Puppet MastersS


Snowman

Edward Snowden: Person of the Year

Margaret Kimberley
Eurasia Review
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
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© Guardian
There is not very much democracy left in America, a country which endlessly brags about how democratic it is. Every now and again we are pleasantly surprised when the people and their interests are served instead of the 1% and their factotums in government. Those moments are few and far between but when they take place it is always because an individual decides to take on the system directly. In 2013 Edward Snowden was the person who risked his freedom to tell every human being with access to modern communications that they were under United States government surveillance.

Snowden was a cog in the very big machine of government defense contractors. Most Americans were not aware that the state intelligence apparatus has been privatized just like education, incarceration and nearly every other sector of society. There are more than 4 million people like Snowden. They have various levels of security clearances and they all have access to some parts of what ought to be private information regarding our lives.

The power of the National Security Agency (NSA) has grown by leaps and bounds ever since the terror attacks which took place on September 11, 2001. The Bush administration wasted no time in dismantling civil liberties and expanding government power through the Patriot Act. Every step he took was supported by both Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress and voices of dissent were too few and far between. Barack Obama made certain to not only keep those powers but to expand them beyond anything that Bush and Dick Cheney had imagined.
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Newspaper

What the press should learn from the 'Snowden Effect'

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson
The Nation
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 12:30 UTC
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© Reuters/Bobby Yip
My Nation column, "China Goes Dark," is kind of about Apple's labor exploitation and kind of about "Hard-hitting New York Times coverage has been journalism at its best - although the Chinese authorities apparently don't agree." I suppose it'll be behind a paywall for a few more days but it's here, if you remember to click when it's not.

In the meantime, there's this: "Worse still is the continued employment of The Nation columnist Eric Alterman..."

Also, I have an ide for a new slogan for the ASA and the rest of the BDS mob: "BDS: More Palestinian than the Palestinians..."

Alter-reviews:
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis put together a sixteen piece band to play songs you did not know were jazz--incluing "Jingle Bells" "Little Drummer Boy" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." The songs were arranged by various members of the Orchestra and introduced with his unique aplomb and charm by Mr. Marsalis. The highlights all involved the appearance of 23-year-old 2010 Thelonious Monk Competition winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, whose charms I do not believe were captured on her cd, and so I've resisted her but her versatility and pitch-perfect delivery --as the pr material says, her "ability to refract the styles of such iconic performers of that era as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Valaida Snow with 21st century freshness, expressivity, and soulfulness"--really shook up the place and made it a most memorable, if somewhat brief performance. The schedule is here.

Comment: "The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined." - Bill Moyers

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Bad Guys

NYPD commissioner Kelly joins powerful foreign policy think-tank, Council on Foreign Relations


RT
Mon, 23 Dec 2013 21:53 UTC
ray kelly
© Christopher Gregory / Getty Images / AFPCommissioner of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) Ray Kelly (R)
Outgoing New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly will join the dominant foreign policy think-tank Council on Foreign Relations following his exit from the NYPD later this month.

Kelly, the longest-serving commissioner in New York Police Department history, will become a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the organization said Monday in a statement. He will focus on "counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and other national security issues" while working at the organization's headquarters in Manhattan.

"Ray Kelly spearheaded the modernization of the New York Police Department," CFR President Richard Haass said in the statement. "The result is that crime is down and the NYPD's counter terrorism capabilities are second to none. We are excited and proud to have his experience, expertise, and judgment at the Council."

The CFR is considered the most influential foreign policy think-tank in the United States. Many top American politicians, officials from presidential administrations, bankers, lawyers, media personalities and others are counted as members. Some top board members include the group's co-chairman Robert Rubin, former US Secretary of Treasury and co-chair of Goldman Sachs; former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell; and the longest-serving CENTCOM commander, Gen. John Abizaid.

In addition to the CFR post, Kelly signed a contract earlier this month to give lucrative speeches with Greater Talent Network.

Comment: Learn more:

Report: Millions of White House dollars helped pay for NYPD Muslim surveillance
Lawmaker testifies NYPD Commissioner wanted to 'instill fear' in black and brown men with stop and frisk
NYPD Muslim spying operation takes 'security' to an unjustified extreme

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Folder

Israeli military justice: The unbearable burden of checking data

Amira Hass
Haaretz
Mon, 23 Dec 2013 02:16 UTC
Tamimi family
© Alex Levac
Bassam and Nariman Tamimi with daughter Ahed, pictured Feb. 2013 in Nabi Saleh.
How many soldiers does it take to extract one statistic from the Israeli military justice system regarding the policy of putting Palestinians on trial? Two lieutenant colonels - a military judge and a military prosecutor - provide their respective answers.

The chief military prosecutor for Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Lt. Col. Morris Hirsch claims that it would take 307 working days, each comprising 12 hours, or a total of 3,685 hours, to check the 6,700 relevant files. The president of the Ofer military court, Lt. Col. Menachem Lieberman believes that the entire checking process would take less than 60 hours.

This disagreement is but one more chapter in a war waged by the Israeli military prosecution against Nariman Tamimi, a Palestinian from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.

Comment: Israeli Defense Forces:
"...in accordance with the military prosecution's policy, which is based on high professional and ethical standards."

Yet another example of how the IDF targets Palestinians - and of Israel's continuously looping hypocrisy in motion.

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Eye 1

How we know Obama will ignore his NSA review group: He already has.

Brian Fung
The Washington Post
Thu, 19 Dec 2013 08:45 UTC
obamawink
© Saul Loeb / Getty Images
Christmas has come early for those awaiting the results of a White House review of NSA surveillance practices. The five-member task force dropped its big report a few weeks ahead of schedule Wednesday, and it's filled with suggestions for how to fix the spy apparatus. But in what may be a sign of things to come, Obama has already decided against one of the panel's recommendations.

The White House said on Friday that it would be keeping the NSA and the Pentagon's cyberwarfare directorate under the command of a single military leader. The current "dual-hatted" head of NSA and Cyber Command, Gen. Keith Alexander, has been at the center of the furor over NSA surveillance. But Alexander plans to step down in 2014, which raised the possibility several weeks ago of Obama changing the rules for Alexander's successor - or successors, as civil liberties advocates had hoped.

Obama's own intelligence panel evidently sympathizes with the idea. In a section of Wednesday's report headlined "Organizational Reform," the committee of insiders urged the president to give serious consideration to making the next Director of NSA a civilian. NSA should be clearly designated as a foreign intelligence organization. ... The head of the military unit, US Cyber Command, and the Director of NSA should not be a single official.
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Bulb

100 years is enough: Time to make the Fed a public utility

Ellen Brown
Web of Debt
Sun, 22 Dec 2013 16:26 UTC
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December 23rd, 2013, marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, warranting a review of its performance. Has it achieved the purposes for which it was designed?

The answer depends on whose purposes we are talking about. For the banks, the Fed has served quite well. For the laboring masses whose populist movement prompted it, not much has changed in a century.

Thwarting Populist Demands

The Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 in response to a wave of bank crises, which had hit on average every six years over a period of 80 years. The resulting economic depressions triggered a populist movement for monetary reform in the 1890s. Mary Ellen Lease, an early populist leader, said in a fiery speech that could have been written today:
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . Money rules . . . .Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. . . .

We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out.
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Magnify

Australia environment minister breaks election promise, will monitor Japan's Antarctica whale hunt by plane, not boat

Oliver Milman
Guardian
Sun, 22 Dec 2013 16:09 UTC
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© Alan Porritt/AAPGreg Hunt: monitoring 'all parties'.
Greens call on environment minister Greg Hunt to resign after breaking numerous pledges to send a boat to monitor the whaling season

The Coalition has been accused of breaking an election promise by announcing it will send an aircraft, rather than a ship, to monitor Japanese whaling activity in the Southern Ocean.

The environment minister, Greg Hunt, said on Sunday an A319 aircraft, co-ordinated and staffed by Customs personnel, would be deployed for the monitoring from January to March. The Greens have called on Hunt to resign over the decision, which they describe as "weak" and a clear breach of an election promise.

Hunt has come under pressure to move quickly to fulfil an election pledge to monitor the Japanese fleet, which is closing in on Antarctic waters claimed by Australia.

Hunt said the aircraft would monitor activities by "all groups in the Southern Ocean", a reference to a trio of Sea Shepherd anti-whaling vessels already dispatched to the Southern Ocean to confront the Japanese.

But he made no mention of how vessels illegally fishing in Australian waters would be intercepted or turned around, nor how a plane would react to prevent loss of life in the event of a violent clash between whalers and Sea Shepherd activists.
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Red Flag

Obamacare is a fiasco: Who says Obama hasn't united the country?

John Fund
National Review
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 16:01 UTC
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Yesterday the Obama administration suddenly moved to allow hundreds of thousands of people who've lost their insurance due to Obamacare to sign up for bare-bone "catastrophic" plans. It's at least the 14th unilateral change to Obamacare that's been made without consulting Congress.

"It shows that the Obamacare insurance products aren't selling so, at the last minute, the administration is holding a fire sale on a failed launch," says Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, a health-care advocacy group. "Just think how you must feel if you were one of the people who spent the last two months fighting their way through HealthCare.gov to buy a policy that will be thousands of dollars more expensive than this catastrophic insurance!"

Of course, like every other exemption from Obamacare the latest fix is supposed to last only a year, raising the prospect that people will be kicked off their catastrophic coverage as soon as the 2014 election is safely in the political rear-view mirror.
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Eye 1

The Pentagon-Hollywood Connection: Propaganda, censorship, and bribery


brasschecktv.com
Mon, 23 Dec 2013 15:58 UTC

Film: "Operation Hollywood"

Want to make a film about Hollywood?

Just do what the Pentagon wants and they'll give you millions of dollars worth of free equipment and personnel.

It's not a secret program. The whole thing is run up front.

Who takes the money? "Top Gun" is a classic example.

But not everyone takes it. "Apocalypse Now!" and "Full Metal Jacket" did not.

How can you tell who is who?

It's pretty darn easy.
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Arrow Down

Teacher fired for failing Greek PM's son caught cheating on a test

Ioanna Zikakou
Greek Reporter
Sun, 22 Dec 2013 14:36 UTC
Greek PM
© The Slog
The Greek Central Council for Secondary Education (KYSDE) announced the definitive dismissal of the teacher who a year and a half ago caught the Greek Prime Minister's son cheating on a test and gave him a failing grade in her class.

After 21 years of working as a teacher, she was removed from duty in June 2012, after having caught Antonis Samaras' son cheating on a test. She filed a lawsuit against Athens College, Greece, seeking to overturn their decision.

KYSDE was also involved in the case but decided not to overturn the dismissal as in their opinion, there was "not enough evidence to prove" an abuse of power by Athens College when they terminated the teacher's contract.

The incident has enraged the Greek Federation of Private School Teachers. In their announcement they said that KYSDE has given an early Christmas present to the Greek Prime Minister's family, the heads of the Ministry of Education and private school owners. The announcement continues, "Three members of KYSDE decided to 'execute' the teacher, Efrosyni Boutala, by reaching the conclusion that there was no evidence for an abuse of power or unfair dismissal by Athens College when they terminated her contract."
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