Support for WikiLeaks

While WikiLeaks enjoyed widespread support just a couple of years ago, the personal attacks on Assange and Manning — along with the unproven and even uncharged sexual assault allegations in Sweden — have dried up much of that support. Who wants to be seen advocating for an unhygienic, abusive egomaniac or a psychologically crippled, gender-confused, vengeful freak: the caricatures of Assange and Manning that have been successfully implanted in the public mind by today’s Nixonian smear artists? The truth or falsity of these caricatures matters little for this tactic to work: once someone is rendered sufficiently radioactive in Decent Society, even many who are sympathetic to their cause will turn away, become unwilling to defend them, lest any of the slime relentlessly poured on the whistleblowers splatter onto their defenders.

[...]

[But] personal attributes or failings of Assange or Manning have no bearing on the threat posed by the U.S. Government’s prosecution for the publishing WikiLeaks has done.

[...]

Ample evidence, including my prior reporting, proves the Obama DOJ has an active Grand Jury investigation of WikiLeaks. Some evidence, albeit not entirely reliable, has emerged stating that they have already obtained a sealed indictment. That there is now a flurry of recent activity at exactly the time when it was known the British Supreme Court would issue its extradition ruling — suspected WikiLeaks supporters being aggressively accosted by the FBI while Hillary Clinton is now meeting with top officials in Sweden — adds to the reasonable suspicion that the U.S. is seeking to exploit Assange’s extradition to Sweden as a means of bringing him to the U.S. to face prosecution under espionage charges.

[...]

A coalition of leading journalists and media outlets in Australia have explained: WikiLeaks “is doing what the media have always done: bringing to light material that governments would prefer to keep secret” and prosecuting them “would be unprecedented in the US, breaching the First Amendment protecting a free press.“ […] Although American journalists were reluctant at first to speak out, even they have come around to recognizing what a profound threat an Assange indictment would be to press freedoms, with The Washington Post Editorial Page denouncing any indictment on the ground that it “would criminalize the exchange of information and put at risk responsible media organizations,” and even editors of the Guardian and Keller himself — with whom Assange has feuded — are now vowing to defend Assange if he were to be prosecuted.

  Glenn Greenwald

Meanwhile, John Edwards is on Trial

12 people down in North Carolina are being asked to judge whether, in the course of being both a public scumbag and being a public idiot, [ex-presidential primary candidate John] Edwards also violated some arcane provisions of the campaign finance laws regarding $1 million that was used to keep the public from knowing exactly how much of a public scumbag and a public idiot he had been.

[...]

There are maybe 100 people in the country who really know the arcane provisions of campaign finance laws, and about 87 of them know those arcane provisions only for the purposes of evading the campaign finance laws entirely. So, down in Greensboro, all the jurors order up another basket of chicken and pretend to know what's going on.

[...]

Former Edwards aide Andrew Young, the world's most opulently cosseted and well-travelled beard, was a hoot on the stand. There was one golden moment when Edwards's lawyer simply banged his head on the defense table in frustration, and everyone went briefly agog when it appeared that one of the alternates was flirting with the defendant who, in a perfect example of why being a horndog has such a high rate of recidivism, seemed to be responding in kind. As circuses go, this really had a lot to recommend it. As a trial, it has been a profound waste of time and money.

[...]

Not that the trial hasn't been entertaining. The alternate jurors seem to be developing a cabaret act that they can take on the road when the trial's done:

[Federal Judge Catherine] Eagles did not mention jurors' sartorial selections, but plenty of reporters and spectators who have spent weeks riding the courtroom's hard wooden benches have paid close attention. They noticed that the four alternate jurors all wore yellow on Thursday and red on Friday. For those keeping track, the alternates' color scheme for Tuesday was gray and black. What it means, if anything, is anyone's guess.

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yeah, That Should Fix It

The airline industry has reacted to the problem of aisle chaos caused by people trying to get couches and coffee tables into the overhead bins, by creating even larger bins. This of course is a strategy similar to trying to get your mooching relatives to leave after dinner by offering them a round of cognac and Cuban cigars.

The new bins will have room for one smart car, one bicycle and one personal cow per passenger and then the airlines will study whether this speeds up the boarding process, or not. Of course you know that someone will try to get an SUV limo into the bin over your head, and then the dirty looks just start up again.

  Tom Toles

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ha!

Yeah, perhaps they should rethink that.  Or maybe that's what they meant.  He can't be a WH favorite.

The New York Times reports that President Obama has created an official “kill list” that he uses to personally order the assassination of American citizens. Considering that the government already has a “Do Not Call” list and a “No Fly” list, we hereby request that the White House create a “Do Not Kill” list in which American citizens can sign up to avoid being put on the president’s “kill list” and therefore avoid being executed without indictment, judge, jury, trial or due process of law.

  White House.gov Petitions

Further on the subject:

The Obama Administration has sought and killed American citizens, notably Anwar al-Awlaki. As the Times noted, “The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.” In other words, it’s due process if the President thinks about it. One wonders how low the standard for “internal deliberations” are—if it might be enough if Obama mulled it over while walking his dog.

[...]

[Obama's counter terrorism adviser, John] Brennan and other officials interviewed by the Times and Newsweek said that Obama had enormous faith in himself. It would be more responsible, though, if he had less—if he thought that he was no better than any other President we’ve had or ever will.

  Amy Davidson, New Yorker

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Justin Raimondo Would Like Some Attention

I was going to defend Chris Hayes, the MSNBC host whose pre-Memorial Day comments [wondering if the word hero when used to describe our troops is really an attempt to justify our foreign policy] provoked the wingnut-osphere into one of its frequent paroxysms of hate.

[...]

I was going to defend him, but he apologized so quickly after the chickenhawk brigade started squawking that he’s taken the fun out of the whole project.

[...]

I’ll defend Hayes anyway, in spite of himself: no doubt his corporate masters at MSNBC forced him to issue his (unconvincing) retraction. And I’ll go him one better: it isn’t just that our troops aren’t heroes, it’s that a good number of them are monsters. Yes, you heard me: monsters.

  Justin Raimondo

Sadly for Justin, he won't get the high profile blowback Chris Hayes encountered, because he's not a TV personality, or even a mainstream media blogger, but he will get some hate mail.  His normal quota, no doubt.

Let’s take an emblematic example: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who killed 17 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children, in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province. In the early morning hours of March 11, 14-year-old Rafiullah – a mere slip of a boy – woke to the sound of gunfire. He looked outside and saw an American soldier walking to a shed that housed the family’s prized cow: the soldier opened fire, killing the animal, and then approached the house.

[...]

“Terror unfolded in the crowded space, the frightened faces of women and children illuminated only by a light that Rafiullah said appeared to be affixed to an assault rifle. The shooter drove everyone before him, herding and hunting his victims like animals.”

[...]

Bales’ rampage is just the latest in a long series of atrocities carried out by our “heroic” centurions. Remember the “Stryker” gang that went around shooting helpless civilians and collecting fragments of bones as “souvenirs”? Should we give those “heroes” a medal?

[...]

There is growing evidence the [Bales] massacre wasn’t just an isolated incident, but part of a larger pattern of “no knock” retaliatory raids conducted by US troops in Afghanistan. Those who are now coming up with exculpatory rationales for Bales’ murderous rampage – and even those who think Bales is monster – take refuge in the argument that his behavior is the exception, and that most of our soldiers are upstanding examples of All That is Good and True. Yet what Bales did is what is occurring on a nationwide scale in Afghanistan: a “special operations” campaign to sow terror among the Afghan populace so that fear outweighs their natural hatred of an occupying army.

[...]

Instead of defending the United States from attack, military recruits in the 21st century are joining a global Praetorian Guard whose mission is to fight wars of conquest. Rather than standing guard at the border, as they should be, they are busy pushing back the frontiers of the Empire. While not each and every one of them is a war criminal, the conduct of US foreign policy has now reached the point where they are all willing aggressors to some degree or other.

You can read Justin's post for an update on the case of Sgt. Robert Bales, because otherwise, it's being kept very quiet, and move on, there's nothing to see here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ask and Ye Shall Be Answered

Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, has lost his appeal at the supreme court in London against extradition to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault allegations.

The judges ruled with a majority of 5 to 2 on Wednesday that the Swedish prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant was a "legitimate judicial authority".

The decision means that Assange, 40, can be extradited. But his lawyers immediately requested to be given leave to appeal to reopen the case.

That means that Assange can stay in Britain for a further 14 days

  akJazeera

Barack Obama: The Right Hand of God

Angel of Death.

It is the strangest of bureaucratic rituals: Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government’s sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.

This secret “nominations” process is an invention of the Obama administration

[...]

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of [this] top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

[...]

This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.

[...]

Mr. Obama [...] insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

[...]

[Obama] signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan — about a third of the total.

[...]

When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

[...]

One early test involved Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. The case was problematic on two fronts, according to interviews with both administration and Pakistani sources.

The C.I.A. worried that Mr. Mehsud, whose group then mainly targeted the Pakistan government, did not meet the Obama administration’s criteria for targeted killing: he was not an imminent threat to the United States. But Pakistani officials wanted him dead, and the American drone program rested on their tacit approval. The issue was resolved after the president and his advisers found that he represented a threat, if not to the homeland, to American personnel in Pakistan.

  NYT

Easy.

Then, in August 2009, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, told Mr. Brennan that the agency had Mr. Mehsud in its sights. But taking out the Pakistani Taliban leader, Mr. Panetta warned, did not meet Mr. Obama’s standard of “near certainty” of no innocents being killed. In fact, a strike would certainly result in such deaths: he was with his wife at his in-laws’ home. “Many times,” General Jones said, in similar circumstances, “at the 11th hour we waved off a mission simply because the target had people around them and we were able to loiter on station until they didn’t.”

But not this time. Mr. Obama, through Mr. Brennan, told the C.I.A. to take the shot, and Mr. Mehsud was killed, along with his wife and, by some reports, other family members as well, said a senior intelligence official.

Easy.

The attempted bombing of an airliner a few months later, on Dec. 25, stiffened the president’s resolve, aides say.

His resolve. So that's what he calls his little soldier.

When a few officials tentatively offered a defense, noting that the attack had failed because the terrorists were forced to rely on a novice bomber and an untested formula because of stepped-up airport security, Mr. Obama cut them short.

“Well, he could have gotten it right and we’d all be sitting here with an airplane that blew up and killed over a hundred people,” he said, according to a participant.

[...]

David Axelrod, the president’s closest political adviser, began showing up at the “Terror Tuesday” meetings, his unspeaking presence a visible reminder of what everyone understood: a successful attack would overwhelm the president’s other aspirations and achievements.

Well, we can't have that, now, can we?

Chris Floyd on the Times story:

It is, I confess, beyond all my imagining that a national leader so deeply immersed in murdering people would trumpet his atrocity so openly, so gleefully -- and so deliberately, sending his top aides out to collude in a major story in the nation's leading newspaper, to ensure maximum exposure of his killing spree. Although many leaders have wielded such powers, they almost always seek to hide or obscure the reality of the operation. Even the Nazis took enormous pains to hide the true nature of their murder programs from the public. And one can scarcely conceive of Stalin inviting reporters from Pravda into the Politburo meetings where he and Molotov and Beria debated the lists of counterrevolutionary "terrorists" given to them by the KGB and ticked off those who would live and those who would die. Of course, those lists too were based on "intelligence reports," often gathered through "strenuous interrogation techniques" or the reports of informers. No doubt these reports were every bit as credible as the PowerPoint presentations reviewed each week by Obama and his team.

[...]

[T]his portrait of an American president signing off -- week after week after week after week -- on the extrajudicial murder of people all over the world is presented as something completely uncontroversial. Indeed, the main thrust of the story is not the fact that human beings -- including many women, children and men who have no connection whatsoever to "terrorism," alleged or otherwise -- are being regularly killed by the United States government; no, the main focus is how this program illustrates Barack Obama's "evolving" style of leadership during the course of his presidency. That's what's really important. The murders -- the eviscerated bodies, the children with their skulls bashed in, the pregnant women burned alive in their own homes -- are just background. Unimportant. Non-controversial.

[...]

In any other age -- including the last administration -- this story would have been presented as a scandalous exposé. The genuinely creepy scenes of the "nominating process" alone would have been seen as horrific revelations. Imagine the revulsion at the sight of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld sifting through PowerPoint slides on "suspected terrorists" all over the world, and giving their Neronic thumbs up or down as each swarthy face pops up on a screen in front of them.

  Chris Floyd

I can hear George whining in jealousy now that he couldn't do that. Because, after all, he thought he was God's chosen leader.

[The] story refers to [...] the president's "own deep reserve" about the possibility that he might have to drop a Hellfire or some teenagers. (Let's face facts: If he didn't have a "deep reserve" about this, he'd be a sociopath and, as it is, the available evidence indicates that he seems to overcome his deep reserve fairly readily.)

  Charlie Pierce

Always with the Best of Intentions

Until now, the [bird flu] virus only passes on to humans via direct physical contact with infected birds - particularly by eating poultry such as chickens, ducks and geese - which has allowed public health officials to keep outbreaks under control.

[...]

[S]cientists have long been concerned about the much more serious consequences if the H5N1 virus ever mutated into an airborne form. So in an attempt to work out how that might happen, and to formulate a scientific and medical response, [scientists from the Netherlands and the US have engineered a version of the H5N1 bird flu virus that can be transmitted atmospherically] with the intention of publishing their results so that others [may] study it too.

  alJazeera

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Illustrated by Matt Bors

Pre-empted Sunday

I thought this news was already out, but perhaps it was just the suspicion of such a document that has been reported previously...

Irish broadcaster RTE has uncovered a 1997 letter from the Vatican discouraging Ireland's Catholic bishops from reporting on all suspected child-abuse cases to police.

[...]

Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter came a year after the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to assist police in identifying alleged pedophile priests with Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

[...]

Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the disclosed document demonstrates that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but also ordered by them. Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the disclosed document demonstrates that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but also ordered by them.

[...]

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's US lawyer, said the letter did no such thing.

[...]

Al Jazeera's Tania Paige reporting from London, said: "For the Vatican's part, they say the letter was written a long time ago and that the document was not a policy but a study draft.

[...]

In a 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI faulted bishops for failing to follow canon law and offered no explicit endorsement of Irish child-protection efforts by the Irish church or state.

But in his January 1997 letter, Storero told bishops that a senior church panel in Rome, the Congregation for the Clergy, had decided that the Irish church's policy of "mandatory" reporting of abuse claims conflicted with canon law.

[...]

To this day, the Vatican has not endorsed any of the Irish church's three major policy documents since 1996 on safeguarding children from clerical abuse.

Irish taxpayers, rather than the church, have paid most of the $2 billion to more than 14,000 abuse claimants dating back to the 1940s.

[...]

Colm O'Gorman, the Ireland director of Amnesty International, said: "The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere."

  alJazeera

P.S.

The Vatican has revised its guidelines on how the Roman Catholic Church will handle sex abuse cases.

The rules include a significant lengthening of the time period a victim can lodge an abuse complaint.

  alJazeera

How Many?

Uh-oh, Part 2

This should have Israel's panties in a bind. And when Israel gets her knickers twisted, we're all in trouble.

Iran is to build a new nuclear power plant, alongside its sole existing one in the southern city of Bushehr, by early 2014, state televisionreported on Sunday, quoting the head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organisation.

[...]

The Mehr news agency suggested the timeline could be longer, quoting Abbasi Davani as saying: “We will begin plans for a 1,000-megawatt plant in Bushehr next year.” He said foreign contractors would be needed for its construction.

  Raw Story

Not if we can help it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Leaks?

With [Brad] Manning’s court-martial approaching in September, his legal team has released details of what they claim is a shocking lack of diligence on the part of the military prosecutors in affording him his basic constitutional rights.

  Raw Story

That would be “shocking” how? His entire experience under the military has been one of denying him basic constitutional rights, particularly the last two years in prison

Almost two years after Manning was arrested, the military has not yet completed a search even of its own files to see if there is any material beneficial to the defence – as it is legally obliged to do.

I am currently watching a Netflix film: Julian Assange: A Modern Day Hero? The man who turned in Brad Manning (Adrian Lamo - and read that link to understand how sketchy is his story) appears via a Skype interview, and if he isn't a mental case, then he does a darned good act.

Manning was first charged as the WikiLeaks suspect on 5 July 2010, but it was not until 29 July 2011 that the government sent out a memo to relevant army officials asking them to search for and keep information that should be disclosed to defence lawyers.

On top of that unexplained delay, the army then discovered on 17 April 2012 – fully nine months after the request went out and 21 months after Manning was charged – that absolutely no action had been taken by any of those officials.

No one has any intention of giving Brad Manning a fair trial. I often wonder even about his defense team.

And while we're on the subject. Anybody feeling any fallout over the WikiLeaks leaks? I mean other than Brad Manning being hung out to dry? Wasn't our “National Security” breached? Is Julian Assange still a wanted man in the US?

Truly, none of that is terribly disturbing. We're famous for our unsustainable adrenaline rushes. What is disturbing, however, is that there's been no real consequences for the US military in light of the information provided by the leaks. Business as usual.

UPDATE: Lamo has Asperger's and has taken medication for depression, which would explain his strange speech pattern and lack of expression:

Sometimes called the “geek syndrome,” Asperger’s is a mild form of autism that makes social interactions difficult, and can lead to obsessive, highly focused behavior.

[...]

Lamo made his mark in the early 2000s with a string of brazen but mostly harmless hacks against large companies, conducted out in the open and with a striking naiveté as to the inevitable consequences for himself. In 2001, when he was 20, Lamo snuck into an unprotected content-management tool at Yahoo’s news site to tinker with a Reuters story, adding a made-up quote by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

  Wired

”Made up.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Memorial Day - It's Just a Party for the Rest of Us

The returning Vietnam veteran was treated abominably. But, in fact, if you want to find the people who did the Vietnam generation the most damage, don't look to the hippies. Look to the institutions staffed and run by what the Vietnam guys used to call, contemptuously, "the Class of '45," the people who ran the VA, and the VFW posts, The Greatest Generation, who looked down on them as losers and who stiffed them on their country's obligations. In actual fact, it was the remnants on the antiwar Left — the people who ran the G.I. coffeehouses and the like — who first took them seriously on issues like post-traumatic stress disorder and the lingering effects of Agent Orange. Those were the people who paid The Troops of that time the most basic tribute there is — taking their human problems seriously. The problem was not people shouting "babykiller" and those mythical expectorations that author Jerry Lembecke put paid to years ago. The problem was that the government abandoned them. The problem was that the community of other veterans abandoned them. And that went on for years. Ronald Reagan famously called their war "a noble cause" and then shut down all the out-patient psychiatric services that the VA finally put in place. What you did was noble, and now sleep on the sidewalk.

[...]

With all our fighting being done by people who (at least in a theoretical sense) willingly signed up to do it, the debt seems to have grown exponentially. Our methods of repayment, though, are curious, to say the least.

We let them get on planes ahead of us, with the elderly and the infirm and the toddlers, but we underfund hospital care and live quite comfortably with the notion that a lot of the functions of the military have been privatized. (Are we that long from Honor The Contractors ceremonies?) We pay tribute to them at ballgames, but send them into battle ill-prepared, and bring them home to decrepit facilities and heedless bureaucracies. We give them parades, but had to be blackjacked into giving them a "new G.I. Bill" that is but a pale shadow of the original one, which did no less than create the modern American middle class.

[...]

Now, for the veterans of the two wars of the past decade, we're giving them all kinds of favors and goodies and public applause, and maybe even a parade or two, overcompensating our brains out, but, ultimately, what does all the applause mean at the end of the day? We are apparently fine with two more years of vets coming home from Afghanistan, from a war that 60 percent of us say we oppose. But we support The Troops.

[...]

Have a great weekend, y'all, and if you see any vets, shake their hands and vow to be a better citizen first, so you can really help them later on.   Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile (Still) in Afghanistan

An air strike by the US-led Nato coalition has killed eight members of a family in eastern Afghanistan, according to officials.

The coalition said it was aware of the allegation and was investigating the incident late on Saturday, in Paktia province. "Coalition officials are currently looking into the claims and gathering information," the coalition said in a statement.

  UK Guardian

Oops, sorry. Here's $5000.

The LA Times identified the victims as “Mohammed Shafi, his wife and his six children,” and cited the statements from the spokesman for the Paktia governor’s office that “there is no evidence that Shafi was a Taliban insurgent or linked with Al Qaeda.” The Afghan spokesman blamed the incident on the refusal of NATO to coordinate strikes with Afghan forces to ensure civilians are not targeted (“If they had shared this with us, this wouldn’t have happened”).

  Glenn Greenwald

Flowers Were Just Waiting (Millenia) for Time-Lapse Photography

It's Sunday

Vatican police arrested Friday a man — reportedly the pope’s butler — on allegations of having leaked confidential documents and letters from the pontiff’s private study to newspapers.

[...]

[I]nformed sources said the man was Paolo Gabriele, 46, who had been working as a butler in the papal apartments since 2006. One source said the pope was “saddened and shocked” by this “painful case.”

[...]

The Italian daily [Il Foglio] said he is likely to be used by the Vatican as “a handy scapegoat” for several others suspected of being involved in leaking documents, some of which ended up in a new book on the tiny state published a week ago.

Gianluigi Nuzzi’s “His Holiness” reproduces dozens of top secret and private letters and faxes which were smuggled out by whistle-blowers tired of the corruption and unhealthy bitterness in the Vatican.

[...]

The arrest came a day after the head of the Vatican Bank was ousted for failing to clean up the image of an institution that has come to symbolise the opacity and scandal gripping the Holy See’s administration.

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was thrown out by the bank’s board for failing to do his job — but had also recently been suspected of being one of those behind the leaks.

[...]

Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s experts on anti-money laundering, is due to rule at the beginning of July on the whether the Holy See has managed to clean up its act and meet international monetary standards.

  

Times really are “a-changin'” if the Vatican's corruption and filth is finally being aired.

I expect we will be seeing some more of it from the book soon...perhaps dozens of “It's Sunday” posts will be writing themselves.

And, as a side note, the audacity with which corrupt elites have been operating in the past few decades is underscored in the election of a Nazi youth, child abuse-condoning/covering up (perhaps even participating - who knows?) slimeball to the very head of the organization.

Reality Check

“If Obama were as radical as they claim, here’s what he would have already done: Pulled the troops out of Afghanistan, given us ‘Medicare for all,’ ended the drug war, cut the defense budget in half, and turned Dick Cheney over to the Hague.”  -- Bill Maher

It's Sunday

And God's rubes are hard at work. Well, not today. It's their day of rest.

The FBI and ATF are conducting a joint investigation of what appears to be a sharp escalation in a campaign to intimidate and threaten providers of women’s health care, including abortion services [in Georgia].

In recent weeks, clinics specializing in women’s health services have been the scene of three burglaries and now two fires.

[...]

Raw Story asked Jaime Chandra, Communications Manager for Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center, if she believes that the attacks are related to Georgia’s recent passage of stringent new anti-abortion measures. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” she said, “I would love to believe that it’s not related and that we live in a civil society, but, no, I don’t think it’s coincidental.”

Chandra pointed out that all of the doctors targeted so far are part of a group of OB GYN physicians who spoke out against the state’s controversial HB 954.

[...]

It was after the physicians’ group had made their resistance to the law known that the first break-in occurred.

[...]

Dr. David Byck, president of the Georgia Obstetrical and Gynecological Society told The Suwannee Patch, “The police officers said that the break-in looked well planned, and it’s frightening that the personal and family information of our membership has been stolen. There cannot be a good intent behind such a crime.”

  Raw Story

No, there cannot.

It's Sunday

The Economic Outlook

The post-1980 period had it’s ups and downs, but throughout it all the quiet little-noticed phenomenon was that the rich were back, and getting richer, and then VASTLY richer, and then UNFATHOMABLY richer. This was bound to lead, as it always does, to an economic crisis, which it did. But when the smoke cleared, there was no reckoning. The wealthy, instead of feeling a tiny amount of responsibility and remorse, instead felt THEMSELVES to be the aggrieved party! People didn’t WORSHIP them quite as much as they had come to enjoy and expect.

[...]

The ability of workers to get significant wage increases is long gone. The ability of a small fraction of people to finagle a jackpot for themselves, and keep it, is welded firmly into place. The political system is beyond the self-correcting stage. Welcome to now.

  Tom Toles

Schrödinger's Mitt

Ha!  Mitt Romney: living proof of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

A Slip of the Lip

Halperin: Why not in the first year, if you're elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you'd like to see after four years in office?  Why not do it more quickly?


Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%.  That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I'm not going to do that, of course. 

Now, as it readily admits, the blog's knowledge of economics is limited to the blog's first law of economics — Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money — and it also believes that most professional economists arrive at their conclusions by reading the entrails of doves and cutting up goats on a rock, so it may be wrong here, but didn't Romney, in saying that, pretty much blow up the entire rationale for over 30 years of Republican economics right there? Cutting government spending will throw us into a recession or depression?

[...]

That this remarkable moment sailed over Halperin's head and lodged in the wall behind him goes without saying.

  Charlie Pierce

Of course Willard isn't a real conservative anyway.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Exceptionalism

Hillary Clinton, another in a long line of unqualified Secretaries of State, informed “governments around the world: we are watching, and we are holding you accountable [for human rights abuses],” only we are not holding ourselves accountable or Washington’s allies like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the NATO puppets.

Hillary also made it “clear to citizens and activists everywhere: You are not alone. We are standing with you,” only not with protesters at the Chicago NATO summit or with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, or anywhere else in the US where there are protests.

The State Department stands with the protesters funded by the US in the countries whose governments the US wishes to overthrow. Protesters in the US stand alone as do the occupied Palestinians who apparently have no human rights to their homes, lands, olive groves, or lives.

[...]

In the US some protesters are being officially categorized as “domestic extremists” or “domestic terrorists,” a new threat category that Homeland Security announced is now the focus of its attention, displacing Muslim terrorists as the number one threat to the US. In September 2010, federal police raided the homes of peace activists in Chicago and Minneapolis.
[...]

The New York Daily News reports that as of November 17, 2011, 1,300 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested in New York City alone. Fox News reported (October 2, 2011) that 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. At the NATO summit in Chicago last week, 90 protesters were arrested .

[...]

In Chicago last week, among the many arrested NATO protesters with whom the State Department does not stand are three young white americans arrested for “domestic terrorism” in what Dave Lindorff reports was “a warrantless house invasion reminiscent of what US military forces are doing on a daily [and nightly] basis in Afghanistan.”

[...]

[T]he three american “domestic terrorists” are being held in solitary confinement. Like many of the NATO protesters, they came from out of town. Brian Church, 20 years old, came from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Jared Chase, 27, came from Keene, New Hampshire. Brent Betterly, 24, came from Oakland Park, Florida. Charged with providing material support for terrorism, the judge set their bail at $1.5 million each.

  Paul Craig Roberts – former Asst US Treasury Secty (under Reagan)

Yes, and the “authorities” set these guys up, as is their usual habit in protecting us from terrorists.

Meanwhile, Human Rights america continues to violate the national sovereignty of Pakistan, Yeman, and Afghanistan by sending in drones, bombs, special forces and in Afghanistan 150,000 US soldiers to murder people, usually women, children and village elders. Weddings, funerals, children’s soccer games, schools and farmers’ houses are also favorite targets for Washington’s attacks.

Uh-oh

Analysts have played down the UN atomic agency’s discovery of higher-grade uranium traces in Iran, saying it was likely due to a technical glitch rather than a covert attempt to enrich to arms grade.

[...]

Iran has told the IAEA that the site was enriching only to 20 percent, which was already of concern to the watchdog since the capability to do so shortens the theoretical time needed to enrich to weapons-grade uranium of 90 percent.

“Iran indicated that the production of such particles ‘above the target value’ may happen for technical reasons beyond the operator’s control,” the report said.

“The agency is assessing Iran’s explanation and has requested further details. On 5 May 2012, the agency took further environmental samples from the same location…. These samples are currently being analysed,” it added.

Analysts played down the discovery, with Mark Fitzpatrick from the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London saying it was “probably a technical glitch.”

  Raw Story

Yeah. Tell that to the Israelis.

If the Iranians aren't trying to create a nuclear arsenal, they aren't paying attention, are they?

All Kneel Before the GOP King

At the request of Republican lawmakers, taxpayers are funding a 24-hour security camera to watch over a Rush Limbaugh bust in the Missouri Capitol building.

  Raw Story

One thousand dollars. And I'm sure the Missouri taxpayers think it's worth every penny

....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hopeless

It was then-Sen. Obama’s vote in favor of the FISA Amendments Act [2008] that caused the first serious Election Year rift between him and his own supporters. Obama’s vote in favor of the bill was so controversial for two independent reasons: (1) when he was seeking the Democratic nomination only a few months earlier and needed the support of the progressive base, Obama unequivocally vowed to filibuster “any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies,” only to turn around once he had secured the nomination and not only vote against a filibuster of that bill but then vote in favor of the bill itself; and (2) the bill itself legalized vast new powers of warrantless eavesdropping: powers which the Democratic Party (and Obama) had spent years denouncing [...]. When Obama announced his reversal, his defenders insisted he was only doing it so that he could win the election and then use his power as President to stop warrantless eavesdropping abuses, while Obama himself claimed he voted for the FISA bill “with the firm intention — once I’m sworn in as President — to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”

The only positive aspect of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was that Congress imposed a four-year sunset provision on the new warrantless eavesdropping powers it authorized. That sunset provision is set to expire and — surprise, surprise — the Obama administration, just like it did for the Patriot Act, is demanding its full-scale renewal without a single change or reform .

[...]

That it is now the Obama administration serving as chief crusaders for warrantless eavesdropping powers — once the symbol of Bush radicalism — is telling enough. But there are numerous key facts that make the administration’s demands for reform-free renewal all the more remarkable:

  Read on - Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Lucky BP

If they'd destroyed the Bay of Plenty instead of the Gulf of Mexico, somebody might have been in trouble.

The captain and navigation officer of a ship that caused one of New Zealand's biggest sea pollution disaster when it ploughed into an offshore reef have been sentenced to seven months in prison.

Prosecutors told the Tauranga District Court on Friday that the pair ignored basic navigational practices when they attempted to take a short cut to reach port on October 5 last year.

The Filipino officers were in charge of the Liberian-flagged Rena when it hit the reef last year, releasing an oil slick that killed thousands of sea birds and fouled beaches in the North Island's pristine Bay of Plenty.

  alJazeera

Outraged!

US senators outraged by Pakistan's jailing of a doctor for helping the CIA track down Osama bin Laden have voted to cut aid to Islamabad by $33mn - one million for each year in the doctor's sentence.

"It's arbitrary, but the hope is that Pakistan will realise we are serious," said Senator Richard Durbin after the unanimous 30-0 vote by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

"It's outrageous that they [the Pakistanis] would say a man who helped us find Osama bin Laden is a traitor," said Durbin, the senate's number two Democrat.

The Senate Armed Services Committee later passed a measure that could lead to even deeper cuts in aid.

The sentencing on Wednesday of Dr Shakil Afridi for 33 years on treason charges added to US frustrations with Pakistan over what Washington sees as its reluctance to help combat Islamist militants fighting the Afghan government and the closure of supply routes to NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, called the jailing of the doctor "unjust and unwarranted" and pledged to continue to press the case with Islamabad. "The United States does not believe there is any basis for holding Dr. Afridi."  

  alJazeera

Tell it to the folks in Gitmo

Afridi was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign, in which he collected DNA samples, that is believed to have helped the American intelligence agency track down bin Laden in a Pakistani town last year.

Gee. Maybe that's why he was charged and tried. Or maybe it WAS for helping the CIA....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Aiding Countries Who Support Terrorists

Iranian sailors helped scare off armed pirates who attacked an American cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, Iranian state media reported Thursday.

[...]

Iranian navy vessels received a distress signal from the U.S. cargo ship Maersk Texas during patrols. The forces announced their willingness to help. As they closed in on the American cargo ship, the pirates scattered. The U.S. ship crew thanked the Iranian naval force and continued on its way.

[...]

American forces assisted or rescued Iranians at sea several times in January.

U.S. sailors aboard a guided-missile destroyer aided the crew of a sinking Iranian fishing vessel in the Arabian Sea. The U.S. Coast Guard rescued six Iranian mariners at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon said. And the destroyer USS Kidd rescued 13 Iranian sailors from a hijacked fishing boat near the Strait of Hormuz.

  CNN

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It Must Be Campaign Season

The transparency group Judicial Watch brought FOIA lawsuits against the administration seeking information regarding the Osama bin Laden raid, but the administration insisted in federal court that the operation is secret and thus not subject to disclosure (even as they were leaking details about the raid to the press).

At the same time, Judicial Watch has also sued the White House seeking documents showing the administration’s collaboration with Hollywood filmmakers — The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal – who have been planning a big-budget, studio film from Sony recounting the raid that killed bin Laden, oh-so-coincidentally scheduled for release in October, 2012, just before the election (that’s clearly a coincidence because Democrats, unlike those Bush/Cheney monsters, do not exploit national security for political gain). And, oh, just by the way: as The New York Times reported in January, “Michael Lynton, the Sony Pictures chief executive, has been a major backer of President Obama and last April attended and paid the donation fee for a high-priced political fund-raising dinner for the president on the Sony studio lot in Culver City, Calif., which was rented by the Democratic National Committee.”

[...]

Politico‘s Josh Gerstein added: “Just weeks after Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency officials warned publicly of the dangers posed by leaks about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, top officials at both agencies and at the White House granted Hollywood filmmakers unusual access to those involved in planning the raid and some of the methods they used to do it.”

[...]

In a meeting with Bigelow and Boal, Defense Undersecretary Vickers promised that, from Vickers, “you are going to get a little bit of operational stuff,” but the bulk of operational details would have to come from “Secretary Gates, Adm. Mullen, Hoss Cartwright.” At that meeting, they even plotted how to get the filmmakers classified information without appearing to do so. The internal administration documents — which pointedly note that the film has a “release date set for 4th Qtr 2012 (Sep-Dec)” — reveal enthusiastic cooperation with the filmmakers by top-level DoD officials, including Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers, all done at the direction of the White House. The very first DoD email indicates the request to work with the filmmakers came from the White House.

[...]

At one point during that meeting, Vickers had spilled so many glorifying details about the raid that he actually apologized for “talking too much” — something Pentagon officials are never guilty of when it comes time to be held accountable in a court or at Congress — and the filmmakers assured him: “No, no. You’ve been so great. You’ve been incredible. . . . So extraordinary. So extraordinary.”

[...]

[T]he name of the SEAL planner who was to meet with the filmmakers has been blacked out in these documents, and the administration still refuses to reveal that name — but it’s perfectly OK to give that information to Hollywood filmmakers so they can produce the best possible cinematic hagiography of the President.


[...]

The DoD officials meeting with the filmmakers were given the White House talking points from the night of the raid, which [include] hailing the President’s actions as “gutsy” and stressing the heavy involvement of the White House in the raid.

  Glenn Greenwald

And we all want to know: who's gonna play glorious President #Compromise and did he pick the actor?

Stop the presses! The film's release date has been moved to December, so as not to interfere with the election!  Ah, the nobility!

As numerous people in comments and elsewhere have noted, the film’s new December release date still makes it likely that glorifying trailers and other film buzz will be heavily circulating prior to the November election.

Trailers. Great campaign videos. Polished, Hollywood quality campaign videos. Actually, much, much better than the movie itself because, 1) who can sustain awe and excitement after a movie has ended?, and 2) trailers are shown in every home with a TV, over and over and over. Indeed, the new release date is genius: the benefit of the trailer playing over and over in people's homes, plus being able to say the release date was changed in order NOT to be an influence. Nice work, Obama campaign. Nice work.

Another Trade with Mexico

Only Mexico’s middle class has grown over the past 30 years in North America, while income disparity has increased in Canada and the United States, according to a study here out Tuesday.

  Raw Story

Watch Out Amnesty

With MEK set to be taken off the US terrorist list, there'll be space available. And don't forget: we have drones.

“In the absence of further clarification from the US authorities, the killing of Osama bin Laden would appear to have been unlawful,” [Amnesty International said in its annual report.]

[...]

“The US administration made clear that the operation had been conducted under the USA’s theory of a global armed conflict between the USA and Al-Qaeda in which the USA does not recognize the applicability of international human rights law.”

[...]

Amnesty said a request for clarification over an apparent US drone strike in Yemen last September that killed US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, his Al-Qaeda co-conspirator Samir Khan and at least two others had also gone unanswered.

[...]

The global rights monitor also criticized Canada for failing to arrest Bush when he visited in October, “despite clear evidence that he was responsible for crimes under international law, including torture.”

  Raw Story

That would have been so good for us. And the world.

This Will Only Get Worse

Four witnesses to the Zimmerman/Martin shooting changed their testimony already.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This Will Shock You

The staff director for the Senate Banking Committee also happens to be a former lobbyist for J.P. Morgan. Guess those upcoming hearings on regulating the banking industry will be as smooth as dupioni silk

  Dependable Renegade

Alive and Well

Residents in Reidsville, North Carolina have begun receiving fliers inviting them to a May 26 Ku Klux Klan cross burning intended for “white people only.”

[...]

It reads:

“Join us, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, for a rally and cross lighting, Saturday, May 26, Harmony, North Carolina. Free Admition [sic]-White People Only. No alcohol, drugs, fighting, glass bottles or weapons. Free on site camping-all major motels in area. Souvenirs. Vendors. Food and beverages for Sale. Cross lighting at dusk-a white unity event. Live country band. Security provided by LWK.”

A recording on the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan “24 Hour Hot Line” confirmed the May 26 cross burning event.

“Always remember: If it ain’t white, it ain’t right,” the recording concluded.

  Raw Story

And While We're on the Subject

Let us consider the Supreme Court's conclusion that money does not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” (see previous post).

Increasingly I found myself spending time with people of means – law firm partners and investment bankers, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists. [...] They had no patience with protectionism, found unions troublesome, and were not particularly sympathetic to those whose lives were upended by the movements of global capital. … I know that as a consequence of my fundraising I became more like the wealthy donors I met.

  The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama (via Glenn Greenwald)

Democrats have accepted more political donations than Republicans from executives at Bain Capital, complicating the left’s plan to attack Mitt Romney for his record at the private-equity firm.

  The Hill

Yesterday, [Democratic] Newark Mayor Cory Booker went on Meet the Press and angered hordes of Democrats when he condemned the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain as “nauseating,” equated the anti-Bain messaging to the GOP’s sleazy use of Jeremiah Wright, and then demanded: “stop the attacks on private equity” (in response to the backlash, Booker then released a hostage-like video recanting his criticisms and pledging his loyalty to President Obama).

[...]

There was more or less a conscious decision in the early 1990s that the [Democratic] Party would transform itself into a servant of Wall Street and corporatism. It became the party of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers as it presided over massive de-regulation of the financial industry. And in response, the corporate money poured into the Party’s coffers and hasn’t stopped pouring in.

[...]

And then there’s the always-annoying fact that Wall Street poured far more of its money into President Obama’s 2008 campaign than it did into John McCain’s, then placed large numbers of its former lobbyists and officials in key administration positions beyond just Summers and Tim Geithner, then received full-scale protection for the crimes leading to the 2008 financial crisis. Thus far, the banking industry — angered by Obama’s tepid anti-oligarch rhetoric and symbolic Election Year populist proposals, and excited to elect one of their own — has donated substantially more to Romney than Obama. It remains to be seen if that trend continues, but whatever else is true, the Democratic Party has been the recipient of ample amounts of Wall Street largesse for two decades now.

[...]

In sum, as is typically true, there is a huge gap between tactical Election Year rhetorical posturing and the reality of whose interests the two parties are serving.

[...]

Despite the industry’s petulant anger, Wall Street has thrived under the Obama administration, and even in those areas where the White House had full authority and the ability to help ordinary Americans — such as the HAMP fund to aid defaulting homeowners — they displayed overwhelming indifference. Not only did President Obama propose large cuts to Social Security and Medicare, he has been assuring Washington insiders such as GOP Sen. Tom Coburn that he intends even larger ones if re-elected.

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Not Likely, But Thanks for Trying

In a submission to the supreme court on Monday, attorneys general from 22 states and Washington, DC representing both major parties called for the Montana law [restricting corporate money in politics - the Corrupt Practices Act] to be upheld.

[...]

That position has been challenged by a conservative interest group, American Tradition Partnership, which has asked the US supreme court to overturn the Montana ruling.

[...]

The challenge over the Montana action has been backed by Senator John McCain, who authored the campaign finance law struck down by the US supreme court in Citizens United. In that ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion said that money does not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption”.

  Raw Story

No comment.

As Though They Haven't Already Been Doing It

Investigative journalist Michael Hastings recently broke a story on BuzzFeed about an amendment that is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill. The amendment would “legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences.” Hasting reported that the amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon. He says the “tweak” to the bill would “neutralize” two other acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—which were passed in order “to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.” Rep. Mark Thornberry (R, Texas) and Rep. Adam Smith (D, Washington) are co-sponsors of the bipartisan amendment.

[...]

According to Hastings, the Pentagon already spends about $4 billion dollars annually to “sway public opinion.”

Here’s something to chill you to the bone: Hastings reported that USA Today had recently published an article about the DoD having spent “$202 million on information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.” Well, it appears that the reporters who worked on the USA Today article were targeted by “Pentagon contractors, who created fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in an attempt to discredit them.”

  Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger at Jonathan Turley

As I was saying.

Meanwhile, in Chicago

From the right-wing Hutaree Militia members to the leftist “Occupy” group, political dissidents are being systematically targeted by our behemoth-like “national security” apparatus.

[...]

Rahm Emanuel runs Chicago like he ran the Obama White House: with an iron fist and a foul mouth – and the NATO summit, being held in the Windy City, is the perfect occasion for him to demonstrate just how “tough” he can be.

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”

[...]

Using a battering ram, Chicago police knocked down the door to an apartment on Chicago’s south side, and arrested 9 individuals, ranging in age from early 20s to a 66-year-old pacifist with a heart condition: all but 3 were later released without charges, although not before being held in chains in an “interrogation” room and denied bathroom facilities. Police claim to have confiscated “Molotov cocktails” made out of “beer bottles and bandanas,” as well as beer-making equipment and such weird items as a shield with a “pointed edge.”

[...]

[T]he real story soon came out, one we are all too familiar with these days: at some point a male and female couple – obviously police informants or federal agents – turned up after ingratiating themselves with the residents, and it was they who actually brought the materials to make a bomb to the apartment, unbidden.

  Justin Raimondo

No doubt a police effort to round up and neutralize any pre-NATO protest trouble.

Occupy Wall Street livestreamers Tim Pool, Luke Rudkowski, and Jeoff Shively, along with two other friends, were driving back to their apartment around midnight on Satuirday, after a long day covering the anti-NATO protests in Chicago when they were suddenly surrounded by twelve police cars and told to come out with their hands raised.

[...]

The police never explained why the men were being detained but handcuffed and interrogated them, searched their car, repeatedly slammed one of their computer hard drives against the car floor, and attempted to delete their footage of the incident before it could be archived at Ustream.

  Raw Story

Tracy Pollock  [credentialed photographer for The UpTake, who was wearing a highly visible press badge,] was attempting to photograph police who had set up barricades and were using their bicycles as weapons to force back a crowd of protesters. As she pressed forward, one police officer first tried to rip her camera away and then pushed her over some bicycles, leaving her bruised but not seriously injured. Protesters helped her to safety.

  Raw Story

And from Glenn Greenwald's Twitter page:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Give 'Em Enough Rope

How many times have we seen this level of brilliance from the wing?  Every time we look.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Age Is Not Kind to Our Bodies

But I do believe these two sound even better than when they were young. And they were very, very good then...





I'm impressed.

(Paul Simon has always put together fantastic bands.)

Those old boys can wring tears. 

Blast from the Past

The incomparable Miss Ellen Greene...

It's Sunday

Just Another Day in Palestine

Dozens of Palestinian olive trees and grape vines were destroyed and anti-Arab graffiti was daubed in groves of the West Bank village of Beit Omar, residents said on Saturday.

The villagers said the attack had taken place on Friday night or early Saturday and blamed it on Jewish settlers of nearby Bat Ayin settlement, which lies north of the town of Hebron.

[...]

The Israeli army said it was unaware of the incident.

Elsewhere on the West Bank, Palestinians said settlers from Yitzhar attacked the village of Asira al-Qibliya, near the northern city of Nablus.

[...]

A weekly protest took place in Beit Omar on Saturday against the expropriation of Palestinian farming land by Israel due to the expansion of the settlement of Karmei Tsur.

  Raw Story

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

Traditional Marriage (Source: King James Bible)

h/t Marty

It's Sunday

A former Roman Catholic priest was found guilty on Thursday of hiring a hit man to kill a boy who had accused him of sexual abuse.

John Fiala, 53, showed no emotion as a Dallas jury found him guilty of plotting to kill the boy, according to The Dallas Morning News. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

[...]

The former priest had claimed that he only hired the hit man because he feared for his own life.

  RAw Story

A Terrible Crime

But the criminals aren't the ones doing the time.

A well-known Columbia [Missouri] businessman and cultural leader was sentenced yesterday to three years in federal prison for illegally siphoning more than $200,000 to family, friends and charities in Iraq during sanctions between 1991 and 2003.

[...]

“I made a mistake, and I am deeply sorry,” [Shakir] Hamoodi told Laughrey before he was sentenced yesterday. “All money sent was used by friends and family.”

Hamoodi, an Iraqi-American former nuclear scientist with the University of Missouri and World Harvest store owner, could have faced up to 71 months in prison. Laughrey said Hamoodi’s efforts to diffuse cultural ignorance toward Muslims and educate local residents about the practice of Islam over the past 20 years weighed heavily in her decision. Hamoodi, through attorney J.R. Hobbs of Kansas City, had requested probation.

[...]

Federal agents in September 2006 searched the Woodberry Court home of Hamoodi, who has been an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq. Investigators found no proof that Hamoodi was aiding the Iraqi government through his financial contributions.

[...]

Hamoodi conspired to help other Columbia residents filter money into Iraq for their families, the court found, but he was the lone defendant.

[...]

Since his home was searched, Hamoodi said, other students have called his children terrorists, his neighbors keep a distance from him and his business has suffered. More than 20 supporters gathered after the sentencing to express their support for the Hamoodi family as their children continue their education and expenses pile up during his absence.

  Columbia Tribune

The man has been an upstanding contributing community member for 20 years. When I was living in Columbia, I met him a few times at his wonderful imported foods store and at a protest march when George Bush declared war on Iraq. He told us at that time about his family in Iraq and his fears for their future under the threat of bombs. He is a lovely person. How many tens of thousands of American citizens from other countries are sending money to families in their home countries? Let them pray that their country doesn't get itself on our enemies list.

(h/t Jean)

And then there's this:

A former Michigan congressman and U.S. delegate to the United Nations was sentenced yesterday to a year and one day in prison for lobbying for a Columbia Islamic charity that had been identified as funneling money to a global terrorist.

Mark Deli Siljander, 60, a Republican who served in Congress from 1981-1987, pleaded guilty in July 2010 to obstructing justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent in connection with his work for the Islamic American Relief Agency, based in Columbia.

In his plea agreement, Siljander acknowledged that he lobbied between March and May 2004 on behalf of the IARA for the organization to be removed from a U.S. Senate Finance Committee list of charities suspected of funding international terrorism. The charity closed in October 2004 after being designated a global terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

[...]

After a short recess, Laughrey said she had no choice but to sentence Siljander to time behind bars.

“I came in this morning with the thought that I would sentence you to a longer time in jail,” she said after announcing the sentence.

Although no real harm had been done by Siljander’s actions, she said, there was the potential for harm, and that’s why a prison sentence was necessary.

“For me, the real harm is that you kept lying to the government,” Laughrey said. However, she added, “This is not a case about somebody aiding a terrorist.”

  Columbia Tribune

He should have been lobbying for the MEK instead.

Ha! Indeed.

I'm sending you over to DR for this one.

Heed the work safe alert.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just Don't Go There

Muhammad Danish Qasim is a Pakistani student at Iqra University’s Media Science and is also a filmmaker. This year, Qasim released a short film entitled The Other Side, a 20-minute narrative that “revolves around the idea of assessing social, psychological and economical effects of drones on the people in tribal areas of Pakistan.”

[...]

In particular, “the film identifies the problems faced by families who have become victims of drone missiles, and it unearths the line of action which terrorist groups adopt to use victimised families for their vested interests.” In other words, it depicts the tragedy of civilian deaths, and documents how those deaths are then successfully exploited by actual Terrorists for recruitment purposes.

[...]

[T]his case is similar to that of Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who had sued the CIA on behalf of civilian drone victims and was also denied a visa to travel to the U.S. to attend last month’s Drone Summit in Washington; the Obama administration relented and permitted him to travel to the U.S. only once a serious outcry arose. The Bush administration also routinely excluded Muslim critics of U.S. foreign policy from entering the U.S.

[...]

Just to underscore how extreme is the Obama administration’s reflexive secrecy in such matters: yesterday, ABC News‘s Jake Tapper asked National Security Advisor Tom Donilon whether the U.S. Government compensates the innocent victims it kills outside of Afghanistan, and Donilon simply refused to answer (“I’m just not going to go there”).

[...]

Isn’t it time for another Hillary Clinton lecture to the world on the need for openness and transparency?

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Tell Us Something We Don't Know

Under pressure from websites like National Journal and The Raw Story, TED Talks published [multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist Nick] Hanauer’s allegedly “controversial” speech on Thursday.

[...]

TED Talks curator Chris Anderson said a talk given in March by [...] Hanauer was “one of the most politically controversial talks we’ve ever run.”

[...]

Hanauer explained where the true wealth of market societies lies, saying that he’s confident rich people do not create jobs, and neither do businesses.

[...]

Hanauer went on to explain that this feedback loop between capitalists like him and middle class consumers is what’s truly creating jobs, and that growth happens only when tax policies are designed to aid the consumer by taking more from the ultra-rich — and that it all, ultimately, benefits both classes.

“That’s why our current policies are so upside down,” he said. “When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer,” he said.

“Since 1980 the share of income for the richest Americans has more than tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50 percent.

“If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy would lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs. And yet unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.”

  Raw Story

Video of the talk is at the link.

The Land of the Free

President Obama issued an executive order Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who “obstructs” implementation of the administration-backed political transition in Yemen.

The unusual order, which administration officials said also targets U.S. citizens who engage in activity deemed to threaten Yemen’s security or political stability, is the first issued for Yemen that does not directly relate to counterterrorism.

Unlike similar measures authorizing terrorist designations and sanctions, the new order does not include a list of names or organizations already determined to be in violation. Instead, one official said, it is designed as a “deterrent” to “make clear to those who are even thinking of spoiling the transition” to think again.

  WaPo

More of our government's persuasion diplomacy. Fear is such a great tool. Why not use it?

Jeremy Scahill, who has reported extensively from Yemen over the last year, reacted to the news of this Executive Order this morning by writing: ”This Executive Order appears to be an attack on Americans’ 1st Amendment Rights and Yemenis’ rights to self-determination“; he added: ”apparently the 1st Amendment had an exception about Yemen in it that I missed.” He then asked a series of questions, including: “What if a Yemeni citizen doesn’t believe in a one candidate ‘election’ and is fighting to change their government? US sanctions?” and ”How would Obama define an American citizen as ‘indirectly’ threatening the stability of Yemen’s government?” and “what if an American citizen doesn’t support Yemen’s government and agitates for its downfall? Sanctions from US Treasury? Wow.”

[...]

One difference between this EO and the prior one issued for Somalia is that this one exempts U.S. government agencies, which means, as Wheeler puts it, that “while Obama doesn’t want you, or Ali Abdullah Saleh’s leave-behinds, or the AP to destabilize Yemen, he reserves the right for US government employees, grantees, or contractors to do so. Which presumably means, as happened in Afghanistan, we are and plan to continue paying some of the people who are in violation of this EO.”

[...]

Hadi became President as part of an “election” in which he was the only candidate (that little fact did not prevent Hillary Clinton from congratulating Yemen “on today’s successful presidential election”).

[...]

The Post article notes that, as unusual as this Executive Order is, Obama issued a similar one for Somalia in 2009, and it has one other precedent: “In 2006, President George W. Bush issued a similar order regarding Ivory Coast in West Africa.”

[...]

Speaking of ongoing erosions of core liberties: a bipartisan group of House members is attempting to enact a law specifying that the indefinite detention powers vested in the President by last December’s passage of the NDAA does not apply to those arrested on U.S. soil; in other words, they are trying to ban military detention on American soil without charges. Even though President Obama, after he signed the bill into law, said he does not intend to use these powers for that purpose, the sponsors of this bill are concerned that — because the law does vest this power — Obama could change his mind at any time or a subsequent President could use those powers. Unfortunately, they are being opposed by key Democratic Senators such as Carl Levin in close cooperation with standard neocon members of Congress. As one tweeter wrote to me yesterday about this: “The fact that government has to be told NOT to do that is insane.” Indeed, and it’s easy to forget how frequently true that is.

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.