BTV's Evaporating Fourth Amendment Stasi Special!

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Evaporating Fourth Amendment Stasi Special This is probably the most in-depth longest Sunday BTV missive ever. Given the gravity of this past week's events we think this is a most significant turning point. (Kudos to all of our BTV editors in Da Bunker! -Ed.) So strap in! Let's begin with some basic definitions:

• The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches ao know nd seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
  
• The East German Stasi (wiki): It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies in the world. ....... Full-time officers were posted to all major industrial plants (the extensiveness of any surveillance largely depended on how valuable a product was to the economy)[13] and one tenant in every apartment building was designated as a watchdog reporting to an area representative of the Volkspolizei (Vopo).[17] Spies reported every relative or friend who stayed the night at another's apartment.[17] Tiny holes were drilled in apartment and hotel room walls through which Stasi agents filmed citizens with special video cameras.[17] Schools, universities, and hospitals were extensively infiltrated.
  

With that said RAISE YER HAND if you remember

• Passage of the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act of 2001 which means a ten letter acronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism (wiki) Title II: Surveillance procedures: The scope and availability of wiretapping and surveillance orders were expanded under Title II. Wiretaps were expanded to include addressing and routing information to allow surveillance of packet switched networks....
  
• George Bu$h Denying the existence of warrantless wire taps George W. Bush's phone records spying SourceWatch.org "The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities," President George W. Bush said May 13, 2006, in his weekly radio address. "The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."
  
• George Bu$h Confirming the existence of warrantless wire taps Bush says he signed NSA wiretap order CNN Dec. 17 2005 "Sources with knowledge of the program told CNN on Friday that Bush signed the secret order in 2002. The sources refused to be identified because the program is classified."
  
• Obomber pledging to stop warrantless searching on the campaign trail in 2008 Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me CNET January 8, 2008
  
• Obomber leaving the campaign trail to sign the post ipso facto Telecom Immunity Act: Obama Backs Bill Giving Immunity To Telecoms HuffPo June 28, 2008
  

Okay more on this week's INCREDIBLE GOVERNMENT DATA DRAGNET in a bit, no doubt the biggest issue of our time. JAPAN PROTESTS: At RT.com ‘No nukes’: Thousands in Tokyo rally against nuclear power (PHOTOS) from June 2, 2013 Thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Tokyo to protest restarting of nuclear reactors the government is considering. Around 7,500 people participated in the anti-nuclear protests in the Japanese capital, according to organizers cited by AFP. The demonstrators gathered in a park in central Tokyo, marched through the city and rallied outside the offices of Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant which suffered meltdowns of three reactor cores following an earthquake and tsunami two years ago. .... It’s estimated the post-disaster clean-up would take about 30 to 40 years and cost around US$15 billion. No mention that Fukushima will be radioactive for centuries and they have NO PLAN to encase the Daichi site much like they are pondering in Chernobyl but can't because they have no money to do it. And for this Sunday's Homily we go to Kathleen Taylor, Neuroscientist, Says Religious Fundamentalism Could Be Treated As A Mental Illness An Oxford University researcher and author specializing in neuroscience has suggested that one day religious fundamentalism may be treated as a curable mental illness. ..... “Someone who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance," Taylor said. “In many ways it could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage." .... "We all change our beliefs of course," Taylor said in a YouTube video about the book. "We all persuade each other to do things; we all watch advertising; we all get educated and experience [religions.] Brainwashing, if you like, is the extreme end of that; it's the coercive, forceful, psychological torture type." Taylor also noted that brainwashing, though extreme, is part of a the "much more widespread phenomenon" of persuasion. That is, "how we make people think things that might not be good for them, that they might not otherwise have chosen to think." We think the GOPher climate-change-deniers fit the description perfectly and are mentally ill, as are the Religious Right as a whole, with their begging for the End Days, child molesting, and belief the Earth is in only 4,000 years old. Definitely not sane. Over at Zerohedge Tyler Durdan reposts Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog 18 Signs That Massive Economic Problems Are Erupting Everywhere This is no time to be complacent. Massive economic problems are erupting all over the globe, but most people seem to believe that everything is going to be just fine. In fact, a whole bunch of recent polls and surveys show that the American people are starting to feel much better about how the U.S. economy is performing. Unfortunately, the false prosperity that we are currently enjoying is not going to last much longer. Just look at what is happening in Europe. The eurozone is now in the midst of the longest recession that it has ever experienced. Just look at what is happening over in Asia. Economic growth in India is the lowest that it has been in a decade and the Japanese financial system is beginning to spin wildly out of control. One of the only places on the entire planet where serious economic problems have not already erupted is in the United States, and that is only because we have "kicked the can down the road" by recklessly printing money and by borrowing money at an unprecedented rate. Unfortunately, the "sugar high" produced by those foolish measures is starting to wear off. We are going to experience a massive amount of economic pain along with the rest of the world - it is just a matter of time. But for the moment, there are a lot of skeptics out there. For the moment, there are a lot of people that are declaring that the problems of the past have been fixed and that we are heading for incredibly bright economic times ahead. Unfortunately, those people appear to be purposely ignoring the economic horror that is breaking out all over the globe. The following are 18 signs that massive economic problems are erupting all over the planet... Read on for the dire predictions. At HuffPoAOL Luke Johnson discusses College Republicans Report Finds Young Voters Hold Many Positions Opposite Of Party WASHINGTON -- A report by the College Republican National Committee released Monday found that most students hold positions closer to Democrats on many issues, underscoring the difficulty in the GOP's push for younger voters. Yet, the report remains vague on solutions for Republicans. The report's focus groups, conducted after the 2012 election loss for the GOP, found that young people are mostly liberal on a range of issues -- not surprising given the fact that 60 percent of voters aged 18-29 voted for Obama in 2012, according to Tufts University. .......On health care, 41 percent said Obama's health care reform law would make the health care system better, versus 32 percent who thought it would make things worse. House Republicans have tried 37 times to repeal Obamacare. ..... Fifty-one percent said that Republican economic policies played a major role or "the biggest role" in the financial crisis, while larger numbers blamed banks and financial deregulation. Forty-four percent said that gay marriage should be legal, 26 percent said it should be left up to the states and just 30 percent said that marriage should be only between a man and a woman, the official position of the Republican National Committee. The responses of individuals from the focus groups were harsher. Respondents described the Republican Party as "closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned." The report does not outright call on the Republican party to change its stances on issues to be more amenable to young voters. Instead, it calls for the party to slightly shift its message. For instance, the report states, "focus on the economic issues that affect young people today: education, the cost of health care, unemployment," but does not say to embrace Obamacare. It says, "Don’t concede 'caring' and 'open-minded' to the left," but does not call for the outright backing of gay marriage. That's right, continue with your troglodyte ideas and ALEC-driven legislation, just see if you can baffle more peeps by "shifting your messaging". Good luck with that. Let's see what whoppers Frank Lunz comes up with this time. At wsws.org Kate Randall explains how the US health reform to slash care, leave millions uninsured With the full implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) less than seven months away, mounting evidence demonstrates that the health care reform signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010 will result in deep cutbacks in medical care, while raising costs for the vast majority of ordinary Americans. At the same time, millions of the uninsured who were promised health coverage will be left out in the cold altogether. While working families and the poor face an uncertain future as far as their health care is concerned, private insurance companies are gearing up for steep increases in premiums as the medical benefits provided under their policies shrink. The Obama administration’s health care overhaul will also reduce reimbursements to Medicare by more than $700 billion over 10 years, forcing drastic cutbacks to medical services and treatments for millions of American seniors who rely on the government program. The health care exchanges, set up for adults under 65 and their dependents, are required to open for enrollment by October 1, with the insurance provided through them set to begin January 2014. Individuals and families who do not receive “affordable” insurance through their employer, or through a government program such as Medicaid, will be required to purchase coverage through private insurers via these marketplaces or pay a penalty, receiving modest government subsidies to do so. The first of these exchanges has already gone into effect in California. Insurer Blue Shield of California has projected that it will increase premiums by an average of 13 percent in the first year alone. But as the health care law goes into effect across the country, premiums can be expected to rise at an even more rapid pace. ...... Now more than half of the 50 US states are opting out of the Medicaid expansion, which would have provided health care coverage for adults making up to 133 percent of the poverty level income. This means that the very poorest of the uninsured—those with annual incomes between 32 percent and 100 percent of the poverty level ($6,250-$19,530)—will have no affordable health care options. They will be eligible for neither Medicaid nor subsidies to purchase coverage on the exchanges, which are available only for people from the poverty level to four times that rate. Those workers who presently receive coverage through their employers will also see attacks on their medical coverage. Businesses, big and small, are strategizing how to comply with the ACA regulations while paying as little as possible for insurance for their employees. ........ Those companies presently offering plans with relatively low deductibles and co-pays are already moving to reduce benefits and shift costs to their employees in response to a provision of the ACA that penalizes companies that offer insurance valued over $10,200 annually for an individual or $27,500 for a family. Employers or health insurers who offer such “Cadillac plans” would pay a 40 percent excise tax on the amount exceeding this threshold. A number of large labor unions have come into conflict with the Obama administration over the ACA’s treatment of health insurance plans that cover about 20 million union members. These multi-employer plans, run by union-management boards, cover workers in occupations and trades governed by collective bargaining agreements. ..... All the major players in the overhaul of the health care system—the corporations and health care industry, the Democratic Party and their supporters in the trade unions—have engaged in what can only be called a conspiracy against the American people. They have attempted to pass off as a reform legislation that will reduce care and benefits and leave millions of people uninsured and impoverished. Read all of this and see Kate's Barack Obama’s health care counterrevolution too explaining On March 21, 2010, two days before signing the health care bill into law, Barack Obama declared that it represented “another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American Dream.” More than three years later, this statement has been exposed as a cynical lie. From the beginning, the legislation has been crafted to serve the interests of private insurers, pharmaceuticals and giant health care chains, while cutting costs for corporations and the government, all at the expense of working families and the poor. Good item! Speaking of that Great Liberal Meet Monsanto's number one lobbyist: Barack Obama (NaturalNews) During his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama transmitted signals that he understood the GMO issue. Several key anti-GMO activists were impressed. They thought Obama, once in the White House, would listen to their concerns and act on them. These activists weren't just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said: "Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they're buying." ........ Then came the reality. After the election, and during Obama's term as president, people who had been working to label GMO food and warn the public of its huge dangers were shocked to the core. They saw Obama had been pulling a bait and switch. The new president filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

• At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.
  
• As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.
  
• As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors' Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.
  
• As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.
  
• As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.
  
• As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had preciously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.

We should also remember that Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto. Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court. The deck was stacked. Obama hadn't simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn't just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn't just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants. And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let's see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency [... big list of GMOs ...] ...... From this perspective, Michelle Obama's campaign for home gardens and clean nutritious food suddenly looks like a diversion, a cover story floated to obscure what her husband has actually been doing. Nor does it seem coincidental that two of the Obama's biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010. ...... Next Ralph Nader explains Patriotic Yardsticks for Unpatriotic Giant Corporations this essay from May 17, 2013 at Information Clearing House - Why are big, global U.S. corporations so unpatriotic? After all, they were created in the U.S.A., rose to immense profit because of the toil of American workers, are bailed out by American taxpayers whenever they’re in trouble, and are safeguarded abroad by the U.S. military. Yet these corporate goliaths work their tax lawyers overtime to escape U.S. taxes. Many pay less than you do in federal income taxes. Imagine corporations, like General Electric, have not paid federal income taxes on U.S. profits for years. Mega corporations have abandoned U.S. workers by entrenching “pull-down” trade agreements that make it easier than ever to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom. Remember, the U.S. has run large trade deficits for the past 30 years as a result of anti-American trade deals pushed by these global companies. These goliaths are pressing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that will further pull down our economy. (See www.citizen.org.) ....... We’ve yet to find a CEO of a U.S. global corporation who will even go through the motions at their annual shareholders meeting standing up and, in the name of the company, pledging “allegiance to the United States…with liberty and justice for all.” When asked, as was General Motors, the CEO refused. Charge companies with unpatriotic behavior and you’ll tap a nerve or two. The munitions companies, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, put ads on television and radio asserting how their modern weapons back up our troops who are sent to expand the Empire. Of course, defense contractors never mention their huge profits, cost over-runs and their staffing the higher echelons of the Pentagon with their own appointees. Nor do these arms merchants ever raise a patriotic objection to the criminal wars of aggression conducted by Bush/Cheney against the defenseless people of Iraq, whose tottering dictator, formerly a U.S. ally, was not a threat to America. Other companies are trying softer promotions of their claimed care for America. Have you seen the lengthy ad campaign by Chevron that starts with some bold demand by a pictured ordinary person? One such ad begins “Oil companies SHOULD support the communities they’re a PART OF” (Chevron’s emphasis) and, invariably, Chevron answers “we agree,” and lists their charities here and abroad. Evaluating corporation philanthropy is for another time; suffice it to say that not one giant corporation exceeds one percent of their pre-tax profits, when the law allows them to give up to five percent, deductible. Do you think that all of the above only comes from consumer/worker advocates? Then read a new, paperback book by Robert A.G. Monks, titled Citizens Disunited: the Corporate Capture of the American Dream. Monks, a former corporate lawyer, corporate CEO, founder of companies, bank chairman, and investor-advocate extraordinaire, writes memorably about corporate excesses. ....... Much more outrage from Nader so go read the rest! And catch Ralph on DN! below talking about his new book Told You So. And read more Nader at nader.org! Writing for Mother Jones Josh Harkinson has this Exclusive: Leader of Anonymous Steubenville Op on Being Raided by the Fed In April, the FBI quietly raided the home of the hacker known as KYAnonymous in connection with his role in the Steubenville rape case. Today he spoke out for the first time about the raid, his true identity, and his motivations for pursuing the Steubenville rapists, in an extensive interview with Mother Jones. "The goal of the media interviews is to get the entire nation to say 'fuck you' to these guys," said KYAnonymous, whose real name is Deric Lostutter. He was referring to the federal agents who raided his home in Winchester, Kentucky, and carted off his computers and XBox. ...... Still, Lostutter knew from a tipster that the FBI was watching him, he says, and stopped tweeting a few months ago. The FBI knocked on his door just two days after he finally went back online. At first, he thought the FBI agent at the door was with FedEx. "As I open the door to greet the driver, approximately 12 FBI SWAT team agents jumped out of the truck, screaming for me to 'Get the fuck down!' with M-16 assault rifles and full riot gear, armed, safety off, pointed directly at my head," Lostutter wrote today on his blog. "I was handcuffed and detained outside while they cleared my house." According to the FBI's search warrant, agents were seeking evidence related to the hacking of RollRedRoll.com. Lostutter believes that the FBI investigation was motivated by local officials in Steubenville. "They want to make an example of me, saying, 'You don't fucking come after us. Don't question us." If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars—far more than the one- and two-year sentences doled out to the Steubenville rapists. Defending himself could end up costing a fortune—he's soliciting donations here. Still, he thinks getting involved was worth it. "I'd do it again," he says. BRADLEY MANNING UPDATE: Glenn gets the quote of the week as the Manning trial begins: "Glenn Greenwald@ggreenwald 11m - Start of Bradly Manning's trial illustrates core of US justice: only way to be punished is exposing high-level crimes, not committing them." Three separate War Crimes are exposed in the helicopter warship attack on civilians and Reuters reporters. Marjorie Cohn explains at truth-out.org Bradley Manning's Legal Duty to Expose War Crimes ..... The "Collateral Murder" video depicts a US Apache attack helicopter killing 12 civilians and wounding two children on the ground in Baghdad in 2007. The helicopter then fired on and killed the people trying to rescue the wounded. Finally, a US tank drove over one of the bodies, cutting the man in half. These acts constitute three separate war crimes. Manning fulfilled his legal duty to report war crimes. He complied with his legal duty to obey lawful orders but also his legal duty to disobey unlawful orders.

• Section 499 of the Army Field Manual states, "Every violation of the law of war is a war crime." The law of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions.
  
• Article 85 of the First Protocol to the Geneva Conventions describes making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack as a grave breach. The firing on and killing of civilians shown in the "Collateral Murder" video violated this provision of Geneva.
  
• Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions requires that the wounded be collected and cared for. Article 17 of the First Protocol states that the civilian population "shall be permitted, even on their own initiative, to collect and care for the wounded." That article also says, "No one shall be harmed . . . for such humanitarian acts." The firing on rescuers portrayed in the "Collateral Murder" video violates these provisions of Geneva.
  
• Finally, Section 27-10 of the Army Field Manual states that "maltreatment of dead bodies" is a war crime. When the Army jeep drove over the dead body, it violated this provision.

Enshrined in the US Army Subject Schedule No. 27-1 is "the obligation to report all violations of the law of war." At his guilty plea hearing, Manning explained that he had gone to his chain of command and asked them to investigate the "Collateral Murder" video and other "war porn," but his superiors refused. "I was disturbed by the response to injured children," Manning stated. He was also bothered by the soldiers depicted in the video who "seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as 'dead bastards.' " The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth the duty of a service member to obey lawful orders. But that duty includes the concomitant duty to disobey unlawful orders. An order not to reveal classified information that contains evidence of war crimes would be an unlawful order. Manning had a legal duty to reveal the commission of war crimes. ...... And former CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains the Moral Imperative of Bradley Manning at WarIsACrime.org .... Lacking any real competition, the 12-minute English version is, in my view, the most straightforward depiction of what happened, including the war crime of murdering the “Good Samaritan,” who stopped to help one of the wounded. War crime? Yes, war crime. “Justifying” the killing of a dozen people, including two journalists, based on the claim that a camera was mistaken for a gun and that therefore the killing was in keeping with the “Rules of Engagement,” as Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed at the time, is already a stretch. But killing someone trying to help the wounded stretches that “justification” well beyond the breaking point. It is a war crime. As Bradley Manning commented later, “The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemly delightful bloodlust they [the Apache helicopter shooters] appeared to have.” What Moved Manning? As I see it, Manning’s motivation was not necessarily religious, but rather a profoundly human reaction of the kind described in the Cain and Abel story in Genesis. I think most of us understand the imperative to be our brother’s keeper, but I do find the Genesis story helpful in sorting through these thorny issues. ...... Howard-Brook makes the point that biblical “myths” can shed light on human behavior – and misbehavior – even today. I am not suggesting that Bradley Manning was consciously motivated by the “Am I my brother’s keeper” story in Genesis. It would be a good question to ask him. I do think this story/myth can provide both guide and warning as to how we humans are to treat one another. ...... A final comment or two before I leave for the start of Manning’s trial. Is it not transparent what our government wants to keep hidden from us? Is it not a safe bet that the court proceedings will be orchestrated such that what remains hidden will not be revealed? But truth has a way of seeping out. I trust that it will. Friends in the Los Angeles Catholic Worker have given this very serious issue a light touch with bumper sticker: “Jesus Loves WikiLeaks – Mark 4:22.” Here’s the verse from Mark: “Whatever is hidden away will be brought out into the open, and whatever is covered up will be uncovered.” Which prompts the question: Where are the leaders of Christian institutions on all this? Deafening silence. ....... Much more to read from McGovern - thanks Ray! And at The New Statesman Laurie Penny adds Bradley Manning’s case is about more than freedom of speech The young soldier has become a symbol of the information war and its discontents. America will be judged by its treatment of Private Bradley Manning. The intelligence analyst was 22 years old when he was arrested for sending a cache of diplomatic and military secrets to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. This month, as his trial begins, he is 25 and facing life in prison, where he has already spent three years – much of it under conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture deemed “cruel” and “inhuman” in 2012. The US military has a history of getting out of torture allegations on technicalities. Its spokespeople would doubtless claim that keeping Manning in solitary confinement under strip lighting for 23 hours a day, forcing him to sleep naked and depriving him of all rights, strained at the definition of torture but did not snap it. Yet it was within the US military’s power to treat Manning as a human being. It chose instead to torment him in a tiny cell and seemed remarkably relaxed about who knew it. The message to everybody else is clear. It is no surprise that Manning’s trial has generated at least as much interest and outrage internationally as it has done within the US. The reactions to his story fall into roughly three camps....... Then there are those who feel that, regardless of whether Manning is a hero, a villain, a lost queer kid or a combination of the three, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are paramount – and so is the protection of whistle-blowers. States maintain power, in part, by maintaining a monopoly on secrets. Both state and corporate power have historically been associated with the ability to operate beyond scrutiny and, in today’s information-rich society, where sharing data and leaking documents is getting easier than ever, there is an ideological battle taking place. On one side are those who believe that such secrecy is anachronistic. On the other are those determined to preserve it by smashing any dissent with ten-tonne fists. Manning’s case is about more than whether or not whistle-blowers deserve protection. ...... This is about information and who gets to hoard it. There are a great many people, not just in the military, who believe that states and institutions operate best by keeping swaths of the population ignorant of their workings. There are a great many people, not just in the US, who are suspicious of unsupervised information exchange, of mass higher education and of the internet. Right now, Manning is only the most high-profile of a large number of “hacktivists” and “crackers” being persecuted for sharing information they weren’t supposed to have. Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, in prison for hacking the telecoms firm AT&T, is one. Aaron Swartz, who took his own life in January while facing prosecution for downloading millions of subscription-only academic journals, was another. There are countless more going through the courts in the US and elsewhere. The US is fighting not only a war on “terror” in the Middle East but a war on information in cyberspace. In choosing to give military secrets to WikiLeaks, Manning placed himself on the front line of both. ...... Every institution faces the choice between appearing just and appearing powerful. The US military, in its treatment of Bradley Manning, has made its choice. Exactly. Thanks Laurie. At ForeignPolicy.com Bruce Schneier explains how The FBI's New Wiretapping Plan Is Great News for Criminals But bad news for the rest of us. The FBI wants a new law that will make it easier to wiretap the Internet. Although its claim is that the new law will only maintain the status quo, it's really much worse than that. This law will result in less-secure Internet products and create a foreign industry in more-secure alternatives. It will impose costly burdens on affected companies. It will assist totalitarian governments in spying on their own citizens. And it won't do much to hinder actual criminals and terrorists. ...... What the FBI wants is the ability to eavesdrop on everything. Depending on the system, this ranges from easy to impossible. E-mail systems like Gmail are easy. The mail resides in Google's servers, and the company has an office full of people who respond to requests for lawful access to individual accounts from governments all over the world. Encrypted voice systems like Silent Circle are impossible to eavesdrop on -- the calls are encrypted from one computer to the other, and there's no central node to eavesdrop from. In those cases, the only way to make the system eavesdroppable is to add a backdoor to the user software. This is precisely the FBI's proposal. Companies that refuse to comply would be fined $25,000 a day. The FBI believes it can have it both ways: that it can open systems to its eavesdropping, but keep them secure from anyone else's eavesdropping. That's just not possible. It's impossible to build a communications system that allows the FBI surreptitious access but doesn't allow similar access by others. When it comes to security, we have two options: We can build our systems to be as secure as possible from eavesdropping, or we can deliberately weaken their security. We have to choose one or the other. This is an old debate, and one we've been through many times. ...... The new FBI proposal will fail in all these ways and more. The bad guys will be able to get around the eavesdropping capability, either by building their own security systems -- not very difficult -- or buying the more-secure foreign products that will inevitably be made available. Most of the good guys, who don't understand the risks or the technology, will not know enough to bother and will be less secure. The eavesdropping functions will 1) result in more obscure -- and less secure -- product designs, and 2) be vulnerable to exploitation by criminals, spies, and everyone else. U.S. companies will be forced to compete as a disadvantage; smart customers won't buy the substandard stuff when there are more-secure foreign alternatives. Even worse, there are lots of foreign governments who want to use these sorts of systems to spy on their own citizens. Do we really want to be exporting surveillance technology to the likes of China, Syria, and Saudi Arabia? ..... What to do, then? Read on! BIG BROTHER UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian.co.uk now reports this EXCLUSIVE NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily - Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19. Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered. ...... Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama. The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. The Guardian approached the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice for comment in advance of publication on Wednesday. All declined. The agencies were also offered the opportunity to raise specific security concerns regarding the publication of the court order. The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself. "We decline comment," said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman..... MUCH MORE!! Hoo boy! The Rude Pundit@rudepundit tweeted "As I was writing that last tweet, NBC News confirmed that Justice is investigating the Guardian." DAMN. So sez Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in this story with ANDREA "Mrs. Greenspan" MITCHELL Intelligence chief declassifies PRISM details, slams 'reckless disclosures' ..... During the exclusive interview with Mitchell, Clapper told NBC News that the NSA has filed a criminal report with the Justice Department requesting an investigation into the leaks to the Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers. "The NSA has filed a crimes report on this already," Clapper said. The Washington Post reported that a disgruntled intelligence officer provided that top-secret information. "I think we all feel profoundly offended by that. This is someone who for whatever reason has chosen to violate a sacred trust for this country," Clapper told Mitchell. "And, so, I hope we're able to track down whoever's doing this, because it is extremely damaging to, and it affects the safety and security of this country." Describing a lot of the reporting on surveillance activities as "hyperbole," Clapper told Mitchell these intelligence programs represent "a key tool for preserving, protecting the nation’s safety and security." ..... Hey Clapper! We're profoundly offended that YOU and your agency have CHOSEN to VIOLATE KEY ELEMENTS of the Fourth Amendement by DRAGNETTING every damned electronic communication by EVERYONE in the U.S. and beyond, without ANY Probable Cause or even a simple search warrant. You piker. Wait there's more! Front Page at WaPo proclaims U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program By Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley. Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” London’s Guardian newspaper reported Friday that GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA. According to documents obtained by The Guardian, PRISM would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required in Britain to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside of the country. PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority. Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. PRISM recruited its first partner, Microsoft, and began six years of rapidly growing data collection beneath the surface of a roiling national debate on surveillance and privacy. Late last year, when critics in Congress sought changes in the FISA Amendments Act, the only lawmakers who knew about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues. Between 2004 and 2007, Bush administration lawyers persuaded federal FISA judges to issue surveillance orders in a fundamentally new form. Until then the government had to show probable cause that a particular “target” and “facility” were both connected to terrorism or espionage. In four new orders, which remain classified, the court defined massive data sets as “facilities” and agreed to certify periodically that the government had reasonable procedures in place to minimize collection of “U.S. persons” data without a warrant. ..... Much much more so go read all of this! Greenwald has this rejoinder On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation We followed Wednesday's story about the NSA's bulk telephone record-gathering with one yesterday about the agency's direct access to the servers of the world's largest internet companies. I don't have time at the moment to address all of the fallout because - to borrow someone else's phrase - I'm Looking Forward to future revelations that are coming (and coming shortly), not Looking Backward to ones that have already come. But I do want to make two points. One is about whistleblowers, and the other is about threats of investigations emanating from Washington: 1) Ever since the Nixon administration broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office, the tactic of the US government has been to attack and demonize whistleblowers as a means of distracting attention from their own exposed wrongdoing and destroying the credibility of the messenger so that everyone tunes out the message. That attempt will undoubtedly be made here. I'll say more about all that shortly, but for now: as these whistleblowing acts becoming increasingly demonized ("reprehensible", declared Director of National Intelligence James Clapper yesterday), please just spend a moment considering the options available to someone with access to numerous Top Secret documents. ...... None of the whistleblowers persecuted by the Obama administration as part of its unprecedented attack on whistleblowers has done any of that: not one of them. Nor have those who are responsible for these current disclosures. They did not act with any self-interest in mind. The opposite is true: they undertook great personal risk and sacrifice for one overarching reason: to make their fellow citizens aware of what their government is doing in the dark. Their objective is to educate, to democratize, to create accountability for those in power. The people who do this are heroes. ....... (2) Like puppets reading from a script, various Washington officials almost immediately began spouting all sorts of threats about "investigations" they intend to launch about these disclosures. This has been their playbook for several years now: they want to deter and intimidate anyone and everyone who might shed light on what they're doing with their abusive, manipulative exploitation of the power of law to punish those who bring about transparency. That isn't going to work. It's beginning completely to backfire on them. It's precisely because such behavior reveals their true character, their propensity to abuse power, that more and more people are determined to bring about accountability and transparency for what they do. They can threaten to investigate all they want. But as this week makes clear, and will continue to make clear, the ones who will actually be investigated are them. The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals. This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. ...... Once again we urge you to read every word of this! PROGRAMMING NOTE: Glenn Greenwald will be on ABC's This Snafugopolis so tune into that and watch Glenn deconstruct all manner of the Beltway Bubala's talking points! LISTEN TO WILLIAM BINNEY.

• Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance Broadcast on DN! April 20, 2012 In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA where he explains, "Well, I went directly to the Intelligence Committee, because it was their job to—because, first of all, when that happened, I mean, the people they had to use to set it up—since they used part of the program we developed to set it up, they had to use our people to set it up, initially, because no one else knew the code, and no one else knew how to get it operating. So, when they did that, they came—those people came to me and said, "You know, they’re doing this," you know, and they told me what they were doing. And so I immediately went to the Intelligence Committee, because they were—the intelligence committees were formed to have oversight over the intelligence community to make sure they didn’t monitor U.S. citizens. This was a fallout of the Church Committee back in the '70s. And the member of the staff that I went to went to Porter Goss, who was chairman of that committee at the time, and he referred her to General Hayden for any further. When it was the job of that committee to do the oversight on all this domestic spying, they weren't doing it, OK? Basically, the—at the time, according to Dick Cheney’s interview on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, he said the—at that time, only the majority or minority leaders, the HPSCI and the SSCI, were involved in having knowledge about this program, Stellar Wind, which you had talked with Tom Drake about."
  
• Sworn Declaration of Whistleblower William Binney on NSA Published: August 22, 2012 The following sworn declaration of William Binney, a former employee of the NSA and specialist in traffic analysis, was filed July 2, 2012 where he states, "9. I estimate that the NSA installed no fewer than ten and possibly in excess of twenty intercept centers within the United States. I am familiar with the contents of Mark Klein’s declaration. The AT&T center on Folsom Street in San Francisco is one of the NSA intercept centers. Mr. Klein indicated that the NSA’s equipment intercepted Internet traffic on AT&T’s peering network. It makes sense for the NSA to intercept traffic on AT &T’s peering network. The idea would be to avoid having to install interception equipment on each of the thousands of parallel data lines that eventually lead into and out of peering networks. By focusing on peering networks, the NSA intercepts data at the choke point in the system through which all data must pass in order to move from one party’s network to another’s. This is particularly important because a block data is often broken up into many smaller packets for transmission. These packets may traverse different routes before reaching the destination computer which gathers them and reassembles the original block."
  
• The National Security Agency’s Domestic Spying Program Published: August 22, 2012 The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data."The Program" by LAURA POITRAS NYT Op-Docs
  

William Binney and Thomas Drake are interviewed on Thursday's DN! listed below so watch that segment! PrivacySOS.org posts this CIA Chief Technology Officer: we collect everything we can and store it forever The sosadmin warns us "Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer." When the CIA's Chief Technology Officer, Gus Hunt, spoke at a GigaOm conference last week in New York, he told the audience that the CIA collects and stores every bit of information it can get its hands on, and then deploys data mining tools to extract meaning from the swirling and ever growing matrix. (You can see the slides from his talk here.) "The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time. Since you can't connect dots you don't have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever," he said. Hunt's talk, embedded above, works from the assumption that data mining can identify terrorist threats. But that's a faulty, if widely held, view. The National Academy of Sciences studied the question back in 2008 and found that it is "not feasible" to successfully deploy data mining in terrorism prevention. On the other hand, the aggregation and mining of data about all of us is all but guaranteed to have a substantial impact on our privacy and civil liberties. Data mining for terrorism prevention doesn't work because, thankfully, there aren't very many terrorists attacks. The terrorists attacks that do occur are so wildly different, and are executed by people with disparate backgrounds and motivations, using different tools, who organize and plot and execute the attacks with varying styles. So it's basically impossible for computer scientists to teach computers how to look for information that may identify terrorists: there is no single 'terrorism pattern' to teach the machines to watch out for. ....... Does data mining for terrorism work? Hardly. Will that stop the government from doing it? Absolutely not. But it's not all failure: the government's obsession with data collection and mining is very effective at enforcing social control. Natasha Lennard at Salon tells us Security expert: All Occupiers’ phones were logged In light of news that every day the entirety of telecom giant Verizon’s call system records are handed over to the NSA, news that Occupy Wall Street protest attendees’ cellphones were logged should hardly come as a shock. It nonetheless bears noting that cellphone metadata of march and rally participants was likely specifically logged, as security expert Steven Ramdam recently noted. This means that individuals were directly targeted for their engagement with First Amendment-protected activity. As Privacy SOS noted, the controversial security expert who gave a talk titled “Privacy Is Dead” — advocating that we “get over it” — said:

"I can tell you that everybody that attended an Occupy Wall Street protest, and didn’t turn their cell phone off, or put it — and sometimes even if they did — the identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID’d, whether an informant pointed them out, it’s known they were there anyway. This is routine. I can tell you that if you go into any police station right now, the first thing they do is tell you, “Oh I’m sorry you’re not allowed to bring a cell phone in there. We’ll hold it for you.” Not a joke. And by the way it’s a legitimate investigatory technique. But cell phones are now the little snitch in your pocket. Cell phones tell me where you are, what you do, who you talk to, everbody you associate with."

Yikes! Tim Shorrock at The Nation asks and answers Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers - Who analyzes that NSA data? Contractors, that's who. And they're laughing all the way to the bank. Meet the NSA Four: In the annals of national security, the Obama administration will long be remembered for its unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. Since 2009, it has employed the World War I–era Espionage Act a record six times to prosecute government officials suspected of leaking classified information. ......... The hypocrisy is best illustrated in the case of four whistleblowers from the National Security Agency: Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis. Falsely accused of leaking in 2007, they have endured years of legal harassment for exposing the waste and fraud behind a multibillion-dollar contract for a system called Trailblazer, which was supposed to “revolutionize” the way the NSA produced signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the digital age. Instead, it was canceled in 2006 and remains one of the worst failures in US intelligence history. But the money spent on this privatization scheme, like so much at the NSA, remains a state secret. The story goes back to 2002, when three of the whistleblowers—Loomis, Wiebe and Binney—asked the Pentagon to investigate the NSA for wasting “millions and millions of dollars” on Trailblazer, which had been chosen as the agency’s flagship system for analyzing intercepted communications over a smaller and cheaper in-house program known as ThinThread. That program was invented by Loomis, one of the NSA’s top software engineers, and Binney, a legendary crypto-scientist, both of whom began working for the NSA during the Vietnam War. But despite ThinThread’s proven capacity to collect actionable intelligence, agency director Gen. Michael Hayden vetoed the idea of deploying the system in August 2001, just three weeks before 9/11. ..... But there’s a direct link between their case and domestic spying: the technology developed at the NSA to analyze foreign SIGINT—including programs created for ThinThread—was illegally directed toward Americans when the agency radically expanded its surveillance programs after the 9/11 attacks. In response, Drake, Wiebe and Binney have taken to the media to expose and denounce what they say is a vast and unconstitutional program of domestic surveillance and eavesdropping. By using the NSA to spy on American citizens, Binney told me, the United States has created a police state with few parallels in history: “It’s better than anything that the KGB, the Stasi, or the Gestapo and SS ever had.” He compared the situation to the Weimar Republic, a brief period of liberal democracy that preceded the Nazi takeover of Germany. “We’re just waiting to turn the key,” he said. ....... In 2011, the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) declassified parts of its 2005 audit of Trailblazer and ThinThread, which was triggered by the NSA Four’s complaint. Its report severely admonished the NSA for “wasting” its resources on Trailblazer (the amounts are redacted). It also found that the agency had overlooked fraud and abuse and “modified or suppressed” studies that put ThinThread in a positive light. ........ None of the whistleblowers have any doubt about who is responsible for the intelligence failures. “No NSA director did as much damage to the agency as Gen. Michael V. Hayden,” Binney told me. Hayden is now a principal with the Chertoff Group, the intelligence advisory company led by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. His primary job there is advising government agencies and corporations about cybersecurity, which keeps him in constant contact with the NSA. The press office at the Chertoff Group never responded to my requests to interview Hayden, so I tracked him down myself. In February, after he made an appearance at George Washington University, I asked Hayden if the NSA would have been better off not wasting “hundreds of millions of dollars” on Trailblazer and going with its in-house system, ThinThread. In his first public comments on Trailblazer since 2005, Hayden admitted that the NSA and its contractors “overreached.” The agency “outsourced how we gathered other people’s communications,” he said. “And that was a bridge too far for industry. We tried a moonshot, and it failed.” But he wouldn’t comment on ThinThread (which, as Drake wryly pointed out to me, “did get to the moon”). ....... But here’s the irony: Even though Trailblazer failed, the massive enterprise it created set the model for the wholesale privatization of national security work after 9/11. As I described in my 2008 book Spies for Hire, this tsunami of taxpayer largesse reached into every nook and cranny of the intelligence-industrial complex that had slowly been built over the 1980s and ’90s to service the vast CIA and Pentagon needs for surveillance, reconnaissance and advanced IT. In the end, a handful of contractors earned at least $1.2 billion from Trailblazer, and probably several billion more, since huge amounts were squeezed from other parts of the NSA, including its detachments in the Army, Navy and Air Force. “It was a feeding frenzy,” recalls Drake....... So much more and we didn't even snip the NSA Four!! Go to The Nation to read the rest of Tim's investigation! We're reminded of the blockbuster WaPo series Top Secret America led by Dana Priest and William Arkin from 2010. Dig through all of that if you haven't already. It's the perfect set-up to all we see now. Here's one link from Tim Who’s helping the NSA? A Look at Palantir I’ve been tweeting links to stories and websites on the contractors who help the world’s largest spying agency analyze all the data (and megadata) it obtains from phone and Internet companies. Here’s a profile of one of those companies: Palantir Technologies Inc., a company initially funded by the CIA that has become one of the hottest players in U.S. intelligence, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most likely at the NSA. JULIAN ASSANGE penned an OP ED Book Review on the new book by Goggle's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen “THE New Digital Age” The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ ..... “The New Digital Age” is, beyond anything else, an attempt by Google to position itself as America’s geopolitical visionary — the one company that can answer the question “Where should America go?” It is not surprising that a respectable cast of the world’s most famous warmongers has been trotted out to give its stamp of approval to this enticement to Western soft power. The acknowledgments give pride of place to Henry Kissinger, who along with Tony Blair and the former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden provided advance praise for the book. In the book the authors happily take up the white geek’s burden. ...... The book mirrors State Department institutional taboos and obsessions. It avoids meaningful criticism of Israel and Saudi Arabia. It pretends, quite extraordinarily, that the Latin American sovereignty movement, which has liberated so many from United States-backed plutocracies and dictatorships over the last 30 years, never happened. Referring instead to the region’s “aging leaders,” the book can’t see Latin America for Cuba. And, of course, the book frets theatrically over Washington’s favorite boogeymen: North Korea and Iran. ....... I have a very different perspective. The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, “Cypherpunks.” But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in “repressive autocracies” in “targeting their citizens,” they also say governments in “open” democracies will see it as “a gift” enabling them to “better respond to citizen and customer concerns.” In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the “good” societies closer to the “bad” ones. ....... THE writing is on the wall, but the authors cannot see it. They borrow from William Dobson the idea that the media, in an autocracy, “allows for an opposition press as long as regime opponents understand where the unspoken limits are.” But these trends are beginning to emerge in the United States. No one doubts the chilling effects of the investigations into The Associated Press and Fox’s James Rosen. But there has been little analysis of Google’s role in complying with the Rosen subpoena. I have personal experience of these trends. ..... This book is a balefully seminal work in which neither author has the language to see, much less to express, the titanic centralizing evil they are constructing. .... But this is essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view of one simple imperative: Know your enemy. Our BTV LAST WORD goes to the Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks Julian Assange Statement on the First Day of Manning Trial:

As I type these lines, on June 3, 2013, Private First Class Bradley Edward Manning is being tried in a sequestered room at Fort Meade, Maryland, for the alleged crime of telling the truth. The court martial of the most prominent political prisoner in modern US history has now, finally, begun. It has been three years. Bradley Manning, then 22 years old, was arrested in Baghdad on May 26, 2010. He was shipped to Kuwait, placed into a cage, and kept in the sweltering heat of Camp Arifjan. "For me, I stopped keeping track," he told the court last November. "I didn’t know whether night was day or day was night. And my world became very, very small. It became these cages... I remember thinking I’m going to die." After protests from his lawyers, Bradley Manning was then transferred to a brig at a US Marine Corps Base in Quantico, VA, where - infamously - he was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of his captors - a formal finding by the UN. Isolated in a tiny cell for twenty-three out of twenty-four hours a day, he was deprived of his glasses, sleep, blankets and clothes, and prevented from exercising. All of this - it has been determined by a military judge - "punished" him before he had even stood trial. "Brad’s treatment at Quantico will forever be etched, I believe, in our nation’s history, as a disgraceful moment in time" said his lawyer, David Coombs. "Not only was it stupid and counterproductive, it was criminal." The United States was, in theory, a nation of laws. But it is no longer a nation of laws for Bradley Manning. When the abuse of Bradley Manning became a scandal reaching all the way to the President of the United States and Hillary Clinton’s spokesman resigned to register his dissent over Mr. Manning’s treatment, an attempt was made to make the problem less visible. Bradley Manning was transferred to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has waited in prison for three years for a trial - 986 days longer than the legal maximum - because for three years the prosecution has dragged its feet and obstructed the court, denied the defense access to evidence and abused official secrecy. This is simply illegal - all defendants are constitutionally entitled to a speedy trial - but the transgression has been acknowledged and then overlooked. Against all of this, it would be tempting to look on the eventual commencement of his trial as a mercy. But that is hard to do. We no longer need to comprehend the "Kafkaesque" through the lens of fiction or allegory. It has left the pages and lives among us, stalking our best and brightest. It is fair to call what is happening to Bradley Manning a "show trial". Those invested in what is called the "US military justice system" feel obliged to defend what is going on, but the rest of us are free to describe this travesty for what it is. No serious commentator has any confidence in a benign outcome. The pretrial hearings have comprehensively eliminated any meaningful uncertainty, inflicting pre-emptive bans on every defense argument that had any chance of success. Bradley Manning may not give evidence as to his stated intent (exposing war crimes and their context), nor may he present any witness or document that shows that no harm resulted from his actions. Imagine you were put on trial for murder. In Bradley Manning’s court, you would be banned from showing that it was a matter of self-defence, because any argument or evidence as to intent is banned. You would not be able to show that the ’victim’ is, in fact, still alive, because that would be evidence as to the lack of harm. But of course. Did you forget whose show it is? The government has prepared for a good show. The trial is to proceed for twelve straight weeks: a fully choreographed extravaganza, with a 141-strong cast of prosecution witnesses. The defense was denied permission to call all but a handful of witnesses. Three weeks ago, in closed session, the court actually held a rehearsal. Even experts on military law have called this unprecedented. Bradley Manning’s conviction is already written into the script. The commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, Barack Obama, spoiled the plot for all of us when he pronounced Bradley Manning guilty two years ago. "He broke the law," President Obama stated, when asked on camera at a fundraiser about his position on Mr. Manning. In a civilized society, such a prejudicial statement alone would have resulted in a mistrial. To convict Bradley Manning, it will be necessary for the US government to conceal crucial parts of his trial. Key portions of the trial are to be conducted in secrecy: 24 prosecution witnesses will give secret testimony in closed session, permitting the judge to claim that secret evidence justifies her decision. But closed justice is no justice at all. What cannot be shrouded in secrecy will be hidden through obfuscation. The remote situation of the courtroom, the arbitrary and discretionary restrictions on access for journalists, and the deliberate complexity and scale of the case are all designed to drive fact-hungry reporters into the arms of official military PR men, who mill around the Fort Meade press room like over-eager sales assistants. The management of Bradley Manning’s case will not stop at the limits of the courtroom. It has already been revealed that the Pentagon is closely monitoring press coverage and social media discussions on the case. This is not justice; never could this be justice. The verdict was ordained long ago. Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relations exercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience. The alleged act in respect of which Bradley Manning is charged is an act of great conscience - the single most important disclosure of subjugated history, ever. There is not a political system anywhere on the earth that has not seen light as a result. In court, in February, Bradley Manning said that he wanted to expose injustice, and to provoke worldwide debate and reform. Bradley Manning is accused of being a whistleblower, a good man, who cared for others and who followed higher orders. Bradley Manning is effectively accused of conspiracy to commit journalism. But this is not the language the prosecution uses. The most serious charge against Bradley Manning is that he "aided the enemy" - a capital offence that should require the greatest gravity, but here the US government laughs at the world, to breathe life into a phantom. The government argues that Bradley Manning communicated with a media organisation, WikiLeaks, who communicated to the public. It also argues that al-Qaeda (who else) is a member of the public. Hence, it argues that Bradley Manning communicated "indirectly" with al-Qaeda, a formally declared US "enemy", and therefore that Bradley Manning communicated with "the enemy". But what about "aiding" in that most serious charge, "aiding the enemy"? Don’t forget that this is a show trial. The court has banned any evidence of intent. The court has banned any evidence of the outcome, the lack of harm, the lack of any victim. It has ruled that the government doesn’t need to show that any "aiding" occurred and the prosecution doesn’t claim it did. The judge has stated that it is enough for the prosecution to show that al-Qaeda, like the rest of the world, reads WikiLeaks. “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people," wrote John Adams, "who have a right and a desire to know.” When communicating with the press is "aiding the enemy" it is the "general knowledge among the people" itself which has become criminal. Just as Bradley Manning is condemned, so too is that spirit of liberty in which America was founded. In the end it is not Bradley Manning who is on trial. His trial ended long ago. The defendent now, and for the next 12 weeks, is the United States. A runaway military, whose misdeeds have been laid bare, and a secretive government at war with the public. They sit in the docks. We are called to serve as jurists. We must not turn away.

And we'll add this from Greenwald: I'm going to go ahead and take the Constitution at its word that we're guaranteed the right of a free press. So, obviously, are other people doing so. And that means that it isn't the people who are being threatened who deserve and will get the investigations, but those issuing the threats who will get that. That's why there's a free press. That's what adversarial journalism means. And Benjamin Franklin once quipped, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." And Thomas Jefferson also added "Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." The U.S. Government is acting like a cornered rat, the avalanche of evidence against it becoming overwhelming; it is striking out on all manner of dissent, despite its near-complete control of media through its compliant mouthpieces that attempt to dictate the various storylines in print, radio, teevee and the internet. Peeps are now just not buying what they're selling and have their Bullshit Meters on High Alert. And peeps are getting more info from reality-based reporting through DN! on top and the ever-growing web presence of many fact-based organizations. From our food safety to our privacy concerns we are getting dire important info from a diverse diaspora of authors, bold independent investigative reporters and regular peeps who are witnessing AND REPORTING as the corporate take-over of America, what Ralph Nader accurately describes "It is not too extreme to call our system of government now 'American fascism.' It’s the control of government by big business, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt defined in 1938 as fascism." Cracks are evident now in the U.S. neolib-neocon capitalist world view and the diagnoses is it's a huge failure (unless yer part of the 0.01%). Witness the ongoing strikes and protests throughout Europe and the Middle East's "Arab Spring". What will it take in the U.S. to stop the global spreading cancer of capitalism's Austerity (called 'sequestration' in the U.S.)?? Do comb through the rest of this week's BTV for some fantastic stories and interviews relating to Stasi Amerika. Click on anything and BE INSTANTLY SMARTER. Tell everybody. BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!_©

Democracy Now's Iraq interactive timeline

Headlines Monday, June 3, 2013

• Koray Caliskan, assistant professor of political science at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul & Nazan Ustundag, activist and a scholar based in Istanbul, Turkey A Turkish Spring? Over 1,000 Injured as Anti-Government Protests Spread Outside of Istanbul
  
• Chase Madar, a civil rights attorney & Kevin Gosztola, civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake Bradley Manning Trial: After 3 Years, Army Whistleblower Begins Court-Martial Shrouded in Secrecy
  

Headlines Tuesday, June 4, 2013

• Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a lawyer to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks Bradley Manning Trial: WikiLeaks Lawyer Sees Spurious "Enemy" Claims & Bid to Scare Whistleblowers
  
• Ralph Nader American Fascism: Ralph Nader Decries How Big Business Has Taken Control of the U.S. Government
  

Headlines Wednesday, June 5, 2013

• Patrick Cockburn, longtime foreign correspondent for The Independent As U.S. Deploys Patriot Missiles and F-16s to Jordan, Could Syrian Conflict Engulf the Middle East?
  
• Michael Risher, staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California & Mia Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime Debate: Supreme Court OKs Unfettered DNA Collection — An Invasion of Privacy or a Blow to Crime?
  
• Robin Marty, senior political reporter for RH Reality Check & Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior legal analyst at RH Reality Check Jim Crow After Roe? How States Are Regulating Abortion Out of Existence & Widening Health Inequality
  

Headlines Thursday, June 6, 2013

• William Binney, Shayana Kadidal & Thomas Drake NSA Whistleblowers: "All U.S. Citizens" Targeted by Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers
  
• Jim Shultz, executive director of the Democracy Center & Celeste Drake, trade policy specialist with the AFL-CIO Obama-Backed Trans-Pacific Partnership Expands Corporate Lawsuits Against Nations for Lost Profits
  
• Chokwe Lumumba Civil Rights Veteran Chokwe Lumumba Elected Mayor of Jackson, Miss., Once a Center of Racial Abuses
  

Headlines Friday, June 7, 2013

• The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald "A Massive Surveillance State": Glenn Greenwald Exposes Covert NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails
  
• Nasser al-Awlaki EXCLUSIVE Nasser al-Awlaki to Obama: Why Did You Kill My U.S.-Born Son, Grandson in Drone Strikes?
  
• Yemen Discussion Inside the U.S. Dirty War in Yemen with Jeremy Scahill, Nasser al-Awlaki, Sheikh Fareed
  

GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders »»» FEATURED SHOW Jaclyn Friedman: Combating Gender-Based Hate Speech The struggle to confront misogyny in all its various forms last week marked a major win in the online media world. more.....

BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!_© »»» NBA Championship on ABC SUNDAY Game 3 Spurs @ Heat 8:00 pm et »»» NASCAR on ESPN2 SUNDAY It's the rain-delayed DuPont Pioneer 250 from Newton, Iowa! Coverage begins at 11 am et »»» SUNDAY BASEBALL on TBS Angels @ Red Sox 1:35 pm et »»» SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL on ESPN Cardinals @ Reds 8 pm et

BRICK TEEVEE ACTION!_© The 1st Amendment is Our Permit Our permit to occupy is The First Amendment. Quickly sign the following statement which will be delivered to mayors, police chiefs and major media across the country:

Our permit to occupy public squares and parks is in The First Amendment, which affirms "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered those protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them. Those other societies don’t have a First Amendment. Yet Washington affirmed the universal right to assembly and protest. We do have a First Amendment. The force being used to clear nonviolent protesters from public squares in our country is unacceptable. It must stop.

StrikeDebt.org & RollingJubilee.org! A bailout of the people by the people Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits. ADDENDUM: Naked Capitalism reports Top Tax Expert Confirms Our Doubts About Occupy Wall Street’s Debt Buying/Forgiveness Scheme

STOP the ACHE NEW WEBSITE! AcheAct.org and Appalachian Community HEALTH EMERGENCY Advocating for government action and protection of the public from the health crisis in mountain top removal communi ties

Lawmakers concerned about the health effects on humans from mountaintop removal coal mining set forth legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives today. Representatives Dennis Kucinich (OH), Louise Slaughter (NY), Maurice Hinchey (NY), Earl Blumenauer (OR), Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA), John Yarmuth (KY), Lynn Woolsey (CA), Judy Chu (CA), Raúl Grijalva (AZ), James Moran (VA), Michael Honda (CA), John Conyers (MI), and Keith Ellison (MN) introduced the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency (ACHE) Act H.R. 5959 which would place a moratorium on permitting for mountaintop removal coal mining until health studies are conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. The ACHE coalition presently consists of participants from Coal River Mountain Watch, Mountain Health and Heritage Association, and Christians for the Mountains. “We encourage you, if you’re concerned about mountaintop removal’s effect on your community’s health, to join us in making your voice heard,” said Allen Johnson, executive director of Christians for the Mountains. “Please contact us, learn about the issue, and take action to protect your community.”

Community-Wealth.org community-wealth.org a project of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland Community-Wealth.org brings together, for the first time, information about the broad range of community wealth building activity. Featuring Overview: The Cleveland Model—How the Evergreen Cooperatives are Building Community Wealth Something important is happening in Cleveland. The Democracy Collaborative—the host of C-W.org—in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland, the City of Cleveland, and the city's major hospitals and universities—is helping to implement a new model of large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting businesses. The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation's decaying economy. Increasingly, this model is being referred to nationally as The Cleveland Model. Initial planning is now underway to assist other cities in Ohio and nationwide to replicate and adapt this innovative approach to economic development, green job creation, and neighborhood stabilization. Find more many resources at Community-Wealth.org!

NET NEUTRALITY! SaveTheInternet.com Declaration of Internet Freedom Tired of fighting bad bills like SOPA, PIPA and CISPA? Want to stand up against those who are trying to control what we do and say online? It's time for something different. A group of more than 1,500 organizations, academics, startup founders and tech innovators has come together to produce a Declaration of Internet Freedom, a set of five principles that put forward a positive vision of the open Internet. Our goal: Get millions of Internet users to sign on to this Declaration. Build political power for Internet users to make sure that we get a seat at the table whenever, and wherever, the future of the Internet is being decided. It's time to stop playing defense and start going on the offensive. The open Internet is central to people’s freedom to communicate, share, advocate and innovate in the 21st century. But powerful interests want to censor free speech, block the sharing of information, hinder innovation and control how Internet users get online. And all too often, people in power are making political decisions behind closed doors about how the Internet should operate — and they're doing this without the involvement of actual Internet users. The result: policies that could close down the open Internet and destroy our freedom to connect. It’s time for us to reclaim the Internet for its users. Take action now and sign the Declaration of Internet Freedom. ACTION! Meet the New CISPA. Same as the Old CISPA. Last year, thanks to a public outcry, the effort to pass overreaching cybersecurity legislation stalled in the Senate. Now supporters have reintroduced the House version of that legislation — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The “new” version is in fact identical to the original CISPA — and poses the same threat to our digital civil liberties. If CISPA becomes law, it will be a major blow to our online privacy. But more than that, CISPA’s passage would have a chilling effect on our freedom to connect online. We won’t feel as free to state unpopular opinions, or to speak truth to power, if we know that Big Brother could get a feed of everything we say and do. This is not what the free and open Internet is about. We must tell Congress: Vote NO on CISPA and bury this bill for good.

NEW!!! Stop Media Consolidation! Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is trying to change the agency’s ownership rules to pave the way for Murdoch to get exactly what he wants. Worse, Genachowski and Murdoch are keeping this all very hush-hush, hoping you won't notice.3 These changes wouldn’t just benefit Murdoch. If the FCC proposal passes, one company could own the major daily newspaper, two TV stations and up to eight radio stations in your town. And that one company could be your Internet provider, too. What is the FCC thinking?!? We can still stop the agency from taking this perilous step — but we have less than a month to do it. By taking action, you’re joining a movement of millions who are working to stop big media from getting even bigger. Please take action today. Click HERE to view our infographic and send a message to the FCC! More info at Another FCC Cave-In: Julius Genachowski’s Media Consolidation Christmas Gift to Murdoch at StopTheCap.com! And Sign Senator Bernie Sanders petition to the FCC Protect Media Diversity: Stop Media Consolidation!

CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE American Majority Rejects Washington Austerity Consensus – And We Demand Media Coverage by Roger Hickey, President, Campaign for America's Future: No more silent majority. The Campaign for America’s Future is joining with the Center for Economic and Policy Research (whose Co-Director, Dean Baker blogs regularly about economic bias in the media) and with FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) to monitor the media’s coverage and representation of the American Majority views as they go into covering the big deficit fight. But we want to enlist YOU too. Send us accounts of unbalanced coverage in the national media and in your local newspapers and television. Call up reporters, editors, assignment people and tell them when they are under-representing the views of the American Majority. We should have at least half the experts, pundits, quotes and real people represented in their coverage. In a debate as important as the one we are going into, we can’t allow the media to ignore the American Majority. Much more at www.ourfuture.org MOVE TO AMEND! www.movetoamend.org SIGN HERE NOW! And check out more actions on the Move to Amend Calendar for more! Also visit Rep Alan Grayson's site www.savedemocracy.net GET INVOLVED! And Alan Grayson is BACK in the 113th Congress! Help out at CongressmanWithGuts.com

REPRESENT.US IT’S TIME TO GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS SO THE GOVERNMENT CAN REPRESENT US. Represent.Us is a fresh campaign to pass the American Anti-Corruption Act: a law that would overhaul campaign finance, impose strict lobbying and conflict of interest laws, and end secret political money. We are mobilizing millions of Americans — conservatives and progressives, young and old, every issue group fighting K Street, online and offline — to join this campaign. Represent.Us is not just building a movement to pass the Act. The campaign will use hard-hitting accountability tactics to unseat politicians who fail to endorse the Act. If passed, the Act will completely reshape American politics and policy-making and give people a voice. See this Guest Blog at Greenpeace by Executive Director Josh Silver The $6 Billion Auction: Finally, A Plan to Get Money Out of Politics for more information! SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT See CourageToResist.org and Bradley Manning Support Network UPDATE! From the Bradley Manning Support Network An appeal from Daniel Ellsberg May 27, 2013. By Daniel Ellsberg. The Bradley Manning Support Network has been key in coordinating nationwide support efforts for Bradley’s defense, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from thousands of people. We need money to support ongoing grassroots efforts—including rallies, petitions, and ads. Most importantly, however, we need to continue fully funding Bradley’s legal defense efforts—including possible appeals, all the way up to the US Supreme Court, if need be....... AND Greg Palast for Vice MagazineBradley Manning & The Deepwater Horizon Bradley Manning tried to save the eleven men who died, burnt alive, on the Deepwater Horizon. But Barack Obama and the New York Times made sure that wouldn't happen. DONATE YOUR OLD CELL PHONES TO T.J. MARTELL FOUNDATION Help save lives. Donate your old & used iPhone, Blackberries, Droid and other phones to help the T.J. Martell Foundations fund life-saving cancer & AIDS research. For more information, go to www.tjmartellfoundation.org CELLULAR PHONE TASK FORCE EDUCATION, ADVOCACY, SUPPORT at CellPhoneTaskForce.org The Cellular Phone Task Force is dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe. We provide: education to the public concerning electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog); advocacy for an electromagnetically cleaner environment; support for individuals disabled by radiation from wireless technology and other sources.

B R I C K T E E V E E The essential guide for watching government propaganda! THEY report. YOU throw bricks.© Get your Foam Bricks at ThrowThings.com HERE! IRAQ: 4,486 US Military Dead as of April 21, 2012 AFGHANISTAN: 2,238 US Military Dead as of June 6, 2013 The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises MOCKINGBIRD: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read

• This Week (ABC) Host George Stephanopoulos
  • Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
  • House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.
  • Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald
  • Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo.
  • ROUNDTABLE: ABC News’ George Will; ABC News ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman; and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.
  

  
  

• Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
  • Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.
  • Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
  • Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif.
  • Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee
  • Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
  • ROUNDTABLE: New York Times' David Sanger, the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Harvard University's Joseph Nye and CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan
  • Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich, who became the longest-serving member of Congress in history on Friday.
  

  
  

• 60 Minutes (CBS) Summer Reruns
  • The Cost of Admission - Steve Kroft investigates allegations from doctors that the hospital chain they worked for pressured them to admit patients regardless of their medical needs. Sam Hornblower, Michael Rey and Oriana Zill are the producers.
  • Justice Sotomayor - Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks to Scott Pelley about her life and career leading up to her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the role affirmative action played. Henry Schuster is the producer.
  

  
  

• Meet the Press (NBC) Host David Gregory
  • Microsoft, NBC News Dissolve MSNBC.com Joint Venture NBC is buying Microsoft's 50 percent interest in the MSNBC website for an undisclosed amount. MSNBC.com will be rebranded as NBCNews.com, and readers who logged into MSNBC.com late Sunday were automatically redirected to NBCNews.com. Microsoft is preparing to launch its own news service this fall. Although he declined to provide many details about the operation general manager of MSN.com Bob Visse said the news staff will be about the same size as the roughly 100 people who created original content for the MSNBC.com. "There is no question that we are going to have more flexibility to make our own decisions," said Vivian Schiller, NBC News' chief digital officer. "This is really an amicable breakup. We think competition will make us better." Okay then.
  • MTP will not air Sun., June 9th, due to NBC’s Coverage of the French Open
  

  
  

• State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) At 9 AM ET, Candy talks to the power players: politicians, business leaders and international newsmakers who will make Monday morning's headlines. At NOON ET, Candy wraps it all up with fresh interviews and the best of the earlier hours.
  • Patriot Act supporter Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
  • Senator Mark Udall (D-CO)
  • Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
  • ROUNDTABLE: Amy Walter, National Editor of The Cook Political Report, Former Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) and Former Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA).
  
  
  
• HEAD ON RADIO with Bob Kincaid
  
  Headon Radio with Bob Kincaid 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific, 2300 GMT. Duration: 3 hrs. To be part of Conversation Radio on Head-on Radio, call toll-free (877) 443-2366, or use our Liberal community line at 304-658-3333. Email bob [at] headonradio [dot] com during the show!
  • Front Porch Fridayday!!!!! Pull up a chair and a cold one! Listen NOW HERE - Friday, June 7, 2013 ! Keep Bob on the air HERE ya hear? Amen to the White Rose Society! Bob's show archives at the White Rose HERE! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!
  

  
  

• YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen!
  
  The Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen: 6 minutes of green news, politics, analysis & snarky comment! BOOKMARK greennews.bradblog.com NOW!
  • 'Green News Report' - June 6, 2013 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Bad timing for sequester cuts to hit US firefighting budget; NM county bans fracking due to drought; CT passes law to require GMO labeling...sort of; NV ditches coal plants; Renewable energy breaks out across US; PLUS: National Mall's new monument...to climate change! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): The ‘Social Cost Of Carbon’ Is Almost Double What The Government Previously Thought; Invention could wrap buildings in solar panels; World’s Biggest Coal Company Is Turning To Solar Energy To Lower Its Utility Bill; USDA helping farmers adapt to climate change; AFP targets Dems over non-existent carbon tax; LED lightbulbs saved $657m this year; Study: trash litters ocean floor ... PLUS: The Most Important Day of the 21st Century ... and much, MUCH more! ...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! VIDEO! Obama's Reported FBI Nominee's 'Stunning' 2007 Testimony Want a REAL White House scandal? Watch what WaPo describes as 'the most riveting 20 minutes of congressional testimony. Maybe ever'...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! Third Greenwald Blockbuster: Obama's Classified Directive for U.S. Cyber Attacks UK Guardian's civil liberties advocate and journalist releases another key classified doc, this one on U.S. cyberwarfare plans...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! VIDEO! Context: Our Massive Secret Surveillance State Rachel Maddow offers the important context and background -- for those who have forgotten, never noticed, or pretend not to know -- on how we arrived in this entire fine mess...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! VIDEO! Greenwald: 'There's This Document Called the Constitution' Guardian's NatSec leak journalist pulls no punches in defending his work, but throws a few at Dianne Feinstein and friends...
  

  
  

• The Peter B. Collins Show PODCAST!
  
  Listen at PeterBCollins.com!
  The Peter B. Collins Show covers American news and politics from the Left Coast. Veteran talk radio personality Peter B. Collins, based in San Francisco, delivers fresh interviews, commentary and analysis on a range of important topics, with views and voices you don’t often find in the corporate media.
  • Holiday Break and Website Changes
  
  To my valued listeners: We are making some changes to the website and our terms, effective in January. We will continue to offer free podcasts–my new daily news and commentary. Our in-depth interviews will be available for $1 per episode, or to subscribers who pay $5 per month or more. Loyal listeners who simply can’t afford it should send an email to peter@peterbcollins.com, as we will be offering a limited number of scholarships to our friends who are hurting during these tough times. More information will be posted as we complete the revisions. I’m grateful to each of you for listening and supporting this work, and hope that the new model will enable us to keep it going well into the future. All the best, -pbc
  • Peter B Collins, Truthout | Op-Ed An Insider's View of the Progressive Talk Radio Devolution
  • PBC Standard Podcast June 6, 2013 Dr. Justin Frank Analyzes Obama’s Internal Conflicts Displayed in May 23 Speech; Investigative Reporter Beau Hodai Exposes Coordinated Crackdown on Occupy
  • PBC Standard Podcast June 7, 2013 Bradley Manning Special: Kevin Gosztola’s Week 1 Report
  • PBC News & Comment June 4, 2013 PBC News & Comment: GOP is Right, for Mostly Wrong Reasons: Holder Must Go Pressure builds for AG Holder to step down, and PBC reluctantly agrees with House GOP leaders, it’s time to resign…
  • PBC News & Comment June 7, 2013 PBC News & Comment: Big Victory! San Onofre Nuclear Plant To Shut Down Permanently Troubled twin reactors in Southern California to be shut down; Obama hunkers down on surveillance as Greenwald reveals secret cyberwar...
  

  
  

• Ring of Fire Radio
  
  Find us at http://ringoffireradio.com and http://goleft.tv/ hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder
  Ring of Fire Radio - GoLeft TV - Robert F. Kennedy, Mike Papantonio, Sam Seder - Politics, Commentary, and News.
  This Weekend on Ring of Fire Radio! Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 7 pm Eastern.
  • Author and historian Andrew Bacevich will be here to discuss the American culture of endless war.
  • Investigative journalist Rick Outzen will discuss the growing epidemic of rape in the military.
  • Author and Nation Magazine contributor John Nichols will tell us about the growing problem of our crumbling infrastructure.
  • America Blog contributing editor Gaius Publius will give us the latest on the Keystone XL pipeline.
  • Author and economics professor William Black will tell us how the financial elites are screwing over the working class.
  • NEW! This Week on Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV! Sundays at NOON!
  • We’ll be talking about the illegal activities taking place in the US military – from covering up of sexual assault, to misdiagnosing mental disorders. Investigative journalist Rick Outzen and attorney Howard Nations will weigh in on that.
    
  • America’s infrastructure is crumbling right before our eyes, and best-selling author and syndicated columnist Cliff Schecter will tell us what has to be done to bring our roads and bridges up to an acceptable standard.
    
  • Fraud and deception is running rampant in the drug industry, and attorney Mike Burg will tell you all about the phony studies and marketing tricks being used to dupe consumers.
    
  • And the Tea Party will be losing one of their leaders soon, so could this be the end of the misguided movement? Trial Lawyer Magazine executive editor Farron Cousins will have the answer for you.
  • VIDEO! THE HISTORY OF CORPORATE CORRUPTION & FRAUD with Robert Kennedy Jr & Mike Papantonio “Call us if you have a personal story about Fraud on Taxpayers or False Claims for Payment made by Corportations at 1-866-389-FIRE (3473) or contact us by email at info@ringoffireradio.com if you have evidence of fraud that robbed taxpayer dollars. If our government is paying too much due to fraud by a corporation, Ring of Fire wants to do a story on it.” • VIDEO! Papantonio: The GOP’s Unbridled Loyalty To Oil (VIDEO) Congressional Republicans have stepped up their fight to protect the interests of the oil industry, and recently passed legislation that seeks to override Obama’s decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. The legislation won’t pass the Senate, but it shows where the GOP’s loyalty lies. Ring of Fire host Mike Papantonio speaks with America Blog contributing editor Gaius Publius about the disaster that is the Keystone XL pipeline. • VIDEO! Papantonio: NSA Spying – Okay With The American Public? (VIDEO) • Ring of Fire’s Weekly Rewind June 8, 2013 featuring the top stories from Ring of Fire from the past week. • Join our blog at www.ringoffireradio.com. You can now SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST by clicking on the "Podcast" tab at the top of the Ring of Fire blog. Please help support progressive radio by signing up! Ring of Fire Radio Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder: Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts 7-10 et Sunday evenings on Chicago's Progressive Talk WCPT AM & FM and 4 pm et on Sirius/XM 167 featuring The PAP Attack! "We’ll bring you the stories that the mainstream media didn’t feel like reporting this week."

• Majority Report with Sam Seder Streaming LIVE weekdays 12 NOON et @ Majority.fm!
  
  • MONDAY 6/3/13 Manning Trial Begins, Unrest In Turkey & Lautenberg RIP
  • TUESDAY 6/4/13 Seder In For Thom Hartmann: TPP, Monsanto, Social Security, Patent Trolls & More
  • WEDNESDAY 6/5/13 Trevor Aaronson: The FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror
  • THURSDAY 6/6/13 Marcy Wheeler: NSA Dragnet Revelations
  • FRIDAY 6/7/13 Casual Friday: Cliff Schecter & Film Guy Matthew Weiss
  • MORE Podcast Interviews at majorityfm.libsyn.com!
  

  
  

• KEISER REPORT Podcasts and more @ MaxKeiser.com!
  
  "HI Y'ALL! Tell the people! Tell the people!"
  WHO IS MAX KEISER? Max Keiser is a financial expert, Prediction Markets analyst, inventor and filmmaker. He is the creator of the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) the first Prediction Market. Max Keiser co-hosts "The Truth About Markets" on ResonanceFM 104.4 in London. He also produces and presents documentary films covering markets and finance for Al Jazeera’s "People & Power" series. Max Keiser started his career on Wall Street in 1983. He is the creator of KarmaBanque a site that enables activists to challenge corporate power.
  • VISIT PirateMyFilm.com!!! Crowd Funding for Pirates!
  • MaxKeiserTV on YouTube! MaxKeiserTV
  • STACY SUMMARY: For once and for all, here are our real Facebook pages, the other ones are fake. But if you feel like chatting to the fake ones, by all means, go ahead.
  • Max Keiser
    
  • Keiser Report
    
  • Stacey Herbert
  • The Federal Reserve 100th Anniversary Road Show Spectacular! by alexschaefer - Paint Provocateur Alex Schaefer wants to say “Happy Birthday, Federal Reserve!’ You made it to 100 years of conducting the nation’s monetary policy! Since mainstream media didn’t send a card, a painter, a protestor, a filmmaker, a freedom fighter and a mad crew are going on a road trip across the USA to visit all twelve of your branches to help you celebrate! Come rain or monkey shines, they are on a mission to throw the birthday party nightmares are made of. A party to highlight the historic END of the original 100 year charter the Federal Reserve Bank has with the U.S. Government December 23rd, 2013! CLICK HERE FOR THE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN & HELP GET THE SHOW ON THE ROAD! Lots of great donation perks, all original works of art by Alex Schaefer and Cain Motter! This is a great way to collect some art AND help fund this amazing journey and film. It’s a win-win situation! Let’s some history and shake things up around here! • Lobbying And GMO Giant Monsanto Buckles In Europe by Wolf Richter - The “March Against Monsanto” in 52 countries, an unapproved strain of its genetically modified wheat growing on its own in Oregon, cancelled wheat export orders…. A rough week for Monsanto. Now it threw in the towel in Europe where its deep pockets and mastery of lobbying had failed: “It’s counterproductive to fight against windmills,” it explained. READ Lobbying And GMO Giant Monsanto Buckles In Europe..... • We pay a high price for plutocrats As the rich lunge for their tax havens, the wages of their greed can be seen in extremism and social unrest by maxkeiser - READ Convincing the wealthy that the problem lies with the poor, not the face in the glass, is one of the few swelling economies of the age. • Taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart’s workforce by maxkeiser - READ Congressional Report Proves Taxpayers Are Subsidizing Wal-Mart Employees. • KEISER REPORT Keiser Report: Fake it til you make it or Potemkin policies We discuss the emergence of a new economic theory of Potemkinism where posters of thriving towns substitute for towns that aren’t actually thriving. And, if that fails, then the towns are demolished to avoid seeing such failure. In the second half, Max talks to writer, producer, journalist, Charlie Skelton about the upcoming Bilderberg event in Watford, UK and the protest groups around it. • KEISER REPORT Backstage #KeiserReport with George Galloway • KEISER REPORT [KR454] Keiser Report: Osborne’s Schlub, Schnook, Yahoo & Yo-Yo We discuss the longest word in the German language ceasing to exist while the most complex derivatives in the financial system continue to thrive, George Osborne’s Help to Buy Scheme gets called another name and the U.S. dollar system disintegrates, ‘gone with the wind.’ In the second half, Max talks to Alasdair Macleod, head of research at Goldmoney.com, about the geopolitical implications of gold failing to clear. • KEISER REPORT [KR455] Keiser Report: Predatory Monopoly We discuss the American Dream that you have to be asleep to believe in, an America’s Cup too expensive to compete in and a patent system ripe to troll about in. In the second half, Max interviews legendary comedian, Mort Sahl, about the Military Industrial Complex and Bradley Manning. • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-1279] The Truth About Markets – 01 June 2013 – #blockupy and #occupygezi We discuss #blockupy, #occupygezi, Max Keiser’s fashion inspiration (Don Cherry) and more. Download show HERE (mp3) • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-1280] The Truth About Seeking Convicted Fraudster Bernie Madoff’s Investment Advice Download show HERE (mp3) • Donate to ResonanceFM here!

• The Scott Horton Radio Show
  
  Scott Horton is host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles and KUCR 88.3 in Riverside, and the Scott Horton Show on No Agenda Radio. (You can listen live Monday through Friday, excluding Thursday, from 12-2 PM Eastern HERE.) Plenty of archives too!
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 6/5/13 Marcy Wheeler: Blogger Marcy Wheeler discusses the start of Bradley Manning’s “speedy” trial after three years in detention; the government’s case against Manning and Julian Assange as co-conspirators engaged in espionage; why Bob Woodward and top government officials are never prosecuted for leaking and publishing classified information; and how Manning’s careful selection of documents to leak (to avoid getting “blood on his hands”) has made his prosecution easier. AND 6/5/13 Marcy Wheeler Blogger Marcy Wheeler discusses how White House narratives go largely unchallenged by journalists starved of information from government leakers; the favorable testimony of prosecution witnesses in Bradley Manning’s court martial; Glenn Greenwald’s scoop on the NSA’s collection of all Verizon customer call data; how Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants help the government spy on Americans; why individuals targeted by government spying can’t get standing to sue in court; and how the FBI is used as a front to evade NSA restrictions on domestic surveillance.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 6/7/13 James Bamford: James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory, discusses the NSA’s Prism surveillance program and Verizon phone log scandal; the failure of unprecedented government spying to stop terrorism in the US; why collecting massive amounts of irrelevant data makes finding terrorists harder, not easier; the government’s “automated conspiracy theories;” the surprising NSA PowerPoint and FISA warrant leaks; the plausibility of the NSA recording every single phone call; and former Senator Frank Church’s prescient warning of an NSA-enabled tyranny in the US.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 6/7/13 Pepe Escobar: Globetrotting Asia Times journalist Pepe Escobar discusses the very small percentage of Syrians (and large number of Western governments) who support the rebellion; the atrocities committed by moderate and radical jihadist rebels; how keeping the rebels armed will extend the civil war indefinitely; and the huge influx of foreign fighters in Syria.
  • SCOTT HORTON July 5, 2012: Scott says goodbye to Antiwar.com. Scott Horton is the former host of Antiwar Radio. Visit his blog Stress. Due to budget cuts Scott lost his gig at AntiWarRadio.com! Whoa! See ScottHortonShow.com for archives! Send emails to Scott at scotthorton.org to help Scott keep his podcast going!
  • Older interviews at Antiwar Radio!
  

  
  

• fauxnews
  • Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)
  • Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI)
  • Former CIA & NSA director General Michael Hayden (ret.)
  
  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Brick TeeVee - THEY report. YOU throw bricks. ©

We're here because you're there. ©

First brick is on us! Get your Foam Bricks at ThrowThings.com HERE!

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