move this    On the right: Jaysem Mokded Mokded

Una mas tiempo:

At 4am on Monday 24th February in a hotel in northern part of the city of Maracay in Aragua state, an individual of Middle Eastern origin and two other people were captured by the Bolivarian Security Forces (SEBIN). Aragua governor, Tareck El Aissami reported the evidence available at that time in several posts on his Twitter account, @TareckPSUV.

El Aissami stated that they had captured a “big fish” in Aragua who was identified as Jayssam Mokded Mokded along with two other people in his company, both of whom have military backgrounds and training.
In the raid of the hotel room the [Venezuelan] security forces found electronic communications equipment – 11 satellite phones for communicating with the US and Colombia – computers and documents linking him with companies in Miami. His vehicle, a Toyota Model FJ was armored with bullet proofing and in it explosives, a keg of gun powder and logistical equipment to set up barricades in the streets were discovered.

Arturo Rosales/AxisofLogic
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Their mouths.
It's going to be harder and harder for some of us not to think of all this as a gravitational slide toward confrontation with pure evil. Because that's what it is.
Pure in the sense it has nothing compromising it, no moral ambiguity, no good but mistaken intention, just raw reptilian, worse than that but nothing animate works as metaphor, claws and poisonous fangs.
The masks are coming off, the comfortable delusions and rationalizations aren't working any longer, there's just personal conscience, the individual heart, and knowing there are others, even when they're not close enough to see and touch.
I envy lots of the ones who have close proximity to shared strength. It's distant for me, virtual all of it.
I know it's there, feel it, but the thing these men are functioning agents of is as close to me as anyone else is now. Closer sometimes.
This isn't about politics anymore, not economics, not even really moral ideas, it's about good and evil in their final essence.
None of us are as purely good as these men are purely evil.
An honest conscience can stall you with knowledge of its failings.
You have to get through that, take on the burdens of transcending your own weakness.
The twisted logic they bring against an honest acceptance of how flawed we are makes them inarguably right. Listen to them long enough and there is no evil, there is no good, just animal strength - theirs.
They're strong, even in their viciousness they have that. You can use it as an excuse to look away, to do and say nothing. That's surrender.
And surrender to evil leaves with you with nothing but further surrender, until you're with them, until you are what they are.
All the false polarities that have divided good people from each other are falling away, even as the noise rises in intensity. Even as the soft and confused see nothing through the blindness of their own encouraged selfishness.
It's going to get completely black and white, it almost is already.
There's no ambiguity now. Unless your cowardice provides it.

Faith

¡Hola!

In the raid of the hotel room the security forces found electronic communications equipment – 11 satellite phones for communicating with the US and Colombia – computers and documents linking him with companies in Miami. His vehicle, a Toyota Model FJ was armored with bullet proofing and in it explosives, a keg of gun powder and logistical equipment to set up barricades in the streets were discovered.
It was also established that Mokded Mokded has access to a bank account in Miami with some US$250,000 and had made various transfers of hundreds of thousands of dollars to Miami and other destinations. In Colombia he has another bank account with a balance of some US$10,000. It was also noted that all his dealings with Venezuelan banks were limited to Banesco – a bank that had been involved in laundering finance for the 2002 – 2003 coup attempts but which was said to have changed its ways in recent years.
                                                              ...
The Venezuela security forces had been tailing him for several days and he had made visits to several upper and middle class urbanizations. The suspicion is that these visits were reconnaissance missions in order to find the most devastating spot to park car bombs and start sowing terror in Venezuela.

Bombs have been used in the last decade to sow terror in Venezuela and the perpetrators of the 2003 attacks, the Colina brothers, escaped to Florida where a judge refused to extradite them back to Venezuela.

Arturo Rosales/AxisofLogic

Chittagong District. Bangladesh:

It was the cyclone in 1991. The girl Sufia in Anwara, was an orphan and had lost all her family members. I saw her sitting in front of where her home had been and wondered what would happen to this orphan child. I needn't have worried. One doesn't stay an orphan for long in rural Bangladesh. She was soon taken into another family. The generosity of the poor has always amazed me. Those who have little to feed themselves always find enough to feed another.

Shahidul Alam/flickr

Just around the multi-dimensional corner: Drone Ships full of genetically modified humans who are going to live forever, on a planet that may or may not be capable of supporting genetically modified human life

Drone Ships full of genetically modified humans who are going to live forever

Drone Ships full of genetically modified humans

Genetically modified humans, just around the multi-dimensional corner

Who did that?

Claims by a former diplomat that Israel has assassinated most of the suspects who took part in the deadly July 1994 bombing of a Jewish center community center in Argentina have triggered angry reactions in Buenos Aires and Jerusalem.
Itzhak Aviran, who was Israeli ambassador to Argentina at the time of the blast that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more, told the Spanish-language Jewish news agency AJN that the overwhelming majority of those responsible for the attack “are already on ‘the other side’and we did that.
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The Jewish ex-interior minister of Argentina will be investigated for his ties to the AMIA Jewish center bombing
The Buenos Aires Federal Appeals Court last week ordered the probe of Carlos Vladimir Corach in connection with an illegal payment of $400,000 to Carlos Telleldin, an auto mechanic who was among those charged in the 1994 attack that left 85 dead and hundreds wounded.
Telleldin, who allegedly provided the car bomb that blew up the Jewish center, has not been indicted.
                                                                   ...
Corach was interior minister during the Carlos Menem government in the 1990s. He was responsible for obtaining the building for the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires and was the main speaker at its inauguration.
-
AMIA Jewish center head Guillermo Borger says joint truth commission may take Argentina ‘to the precipice’.

He said:

The president of the AMIA Buenos Aires Jewish center said the truth commission agreed to by Argentina and Iran “will allow a third bombing in Argentina.”

Times of Israel
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She said:

Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner says any third attack on the Jewish community center, AMIA, will be carried out by opponents of the recent Tehran-Buenos Aires agreement to investigate the 1994 bombing on the center.
Kirchner made the remark in reaction to AMIA President Guillermo Borger who claimed the Iran-Argentina memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in January “will allow a third bombing in Argentina.”

“I read with concern Borger’s remarks. I respect Mr. Borger, but what makes him speak about such a horrible incident?” she asked.
“In that case, if any suicide attack occurs due to the MoU [signed] with Iran, who will be its spiritual and material mastermind?” asked the Argentinean president.
“Obviously, the signatories [to the MoU] will not mastermind any attack. Hence, will the masterminds be those who oppose the MoU? Or a country, intelligence agents and organizations of certain states? In that case, who would be committing such a strike and what would he be driving at?” she noted.

PressTV
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They said:

Jewish FM [Hector Timerman] of Argentina Accuses Israel of Causing Anti-Semitism
the algemeiner
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Kirchner to Skip Bombing Memorial Again
Michael Rubin/commentary
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Argentina's President Accuses Jewish Leaders of Plotting Against the State
Daily Beast
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TO GET OIL FROM IRAN, ARGENTINA READY TO SELL OUT JEWISH VICTIMS OF TERRORIST ATTACK
Rachel Miller/Palm Beach Post
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etc. and lots more etc.

Livin' la Kosher Nostra:

Jamie Dimon is the slick, vainglorious, silver-haired boss of the JPMorgan house of banksters. This CEO has fostered a culture of thievery during his years as a top executive at JPMorgan, leading to a shameful litany of crime. Yet, federal prosecutors have bowed to the politically connected Wall Streeter, refusing to ruffle his feathers with even a single criminal charge.

Meanwhile, one of the scams that Dimon directly supervised produced a $6 billion loss for shareholders in 2012. And his reign of mismanagement and illegalities cost the bank's shareholders another $20 billion in federal fines last year, resulting in a 16 percent drop in profits.

JimHightower/truthout
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The CEO says he can't conform to some safety standard, some decent wage idea, environmental damage that results from his company's practices can't be stopped  - because the shareholders.
The shareholders are why, he owes it to them to make a profit. He's legally required to put the profit first. It's in the rules.
They say that all the time.
Nope. Can't do it. We have an obligation to our shareholders.
Why? When nothing happens if you don't? You stiff the shareholders 26 billion and nothing happens.
And all these hate radio clones listeners are all about Obama redistributing the wealth - to poor people.
You're being played, my brothers.

aliculablog laughs about anti-Semitism

Max Blumenthal is still not on the payroll at First Look:

Old Photos Surface Showing Breitbart, O’Keefe Hobnobbing With White Nationalists

crooks and liars

The Elk River upstream of Freedom Industry's tanks. Image courtesy of the author

Death in Camp Delta:

At some point during their captivity, these three men began to retreat. They no longer touched the food the guards pushed through the holes in the doors of their cells. Their bodies dwindled. Their lives hung on thin yellow tubes shoved down their nostrils each morning to let a nutrient fluid drip into their stomachs. In their minds, nothing changed. They didn’t want to stay, and one night, on June 9, 2006, they decided to leave Guantánamo.

Mario Kaiserhor/Guernica

Firefox OS home

Mozilla Promises $25 Smartphone:

"We are committed to an open platform [that] works across a variety of devices," Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, told the crowd of 200 media here at Mobile World Congress today. "It is called the Web."

The Real Tragedy:

A paradigmatic example is Pacific Lumber, a California company that in the 1980s owned most of the old-growth redwoods still in private hands. Pacific Lumber was unusual. Its chief executive was a lifelong timberman named A. S. Murphy who believed in harvesting no more than the forests could replace. “Their approach,” wrote David Harris in The Last Stand, “was to treat the forest as capital and try to live off the interest.”

This virtue did not go unpunished. Pacific’s self-discipline meant its forests were ripe for less conscientious plucking. Its clean balance sheet—Murphy believed in pay-as-you-go—left plenty of room for a raider to load up the company with debt. And this is exactly what happened.

During the leveraged buyout boom of the 1980s, a corporate chief by the name of Charles Hurwitz teamed up with Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, two of the more infamous financiers of the era, to take over Pacific Lumber. They mortgaged the company to the hilt to finance the purchase. Then, in order to pay off the debt, Hurwitz began liquidating the forests Murphy had conserved. Finance trumped husbandry

Jonathan Rowe/Guernica
Financiers.

He used to report for the New York Times, but stepped down, 
saying he couldn't conform to the paper's conflict-of-interest rules:

The fact that FAIR was writing about Toro's reporting more than 10 years ago points to the fact that this is not a new story; since Hugo Chavez's first election in 1998, Venezuela's government has faced intense opposition, and despite this opposition, the government has repeatedly won elections that have been deemed free and fair (Extra!, 12/06). US journalists tend to identify with the opposition, which is generally wealthier and better educated–and not incidentally whiter–than government supporters (FAIR Blog, 2/25/13). This should be borne in mind when reading reports from Venezuela–from whatever source.

Jim Naureckas/Fair/Venezuelanalysis
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The mind-set is contempt, which opens up all kinds of moral freedoms.
 If you're talking to someone you despise, it's okay to lie to them. And to lie about them to others.
And these people, the ricos Toros is speaking for, despise everyone but themselves, though probably if you could get in there deep enough, even themselves. But especially they despise the poor brown-skinned descendants of the enslaved indigenous of South America.
On the surface, in the US, which has only surfaces, it's a desperate fight, arrows flying, guns blazing, women screaming, children crying, horses doing whatever horses do when the settlers are besieged by savages, with the wagons circled, bravely battling for the freedom to be scumsucking greedheads and get away with it.
It's a cowboy movie.
They're literally, in the case of Venezuela, being attacked by Indians.

Max Blumenthal is not on the payroll at First Look:

I wrote about Lopez in my investigation of Thor Halvorssen and his Potemkin Village-like Human Rights Foundation. Halvorssen is a former right-wing campus activist who has leveraged his fortune to establish a political empire advancing a transparently neoconservative agenda behind the patina of human rights.

Among Halvorssen’s main PR megaphones is Buzzfeed, whose correspondent Rosie Gray flew to Oslo in 2013 to write a fawning profile of him and his Oslo Freedom Forum. (Gray has not disclosed whether Halvorssen covered her travel expenses or provided her with resources like food and lodging). Michael Moynihan, another writer who was flown to Oslo to participate in Halvorssen’s confab, published an editorial in the Daily Beast this week praising “the handsome, telegenic, and Harvard-trained Leopoldo Lopez” and slamming President Nicolas Maduro as “Mussolini-on-the-piazza.” The Daily Beast followed up with atranslated version of the dramatic and carefully staged speech Lopez delivered before he turned himself in to Venezuelan authorities, which Halvorssen promptly promoted on Twitter.

Besides being the son of a CIA asset who channeled money from Venezuelan oligarchs to the Nicaraguan Contras, Halvorssen happens to be Lopez’s first cousin — Leopoldo is the son of Thor’s oil executive aunt. Through his human rights apparatus, he has played a critical role in marketing Lopez to an international audience.

Max Blumenthal

la bellezza non può attendere:

One must give to Citizens that which are Citizens'

Video di attrice comica Sylvia de Fanti, di Teatro Valle Occupato

On Liberty:

Independence came in the early 60s and Ugandans were elated. But we, within months, seemed to be losing our fragile rights. Idi Amin was the general, Milton Obote the first elected president. Between them they started a reign of terror. People disappeared, mutilated bodies were found on the streets. Two were thrown into the stairwell of where we lived. I saw one of them, a young man, being feasted on by flies and stray dogs. I went to university and within months Amin and his army deposed Obote. The coup was "managed" by the UK, US and Israel. More killings, widespread torture. No one was safe. My university friends were taken away and never seen again for saying things in seminars or during debates, or in a college bar.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown/GuardianUK

                        From Mexico, Obama warns Ukraine to 'show restraint' on protests

Obama spent his first moments of an abbreviated eight-hour stay focused on a public statement about turmoil in distant Ukraine – a country with which U.S. annual trade doesn’t equal even two days’ worth of business with Mexico

                                                         Police at Occupy Wall Street

Scott Olsen

                                                                    Protesters Kiev
                                                     
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Let's all imagine the peaceful protesters of Occupy, including Scott Olsen, non-violent, within their constitutional rights, suddenly going all Molotov. Burning shit in the streets, throwing things at cops.
 And restraint.
Given the restraint demonstrated in New York and Oakland.
Why the concern for Ukraine? You ask.
Because the same hand that came down with its truncheon swinging in New York and Oakland is backing the "other side" in Ukraine. That's why.

Dialogue or Coups:

The main question in Venezuela isn’t about any lack of democracy in this country, nor restrictions on freedom of expression.

Regarding the supposed “democratic deficit of the Venezuelan regime”, the facts speak for themselves. Since 1998 there have been four national plebiscites, four presidential elections, and eleven parliamentary, regional, and municipal elections. Venezuela is the Latin American country with the highest number of elections and it also has an automatic electoral system (much more modern than Chile’s one), described by Jimmy Carter, who has observed 92 elections in all continents, as “the best system in the world”.

Then on the second argument that is being constantly repeated, the supposed lack of freedom of expression and press in Venezuela, once again the numbers speak for themselves. 80% of the media is private. The three national newspapers (El Universal, El Nacional and Ultimos Noticias) are opposed to the government, especially the first two, and they bring together 90% of the readership. Of the four television channels with national coverage, three of them (Venevision, Globovision, and Televen) are opposition, and likewise bring together 90% of the audience

Pedro Santander/Venezuelanalysis 19.Feb.14

The Farewell Speech of Muqtada Al-Sadr:

Iraq that is ruled by wolves, thirsty for blood, souls that are eager for wealth, leaving their nation in suffering, in fear, in water puddles, in dark nights, lightened only by moonlight or a candle, swamped by assassinations based on differences or after ridiculous disagreements. All that and the government is only watching.

Counterpunch

an 84 year old nun gets 35 months for:

Rice and the others admitted to spray painting peace slogans and hammering on exterior walls of the facility. When a guard confronted them, they offered him food and began singing.

Reuters
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a 31 year old Marine found guilty of murdering 24 Iraqi civilians gets:

Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich will not serve a jail sentence following his guilty plea in the killing of 24 Iraqis in 2005, a military judge said Tuesday.
                                                 ...
Jones said he had planned to recommend 90 days in the brig — the maximum as requested by the prosecution — but that the plea bargain approved by Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser had called for no jail time.

LATimes
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Just us is served.
This is not to belittle Wuterich's remorse, which appears heartfelt and genuine. In a very real sense he's only a weapon, a drone if you will, operated remotely, by the invisible and unaccountable.
Who can't be court-martialed because there's no one powerful enough to haul them into court. If there was a court big enough.

original contrast via Charles Davis ‏@charliearchy 

It's not getting warmer here, because it's getting warmer there:

Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing. Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake.

nature climate change

Schematic of the trends in temperature and ocean–atmosphere circulation in the Pacific over the past two decades.
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I don't normally like to link to paywall news/info sites, but I forgot that's why I don't read nature online, and then I followed a link and read this excerpt and then it was, uhm, too late.
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via Who's Afraid of Ruins?
at Out of the Woods's blog at libcom
which I'm a little sketchy on because they, or someone(s) there, have adopted the comfort-jargon "triggering" - which I support in theory, as a means of helping those naked souls who are in a state of trauma and recovery from trauma to avoid horrible reminding images - but it (the word "triggering") has been seized upon by communities of trauma-worshipping victim-sanctifying excuseniks. That closes off the path toward individual healing and strengthening.
Communities of people I also support in theory, and as individuals in fact, until they become actual communities, and cease to be individuals in fact.
Sort of like how back in the 70's people went around asking if you had "accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior", in exactly that phrase. Over and over.
No question people who have experienced horrific events and conditions can be assaulted and re-wounded by some things available on the net, and should be warned by responsible guides, but "triggering", as opposed to the formerly common "contains graphic imagery" etc, enables the victim response too readily.
It doesn't strengthen the soul of the individual, it grants strength through the subsuming of the individual into the stronger, pathologically-defined, group.

An Amazon Indian in London

Thirty Lies about Venezuela that Human Rights Watch is telling:

In the six pages that HRW dedicates to Venezuela in its World Report 2014, released this week, it manages to tell at least 30 serious lies, distortions, and omissions. Pointing out these lies is important, because many people believe that HRW is a neutral authority on human rights, and the mainstream press publish articles and headlines based on HRW report conclusions. Here are some of the headlines in both English and Spanish (translated to English) that have come out of the 2014 report

Global Research
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Tiresome as it may be - the history of Human Rights Watch is filled with a significant absence of serious reportage about Zionist maneuvers to elide Jewish criminality and distortion, in Palestine and elsewhere.
 I can remember ten or so years ago running into accusations of HRW's Zionist bias, but at the time thinking it was mostly just bigotry and paranoia. Events have subsequently proved otherwise.
One of the things that Chavez and Co. did right away is make the climate in Venezuela very uncomfortable for the affluent elite there, which was affluent purely and simply because of its racist inhuman suck of the energies of the poor majority, before the Bolivarian Revolution.
 After the revolution there were prosecutions and a steady program of return of power to the people, to the shrieking hysterical outrage of the energy vampires. Many of whom were Jews. A disproportionate number of whom were Jews. Who are now fleeing to Spain, evidently.
It's to the credit of the Bolivarians that they didn't create an official climate of anti-Semitism, even with sensible just cause. Maybe Sean Penn had something to do with that.
But the deposed elites who got knocked out of the financial catbird seat have been trying, increasingly desperately, to create an air around conditions in Venezuela of just that. Socialist cannibals who want the hard-earned rewards of superior lives for their own greasy lazy selves.
Only the Jews are stuck, because there's no accusation against their ethnicity, only their criminality. So they can't quite bring it forward into public discourse. Without amplifying the topic themselves.
We're still in this absurd place where Amy Chua can purr Satanically about ethnic superiority, in values and child-rearing, but no sane prominent voice can even begin a discussion about ethnic criminality. Without the squalid images of Jewish suffering being used as a fire-suppressant. Or tear gas.
It's reminds me of that metaphorical dog. The one that got lots of attention when it was a puppy, then grew into a kind of mobile furniture position in the family, taken for granted, fed but ignored, then got hurt, say run over, taken to the vet, and with its leg all bandaged up got lots of that outgrown attention it was craving.
Oh, so that's how you do it.
So now, long after the leg's healed up, when it gets yelled at it starts limping around the house with a pleading look in its eyes.
Another part of the problem I''d like to see brought into open discussion is the recursive rationalization, hidden but common, of otherwise intelligent Jews, that since all these nasty anti-Semites are threatening us so horribly, we're justified in doing the very things they're accusing us of, and then lying about doing them. Because anti-Semitism.
The refusal to allow any polite talk about the legitimate and justifiable accusations behind anti-Jewish sentiment means we're prevented from doing anything about the illegitimate and unjust bigotries that do exist.

                                        Project Coyote

this international cavalcade of anti-government protest and government brutality in the make-believe land called “Venezuela.”

time for some fried calamari:

You might not have been surprised that Goldman got caught scamming the world again, but it was certainly news to a lot of people that an investment bank with no industrial expertise, just five years removed from a federal bailout, stores and controls enough of America's aluminum supply to affect world prices.

How was all of this possible? And who signed off on it?

Taibbi/RollingStone

Sayd Muqtada al-Sadr:

“I announce my noninterference in politics, and from now there is no bloc that represent us and no position inside or outside movement or parliament.”

Not that Iraq is in the crosshairs of the Judeo-Christian West at the moment anymore, but that's a really significant thing.
 Al-Sadr's like the Gandhi of Iraq, vilified by the colonial power(s) that decimated his country and left it in ruins. Unknown, except as a cartoon drawn by lying bigots, to lots of those who think they know what's happening there, or what happened.
His personal history is heart-breaking, and his strength in the face of that heartbreak exemplary.

France has crawled up the rectal cavity of the Zionist enterprise
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and Neil Young's scheduled to entertain the Israelis in July
the Rolling Stones are on for June
Be sure to wear some real rebel clothes on stage guys
and deliver that rock and roll attitude that got you where you were.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU IDIOTS THINKING?

 History makes clear, however, that information gathered for any purpose may be misused:

And the effect of these extensive retention periods is magnified exponentially by both the technological ability and the legal mandate to share the information with other federal agencies, state and local law enforcement departments, foreign governments, and private entities.

To address these problems, this report recommends the following reforms:

1. Ensure that policies governing the sharing and retention of information about Americans are accessible and transparent.
    
2. Prohibit the retention and sharing of domestically-gathered data about Americans for law enforcement or intelligence purposes in the absence of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and impose further limitations on the dissemination of personally identifiable information reflecting First Amendment-protected activity.
    
3. Reform the outdated Privacy Act of 1974, which has fallen far short of its goal of protecting the privacy of Americans’ personal information, through statutory amendments and establishment of an independent oversight board.
    
4. Increase public oversight over the National Counterterrorism Center, a massive federal data repository that increasingly is engaged in large-scale aggregation, retention, and analysis of non-terrorism information about Americans.
    
5. Require regular and robust audits of federal agencies’ retention and sharing of non-criminal information about Americans.

Rachel Levinson-Waldman
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
                                                                       -
                                                              Chilling Effect
 NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self-Censor:

The initial survey results show that writers are significantly more likely than the general public to disapprove of “the government’s collection of telephone and Internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts”— 66% of writers vs. 44% of the general public. Only 12% of writers approve, compared with 50% of the general public.
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Freedom of expression is under threat and, as a result, freedom of information is imperiled as well.
Fully 85% of writers responding to PEN’s survey are worried about government surveillance of Americans,
and 73% of writers have never been as worried about privacy rights and freedom of the press as they are
today.

PenAmerica (pdf)
-
Above links via Dave Eggers: US writers must take a stand on NSA surveillance GuardianUK
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One explanation for the discrepancy in mistrust and apprehension (between writers and the general public) about govt. surveillance may be the parallel discrepancy in religious belief, especially the belief in an all-seeing anthropomorphic judgmental deity with very specific demands on behavior, and the punishment/reward protocols laid out by that deity in His Holy Book.
"God is already watching me, and I know what He wants, so why should I care if some hired-gun dweeb in a cubicle at the NSA is also watching me?"

Me personally, I've been the target of surveillance, intense and constant, governmental as well as private, since I was in my teens. Four Five decades.
I'm certain, though of course without any substantive proof, that for quite a while if not most all of that time, say between the late 60's and the mid 00's, I was being used as an in situ guinea pig, as the technologies and techniques were evolving.
The damage done to people who trusted me, who were as a consequence of that surveillance infected by it, and to the few people who inhabited that cage of attention with me, is as yet uncalculated.
It's interesting now, tracking my emotional response as everybody else catches up with that, or at least with the broad general fact of that.
Being watched, not by God, but by clueless worthless untrustworthy delusional assholes with guns, constantly evolving bugs, and a mandate that is morally and ethically without foundation.

This is the ax you would take to the stars

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also: track and whack US gov stylee

CVS quits tobacco, sort of for health reasons, sort of not
via

Climate Revolution
A distinction between "elites" and "rulers" is important. And anybody who's doing anything, from little kids making drawings at school, to crazy-ass eco-warriors getting busted in sub-zero Arctic frigidity, matters, and what they do is important.

                                                  twitter 06/feb/14

                        DID GOD INTERVENE IN SUPER BOWL?

DID GOD INTERVENE IN SUPER BOWL?

•  No, that's absurd
•  No, God has more important things to do, like running the universe
•  No, strange events happen all the time in sports
•  No, God is in church on Sundays
•  No, God gave us free will, which explains our present mess
•  No, but John Elway did - by releasing Tim Tebow
•  No, there is no God
•  If He did, why would he allow all those concussions to occur?
•  Of course, God is everywhere
•  Yes, God is the originator of 'teachable moments'
•  Yes, God can run the universe and enjoy football at the same time
•  Yes, God is active in ALL the affairs of men, since we are being trained to be the children of God
•  Yes, God is the real 12th man
•  Yes, He was clearly spanking Denver for ousting Tim Tebow, and honoring Tebow with the best ad
•  Other

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/super-claim-god-intervened-in-super-bowl/#1RbvlZmXQ6BF51Xm.99

United Nations' Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM:

British girl leads Guardian campaign to end female genital mutilation

Female genital mutilation: A family speaks out against the abuse

“I ended up alone for refusing to be mutilated”

Fighting female genital mutilation

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Due to the obvious crossover we're not going to be calling it "female circumcision" anymore.
Because then the kids would be all, "So how come it's okay to do that to boys?"
And then everything would get messy.
And we can't have any more messes now.
Pretty deep sorrow that this subject, the mutilation of female genitalia, is even a topic for discussion.

Like, okay, whether or not you should slowly torture people to death before you eat them, because the adrenaline makes the meat tangier, or if you should give them all kinds of relaxing and euphoric stuff over a couple days so when you kill them the meat is saturated in feel-good pheromones, and more relaxing to the consumer. Diff'rent strokes y'all.

The metaphorical gift of circumcising children of either gender is one that just keeps on giving.
Fucking up kids when they're too young and/or too brainwashed to understand and resist what you're doing, breaking their spirits, means as a member of the grownup community you get to have some of the power that's made available by what is essentially the psychological enslavement of the young.
And nothing says personal enrichment like slavery.
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Russel Brand was talking about the death of PSHoffman and what the drug hypocrisy syndrome had to do with that. And I just get so weary. So very weary.
We don't need a calm rational conversation about drugs, use and abuse.
There's no one to talk to.
Drugs are illegal because the people who sell them make a lot more money that way than they would if the drugs were legal. Not the guy on the street, the guy in the suite.
Read it again: Drugs are illegal because...
 Phasing in legality like the US is doing w/weed is acceptable because the price will stay "high".
It's the money.
You would be taking money away from some very rich very powerful men if you decriminalized addiction and recreational use. And they don't like it when someone tries to take their money.
In the case of female genital mutilation, it was clearly decided somewhere to avoid the use of "circumcision" to describe a practice that decent people everywhere find disgusting and barbaric, senselessly cruel, and pointless.
As opposed to male circumcision, which is perfectly sensible and a positive addition to any young boy's life experiences.
Plus a religious tradition millenia old. That God said. So it's different.

      Doug Peacock at My Lai Veteran's Day 2011
      Vietnam 2011
Doug Peacock

suggestive of their source, which suggestion should be avoided at all costs:

Syngenta intensified its public-relations campaign in 2009, as it became concerned that activists, touting “new science,” had developed a “new line of attack.” That year, a paper in Acta Paediatrica, reviewing national records for thirty million births, found that children conceived between April and July, when the concentration of atrazine (mixed with other pesticides) in water is highest, were more likely to have genital birth defects. The author of the paper, Paul Winchester, a professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, received a subpoena from Syngenta, which requested that he turn over every e-mail he had written about atrazine in the past decade. The company’s media talking points described his study as “so-called science” that didn’t meet the “guffaw test.” Winchester said, “We don’t have to argue that I haven’t proved the point. Of course I haven’t proved the point! Epidemiologists don’t try to prove points—they look for problems.”

Aviv/NewYorker
via cryptogon

                                                             photograph of Anne Frank taken by her father


"I'm worried about my marbles..."
Anne Frank
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"I'm worried about your father."
Me

"people who worship death for their children are not human."

take more time off
via

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