawmakers to lower the burden of proof for investigators trying to prove a mask was used for the sole purpose of hiding a demonstrator’s identity. Municipal authorities have also sought to stiffen penalties in the wake of recent violent riots in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and other cities.    Continue reading “Mask ban: Canada’s veiled protesters face 10 years’ jail”

I found this at Rense.com. I’d like to run it through the “bullshit” meter at FFTWR comment section.

Rense.com – by Richard Wilcox, Ph.D.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.” – Shakespeare (1)   Continue reading “The True Powers Behind Multiculturalism, Globalization And World War”

Aljazeera – by Danny Schechter

How ironic. The current NSA spying story broke just as President Obama was huddled on an out-of-the-way estate in California with China’s Xi Jinping to discuss US cyber-security concerns.

The administration had been claiming that a secret Bejing-based cyber military unit had been targeting US companies and government agencies. They insisted they had evidence and would confront the Chinese with it.   Continue reading “What We Are Learning – or Should Be – From the Spying Scandal”

EFF – by RAINEY REITMAN

Today, a bipartisan coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies – including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American Civil Liberties Union – are demanding swift action from Congress in light of the recent revelations about unchecked domestic surveillance.

In an open letter to lawmakers sent today, the groups call for a congressional investigatory committee, similar to the Church Committee of the 1970s. The letter also demands legal reforms to rein in domestic spying and demands that public officials responsible for this illegal surveillance are held accountable for their actions.   Continue reading “86 civil liberties groups and Internet companies demand an end to NSA spying”

Common Dreams – by Ben Quinn, The Guardian

An interactive database allowing users to search more than 100,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore tax havens including the British Virgin Islands has gone online.

The data, part of a cache of 2.5m leaked files that has already led to a series of exposes of the offshore financial sector by the Guardian and other global media organisations, has been launched by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).   Continue reading “Revealed: Secret Offshore Tax Evaders”

Common Dreams – by Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian

In my first substantive discussion with Edward Snowden, which took place via encrypted online chat, he told me he had only one fear. It was that the disclosures he was making, momentous though they were, would fail to trigger a worldwide debate because the public had already been taught to accept that they have no right to privacy in the digital age.

Snowden, at least in that regard, can rest easy. The fallout from the Guardian’s first week of revelations is intense and growing.   Continue reading “Edward Snowden’s Worst Fear Has Not Been Realized – Thankfully”

Jon Rappoport

Well, they’ve solved the riddle. Ed Snowden was able to steal thousands of highly protected NSA documents because…he had a thumb drive.

This is the weapon that breached the inner sanctum of the most sophisticated information agency in the world.   Continue reading “Ed Snowden’s magic thumb drive and other NSA fantasies”

NewsMax – by Paul Scicchitano

Former GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul insisted on Tuesday that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is not a traitor, but he fears the U.S. government may send drones or a cruise missile to kill the 29-year-old, who has fled the United States.

“I don’t think for a minute that he’s a traitor,” Paul told Fox Business’ Melissa Francis.    Continue reading “Ron Paul: Fear Snowden Could Be Target of Drone Assassination”

Truth Dig – by Alexander Reed Kelly

The 179,000 jobs created in May and boasted about by the Obama administration are no more than “the usual lowly paid non-exportable domestic service jobs—the jobs of a third world country,” former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts writes.

According to Roberts’ number crunching, here’s how the bulk of those jobs break down: retail, 27,700; wholesale trade, 7,900; ambulatory health care services, 15,300; servers and bartenders, 38,100; local government, 13,000; amusement, gambling and recreation, 12,500; temporary help, 25,600; business support services, 4,300; services to buildings and residences, 6,400; accounting and bookkeeping, 3,100; architecture and engineering, 4,900; computer systems and related, 6,000; management and technical consulting, 3,200.   Continue reading “‘Another Phony Jobs Report From a Government That Lies About Everything’”