Author: Millard

The Guardian – by Glenn Greenwald

We followed Wednesday’s story about the NSA’s bulk telephone record-gathering with one yesterday about the agency’s direct access to the servers of the world’s largest internet companies. I don’t have time at the moment to address all of the fallout because – to borrow someone else’s phrase – I’m Looking Forward to future revelations that are coming (and coming shortly), not Looking Backward to ones that have already come.   Continue reading “On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation”

Common Dreams – by Norman Solomon

Dear Senator Feinstein:

On Thursday, when you responded to news about massive ongoing surveillance of phone records of people in the United States, you slipped past the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you seem to be in the habit of treating the Bill of Rights as merely advisory.   Continue reading “The Bill of Rights Exists: An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein”

Newsmax – by Lisa Baron

Secretary of State John Kerry says that the U.S. will sign a controversial United Nations treaty on arms control in spite of bipartisan opposition from lawmakers.

Kerry released a written statement on Monday saying the U.S. “welcomes” the next phase for the treaty, which the U.N. General Assembly approved on April 2 but which gun rights advocates on Capitol Hill fear could lead to new gun control measures domestically, reports Fox News.   Continue reading “Kerry Says US Will Sign UN Arms Treaty, Ignores Congressional Opposition”

News Max – by Audrey Hudson

Presidential aides are privately admitting to a growing frustration inside the White House with Attorney General Eric Holder’s political ineptness in the press leak investigations and are hoping the embattled appointee will resign from office, The New York Times reports.

“The White House is apoplectic about him, and has been for a long time,” said an anonymous Democrat source, identified only as a former government employee who acknowledged the White House staffers in question are his friends.   Continue reading “NYT: White House Wants Holder to Resign”

End the Lie – by Richard Cotrell

Is Turkey next for the CIA’s spring cleaning?   It certainly looks that way, from all the clues surrounding the huge riots that have developed seemingly overnight in Istanbul and other large cities.

Ostensibly the trouble began over the plans by the Istanbul municipality to redevelop part of Gezi Park close to Taksim (Constitution) Square, situated in the heart of the country’s largest city. Suddenly – and suspiciously – numbers or protestors swelled dramatically and the police, never renowned for their lightness of touch, moved in with full-scale anti-riot tactics.   Continue reading “Riots in Istanbul: Gladio strikes again”

Daily Censored – by Stephen Lendman

America does it wholesale and retail. Obama’s wars increase body counts. They mount daily. Special forces death squads in over 120 countries add their own.

So do covert CIA agents. They’re licensed to kill. They do it globally.  FBI assassins operate domestically. Doing so belies their “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” motto.   Continue reading “Murder, Inc: Official US Policy”

Roi Rov

The combination was electrifying. On the screen, a leader was obviously being isolated from his people; endless commentaries on the security measures of the event had been broadcast during the preceding hours. “It is the last time he will walk among the people as a President,” an anchor had oddly announced. Yet, he was separated from the people by a moving wall of heavy armored vehicles. The edition played odd tricks; looking at President Obama walking along Pennsylvania Avenue, I could listen to excerpts from his inaugural address. “We, the People,” he kept saying, quoting the first words of the USA Constitution. The effect was grotesque.   Continue reading “We, the People; You, the Liar”

Common Dreams – by Amy Goodman

One cyberactivist’s federal case wrapped up this week, and another’s is set to begin. Although these two young men, Jeremy Hammond and Bradley Manning, are the two who were charged, it is the growing menace of government and corporate secrecy that should be on trial.

Hammond was facing more than 30 years in prison, charged with hacking into the computers of a private security and intelligence firm called Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, when he agreed to a plea agreement of one count of computer hacking. Stratfor traffics in “geopolitical intelligence, economic, political and military forecasting,” according to its website.   Continue reading “President Obama Uses a Sledgehammer Against Dissent”

Common Dreams – by Robert Jensen

Feeling anxious about life in a broken economy on a strained planet? Turn despair into action.

In December 2008, Tim DeChristopher attended a protest at a federal auction of drilling rights to Utah wilderness lands. He found a better way to disrupt the auction when he picked up a paddle and began bidding on the leases as “Bidder 70.” He won $1.8 million worth of parcels and inflated the price of many others. When it was discovered that he had no money to back his bids, the auction had to be shut down.   Continue reading “Get Apocalyptic: Why Radical is the New Normal”

Common Dreams – by Matthew Rothschild

President Obama has an eerie and alarming ability to detach himself from his own dubious actions.

This character trait was on full display in his speech on Thursday at the National Defense University.   Continue reading “In Drone Speech, Obama Gets Slippery on Killing US Citizens”

Common Dreams – by Dave Zirin

My kids are into Angry Birds, a game they love for the same reason I once obsessively played Super Mario Brothers: its appeal is incomprehensible to the adults around them. This inscrutable game, however, has one essential truth: you have some pissed off birds compelled by rage to put down some zombie-looking pigs. After a sad effort to play the game myself, I had my own epiphany: this game is actually a metaphor for the city of Chicago. Please bear with me. Angry Birds is more Chicago than the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field or deep-dish pizza. The lunacy, the violence, the plethora of increasingly crazed pigs and those fierce feathered fowl all represent the political actors in a city that’s gone over the edge.   Continue reading “Rahm Emanuel’s Zombie Pigs vs. Chicago’s Angry Birds”

Common Dreams – by Abby Zimet

In the time-honored tradition of setting abstract and often wrong-headed partisan politics above the needs of real-life people, Oklahoma’s GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, along with his colleagues a longtime climate change skeptic and foe of federal disaster relief, announced within hours of the devastating tornadoes hitting his state that any federal disaster aid should be paid for with budget cuts elsewhere, no doubt preferably affecting poor people. So when he tweeted that his “thoughts and prayers” were with the suffering victims of “the tragic tornado outbreak,” they weren’t having any of it.   Continue reading “Oklahomans Want Coburn to Take His Thoughts and Prayers and Shove ‘Em”

Common Dreams – by Jon Queally

Laborers digging a water ditch just 200 yards from a former US Special Forces outpost in Afghanistan have discovered the body of a missing Afghan man, Sayid Mohammad, who was last seen being taken to the base after being taken into custody by men associated with the US military.

The discovery of the mutilated body is just the latest development in a bizarre but pivotal series of events that have pitted the authority of Afghan President Hamid Karzai against the occupying military power of the US military and NATO.   Continue reading “Body of Footless Torture Victim Unearthed Near US Special Forces Base in Afghanistan”

End the Lie – by Madison Ruppert

As the Obama administration is hit by scandal after scandal, it was revealed that Verizon wireless handed over private data belonging to journalists with the Associated Press last year without any hesitation or questions asked.

Interestingly, the Associated Press said the decision to publish the article that reportedly sparked the investigation was only made after consulting the White House and the CIA.   Continue reading “Verizon secretly handed over phone records of AP reporters to the federal government”

End the Lie – by Richard Cottrell

The aim is to be able to lock down America (or anywhere else). Urgent need: a script. The powers that be decide on a real time live lab exercise to discover the mechanics.

Needs to know include:

– How fast planners can shut down and gain control of a very large and complex city.   Continue reading “Boston: a cynically calculated rehearsal”

The New American – by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

In what must be bad news to Attorney General Eric Holder (and his boss in the Oval Office), results of a new Rasmussen poll indicate that 49 percent of respondents believe that the regulation of gun ownership is a state or local issue.

On May 3-4, 2013, Rasmussen Reports polled the opinions of 1,000 likely voters. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points.   Continue reading “Rasmussen Poll Reports Majority of U.S. Support Nullification”

NewsMax – by Greg Richter

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman says he’ll go back to North Korea on Aug. 1 in an attempt to secure an American imprisoned there.

Rodman was critical of President Barack Obama for not talking to North Korean President Kim Jong-un after Rodman’s last visit there. The young leader bonded with the ex-NBA star over basketball, and sent a message back with him that he wanted to talk to Obama.   Continue reading “Rodman Says He’s Going Back to NKorea, Blasts Obama”

Mother Jones – by Tim Murphy