Why Not Try Love Again by Jumpin' Jupiter
BOPTIME ~ Saturdays, 6 AM/EST, Listen
Paul Krassner ~ The Realist, Writer, Comic, Investigative Satirist ~ (Links Page)
Paul Krassner ~ Frank Moore's Shaman's Den
from Eroplay.com ~ https://vimeo.com/110267592
Five Finger Death Punch ~ Wrong Side of Heaven
from Nick Peterson ~ https://vimeo.com/101360301
MOST WORLD PROBLEMS CAN BE TRACED BACK TO POLITICIANS
NONE OF THE ABOVE SHOULD BE A CHOICE ON VOTER BALLOTS
Michael Stickrod ~ Art Exhibitions / Screenings ~ (Links Page)
TRANS-PECOS
Michel Auder & Michael Stickrod, Salvatore Principato,
Diamond Terrifier, Michael Beharie, Heidemann, Zulu P
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2015 ~ 8PM
$10 ~ RSVP on facebook
TRANS-PECOS
915 WYCKOFF AVE,
RIDGEWOOD, QUEENS,
NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA
Dahbud Mensch ~ is SANITY the PLAYGROUND of the unIMAGINATIVE ? ~ (Links Page)
Sounds Like Punt?
Fox 8 news anchor Kristi "Jigaboo" Capel
is a RACISTRUNT ?More Stupid ? Fox News Quotes:
"If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush [REPUBLICON] Administration again, all right?" ~ Bill (Fox Bullshitter?) O’Reilly ~ March 18, 2003
Dahbud Mensch ~ is SANITY the PLAYGROUND of the unIMAGINATIVE ? ~ (Links Page)
Leaked cables show
Netanyahu's Iran bomb claim
contradicted by MossadGulf between Israeli secret service and PM revealed in documents shared with the Guardian along with other secrets including CIA bids to contact Hamas
• Read the leaked document here
Seumas Milne, Ewen MacAskill & Clayton Swisher ~ 23 Feb 2015 ~ Article Source
Netanyahu's Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad, leaked spy cables showBinyamin Netanyahu's dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document.
It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world's major intelligence services – one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times.
Brandishing a cartoon of a bomb with a red line to illustrate his point, the Israeli prime minister warned the UN in New York that Iran would be able to build nuclear weapons the following year and called for action to halt the process.
But in a secret report shared with South Africa a few weeks later, Israel's intelligence agency concluded that Iran was "not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons". The report highlights the gulf between the public claims and rhetoric of top Israeli politicians and the assessments of Israel's military and intelligence establishment.
An extract from the document Photograph: The GuardianThe disclosure comes as tensions between Israel and its staunchest ally, the US, have dramatically increased ahead of Netanyahu's planned address to the US Congress on 3 March.
The White House fears the Israeli leader's anticipated inflammatory rhetoric could damage sensitive negotiations between Tehran and the world's six big powers over Iran's nuclear programme. The deadline to agree on a framework is in late March, with the final settlement to come on 30 June. Netanyahu has vowed to block an agreement he claims would give Iran access to a nuclear weapons capability.
The US president, Barack Obama, will not meet Netanyahu during his visit, saying protocol precludes a meeting so close to next month's general election in Israel.
The documents, almost all marked as confidential or top secret, span almost a decade of global intelligence traffic, from 2006 to December last year. It has been leaked to the al-Jazeera investigative unit and shared with the Guardian.
The papers include details of operations against al-Qaida, Islamic State and other terrorist organisations, but also the targeting of environmental activists.
The files reveal that:
• The CIA attempted to establish contact with Hamas in spite of a US ban.
• South Korean intelligence targeted the leader of Greenpeace.
• Barack Obama "threatened" the Palestinian president to withdraw a bid for recognition of Palestine at the UN.
• South African intelligence spied on Russia over a controversial $100m joint satellite deal.
The cache, which has been independently authenticated by the Guardian, mainly involves exchanges between South Africa's intelligence agency and its counterparts around the world. It is not the entire volume of traffic but a selective leak.
One of the biggest hauls is from Mossad. But there are also documents from Russia's FSB, which is responsible for counter-terrorism. Such leaks of Russian material are extremely rare.
Other spy agencies caught up in the trawl include those of the US, Britain, France, Jordan, the UAE, Oman and several African nations.
The scale of the leak, coming 20 months after US whistleblower Edward Snowden handed over tens of thousands of NSA and GCHQ documents to the Guardian, highlights the increasing inability of intelligence agencies to keep their secrets secure.
While the Snowden trove revealed the scale of technological surveillance, the latest spy cables deal with espionage at street level – known to the intelligence agencies as human intelligence, or "humint". They include surveillance reports, inter-agency information trading, disinformation and backbiting, as well as evidence of infiltration, theft and blackmail.
The leaks show how Africa is becoming increasingly important for global espionage, with the US and other western states building up their presence on the continent and China expanding its economic influence. One serving intelligence officer told the Guardian: "South Africa is the El Dorado of espionage."
Africa has also become caught up in the US, Israeli and British covert global campaigns to stem the spread of Iranian influence, tighten sanctions and block its nuclear programme.
The Mossad briefing about Iran's nuclear programme in 2012 was in stark contrast to the alarmist tone set by Netanyahu, who has long presented the Iranian nuclear programme as an existential threat to Israel and a huge risk to world security. The Israeli prime minister told the UN: "By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move[d] on to the final stage. From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb."
He said his information was not based on secret information or military intelligence but International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports.
Behind the scenes, Mossad took a different view. In a report shared with South African spies on 22 October 2012 – but likely written earlier – it conceded that Iran was "working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate, such as enrichment reactors, which will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given".
But the report also states that Iran "does not appear to be ready" to enrich uranium to the higher levels necessary for nuclear weapons. To build a bomb requires enrichment to 90%. Mossad estimated that Iran then had "about 100kg of material enriched to 20%" (which was later diluted or converted under the terms of the 2013 Geneva agreement). Iran has always said it is developing a nuclear programme for civilian energy purposes.
Last week, Netanyahu's office repeated the claim that "Iran is closer than ever today to obtaining enriched material for a nuclear bomb" in a statement in response to an IAEA report.
A senior Israeli government official said there was no contradiction between Netanyahu's statements on the Iranian nuclear threat and "the quotes in your story – allegedly from Israeli intelligence". Both the prime minister and Mossad said Iran was enriching uranium in order to produce weapons, he added.
"Israel believes the proposed nuclear deal with Iran is a bad deal, for it enables the world's foremost terror state to create capabilities to produce the elements necessary for a nuclear bomb," he said.
However, Mossad had been at odds with Netanyahu on Iran before. The former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who left office in December 2010, let it be known that he had opposed an order from Netanyahu to prepare a military attack on Iran.
Other members of Israel's security establishment were riled by Netanyahu's rhetoric on the Iranian nuclear threat and his advocacy of military confrontation. In April 2012, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, accused Netanyahu of "messianic" political leadership for pressing for military action, saying he and the then defence minister, Ehud Barak, were misleading the public on the Iran issue. Benny Gantz, the Israeli military chief of staff, said decisions on tackling Iran "must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria".
There were also suspicions in Washington that Netanyahu was seeking to bounce Obama into taking a more hawkish line on Iran.
A few days before Netanyahu's speech to the UN, the then US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, accused the Israeli prime minister of trying to force the US into a corner. "The fact is … presidents of the United States, prime ministers of Israel or any other country … don't have, you know, a bunch of little red lines that determine their decisions," he said.
"What they have are facts that are presented to them about what a country is up to, and then they weigh what kind of action is needed in order to deal with that situation. I mean, that's the real world. Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner."
Oral Cancer Struggle ~ Email from Curtis ~ (Links Page)
Cancer Update:
Not For Tea or SympathySince I have grown tired of "the struggle," and rather than continue to send individual email on current personal events, here is a general, definitive, cancer, "waddup."
by ~@~ Sunday, February 22, 2015
[(fwiw) As one of Internet's actual pioneers, let it be known I no longer trust using Internet, email, socnets, certain software, (new) computers or smart devices (cell phones, pads, pods, watches), and believe that during 1991 Internet started eroding into demise when it became a corporate / government tool, used for marketing or divide & conquer.]
On finishing radiation treatment and subsequent tests indicating survival from oral cancer (discovered during January 2011) I was ecstatic because, with exception to an "all clear" cancer report that should occur in one and a half years, I had once again ;-) beaten the Reaper.
I say that because I was told many times by my oncologists, after the operations and treatments, "Most people with your type of cancer do not survive," and am now considered to be a "walking miracle," but the story does not end there.
As those who are close know, I seldom, or rarely, complain about anything (-; with exception to dishonest politicians & government ;-) including physiological pain, so ... I did not bother to mention my continuing rash and string of biopsies that fortunately turned up negative, except the last one, which I do not consider serious.
In turn, I have another operation coming up soon and about a month later start photodynamic therapy.
Bottom Line: All is fine with me, except I seem to be getting a little tired of dealing with cancer related things and a little more reclusive. (btw) I seldom use a phone because my rebuilt mouth still bothers me when I talk... and :) is not personal.
CASHCPR
Citizens Against Second Hand Cellular Phone Radiation
Camel cigarettes had the largest booth at American Medical Association's 1948 convention; boasting, "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." which is a splendid example of "Profits Not People" and should be a 'Wake Up Call' for HONEST Evaluation of the Dangers and Hazards from Cellular Telephones and effects of amplified microwave frequencies emitting from Cellular repeater sites. -- "It's A Matter of Trust" = Citizen's Against Second Hand Cellular Phone Radiation (CASHCPR), 2004 thru 2015, Inspired by "edge Wireless", member of the [Spying] AT&T Wireless Network.
More Doctors Smoke Camels
Than Any Other Cigarette
Proof Corporatist and FDA Support "Profits Not People"Have You Ever Considered Cellular Phones
May Be Harmful To Your Health?
Spies Can Track You Just by
Watching Your Phone’s Power UseBY ANDY GREENBERG 02.19.15 | 8:45 PM | PERMALINK
Klaus Vedfelt/Getty ImagesSmartphone users might balk at letting a random app like Candy Crush or Shazam track their every move via GPS. But researchers have found that Android phones reveal information about your location to every app on your device through a different, unlikely data leak: the phone’s power consumption.
Researchers at Stanford University and Israel’s defense research group Rafael have created a technique they call PowerSpy, which they say can gather information about an Android phone’s geolocation merely by tracking its power use over time. That data, unlike GPS or Wi-Fi location tracking, is freely available to any installed app without a requirement to ask the user’s permission. That means it could represent a new method of stealthily determining a user’s movements with as much as 90 percent accuracy—though for now the method only really works when trying to differentiate between a certain number of pre-measured routes.
Spies might trick a surveillance target into downloading a specific app that uses the PowerSpy technique, or less malicious app makers could use its location tracking for advertising purposes, says Yan Michalevski, one of the Stanford researchers. “You could install an application like Angry Birds that communicates over the network but doesn’t ask for any location permissions,” says Michalevski. “It gathers information and sends it back to me to track you in real time, to understand what routes you’ve taken when you drove your car or to know exactly where you are on the route. And it does it all just by reading power consumption.”
PowerSpy takes advantage of the fact that a phone’s cellular transmissions use more power to reach a given cell tower the farther it travels from that tower, or when obstacles like buildings or mountains block its signal. That correlation between battery use and variables like environmental conditions and cell tower distance is strong enough that momentary power drains like a phone conversation or the use of another power-hungry app can be filtered out, Michalevsky says.
One of the machine-learning tricks the researchers used to detect that “noise” is a focus on longer-term trends in the phone’s power use rather than those than last just a few seconds or minutes. “A sufficiently long power measurement (several minutes) enables the learning algorithm to ‘see’ through the noise,” the researchers write. “We show that measuring the phone’s aggregate power consumption over time completely reveals the phone’s location and movement.”
Even so, PowerSpy has a major limitation: It requires that the snooper pre-measure how a phone’s power use behaves as it travels along defined routes. This means you can’t snoop on a place you or a cohort has never been, as you need to have actually walked or driven along the route your subject’s phone takes in order to draw any location conclusions. The Stanford and Israeli researchers collected power data from phones as they drove around California’s Bay Area and the Israeli city of Haifa. Then they compared their dataset with the power consumption of an LG Nexus 4 handset as it repeatedly traveled through one of those routes, using a different, unknown choice of route with each test. They found that among seven possible routes, they could identify the correct one with 90 percent accuracy.
“If you take the same ride a couple of times, you’ll see a very clear signal profile and power profile,” says Michalevsky. “We show that those similarities are enough to recognize among several possible routes that you’re taking this route or that one, that you drove from Uptown to Downtown, for instance, and not from Uptown to Queens.”
Michalevsky says the group hopes to improve its analysis to apply that same level of accuracy to tracking phones through many more possible paths and with a variety of phones—they already believe that a Nexus 5 would work just as well, for instance. The researchers also are working on detecting more precisely where in a known route a phone is at any given time. Currently the precision of that measurement varies from a few meters to hundreds of meters depending upon how long the phone has been traveling.
The researchers have attempted to detect phones’ locations even as they travel routes the snooper has never fully seen before. That extra feat is accomplished by piecing together their measurements of small portions of the routes whose power profiles have already been pre-measured. For a phone with just a few apps like Gmail, a corporate email inbox, and Google Calendar, the researchers were able determine a device’s exact path about two out of three times. For phones with half a dozen additional apps that suck power unpredictably and add noise to the measurements, they could determine a portion of the path about 60 percent of the time, and the exact path just 20 percent of the time.
Even with its relative imprecision and the need for earlier measurements of power use along possible routes, Michalevsky argues that PowerSpy represents a privacy problem that Google hasn’t fully considered. Android makes power consumption data available to all apps for the purpose of debugging. But that means the data easily could have been restricted to developers, nixing any chance for it to become a backdoor method of pinpointing a user’s position.
Google didn’t respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
This isn’t the first time that Michalevsky and his colleagues have used unexpected phone components to determine a user’s sensitive information. Last year the same researchers’ group, led by renowned cryptographer Dan Boneh, found that they could exploit the gyroscopes in a phone as crude microphones. That “gyrophone” trick was able to to pick up digits spoken aloud into the phone, or even to determine the speaker’s gender. “Whenever you grant anyone access to sensors on a device, you’re going to have unintended consequences,” Stanford professor Boneh told WIRED in August when that research was unveiled.
Stanford’s Michalevsky says that PowerSpy is another reminder of the danger of giving untrusted apps access to a sensor that picks up more information than it’s meant to. “We can abuse attack surfaces in unexpected ways,” he says, “to leak information in ways that it’s not supposed to leak.”
Read the full PowerSpy paper below.
PowerSpy: Location Tracking using Mobile Device Power Analysis by Andy Greenberg
Sim card database hack gave
US and UK spies access to
billions of cellphonesInternational row likely after revelations of breach that could have given NSA and GCHQ the power to monitor a large portion of world's cellular communications
Gemalto, the company targeted by the spy agencies, produces 2bn sim cards per year for
clients including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. Photograph: Kimmo Mntyl /Rex FeaturesDominic Rushe in New York, 19 February 2015, Article Source
American and British spies hacked into the world's largest sim card manufacturer in a move that gave them unfettered access to billions of cellphones around the globe and looks set to spark another international row into overreach by espionage agencies.
The National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent GCHQ hacked into Gemalto, a Netherlands sim card manufacturer, stealing encryption keys that allowed them to secretly monitor both voice calls and data, according to documents newly released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The breach, revealed in documents provided to The Intercept, gave the agencies the power to secretly monitor a large portion of the world's cellular communications, which experts said violated international laws.
Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said there was no doubt that the spy agencies had violated Dutch law and were in all probability violating laws in many other territories when they used the hacked keys.
"They have the functional equivalent of our house keys," he said. "That has serious implications for privacy not just here in the US but internationally."
The scale of the hack and its international reach will likely reopen wounds in the diplomatic community. The Obama administration faced intense criticism from Germany, Brazil and other nations following the Snowden leaks and has been working hard recently to repair the damage.
Previous documents disclosed by the Guardian showed Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was the target of an NSA spying campaign, a revelation that has soured US-German relations. Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff has already accused the NSA of violating international law.
"It's a big breach," Matthew Green, a cryptologist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, told the Guardian. "The problem is that the attacks could still be ongoing."
Gemalto, the company targeted by the spy agencies, produces 2bn sim cards per year for clients including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. The Netherlands company operates in 85 countries around the world and provides cards to some 450 wireless network providers globally.
The stolen encryption keys would allow intelligence agencies to monitor mobile communications without the approval or knowledge of telecom companies and foreign governments.
Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Guardian the hack would allow spies to "put an aerial up on the embassy in Berlin and listen in to anyone's calls in the area".
Calls made on 3G and 4G mobile networks are encrypted. But with the keys, which a GCHQ slide described as living "in the phone", spies could access any communication made on a device unless its owner uses an extra layer of encryption.
NSA and GCHQ hacked into SIM card manufacturers, stealing all the crypto keysSoghoian said the latest Snowden revelations meant that it was difficult for anyone to trust the security of a mobile phone. "It is very unlikely that this is an issue that is going to be fixed anytime soon," he said. "There is no reason for people to trust AT&T, Verizon or anyone at this point. Their systems are hopelessly insecure."
"The real value of this is that it allows bulk surveillance of telecoms without anyone getting caught," Soghoian said of hacks like the one at Gemalto, which he said would allow the spy agencies to target "whoever they wanted".
"In countries where the government will not cooperate, that's very useful," he said. "It's also very useful in countries where the government would help. Germany would allow spy on a suspected terrorist but not on [Angela] Merkel."
Paul Beverly, a Gemalto executive vice president, told The Intercept that the company was totally oblivious to the penetration of its systems. "I'm disturbed, quite concerned that this has happened," he said. "The most important thing for me is to understand exactly how this was done, so we can take every measure to ensure that it doesn't happen again."
According to the Snowden documents, Gemalto was targeted by the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team (MHET), a unit formed by the NSA and GCHQ in April 2010 to target vulnerabilities in cell phones.
The Intercept reports that in one GCHQ slide, the British intelligence agency boasted it had planted malware – malignant software – on several of Gemalto's computers, giving GHCQ access to "their entire network".
Green, from Johns Hopkins, said the scale of the hack – "apparently a huge percentage" of the sim cards at Gemalto – would mean a massive replacement process.
"Suppliers are going to have to tighten up their practices before anyone can think about fixing this," he told the Guardian, "and that's going to be a nightmare."
The keys were obtained after a clandestine operation targeting the email and Facebook accounts of Gemalto employees and other telecom executives. GCHQ operatives singled out key individuals within Gemalto and then hacked their private accounts.
One Gemalto employee in Thailand was identified as "a good place to start" after he was observed sending encrypted files, a move the agents suggested meant he was sending valuable information.
Board votes for Jefferson
State of Jefferson supporters fill a row at the Lake County Courthouse during a Board of
Supervisors meeting. The Jefferson crowd packed the supervisors chambers Tuesday
morning for the presentation. Photos by Berenice Quirino ~ Lake County PublishingBy Eli Nymeyer, R-B Staff, 02/18/15, Article Source
Lakeport >> State of Jefferson supporters once again appeared before the Lake County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, urging the board to adopt measures that might eventually lead to a permanent secession of the county from the state of California in order to create a new and independent state. And, in a move that stunned many of the opponents to the declaration in the audience, the board voted 3-to-2 in favor of the movement — though the step was tentative.
The chief concern of the board was the lack of language in the declaration dealing with whether or not voters would get a say-so in the process. It was decided that, before the supervisors would declare definitively one way or the other, that such language needed to be added to the document.
"This should be a vote of the people of the county," said District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown. "I support the idea of moving forward with the discussion, but we need that extra language in there." The other board members all echoed this concern.
A state of Jefferson supporter wears pins and a shirt to show his allegiance."This should be a vote of the people of the county," said District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown. "I support the idea of moving forward with the discussion, but we need that extra language in there." The other board members all echoed this concern.
As it stands, should the movement pass through the myriad legal and political hurdles in front of it in Sacramento and be passed by the legislature, residents would have no actual say-so in leaving California and joining Jefferson. With the additional language being sought by the board, the final decision would be left up to the people, with a popular vote deciding what state Lake County belongs in.
A common theme of the proponents of Jefferson was an issue of feeling underrepresented in the state government due to the large influence of the state's major population centers on policy. Supervisors Brown, Jim Comstock and Jeff Smith all appeared adamant in their pro-Jefferson positions, but District 3 Supervisor Jim Steele advocated a different solution.
"When I was elected to work on the problems of Lake County, it was to fix those problems, not to create a whole new set," Steele said. "All the arguments for [the State of Jefferson] could be addressed by having stronger representation for counties, which I feel we need to work toward. If you can have two senators from each state regardless of size of population, then you can have one senator from each county and that will make a lot of difference."
The audience was peppered with people appareled in pro-Jefferson clothing, from t-shirts and polos to hats and lapel buttons. Among them were two key figures in the local iteration of the Jefferson movement: Robert "Randy" Sutton, county co-chair of the State of Jefferson, and centenarian Ruby E. Glebe, a Lake County historian and a vocal proponent of the State of Jefferson movement — since 1940.
"The goal of Jefferson is to get representation for the peoples of the northern counties, […] so we can address our problems as we know them," he added. "Representatives in big cities don't have any idea of what our problems are."
In open comments, Glebe offered, "It is a big change to establish a new state, and a big challenge, […] but it can be accomplished, and it can be rewarding."
The opposition, however, consistently brought up concerns over the potential financial and organizational hurdles they felt are as of yet unaddressed by the proponents.
"We have to look to the future of what we stand to lose," Victoria Brandon said. "One of the things we would lose access to is higher education. The state of California […] resources we need for a viable future would not be there. Creating economic growth by getting rid of economic regulations is not a viable option."
"The state of Jefferson is acting like they're going to be a state that comes into being with no debt," said Joyce Swetnam. "But they will be mired in debt. They will be comprised of approximately 1.4 million people in the poorest counties in the state. If [Lake County] becomes a member of the state of Jefferson I will leave and move back to California."
Resident El-Amin Bakhit raised a concern over the state of Jefferson's acceptance of people of color. When she posed the question of whether or not she and her white partner and mixed-race grandchildren would be allowed into the state of Jefferson, her voice was overwhelmed by calls to the affirmative from the audience. Bakhit was unable to continue for the noise, until chairman and District 4 Supervisor Anthony Farrington intervened.
"I hear this common theme of the people having a voice," said Farrington. "Well, let this woman have a voice. Don't be hypocrites."
After the commotion caused by the Board of Supervisor's decision died down, the chambers cleared out quickly. Where there was before a room packed full of both supporters and detractors for the Jefferson movement, there remained a scant 21 bodies to observe the rest of the meeting.
In an interview, Glebe also expressed some concern for the future of the movement.
"This is about the last opportunity for us to do this," said Glebe. "If we can't get it done now, it probably won't ever happen."
When asked how she felt about subsequent attempts and the current organization, she said, "There was talk in the 50s, but then the Korean War happened. They weren't nearly as organized as they were in the 40s. The current group is very enthused and well planned and organized."
This "Declaration and Petition to the California State Legislature for Withdrawal of Lake County from the State of California and to Form the State of Jefferson," if it were to be ratified and approved, would carve a sizeable chunk out of northern California and southern Oregon, creating the 51st state. The last time a new state entered the Union was August 1959, when Hawaii traded in its territory status.
The last time a new state was created through a state split, like the one proposed to create Jefferson, was 1863, when West Virginia seceded from Virginia over slavery. This, however, was accomplished during the Civil War following Virginia's short-lived secession.
Google Is Evil ~ For using insinuation to destroy hobbies of Vietnam Vet. Cancer Patient ~ (Links Page)
Google warns of US government
'hacking any facility' in the world
In particular, Google sounds the alarm over the FBI's desire to ‘remotely' search computers
that have concealed their location. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty ImagesGoogle says increasing the FBI's powers set out in search warrants would raise ‘monumental' legal concerns that should be decided by Congress
Ed Pilkington in New York, 18 February 2015, Article Source
Ed. Note:
• Remembering some of what Congress has done to the American People: Telecom Crime, Patriot Act, Denialist
• Kill your Computer & Smart Device NOW, before ??? Google Monster ruins everything ???
Google is boldly opposing an attempt by the US Justice Department to expand federal powers to search and seize digital data, warning that the changes would open the door to US "government hacking of any facility" in the world.
In a strongly worded submission to the Washington committee that is considering the proposed changes, Google says that increasing the FBI's powers set out in search warrants would raise "monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide".
The search giant warns that under updated proposals, FBI agents would be able to carry out covert raids on servers no matter where they were situated, giving the US government unfettered global access to vast amounts of private information.
In particular, Google sounds the alarm over the FBI's desire to "remotely" search computers that have concealed their location – either through encryption or by obscuring their IP addresses using anonymity services such as Tor. Those government searches, Google says, "may take place anywhere in the world. This concern is not theoretical. ... [T]he nature of today's technology is such that warrants issued under the proposed amendment will in many cases end up authorizing the government to conduct searches outside the United States."
Google raised its objections as part of a public consultation that ended on Tuesday. Its submission, and 37 others made by interested parties, will be considered by the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules, an obscure but powerful Washington body consisting mainly of judges that has responsibility over federal rules including those governing the actions of the FBI.
Federal agents wishing to search a property have to apply to a judge for a warrant to do so. Under existing rules, known as Rule 41, the authorizing judge has to be located in the same district as the property to be searched.
But the Justice Department argues that in the modern computer age, such an arrangement no longer works. It is calling for the scope of warrants to be widened so that FBI agents can search property – in this case computers – outside the judge's district. The FBI argues that this new power would be essential in investigations where suspects have concealed the location of their computer networks.
A comment to the committee from a coalition of prosecutors, the National Association of Assistant US Attorneys, said that "suspects are increasingly using sophisticated anonymizing technologies and proxy services designed to hide their true IP addresses. This creates significant difficulties for law enforcement to identify the district in which the electronic information is located."
The Justice Department itself has tried to assuage anxieties about its proposed amendment. In its comment to the committee, DoJ officials say that federal agents would only request the new type of warrants where there was "probable cause to search for or seize evidence, fruits, or instrumentalities of crime".
But civil liberties and legal groups remain unconvvinced, insisting that the language is so vaguely worded that it would have draconian and global implications. In its submission, the American Civil Liberties Union said that the proposed changes could violate the fourth amendment of the US constitution, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures.
The ACLU's principal technologist, Christopher Soghoian, said: "The government is seeking a troubling expansion of its power to surreptitiously hack into computers, including using malware. Although this proposal is cloaked in the garb of a minor procedural update, in reality it would be a major and substantive change that would be better addressed by Congress."
The FBI has been developing its computer surveillance techniques over almost 15 years. It now regularly uses "network investigative techniques", or NITs, to implant malware software onto target devices that in effect allow agents to control the machine – they can turn on or off cameras and recording equipment, download the entire database of information and gain access to other linked computers.
Google argues such tactics run the risk of the private information of innocent third parties being hoovered up in a massive data sweep.
Recent high-profile hacks such as the breach of Sony Pictures, which the FBI blamed on North Korea, have highlighted global cybersecurity as a growing area of importance for the Obama administration. But the US government now stands accused of trying to acquire the ability to carry out routine extra-territorial hacking raids that it has accused other countries of conducting.
Google contends that by doing so, the US government risks undermining diplomatic arrangements it has built up with other countries over many years that allow cross-border investigations to take place with the approval of all parties.
"The US has long recognized the sovereignty of nations," the company says in its submission, quoting legal authorities that say that in the absence of a treaty or other national agreement, "the jurisdiction of law enforcement agents does not extend beyond a nation's borders".
In October, FBI director James Comey gave remarks – widely derided by privacy watchers and tech-industry officials – in which he said "encryption threatens to lead us all to a very, very dark place".
Comey asked: "Have we become so mistrustful of government and law enforcement in particular that we are willing to let bad guys walk away, willing to leave victims in search of justice?"
United State Cafe ~ Historic Haight/Ashbury Coffee House, San Francisco, CA ~ (Links Page)
40 Years Ago:
Poetry Flash
Twenty Four
February 1975
by Laurence Rice
PETER PUSSYDOG and TIM JACOBS regaled the Haight-Ashbury's U.S. Cafe in January with a boisterous poetry performance involving costume, kazoo music, and a bit of the old slap-arid-tickle. In the first third of their hour-and-a-half set, Peter cavorted through a series of hilariously gross poems, song lyrics, and sing-alongs (The crucified virgin lies bleedin' / The Christ child is drinking her blood / Blaspheme, blaspheme / Get everybody uptight uptight) to the punctuation of Tim's blues harmonica, stopping occasionally to adjust the flashing lights on his elaborate costume (vaguely reminiscent of a theater marquee). Aa a climax Tin played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" on a kazoo while Peter read a masturbation poem and pulled a phallic-shaped candle out of his pants. After a short break Tim returned to read his own quietly powerful poetry, which was a refreshing contrast to Peter's lightheartedness. (I saw the flowers, like broken gears / turning in the wind). Then Peter rejoined him and the two traded serious poems for the closing segment. All in all a delightful evening for the SRO crowd. (source)
United State Cafe Home ~~ United State Cafe Index
Remembering Our Missed Friend
Peter (Pussydog) Stevens
Photograph: C. Spangler
Mike Wilhelm ~ Charlatans, Flamin' Groovies, Loose Gravel, and more ~ (Links Page)
High Curtis,
Diamond Ed Chatham is now uploading his stuff to Vimeo. The first of mine he has up is Louie Louie. Looks nice and clean displayed full screen.
Keep rockin', Mike
LOUIE LOUIE ~ Mike Wilhelm & Hired Guns ~ from ed chatham
https://vimeo.com/52509099
Nobody's Opinion
A Visual Journey
Be Aware: Nobody Has Friends In High Places
Paul Krassner ~ The Realist, Writer, Comic, Investigative Satirist ~ (Links Page)
Paul Krassner honored by
Veterans for Peace groupDenise Goolsby, The Desert Sun, February 16, 2015, Article Source
Paul Krassner, co-founder of the Yippies and publisher of Realist Magazine, was
honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Jon Castro Veterans for Peace
Chapter 19 of the Inland Empire luncheon on Monday, Feb. 16, 2015 at Cimarron
Golf Resort in Cathedral City. He’s pictured with VFP’s Clark McCartney.
~ Photo: Denise Goolsby/The Desert SunPaul Krassner, co-founder of the political activist group the Yippies and founder of America’s first adult satirical publication, The Realist, was awarded a lifetime achievement award by Veterans for Peace Jon Castro Chapter 19 at the group’s President’s Day awards luncheon Monday at Cimarron Golf Resort in Cathedral City.
Veterans for Peace of the Inland Empire — which celebrated its 10th anniversary Monday — is part of a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to abolishing war.
Krassner, 82, of Desert Hot Springs — who began publishing The Realist in 1958 — founded the Yippies (Youth International Party) with fellow political and social activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He became a key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s was an outspoken antiwar advocate who was on the FBI list of radicals during the Vietnam War.
Krassner is the author of numerous works, including the books,“Pot Stories for the Soul: An Updated Edition for Stoned Adventures” and “Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture.”
Lanny Swerdlow, a local medical marijuana advocate, introduced Krassner by way of a witty three-minute riff lamenting the decline of pot use since the ‘60s — blaming today’s troubles on yesterday’s activists — seeking respectable careers — who decided to forgo weed.
“We wouldn’t be in the mess we are today if we kept on smoking marijuana as much as we did in the ‘60s — and Paul Krassner and I were two of the people who never stopped smoking pot,” Swerdlow said as the crowd laughed.
“Paul Krassner was a hero of mine,” he continued. “When I was 17 and started college, one of the first magazines I ever subscribed to was The Realist magazine, and that magazine changed my perspective on everything. It made me learn that what was out there was not what it always seemed to be. ... He would take us through these situations and we don’t know where reality ended and nonsense began.”
Krassner talked about the history of the Yippies and his experiences in the counterculture of ‘60s and ‘70s America.
He was reluctant to receive the award because he didn’t feel he was deserving.
“At first when (organizer) Tom Swann called me — I had a resistance because I was not a veteran — they really sacrificed,” Krassner told the crowd. “I was just having fun.”
“I thank you for honoring me like this, I appreciate it and I’m inspired by the feelings here, of optimism, that hope did not dissolve with the Salton Sea,” he said, referring to the shrinking sea.
Keynote speaker at the event was Vickie Castro, a Gold Star Mother who lost her son, U.S. Army Cpl. Jonathan Castro — for whom the Veterans for Peace chapter was named — when a suicide bomber, wearing an Iraqi National uniform, walked into a mess hall in Mosul, Iraq and blew himself up, along with 22 U.S. soldiers, on Dec. 21, 2004.
Also honored were Donni Prince, who received a Friend of the Veteran Award for her decades of work as Veterans Specialist at College of the Desert, and Chuck Parker, of Comite Latino, who received the group’s Member of the Year Award.
Denise Goolsby is The Desert Sun's columnist for profiles and history. She can be reached at Denise.Goolsby@DesertSun.com and on Twitter @DeniseGoolsby.
That ;) You Type Can
& Will Be Used Against
You in a Court of Lawby JULIA GREENBERG, 02.12.15, 8:55 PM, PERMALINK
On January 15, Osiris Aristy opened up Facebook, posted a photo of a gun and wrote, "feel like katxhin a body right now." Later that night, he added, "Nigga run up on me, he gunna get blown down" and followed that with an emoji of a police officer and three gun emoji pointing at it. After an hour, he posted another similar message.
Three days later, Aristy, 17, was arrested by New York City police at his home in Brooklyn. According to a criminal complaint, the teen was charged with making a terroristic threat, along with charges of weapon and marijuana possession. His posts, the complaint argued, constituted a threat against police. They felt intimidated and harassed--emoji and all. o_O
Emoji are the language of our online era, the thumbs-up to a question, the wink to our wit, the peach to our eggplant. They're a splash of color in black and white communication, conveying things mere words often cannot. We send emoji to improve upon, even expand, our words and bring emotion--affection, frustration, love, anger--to the conversation. Now, like the tweets, posts, and texts that are a crucial part of the way we communicate today, emoji, and their brethren emoticons, are finally getting their due in court. And like everything we love online, it's complicated, kind of.
Several recent arrests and prosecutions have included, at least in part, emoji. At the beginning of the recent Silk Road trial of Ross Ulbricht, US District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled "the jury should note the punctuation and emoticons" in all evidence. (In the trial, attorneys then, quite literally, said "emoticon" when the symbols appeared in chat conversations.) In a case currently pending before the US Supreme Court, Anthony Elonis, a Pennsylvania man who was convicted for using Facebook posts to threaten his ex-wife, has claimed that a threatening post toward her was clearly meant in "jest" because he included a smiley sticking its tongue out.
None of these cases relied solely on the emoji, of course. Evidence, arrests, and prosecutions are far more complicated than that. But, as social media becomes increasingly important evidence for law enforcement, so too do emoji. When the digital symbol for a gun, a smile, or a face with stuck-out tongue comes up in court, they aren't being derided or ignored.
Emoji matter.
When you talk to someone in person, you hear the intonation of their voice, see the cringe of their face, and react to the movement of their body. Online, we have only words. "If I were texting or emailing you, you couldn't get that," says Tyler Schnoebelen, a linguist and the founder of Ibidon, which helps companies analyze and understand language data from emails, chats, and social media. "I might do other things--add emoji or emoticons, words like LOL, or include multiple vowels, like soooo, just so you have a sense of how I'm emoting."
Such things can stand in for a facial expression, or clarify context. They can transform a sentence that seems serious into a joke, or make what seems to be a joke serious. They can be playful, sarcastic, ambiguous, and dirty. Sometimes, they replace words altogether.
And if someone is to fully understand a text phrase or conversation--to truly parse what we were saying--they cannot be left out. That means that in court--if the larger piece of evidence is seen as authentic and admissible--the emoji should be read or shown, too.
Yet this can quickly get complicated because it's not always clear what emoji mean. For investigators, attorneys, and jurors trying to determine, or prove, the intent of a phrase, as in the Elonis case, it's often much more complicated than : ) means this past sentence was pleasing. Maybe the person was being polite. Maybe they were trying to dull a blow. Maybe it's an evil grin and the person is being ironic. Without the context of who is using the symbol, who received it, and an understanding of how those two people--or the people in their community--typically use it, the intent may not immediately be clear.
We all use emoji, and we all have opinions. So, it's no surprise that the recent public reaction to emoji cropping up in evidence has been somewhat frenetic. "What do Emoji mean?" asks The Atlantic, while wondering if they're "vital." Mashable says the law around emoji is "murky." The New York Times considers "how jurors should be educated about unfamiliar terms" in cases with web evidence. And BuzzFeed says, well, let's just blame 9/11. These questions, in part, are real and important--we don't always know what emoji mean and, sure, they may be unfamiliar. But, besides tweaking already common practices, emoji shouldn't change all that much in court.
Because what we mean when we use language is never crystal clear, and never has been. "Emoji are new, so they haven't been conventionalized," Schnoebelen explains. "But they work like a lot of other things that we know. And, just like with any particular word or a laugh, it's pretty dangerous to say that you know what's happening, what the intent is, based on one symbol." Part of the role of a prosecutor in a criminal trial, like in the case of a threat, can be to demonstrably prove intent--and that is complicated both with emoji or without.
To help clarify intent, technical language, or slang, attorneys may ask witnesses or defendants to explain the meaning of the language they used or read. "To me, emoji are no different than drug slang in a criminal controlled substances case," explains Greg Hurley, an analyst for the National Center for State Courts who spent a decade as a criminal defense attorney. "They may need some interpretation in some situations, in others the content may be obvious." Want to know what an emoji implies? Ask. (Which is exactly what happened at one point in the Silk Road trial.)
And, even if a juror unfamiliar with emoji might misunderstand or misinterpret their meaning at first, they can learn. "More users pick up on the conventions after interacting for a while with others who use them," says Susan Herring, a professor of information science and linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington. "Emoji in isolation could cause some puzzlement, but in the context of a textual message, though, the sender's intended meaning of an emoji is usually clear." Because humans are smart! We're used to dealing with the complexities of language. With some context and explanation, we can, usually, figure it out.
Like the rest of us, when it comes to emoji, the courts are figuring it out. Last week, Aristy's criminal charge of making a terroristic threat was dropped, according to his attorney, Fred Pratt. A decision in the Elonis case, which deals predominantly with more complex First Amendment questions about threats, is pending. Ulbricht was convicted of all seven charges against him in the Silk Road case.
Emoji were, at most, a sideshow for all of these trials, but they have become an integral part of our digital life. And that means they, like the tweets and texts and IMs we so often send, will increasingly be offered as evidence in court.
So, remember, anything you ; ) can and will be used against you in a court of law – but, that's true of what you say, too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Paul Krassner ~ The Realist, Writer, Comic, Investigative Satirist ~ (Links Page)
Muhammad, Charlie, and Me
A new satirical drawing by Paul Krassner and Mort GerbergBy Paul Krassner, for counterpunch
"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." --G.K. Chesterton
When the news broke about killing cartoonists in Paris, Michael Dooley sent me an email: "I'm writing the intro to a feature that Print magazine will post online about the tragedy, and I'd like to include a comment from you, if possible. Any angle you want to approach it is fine. Possible to email it to me at your soonest convenience, please?" My hurried reply:
"This massacre is an awesome outrage, even to liberals and conservatives alike [HBO left-wing comedian Bill Maher and Fox News right-wing journalist Bernard Goldberg had in common the plea urging newspapers to publish the offensive Charlie cartoons.], although some dinosaur Republicans might try to blame Obama.
"It's a horrendous violation of basic semantic principles, such as 'The menu is not the meal' and 'The map is not the territory.' As an atheist, I perceive the irony of those assassins shouting "God is great" to justify their insane act in the name of a deity that I believe doesn't exist.
"And what could happen in America? Security guards protecting the Onion offices? Treat Funny or Die as Islamic marching orders? Invade the cyberspace of NBC for broadcasting Saturday Night Live until it morphs into Saturday Night Dead if it's not already deceased?
"Religions continue to rationalize their dogma, from birth to death—and then comes the hereafter for these Muslim murderers where all those virgins supposedly waiting to greet then in Nirvana are busy reading Lysistrata. OMG has declared war on LOL."
I forwarded that to some cartoonist friends. Decades-long New Yorker contributor Mort Gerberg responded, "Clap, clap! Neatly done--although my own thought might be that LOL has morphed into OMG. And that would include an email request sent this afternoon by New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff to cartoonists, inviting them to submit 'cartoons in response to the tragedy to post tomorrow on the website…'"
I told Gerberg my idea for a cartoon that I would've assigned to an artist if I were still publishing The Realist. He drew the one above and submitted it to the New Yorker. It was rejected. So were four other submissions, including an artist seeing a headline, "French Cartoonists Murdered," and thinking, "Up until now, I always thought that being one of an endangered species was just something I imagined."
I suddenly got a feeling of déjà vu, from back when the New Yorker would reject a cartoon, then Gerberg (among others) would send the artwork to me, and I would publish it in The Realist. I also felt a flash of déjà vu about the great Muhammad cartoon controversy a decade ago. I found it simultaneously tragic and absurd to witness the death and destruction triggered by Danish cartoonists' illustrations of the Islamic prophet, serving as a reflection of so much unspeakable anguish caused by religious wars and fueled by oil.
America certainly has its own share of dangerous fanatics. George Bush was personally prompted by God: "God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.' And I did." In July 2003, during a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Bush told the newly elected leader, "God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
Apparently, religious bigotry runs in the family. Bush's father, the former president: "I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." And before him, there was Ronald Reagan: "For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ." Not to mention Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, responsible for national policy on the environment: "We don't have to protect the environment--the Second Coming is at hand." In 1966, Lyndon Johnson told the Austrian ambassador that the diety "comes and speaks to me about two o'clock in the morning when I have to give the word to the boys, and I get the word from God whether to bomb or not." Apparently there's some kind of bipartisan theological tradition of delusionary leaders going on in the White House.
But getting back to the cartoons that made terrorists reek with revenge for something they considered to be rotten in Denmark, and there were different kinds of retaliation. A military commander for the ousted Taliban in Afghanistan was quoted in Arab newspapers as claiming that the Taliban had recruited at least 100 new suicide bombers as a result of the cartoons. And the BBC reported that the Arab boycott of Danish food products was costing the Danish company Aria millions per day. The company complained that full-page ads they took out in Saudi Arabia, explaining that they had nothing to do with the cartoons, had no effect. In Iran, as if imitating our own country changing the name of French fries to "Freedom fries," those wishing to purchase Danish pastry now had to ask for "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad."
"Meanwhile," Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Joel Pett stated, "fearing editorial censors, not to mention firebrand jihadists, U.S. cartoonists did a lot of self-censoring. Plenty of people pointed to what they said was the hypocrisy of the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons, given how often the Arab press publishes hateful images of Jews. An Iranian editor raised the stakes when he announced that his paper would challenge cartoonists to debunk the Holocaust, a crime in several European countries." One cartoon featured Holocaust victim Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler after having sex. Hitler says, "Write this one in your diary, Anne." But at least Jews don't murder such offensive artists; the Anti-Defamation League just complains about 'em.
Not all American artists shied away from reacting to the Danish cartoon controversy. My favorite was Wiley Miller's syndicated comic strip, Non Sequitur, depicted a sidewalk artist who "finally achieves his goal to be the most feared man in the world," his placard advertising "Caricatures of Muhammad While You Wait!" Which brings us back to the present. This time, Wiley showed a woman telling her husband, "You know, I shouldn't have to ask, but…do you feel lucky?" They had come upon a sidewalk artist with a sign: "Caution—Unrestricted Cartooning Zone Ahead."
The poignant irony at a rally of millions in the streets of Paris was triggered by a woman who opened her window, playing music for the crowd, and when John Lennon's song "Imagine" boomed out, a great many citizens spontaneously sang along with the lyrics, "Imagine there's no heaven/ It's easy if you try…Nothing to kill or die for/ And no religion too."
The first email I got in the wake of the shock in Paris came from Bill Griffith, creator of the syndicated comic strip Zippy. He wrote, "I feel like an oppressed minority for the first time today," accompanied by his pinhead character saying, "I'm not having fun" and "I am Charlie." Incidentally, Charlie was named after Charlie Brown in the Peanuts strip. Good grief!
Frequent Realist contributor artist Richard Guindon wrote, "It seems to me that they were doing what you did all those many years ago. Sixty years? No response could top the drawing of the armed assassin saying about the dead cartoonist in front of him, 'He drew first.' A brilliant summation." And another contributor, artist Trina Robbins, commented, "If cartoonists don't draw satirical cartoons of Muhammad, the terrorists will have won."
R. Crumb, who lives in France, was aware that the Prophet's face was not to be caricatured, so when the Paris paper Liberation requested a cartoon, Crumb sketched a self-portrait holding up his cartoon of a hairy ass. What ever could have topped that? Well, how about the cartoon by British artist Gerald Scarfe, showing Prime Minister Tony Blair's unhappy face being squeezed out of George Bush's presidential anus? And was Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove jealous?
The Los Angeles Times didn't allow the offensive Charlie Hebdo's cartoons to accompany its reportage. Although the Washington Post position was, ""We have a practice of avoiding the publication of material that is pointedly, deliberately, or needlessly offensive to religious groups," the Post ultimately decided to publish the cover of the recovered Charlie Hebdo issue, as well as the cartoon that had prompted the 2011 fire-bombing of Charlie's offices, depicting Muhammad saying, "100 lashes of the whip if you don't die laughing."
The New York Times stated, "Under Times standards, we do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities. After careful consideration, Times editors decided that describing the cartoons in question would give readers sufficient information to understand today's story." However, USA Today "traditionally does not show images of Muhammad to avoid offending Muslim readers. But the magazine cover has enough news value to warrant its publication in this case."
NBC News—including MSNBC and CNBC--proclaimed that the network would not be showing "headlines or cartoons that could be viewed as insensitive or offensive." ABC suits followed suit. Although CBS had no explicit ban of Muhammad cartoons, producers were instructed to exercise judgment. Fox News had "no plans to show the cartoons," but published them online.
Judy Woodruff said "PBS has decided not to show the cartoon of the Prophet as they had decided it was in bad taste." And NPR's Eleanor Beardsley described Charlie Hebdo as "gross"" and "in poor taste." After all, the magazine published a cartoon depicting a member of the Islamic State group beheading Muhammad. Bloomberg News published that image.
CNN described the cartoons, but held back from actually showing them. CNN president Jeff Zucker explained, "As managers, protecting and taking care of the safety of our employees around the world is more important right now." Associated Press announced, "It's been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images." Glenn Beck complained, "AP has proven themselves now to be liars and dishonest and disingenuous. AP has said they're not going to show the Islamic cartoon, but they did show Piss Christ."
Artist David Horsey said, "In Muslim countries from Niger to Pakistan, mobs have responded to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons with rioting, shootings and church burnings." His colleague, Ted Rall, pointed out that "More fulltime staff political cartoonists were killed in Paris on Wednesday than may be employed at newspapers in the states of California, Texas and New York combined. More fulltime staff cartoonists were killed in Paris on Wednesday than work at all American magazines and websites combined. There's only one full-time staff political cartoonist at a website: Matt Bors. None at a magazine."
Rall's strips appear in nearly 100 newspapers in the United States. He once drew a cartoon about Muhammad, but his distributors refused to send it out. "I posted it to my own website," he said, "and sent it out to the newspapers that were willing to publish it, which, as far as I know, were very few. Part of the real issue here is not so much the cartoonists being timid. The problem really is the newspapers and magazines unwilling to take a chance."
Social media to the rescue. I Am Charlie was tweeted nearly four million times. And several websites—including Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Gawker, Slate, Vox, Business Insider—presented some of Charlie's provocative covers.
At the risk of revealing my false humility, allow me to quote from an article in Time that concludes with an left-handed compliment:
"Perhaps the satire magazine that most closely resembles Charlie Hebdo in terms of inflammatory imagery was The Realist [1958-2001] created by Paul Krassner. The most notorious items from this publication appeared in 1967, including the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy' [now a poster], an illustration of classic animated Disney characters engaged in a variety of obscene acts, and 'The Part Left Out of the Kennedy Book,' a graphic short story containing a scene in which Lyndon B. Johnson sexually penetrates John F. Kennedy's corpse…"
Early in 1962, I heard a rumor that JFK had been married previous to Jackie Kennedy, and I got a tip that there was a genealogy which actually listed the alleged previous marriage. I decided to check it out as a matter of routine procedure, and sure enough, The Blauvelt Family Genealogy, published in 1957, had the listing on page 884, Under Eleventh Generation. The rumor had now become the basis of a valid news report, so I called the White House to get their prepared denial. When word got out that The Realist was going to publish that item, I was contacted by newspapers, magazines, wire services, radio and TV news departments, and various foreign correspondents.
The New York Times sent a reporter to my office to make sure that The Realist had gotten into the mails and onto the newsstands. Later, the night city editor of the Times sent a messenger to pick up a copy of the Daily News as soon as it hit the streets, because there was a rumor that the News was going to break the story, and if it did, then the Times would too, but the News didn't, so the Times didn't either. (The most frequently asked question at the Daily News Information Bureau was whether the rumor was true.)
Newsweek sent over a pair of researchers who interviewed me for two hours. "We've been waiting for somebody to break this story," said one. I asked, "Why didn't you break it?" And the answer was one word: "Fear." A Time magazine researcher told me, "If anybody picks up this story from The Realist, then Time will jump in with both feet."
Associated Press dispatched the story and it became front-page news. The New York Post headline: "JFK Wed Before? White House Says No." Newsweek broke the story, with a reprint in advance by the Washington Post. Newsweek stated: "The story first appeared in a beatnik Greenwich Village magazine of slight circulation, The Realist." When the genealogy-denial report hit the newspapers, it also broke on radio and TV. There was a memo on the bulletin board in the NBC newsroom ordering broadcasters not to carry the story in any form until it broke in some other medium or on some other network.
Time carried a two-page article, which stated: "In the absence of forthright denials, the story–-and the rumors–-grew. Last March, The Realist, a shabby Greenwich Village periodical, published the fact of the Blauvelt genealogical entry as an 'expose.'" And now, more than fifty years later, Time has ambiguously acknowledged my work. Maybe that means we've come a long way, baby, but for me it's been a pleasure communicating without compromise. Irreverence is my only sacred cow.
Google Is Evil ~ For using insinuation to destroy hobbies of Vietnam Vet. Cancer Patient ~ (Links Page)
Google waited six months
to tell WikiLeaks it passed
employee data to FBITech giant facing renewed questions about user data as WikiLeaks lawyer says 'The question I have is: what caused this six-month delay?'
Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty ImagesEd Pilkington in New York, Thursday 12 February 2015 15.36 EST, Source
Google is facing renewed questions about its handling of subscribers' private information following the revelation that it waited six months after the lifting of a gagging order to alert WikiLeaks that emails and other data belonging to its employees had been passed to the FBI.
It was disclosed last month that Google had cooperated with federal agents after the search giant was served with secret warrants demanding that it hand over all emails and IP addresses relating to three WikiLeaks staffers. The warrants named the British citizen Sarah Harrison; senior WikiLeaks editor Joseph Farrell and the spokesperson for the organisation, Kristinn Hrafnsson.
The three were informed by Google on 23 December that their personal data had been disclosed to the US government. Google said that it had handed over "responsive documents" to detectives, though it did not specify the nature of the data it had divulged or how much.
The initial warrants were issued in March 2012, and Google said the three-year pause before WikiLeaks was notified was explained by a gagging order imposed by a federal judge that prohibited the tech company from discussing the matter with anybody, including the targeted individuals. But new information obtained by the investigative reporter Alexa O'Brien shows that the warrants were in fact unsealed by the US district court in Alexandria, Virginia, on 15 May last year – six months before WikiLeaks was approached.
WikiLeaks has long suspected that Google disclosed the existence of the warrants in the week of Christmas in order to bury uncomfortable material in a slow news cycle.
In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the company's policy was to "tell people about government requests for their data, except in limited cases, like when we are gagged by a court order, which sadly happens quite frequently". The spokesperson said that they had challenged many orders relating to WikiLeaks that in turn had led to disclosures to the individuals concerned.
"We've also pushed to unseal all the documents related to the investigation. We continue to argue for surveillance reform which would enable us to be more transparent."
Michael Ratner, WikiLeaks' US-based lawyer, said that Harrison, Hrafnsson and Farrell should have been given notice of the warrants soon after they were unsealed last May. "The question I have as their attorney is: what caused this six-month delay in notifying our clients of these search warrants?"
A clue to why the warrants were issued in the first place is given by the fact that they came from a court in the eastern district of Virginia – the same jurisdiction in which a grand jury was convened as part of a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks. The investigation, which is believed to be ongoing, related to the leaking of a vast quantity of secret US government documents by the Army soldier Chelsea Manning.
This week it was announced that Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence for the leak in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, will write an opinion column for the Guardian.
Flying Pot Plant
flying pot plant ~ peter glukhov ~ http://vimeo.com/72247140 ~ or potted plant?
Archer
... for the Television Challenged
NEW YEAR 2015 ~ from Project C ~ http://vimeo.com/117535247
Music Teaser ~ The Call ~ from Victor Levi ~ http://vimeo.com/113956519
ARCHER-IZED COCKTAILS ~ from Project C ~ http://vimeo.com/117440268
Danger-Zone ~ from Raj Bhatt ~ http://vimeo.com/101305536
S05E04 ~ Metric System ~ from Nuclear Dog ~ http://vimeo.com/105441375
Archer's birthday spy car ~ via Mee ~ http://vimeo.com/48102506
Parks & Recreation Edition ~ from Matzo Films ~ http://vimeo.com/118212154
Drawing Inspiration ~ from Jacquie Greff ~ http://vimeo.com/113632325
Dahbud Mensch ~ is SANITY the PLAYGROUND of the unIMAGINATIVE ? ~ (Links Page)
(Human) Rights People Lost
Were Caused By Politician Lies?For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction because it was the one reason everyone [politicians] could agree on [despite being an outright lie]. ~ Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003
I don't know how to say this, but...
You no longer have government by the People ... anymore !!!GCHQ mass internet surveillance was unlawful, court rules
An illegal mass surveillance sharing programme that has affected millions of people around the world.~ Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International
Fightback against internet giants’ stranglehold on personal data starts here
If you want to do business with us, then you will do it entirely on our terms; click here to agree, otherwise go screw yourself. Oh, and by the way, all of your personal data revealed in your interactions with us belongs to us. ~ Average EULA (end user licence agreement)
Google Is Evil ~ Facebook Is Evil ~ Twitter Is Evil
I am not saying that you are stupid...
I am saying you have bad luck when it comes to thinkingFox News site embeds unedited Isis video showing brutal murder of Jordanian pilot
Only US network to feature graphic video showing Muadh al-Kasasbeh burning to death. Twitter accounts associated with Isis supporters are sharing video via links to Fox News
ISIS Photo of Their Members Chilling With Sen. John McCain
Senator McCain "chillin'" with ISIS Leaders in SyriaIt now appears John Boehner, along with Politicians like John "Hot-dog" McCain, Support Murder and Maiming of United States Naval Personnel?
Drop Dead ~ Telecom Crimes ~ Patriot Act
Denialist ~ He Said It ~ Rethinking 9/11
The Dictator ~ Sacha Baron Cohen ~ http://vimeo.com/47420554
The Government is asleep... quick, post pictures of freedom!
2 Corinthians 11:15
15. It is not surprising Satan's servants also masquerade as servants of God and their end will be what their actions have sewn.
God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them. ~ George W. Bush, HAARETZ.COM
In case you haven't noticed,
THEY RETURNED
THEY Took Your Jobs
THEY Took Your Homes
THEY Took Your Money
THEY Started Illegal Wars
THEY Destroyed the Economy
THEY Murdered Women, Children, & Military
THEY Put Martha Stewart & Tommy Chong In Jail
and... THEY
Held the Teachers Accountable!
This EVIL Good Ol' Boy Network Brought Disgrace to the United States & Walk Free Today with Supreme Court help and Politician Approval !
What would it take for "The People" to understand their lives would be incredibly better and far less complicated if:
NONE OF THE ABOVE
was a 'valid choice' on voter ballots?
Beautiful & Twisted
UPCOMING AIRDATES
Sat, Jan 31 at 8 PM ~ Sun, Feb 1 at 12 AM
Sun, Feb 1 at 9 PM ~ Mon, Feb 2 at 1 AMIMDb ~ Director: Christopher Zalla
Writers: Teena Booth, Stephen Kay, Inon Shampanier, Natalie Shampanier
Stars: Rob Lowe, Paz Vega, Candice Bergen ~ Click to: See full cast and crewRob Lowe ("Drew Peterson: Untouchable," "Parks and Recreation"), Paz Vega ("Spanglish," "Grace of Monaco") and Emmy® and Golden Globe® Award winner Candice Bergen ("Murphy Brown," "Sex and the City") star in the Lifetime Original Movie "Beautiful & Twisted."
Set against blue-sky Miami in a world of money, privilege and excess, the high-flying millionaire heir to the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel fortune, Ben Novack, Jr. (Lowe), marries a stunning stripper, Narcy (Vega). But the couple’s intense relationship, sparked by fetish and kink, quickly devolves into a marriage in which both lovers inexplicably coexist on love and distrust. When Ben is found brutally murdered, the city’s elite is shaken to the core. As police untangle a web of deviant behavior, Narcy emerges as the prime suspect. Bergen portrays Ben’s mother, Bernice Novack, whose suspicions surrounding Narcy lead to her demise at the hands of her ruthless daughter-in-law.
Notes from ~@~
Carlin Step ~ DJ Steve Porter & Eli Wilkie ~ http://vimeo.com/21162532
The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) ~ http://vimeo.com/6518109
One Day ~ Matisyahu ~ http://vimeo.com/11520225
Unsung Hero ~ Still Anonymous ~ http://vimeo.com/90853494
Remembering the United State Cafe
Rock Of Ages ~ DJ Schmolli / Video: Panos T ~ http://vimeo.com/44298418
The Heyókȟa symbolize and portray many aspects of the sacred, the Wakȟáŋ. Their satire presents important questions by fooling around. They ask difficult questions, and say things others are too afraid to say. By reading between the lines, the audience is able to think about things not usually thought about, or to look at things in a different way.
Principally, the Heyókȟa functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others, thereby forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weaknesses. Heyókȟas also have the power to heal emotional pain; such power comes from the experience of shame--they sing of shameful events in their lives, beg for food, and live as clowns. They provoke laughter in distressing situations of despair and provoke fear and chaos when people feel complacent and overly secure, to keep them from taking themselves too seriously or believing they are more powerful than they are.
In addition, sacred clowns serve an important role in shaping tribal codes. Heyókȟa's don't seem to care about taboos, rules, regulations, social norms, or boundaries. Paradoxically, however, it is by violating these norms and taboos that they help to define the accepted boundaries, rules, and societal guidelines for ethical and moral behavior. This is because they are the only ones who can ask "Why?" about sensitive topics and employ satire to question the specialists and carriers of sacred knowledge or those in positions of power and authority. In doing so, they demonstrate concretely the theories of balance and imbalance. Their role is to penetrate deception, turn over rocks, and create a deeper awareness.
Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard...It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. And there's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. So I dedicated this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silenced. ~ Tom Smothers
Turn It Off, Tune It Out, Re-learn to Go Outside & Play.
Internet (1991~2013): A virus forced into prostitution by
greedy corporations & used as a tool to Divide & Conquer.
Cree Prophecy
Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
Science Fiction ... or Not
Do Not Allow This Happen![Ed. Note: "Why do you post crap like this?" is frequently asked and the answer requires an example.
During Apollo 11's return from the moon astronaut Neil Armstrong said, "A hundred years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon. His spaceship, Columbia, took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the Moon. It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow" (source) and simply, the above example shows science fiction is able become real.
Multus* discovered that posting science fiction stories and false flag information can prevent certain things from happening because powers that be prefer not to give any credibility, whatsoever, to "crap posters."
*Multus ~ Latin word for multiple & an alleged highly educated, secret, fraternal order.
Members of Multus, also known as "Multies," work, on occasion, with "Singulars."
Singulars are most common (87%) and usually educated in one field of study. Multies (3%) are educated in a variety of scientific and related fields of study.
It is alleged one has to have an "Above 33" secret clearance (no president of the United States has ever had) in order to know the true purpose of Multies and ... that they are peaceful, positive beings involved with preservation of humanity.
In order to understand a little more about Multus, ARPA, established during 1958, was renamed "DARPA" (D for Defense) in March 1972, then renamed "ARPA" in February 1993, and then renamed "DARPA" again in March 1996 because Multies refused to harm any living thing. They turned DARPA back into ARPA, for a while, in order to get some important classified work done.]
John Titor on Civil War
I remember 2036 very clearly. It is difficult to describe 2036 in detail without spending a great deal of time explaining why things are so different.
In 2036, I live in central Florida with my family and I'm currently stationed at an Army base in Tampa. A world war in 2015 killed nearly three billion people. The people that survived grew closer together. Life is centered on the family and then the community. I cannot imagine living even a few hundred miles away from my parents.
There is no large industrial complex creating masses of useless food and recreational items. Food and livestock is grown and sold locally. People spend much more time reading and talking together face to face. Religion is taken seriously and everyone can multiply and divide in their heads.
Life has changed so much over my lifetime that it's hard to pin down a "normal" day. When I was 13, I was a soldier. As a teenager, I helped my dad haul cargo. I went to college when I was 31 and I was recruited to "time travel" shortly after that. Again, I suppose an average day in 2036 is like an average day on the farm.
There is a civil war in the United States that starts in 2005. That conflict flares up and down for 10 years. In 2015, Russia launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States (which is the "other side" of the civil war from my perspective), China and Europe. The United States counter attacks. The US cities are destroyed along with the AFE (American Federal Empire)...thus we (in the country) won. The European Union and China were also destroyed. Russia is now our largest trading partner and the Capitol of the US was moved to Omaha Nebraska.
One of the biggest reasons why food production is localized is because the environment is affected with disease and radiation. We are making huge strides in getting it cleaned up. Water is produced on a community level and we do eat meat that we raise ourselves.
After the war, early new communities gathered around the current Universities. That's where the libraries were. I went to school at Fort UF, which is now called the University of Florida. Not too much is different except the military is large part of people's life and we spend a great deal of time in the fields and farms at the "University" or Fort.
The Constitution was changed after the war. We have 5 presidents that are voted in and out on different term periods. The vice president is the president of the senate and they are voted separately. ~ John Titor
The Beast File ~ Elmo Keep ~ http://vimeo.com/9897083
Today's Secret Question Is:
How many Children, Women, Civilians, and Military were Maimed & Murdered over this outright, blatant, Neocon, Politician LIE:
Iraq has Weapons
of Mass Destruction?
'It was widely known before the Iraq war over 50% of the Iraqi population were children under the age of 15, and the war began with this act of sheer cowardice.'
For the record Bush said, 'Anyone who harms children is a terrorist.'
The above child was maimed by Republicons and Democraps.
Lies, Lies, Lies - BlackMustache.comLying, Baby Killer,
Politician Says What?Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. - Dick Cheney - August 26, 2002
Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States. - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-CT - September 4, 2002
If we wait for the danger to become clear, it could be too late. - Sen. Joseph Biden D-Del. - September 4, 2002
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. - George W. Bush - September 12, 2002
If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world. - Ari Fleischer - December 2, 2002
We know for a fact that there are weapons there. - Ari Fleischer - January 9, 2003
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. - George W. Bush - January 28, 2003
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. - Colin Powell - February 5, 2003
Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations. - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY - February 5, 2003
We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have. - George Bush - February 8, 2003
So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not. - Colin Powell - March 8, 2003
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. - George Bush - March 18, 2003
We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd. - Tony Blair, Prime Minister - March 18, 2003
Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes. - Ari Fleischer - March 21, 2003
There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them. - Gen. Tommy Franks - March 22, 2003
One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites. - Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark - March 22, 2003
I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction. - Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board - March 23, 2003
We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad. - Donald Rumsfeld - March 30, 2003
Saddam's removal is necessary to eradicate the threat from his weapons of mass destruction. - Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary - April 2, 2003
Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty. - Neocon scholar Robert Kagan - April 9, 2003
I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found. - Ari Fleischer - April 10, 2003
We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them. - George Bush - April 24, 2003
There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country. - Donald Rumsfeld - April 25, 2003
Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit. - Tony Blair - April 28, 2003
We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so. - George Bush - May 3, 2003
I am confident that we will find evidence that makes it clear he had weapons of mass destruction. - Colin Powell - May 4, 2003
I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. - Donald Rumsfeld - May 4, 2003
I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program. - George W. Bush - May 6, 2003
U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction. - Condoleezza Rice - May 12, 2003
I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden. - Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne - May 13, 2003
Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found. - Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps - May 21, 2003
Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction. - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff - May 26, 2003
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer. - Donald Rumsfeld - May 27, 2003
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction because it was the one reason everyone could agree on. - Paul Wolfowitz - May 28, 2003 - Permmalink Source
REMEMBER KIDS, ... every time you hear BUSH, or Wolfowitz, or Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), or Senate, or Congress, or Republican, or Democrat, or Politician ... SCREAM REAL LOUD:
Pee Wee's Punk Rock Pogo Party with Cowboy Curtis
Robert Lyons ~ http://vimeo.com/24793063
10 Ways Our Politicians
Are Screwing Usby Morris M, MAY 15, 2013
Click to read entire article at LISTVERSE source
It's not easy being a politician. The pressure is high, the rewards low and there simply aren't enough hours in the day for screwing the electorate. Yeah, that's right: screwing. For all they claim to be representing us, the truth is our politicians are almost-exclusively looking out for number one. How else do you explain stuff like:
10 Accepting Bribes
Lobbying is bribery for rich people. Only instead of being super-illegal it's encouraged, and instead of letting them bend the law it allows them to simply change it. Take gun control. In the months after Sandy Hook, it looked like there would finally be some movement on this issue. Public support for new laws was over ninety percent, both sides of the house seemed interested and it looked like a vote would sail through. Then the day came and the vote came back 'no'. So what happened? The pro-gun lobby put forward a convincing argument and senators rationally changed their minds, right?
Wrong. In the immediate aftermath of the vote, the Guardian revealed that all but 3 'no' senators had received thousands of dollars in pro-gun money. In other words: they'd been bribed. And, thanks to lobbying laws, that bribe was legal.
Now, lobbying is rarely this overt, but it's happening all the time—usually in the form of Washington's 'revolving door'. Put simply: a senator will align himself with a lobby group, vote their way and—the moment he's kicked out of office—get a lucrative job at that same group. It's about as openly corrupt as you can get in a democracy and guess what? There are approximately zero plans to change it.
09 Taking Welfare
If there's one group of people politicians of all colors are happy to piss on, it's welfare recipients. Whether they're talking about 'Welfare Queens' existing on the government teat, Obamacare bankrupting us all or food stamps becoming unaffordable; politicians sure do like to put the boot into those taking government money. So it should come as no surprise that the biggest 'Welfare Queens' of all reside on Capitol Hill.
In 2011, it was revealed that 23 members of congress were claiming farm subsidies. Of those 23, five were sponsored by the Tea Party: the very same Tea Party that opposes all Federal hand-outs. Between them, the Washington Welfare Queens had raked in over $18 million of your money, often while demonizing others for doing exactly the same thing. No matter where you stand on social security, you gotta admit that's pretty low.
08 Robbing the Taxpayer
Remember how I said lobbying was the most-corrupt you could get in a Western democracy? Turns out I lied. Welcome to Britain, where the UK parliament could give Silvio Berlusconi lessons in corruption.
Four years ago, an investigation by the Telegraph revealed that British MPs were using their expense accounts to pay for anything they felt like. And while you or I might be tempted to charge the odd drink or meal to whatever company we work for, these guys were charging for freaking houses. Not only were the charges highly-immoral, they were frequently ludicrous: one politician had the taxpayer pay £1,600 for a duck house and £30,000 for 28 tons of manure; while another claimed £2,200 to have his moat cleaned. As in his actual moat: as in something you only have if you already live in an actual castle. One MP even submitted rental costs for a non-existent property. By the time the dust settled, it became clear the government had been screwing the taxpayer for years, so the whole lot of them were locked in the tower of London and summarily beheaded. At least they would have been if there was any justice in this world.
07 Encouraging Nepotism
Nepotism is where useless people get money or power because their mommy or daddy was kinda important. While some families, like that of Kim Jong-Un, take a direct approach—our Western version is more to do with handing out lucrative jobs and contracts to people on the basis of nothing more than sharing a handful of genes.
Last year, the New York Times ran this story reporting on the findings of Washington watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. After trawling through a heck-load of records, the group had discovered 82 lawmakers diverting public and party funds to their relatives, often in the form of lucrative salaries for doing not very much. This included 20 members who used money raised for their own campaigns to campaign on behalf of a son, daughter or spouse. Worst of all, as the NYT editorial noted, the revelations came at a time of eight percent unemployment and worsening poverty: a time when hundreds of thousands of young people were getting thrown on the scrapheap. In other words, plenty of intelligent graduates are being frozen out these jobs in favor of people of no discernible talent—effectively creating a 'political class' with no connection to real life whatsoever.
06 Lying
Let's flip back to the UK for this one. Over there, lying has gotten so routine that two separate stories of made-up government statistics broke in one week. First, an important minister was caught out justifying welfare-robbery by making up facts. Then another high-ranking politician was caught quoting figures from an opinion poll commissioned by a motel-chain, which is about as scientific as it sounds. And that's just in one week: go back even further and you have a guy who was caught speeding on camera and blamed his wife—despite her being at a public conference at the time.
But these are just a handful of examples. Time and again, we encounter politicians breaking election promises, breaking contracts and just flat-out lying whenever they're caught being racist. These are the same people trying to make a living off their 'honest image': yet experience often shows them to be anything but.
05 Ignoring the Law
It's a cliché to say someone thinks he or she is 'above the law', but our politicians apparently didn't get the memo. Whether it's driving while under the influence, sleeping with prostitutes, embezzlement, getting drunk and starting fights or simply being Nixon, our politicians break the law like it won't apply to them. And they're usually right: penniless people who smoke crack get the best part of a decade in prison; rich guys apparently get off with a wrist-slapping six months.
But none of that even begins to touch on the issue of government law-breaking. Put simply, sometimes the entire government makes a law then completely ignores it—as happened recently in England. After a court ruled the government had violated its own minimum wage laws by forcing hundreds of people into near-unpaid labour; the sociopaths in charge voted to bring in another law making them immune from liability. So, to recap: government makes law, government breaks law, government changes law to cover its own ass. There's a word these sort of people need to hear more often, and that word is "guillotine".
04 Looking out for Number One
But our politicians aren't completely stupid: often they simply vote for what would benefit them to begin with, rather than what would benefit the country. Take the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and the collective hissy fit Washington threw at the thought of a few rich guys paying a little extra each month. But did you ever stop to think who might benefit from those cuts—aside from millionaires?
That's right: politicians. According to the New York Times, two thirds of senators were millionaires in 2008, while the poorest senator is still earning around 3.5 times the average American wage. Then there's the massive $19,000 pay rise they awarded themselves in 2009—in other words, at the exact same time the economy was in free-fall and we were being told the country was broke. Not to be outdone by their American counterparts, British politicians later went one further by voting themselves a £31,000 salary increase—about $50,000. That's a 30 percent increase; seemingly-timed to coincide with devastating UK cuts to public services.
03 Abusing Office
Earlier this year, the daughter of a Mexican official was refused a table at a Mexico City restaurant, so responded by getting her Dad's inspectors to close the place down. While that case is pretty overt, we here in the West are just as adept at abusing high office—so much so that Business Insider regularly publishes its list of 'most corrupt members of congress', and it sure makes for some ugly reading. Their 2012 edition includes a congresswoman who forced her staff to spy on an opponent; a congressman who used campaign funds to finance his daughter's graduation party; another who offered foreign donors Green Cards in exchange for money; another who allegedly bribed a Federal witness; one who ran a giant Ponzi scheme; several who accepted inappropriate gifts and several more who violated Federal laws. And this list is updated every year with new infractions, new abuses and new redefinitions of the word 'corruption'. In other words, we could give a Banana-Republic lessons in abuse of power, and no-one's willing to do a thing about it.
02 Being Hypocrites
Most of the items on this list deal with some form of hypocrisy—but sometimes, it gets really overt. It may be the moral hypocrisy of talking up God and family values while cheating on your three wives, or evangelizing about raising taxes when you don't pay any yourself, or running your whole campaign on honesty when you're really as corrupt as the rest of them.
But what really sticks in the craw is this constant mantra that we're all suffering equally from this economic Armageddon. We're not: most of us have seen our taxes rise, our incomes shrink and our jobs get a heck of a lot more precarious. Our politicians, meanwhile, have been living it up: installing hundred thousand dollar beds on five hour flights, ordering expensive designer cushions to perch on and enjoying $60 breakfasts at taxpayer expense. Out of touch is one thing, but these guys seem to be living on a different planet.
01 Ignoring Voters
Here's some quick facts: ninety one percent of Americans back moderate gun control measures. Eighty seven percent want the tackling of Federal corruption to become a priority. Fifty percent back legal marijuana. Fifty three percent favor gay marriage. At the time of writing, literally none of those things are being dealt with. Now, I'm not trying to say that majority opinion is always right, or that the government should be ruled by opinion polls. However, when the government consistently supports unpopular measures in the face of hard, scientific evidence, you have to start wondering who they're working for in the first place. 'Cause, right now, it sure as hell isn't us.
Morris M. is a freelance writer and newly-qualified teacher, still naively hoping to make a difference in his students' lives. You can send your helpful and less-than-helpful comments to his email, or visit some of the other websites that inexplicably hire him. Read More: Urban Ghosts
Seriously, ... what would it take for "The People" to understand their lives would be incredibly better and far less complicated if:
NONE OF THE ABOVE
was a 'valid choice' on voter ballots?
American Dream ~ George Carlin/L.I.L.T ~ http://vimeo.com/72719973Nobody should have that much power
Until there is a solution for this, Nobody will continue to bring Peace to Our Times, feed the hungry, care for the sick, bake apple pie better than Mom, and believes None of the Above should be a choice on Voter Ballots
Oh, I hope that I see you again I never even caught your name As you looked through my window pane ~ So I'm writing this message today I'm thinking that you'll have a way Of hearing the notes in my tune ~ Where are you going? Where have you been? I can imagine other worlds you have seen ~ Beautiful faces and music so serene ~ So I do hope I see you again My universal citizen You went as quickly as you came ~ You know the power Your love is right You have good reason To stay out of sight ~~ But break our illusions and help us Be the light ~ The Promise by Mike Pinder
Without love in the dream, it will never come true. ~ Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. ~ John Lennon
Rivers Of Babylon ~ BONEY M ~ http://vimeo.com/68371548
NONE OF THE ABOVE
should be a 'valid choice' on voter ballots!
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear. So the man yelled "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen. The man looked around and said, "God let me see you" and a star shined brightly. But the man did not notice. And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle" and a life was born. But the man did not know. So the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are there" Whereupon God reached down and touched the man. But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.
Don't miss out on a blessing because
it isn't packaged the way you expect.
