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More Snowden Blowback Last weekend's Beltway Bubalas went on the offensive calling Eric Snowden a traitor among other things. SHOCKING, right? We'll have more on this in a bit. But first we begin with CommonDreams.org Physicians for a National Health Program a single issue organization advocating a universal, comprehensive single-payer national health program has this press release Oncologists Call for Single Payer in Leading Cancer Journal - Article in leading cancer journal calls on oncologists to support single-payer national health insurance WASHINGTON - January 20 - A feature article published this week in the Journal of Oncology Practice contains an evidence-based appeal by two oncologists, including a past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), for their colleagues to endorse a single-payer health system. The authors are Dr. Ray Drasga, a longtime community-based oncologist who founded a free clinic in his own community of Crown Point, Ind., and Dr. Lawrence Einhorn, a distinguished professor of medicine at Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis. .......... “With the costs of cancer care skyrocketing out of control, most people with cancer are burdened not only physically but also financially,” said Dr. Drasga, the lead author. “They delay or do not receive care due to their inability to pay. “The crisis in health care is much more pronounced in cancer due to the high costs of drugs, tests, and procedures,” he said. “For example, the cost of a new cancer drug has increased to a median price of $10,000 per month since 2010, and some drugs cost much more. “The situation is worsening,” he said. “We need a fundamental shift in our approach to funding health care in the United States.” The authors ask their fellow oncologists and their society, ASCO, to endorse a single-payer system of national health care insurance. They say they do not believe that the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” will be able to solve the health care crisis that cancer patients face. Go to pnhp.org for many more comments and articles at Cancer, costs and single payer GOOD ITEM! Share with yer peeps and tweets!
THEN see Ring of Fire's MIKE PAPANTONIO on The Big Picture on the GOP's most recent attempt at tax law repatriation Surprised? GOP helping tax evaders as part of their platform... PLUS Health Insurance whistleblower WENDELL POTTER on Full Show 1/23/14: How Rand Paul Can Help the Democratic Party the fate of Obamacare with former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter also with SAM SEDER on Thursday's Majority Report below AND Thom's rant What the world looks like without net neutrality. See below in the BTV ACTION section on NET NEUTRALITY for new ACTION!
GRAEME WEARDEN at TheGuardian.com explains the latest report from Oxfam: 85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world - As World Economic Forum starts in Davos, development charity claims growing inequality has been driven by 'power grab' .......... The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a new report from Oxfam on Monday. It warned that those richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population.

The wealth of the 1% richest people in the world amounts to $110tn (£60.88tn), or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world, added the development charity, which fears this concentration of economic resources is threatening political stability and driving up social tensions. It's a chilling reminder of the depths of wealth inequality as political leaders and top business people head to the snowy peaks of Davos for this week's World Economic Forum. Few, if any, will be arriving on anything as common as a bus, with private jets and helicopters pressed into service as many of the world's most powerful people convene to discuss the state of the global economy over four hectic days of meetings, seminars and parties in the exclusive ski resort. Winnie Byanyima, the Oxfam executive director who will attend the Davos meetings, said: "It is staggering that in the 21st Century, half of the world's population – that's three and a half billion people – own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus." Oxfam also argues that this is no accident either, saying growing inequality has been driven by a "power grab" by wealthy elites, who have co-opted the political process to rig the rules of the economic system in their favour. In the report, entitled Working For The Few (summary here), Oxfam warned that the fight against poverty cannot be won until wealth inequality has been tackled. "Widening inequality is creating a vicious circle where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs from the top table," Byanyima said. Oxfam called on attendees at this week's World Economic Forum to take a personal pledge to tackle the problem by refraining from dodging taxes or using their wealth to seek political favours. As well as being morally dubious, economic inequality can also exacerbate other social problems such as gender inequality, Oxfam warned. Davos itself is also struggling in this area, with the number of female delegates actually dropping from 17% in 2013 to 15% this year. ............... Byanyima explained: "In developed and developing countries alike we are increasingly living in a world where the lowest tax rates, the best health and education and the opportunity to influence are being given not just to the rich but also to their children. Without a concerted effort to tackle inequality, the cascade of privilege and of disadvantage will continue down the generations. We will soon live in a world where equality of opportunity is just a dream. In too many countries economic growth already amounts to little more than a 'winner takes all' windfall for the richest." ............ MORE!
But The Filthy Rich (no relation) have no scruples or lack of money to get what they want in their scorched-earth approach. We all now know about the KOCH BROTHERS EXPOSED and ALEC Exposed and the DARK MONEY they use to hide their co-conspiritors' "investments" and donations into shadowy (but legal) 501c3 nonprofit organizations Citizens United and New Rules for Nonprofits. ANDY KROLL at MoJo finds this regressive Shadowy Wisconsin Group That Helped Scott Walker Win His Recall Was Backed by the Koch Network Days before Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker's June 2012 recall election, two TV ads ran on stations statewide. Paid for by a group called the Coalition for American Values (CAV), the ads attacked the very notion of holding a recall election (even though it's in the state constitution) and featured supposed Wisconsin citizens speaking out against the recall. "I didn't vote for Scott Walker, but I'm definitely against the recall," one man says. In another ad, the narrator says, "Recall isn't the Wisconsin way...End the recall madness. Vote for Scott Walker June 5th." CAV put $400,000 behind those ads, which stoked a sense of unease about the recall among Wisconsin voters. Walker coasted to a seven-point victory. Exit polls strongly suggested that CAV's ads played a part in the governor's win. Yet the mystery surrounding the Coalition for American Values persisted. The group never disclosed how much it spent, how much it raised, or who funded it. Until now. As first reported by the left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy, new tax filings reveal that the main source of CAV's funding was the Center to Protect Patient Rights, an Arizona nonprofit that gave CAV $510,000 in 2012. CPPR is a linchpin in a network of nonprofit groups Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists, use to shuffle money around the country while keeping donors anonymous. California's Fair Political Practices Commission identified the group as "the key nonprofit in the Koch Brothers' dark money network of nonprofit corporations," and hit the group and a related nonprofit with a $1 million fine for failing to disclose donations made during the 2012 election season. All told, CPPR doled out $156 million in dark money in 2011 and 2012, a sizable chunk of the $407 million moved by the Kochs' network of nonprofit groups. ......... WOW! And ANDY KROLL continues with Meet the New Kochs: The DeVos Clan's Plan to Defund the Left - They beat Big Labor in its own backyard. Next up: your state? .......... Since the election a few weeks earlier, Republicans had been aiming to use the current lame-duck session to ram through a controversial piece of legislation known as right-to-work. Such laws, already on the books in 23 states, outlawed contracts requiring all employees in a unionized workplace to pay dues for union representation. Jackson and other labor leaders were scrambling to head off the bill, widely regarded as a disaster for unions. Richardville, who had once told a hotel conference room filled with union members that right-to-work would pass "over my dead body," was one of the votes they'd counted on. Richardville said he'd spent the previous evening at a fundraiser in western Michigan. At one point during the event, he was escorted into a private room where a dozen wealthy business moguls were waiting for him. Some he recognized as heavy hitters in Michigan politics; others had flown in from out of state. One of the men in the room glared at Richardville. "You gotta grow a set and move this legislation," the man said, referring to right-to-work. Had he ever run for office? Richardville asked. The man said no. "Well, when you grow a set and give that a try," Richardville snapped, "then you can talk about the size of my testicles." Jackson was wide awake now. "Good for you," he said. "How'd it end?" "Mike, you're fucked," Richardville said. "They've got all the money they need, they're going up on the air, and they're going to push this freedom-to-work thing." Wasn't there some way to head off the bill? Jackson asked. "They've got my caucus," Richardville replied. "You can't imagine the pressure I'm under." The pressure came largely from one man present at that fundraiser: Richard "Dick" DeVos Jr. The 58-year-old scion of the Amway Corporation, DeVos had arm-twisted Richardville repeatedly to support right-to-work. After six years of biding their time, DeVos and his allies believed the 2012 lame duck was the time to strike. They had formulated a single, all-encompassing strategy: They had a fusillade of TV, radio, and internet ads in the works. They'd crafted 15 pages of talking points to circulate to Republican lawmakers. They had even reserved the lawn around the state capitol for a month to keep protesters at bay. A week after Richardville's early morning call to Jackson, it was all over. With a stroke of his pen on December 11, Gov. Rick Snyder—who'd previously said right-to-work was not a priority of his—now made Michigan the 24th state to enact it. The governor marked the occasion by reciting, nearly verbatim, talking points that DeVos and his allies had distributed. "Freedom-to-work," he said, is "pro-worker and pro-Michigan." THE DEVOSES sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys (of Allen-Bradely fame), and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. "There's not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn't known the DeVoses," says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. Nowhere has the family made its presence felt as it has in Michigan, where it has given more than $44 million to the state party, GOP legislative committees, and Republican candidates since 1997. "It's been a generational commitment," Anuzis notes. "I can't start to even think of who would've filled the void without the DeVoses there." The family fortune flows from 87-year-old Richard DeVos Sr. The son of poor Dutch immigrants, he cofounded the multilevel-marketing giant Amway with Jay Van Andel, a high school pal, in 1959. Five decades later, the company now sells $11 billion a year worth of cosmetics, vitamin supplements, kitchenware, air fresheners, and other household products. Amway has earned DeVos Sr. at least $6 billion; in 1991, he expanded his empire by buying the NBA's Orlando Magic. The Koch brothers can usually expect Richard and his wife, Helen, to attend their biannual donor meetings. He is a lifelong Christian conservative and crusader for free markets and small government, values he passed down to his four children. ........... Passing right-to-work in Michigan was more than a policy victory. It was a major score for Republicans who have long sought to weaken the Democratic Party by attacking its sources of funding and organizing muscle. "Michigan big labor literally controls one of the major political parties," Dick DeVos said last January. "I'm not suggesting they have influence; I'm saying they hold total dominance, command, and control." So DeVos and his allies hit labor—and the Democratic Party—where it hurt: their bank accounts. By attacking their opponents' revenue stream, they could help put Michigan into play for the GOP heading into the 2016 presidential race—as it was more than three decades earlier, when the state's Reagan Democrats were key to winning the White House. More broadly, the Michigan fight has given hope—and a road map—to conservatives across the country working to cripple organized labor and defund the left. Whereas party activists had for years viewed right-to-work as a pipe dream, a determined and very wealthy family, putting in place all the elements of a classic political campaign, was able to move the needle in a matter of months. "Michigan is Stalingrad, man," one prominent conservative activist told me. "It's where the battle will be won or lost."......... WHOA! READ BOTH OF THESE! Something tells us these regressive greedy cretins didn't read the Oxfam report, or if they did, decided to extend their Middle Finger anyhow. It's our observation that - over the long haul of a few decades of outsourcing and globalization - Union and working-peeps in historic strongholds like Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and other automotive-industry-heavy states have steadily lost membership as those workers have either died (or are on their way thanks to defunding of pensions) or had to relocate out of those states, leaving behind scores of libertarian/conservative tea-bagger types (think Michigan resident Ted Nugent) who overwhelmingly vote for the likes of ALEC/Koch-funded regressive Republican candidates like John Kasick, Scott Walker and Rick Snyder and his "Emergency Managers" (thx wonkette) basically nullifying the Democractic System of everyday peeps electing their own to represent them in We The Government of The PEOPLE, a TOTAL and COMPLETE corporate Chicago-School Milton-Freidman-esque takeover of the democratic system. These are CLEAR and OBVIOUS reasons to TAKE MONEY OUT OF ELECTIONS (not to mention fair elections without 'faith based' voting machines). Thankfully the Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice are fighting back Democracy Emergency Look here: Detroit NAACP Lawsuit Filing Says Michigan Emergency Manager Law Threatens Voting Rights PA 436 gives broad powers to emergency managers appointed by the state to economically distressed communities, including the ability to sell off public assets, revoke labor contracts and dismiss elected officials. The legislation is a revised version of a similar law, known as Public Act 4, which was repealed by voters last year[2012]. Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP, told The Huffington Post that, unlike previous lawsuits that have emphasized violations of the state's Open Meetings Act and concerns about collective bargaining, this litigation focuses on violations of voting rights and equal protection rights protected under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. ARE YOU GETTING THIS? CONNECTING THE DOTS? We digress.......... . . . - - - . . . ........
SOME GOOD NEWS:

• VIDEO! AVAAZ.org details Bankers Arrested In Iceland, Ireland, UK, USA, Switzerland, India, France, Russia, Austria with UK: Banksters behind bars
  
• From the Booman Tribune Frank Luntz Earned His Hell
  
• New York agrees $18m settlement with 2004 Republican convention protesters

NEXT JUAN COLE explains how Gov’t Used Surveillance of MLK in Bid to Destroy Him: Now They Want Us to Just Trust Them Among the ironies of Barack Obama trying to sell us the gargantuan NSA domestic spying program is that such techniques of telephone surveillance were used against the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in an attempt to destroy him and stop the Civil Rights movement. Had the republic’s most notorious peeping tom, J. Edgar Hoover, succeeded in that quest, Obama might never have been president, or even been served in Virginia restaurants. Now that MLK is recognized by all but a tiny minority of Americans (Dick Cheney being in the minority) as a national hero, it is sometimes hard to remember that the Establishment treated him in his own lifetime like a criminal conspirator. He merely demanded the end of Jim Crow Apartheid and equal rights and opportunities for African-Americans with whites in every state of the union. As a result of this entirely reasonable demand, required by the 14th Amendment, he was placed under 24 hour a day surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As with everything in the Cold War, the pretext was that King might have Communist associates. Just as the NSA grabbing our metadata today is justified by the pretext that all 310 million of us might have al-Qaeda associates. King’s powerful “I have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Capitol provoked a frothing at the mouth Hoover to swing into full action against him. One of Hoover’s aides wrote in a memo after that 1963 event, “In the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech…We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.” At Hoover’s urgent request, Bobby Kennedy permitted the FBI secretly to break into King’s premises and those of his associates and plant bugs. They also bugged meetings where he spoke and hotels he stayed in. Let me repeat that. The reaction of the head of the FBI and the attorney general of the US to King’s dream that little boys and girls of different races would play games with each other was to record his every word and action and those of his friends. If that speech can get you that kind of scrutiny in the USA, then why should we ever trust any high government official with our personal information? Most of us are at least as idealistic as that. .............. The point is that King’s private life is irrelevant to his public demands and his public role. He was demanding constitutional rights for all Americans. Whom he shtupped in his spare time is not germane to the rightness of that demand. Note that today’s NSA collection of all Americans’ smartphone records shows who they called and texted and where they were when they did it. All American dalliances are as transparent in those records as King’s were to Hoover. If the US government was willing to try to blackmail King and many other public figures (Hoover always went straight to any Congressman on whom he got dirt and let him know about it, putting the man in his back pocket), then it is willing to blackmail anyone who becomes inconvenient. That Barack Obama thinks we’re so naive or uninformed about American history that we will buy his assurances that the NSA information on us would never be used is a sad commentary. Indeed, we cannot know for sure that Obama himself and other high American officials are not being blackmailed into taking the positions they do on domestic surveillance. If the American people do accept such empty words, then I suppose they deserve to have Hoover’s pervy successors in their bedrooms....... Cue GOPhers Rep. Peter King, Rep. Mike Rogers et. al. (more on them in a bit) and a host of Democrats led by the likes of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calf.) NEXT Buzzfeed Staffer Benny Johnson explains how America’s Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead Edward Snowden has made some dangerous enemies. As the American intelligence community struggles to contain the public damage done by the former National Security Agency contractor’s revelations of mass domestic spying, intelligence operators have continued to seethe in very personal terms against the 30-year-old whistle-blower. “In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. “A lot of people share this sentiment.” “I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon official, a former special forces officer, said bluntly. “I do not take pleasure in taking another human beings life, having to do it in uniform, but he is single-handedly the greatest traitor in American history.” That violent hostility lies just beneath the surface of the domestic debate over NSA spying is still ongoing. Some members of Congress have hailed Snowden as a whistle-blower, the New York Times has called for clemency, and pundits regularly defend his actions on Sunday talk shows. In intelligence community circles, Snowden is considered a nothing short of a traitor in wartime. “His name is cursed every day over here,” a defense contractor told BuzzFeed, speaking from an overseas intelligence collections base. “Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him.” One Army intelligence officer even offered BuzzFeed a chillingly detailed fantasy. “I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” he said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.” There is no indication that the United States has sought to take vengeance on Snowden, who is living in an undisclosed location in Russia without visible security measures, according to a recent Washington Post interview. And the intelligence operators who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity did not say they expected anyone to act on their desire for revenge. But their mood is widespread, people who regularly work with the intelligence community said. “These guys are emoting how pissed they are,” Peter Singer, a cyber-security expert at the Brookings Institute. “Do you think people at the NSA would put a statue of him out front?” The degree to which Snowden’s revelations have damaged intelligence operations are also being debated............ On the ground, intelligence workers certainly say the damage has been done. The NSA officer complained that his sources had become “useless.” The Army intelligence officer said the revelations had increased his “blindness.” “I do my work in a combat zone so now I have to see the effects of a Snowden in a combat zone. It will not be pretty,” he said. And while government officials have a long record of overstating the damage from leaks, some specific consequences seem logical. “By [Snowden] showing who our collections partners were, the terrorists have dropped those carriers and email addresses,” the DOD official said. “We can’t find them because he released that data. Their electronic signature is gone.” JANE MAYER at The New Yorker did an interview with Snowden Snowden Calls Russian-Spy Story “Absurd” in Exclusive Interview ........ Speaking from Moscow, where he is a fugitive from American justice, Snowden told The New Yorker, “This ‘Russian spy’ push is absurd.” On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mike Rogers, a Republican congressman from Michigan who is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described Snowden as a “thief, who we believe had some help.” The show’s host, David Gregory, interjected, “You think the Russians helped Ed Snowden?” Rogers replied that he believed it was neither “coincidence” nor “a gee-whiz luck event that he ended up in Moscow under the handling of the F.S.B.” Snowden, in a rare interview that he conducted by encrypted means from Moscow, denied the allegations outright, stressing that he “clearly and unambiguously acted alone, with no assistance from anyone, much less a government.” He added, “It won’t stick…. Because it’s clearly false, and the American people are smarter than politicians think they are.” If he were a Russian spy, Snowden asked, “Why Hong Kong?” And why, then, was he “stuck in the airport forever” when he reached Moscow? (He spent forty days in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport.) “Spies get treated better than that.” In the nine months since Snowden first surfaced, there has been intense speculation about his motives and methods. But “a senior F.B.I. official said on Sunday that it was still the bureau’s conclusion that Mr. Snowden acted alone,” the New York Times reported this weekend, adding that the agency has not publicly revealed any evidence that he was working in conjunction with any foreign intelligence agency or government. The issue is key to shaping the public’s perceptions of Snowden. Representative Rogers, on “Meet the Press,” went on to allege that “some of the things he did were beyond his technical capabilities. Raises more questions. How he arranged travel before he left. How he was ready to go—he had a ‘go bag,’ if you will.” Gregory then asked Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, and who was also a guest on the show, whether she agreed that Snowden may have had help from the Russians. She did not dismiss the notion. “He may well have,” she said. “We don’t know at this stage.” On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Rogers made similar allegations, saying, “This wasn’t a random smash and grab, run down the road, end up in China, the bastion of Internet freedom, and then Russia, of course, the bastion of Internet freedom.” ............... Snowden told me that having a go bag packed—something that Rogers described as highly suspicious—reflected his work deployed overseas for the C.I.A. He’d had “a go bag packed since 2007. It’s not an exotic practice for people who have lived undercover on government orders,” Snowden said. “It’s not the smears that mystify me,” Snowden told me. “It’s that outlets report statements that the speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation.” Snowden went on to poke fun at the range of allegations that have been made against him in the media without intelligence officials providing some kind of factual basis: “ ‘We don’t know if he had help from aliens.’ ‘You know, I have serious questions about whether he really exists.’ ” Snowden went on, “It’s just amazing that these massive media institutions don’t have any sort of editorial position on this. I mean, these are pretty serious allegations, you know?” He continued, “The media has a major role to play in American society, and they’re really abdicating their responsibility to hold power to account.” Asked about this, George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC’s “This Week,” defended the coverage. Stephanopoulos pointed out that when the congressman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, alleged that Snowden was “cultivated by a foreign power” and “helped by others,” Stephanopoulos pressed him for details, twice. “I did two follow-ups,” Stephanopoulos said, “and got as much as the congressman was going to give up.” ....... MORE! And for all those peeps like Rogers and those "intelligence operators" who want Snowden "tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him” they obviously don't understand the Constituion's definition of treason. Article Three of the United States Constitution Section 3: Treason (wiki) clearly states

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Peter Hart at FAIR.org covers the entire episode in Snowden Is a Janitor Working for the Russians ............ So there's no evidence yet that any of this is true. But since the charges are repeated everywhere in the media, along with the old even-the-liberal-New-Republic trick, means that this line of attack is punchy or something. Newsweek's piece isn't even all that clear:

But scrapping over whether the whistle-blower was a Russian agent is futile now-–and mostly silly, says Oleg Kalugin, an ex-KGB general who spent much of his 32-year career running espionage operations in and against the United States. From what he has seen and heard, Kalugin told Newsweek, Snowden wasn’t a spy.

So there's no evidence for these charges, Snowden denies them, US intelligence doesn't seem to think they add up–but this is a potent line of attack on Snowden? It's a curious take. If lawmakers are making unfounded allegations about a whistleblower, and those allegations are being repeated across the media, one might think the real problem is with a media culture. THEN Behind the WSJ Pay Wall Jesselyn Radack: Why Edward Snowden Wouldn't Get a Fair Trial The Espionage Act of 1917 wasn't intended to prosecute whistleblowers like him—or Bradley Manning. While the controversy surrounding Edward Snowden's dissemination of National Security Agency information continues, members of Congress, journalists and advocacy groups keep repeating the same argument: Mr. Snowden should turn himself in, mount a solid defense and all will be righted at trial. That's a fantasy. I served as legal adviser to two high-profile whistleblowers between 2010 and 2013, former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake and former CIA officer John Kiriakou, both charged with espionage. I also witnessed last... AACK stoopid pay wall! Watch Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden’s legal advisors and also National Security and Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project on Meet the David Sunday! WaPo's Ellen Nakashima writes Independent review board says NSA phone data program is illegal and should end An independent executive branch board has concluded that the National Security Agency’s long-running program to collect billions of Americans’ phone records is illegal and should end. In a strongly worded report to be issued Thursday, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) said that the statute upon which the program was based, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.” The board’s conclusion goes further than President Obama, who said in a speech Friday that he thought the NSA’s database of records should be moved out of government hands but did not call for an outright halt to the program. The board had shared its conclusions with Obama in the days leading up to his speech. The divided panel also concluded that the program raises serious threats to civil liberties, has shown limited value in countering terrorism and is not sustainable from a policy perspective. “We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation,” said the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.” ............. The 238-page report is arguably the most extensive analysis to date of the program’s statutory and constitutional underpinnings, as well as of its practical value. It rejects the reasoning of at least 15 federal surveillance court judges and the Justice Department in saying that the program cannot be grounded in Section 215. That statute requires that records sought by the government — in this case phone numbers dialed, call times and durations, but not call content — be relevant to an authorized investigation. But the board found that it is impossible that all the records collected — billions daily — could be relevant to a single investigation “without redefining that word in a manner that is circular, unlimited in scope.” Moreover, instead of compelling phone companies to turn over records already in their possession, the program requires them to furnish newly generated call data on a daily basis. “This is an approach lacking foundation in the statute,” the report said. “At its core, the approach boils down to the proposition that essentially all telephone records are relevant to essentially all international terrorism investigations,” the report said. This approach, it said, “at minimum, is in deep tension with the statutory requirement that items obtained through a Section 215 order be sought for ‘an investigation,’ not for the purpose of enhancing the government’s counterterrorism capabilities generally.” ............ Defenders of the program reacted sharply to the report’s findings on Thursday. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he agreed with the two dissenters “that the board should ... not partake in unwarranted legal analysis.” ............ The report concluded that the NSA collection raises “constitutional concerns’’ with regard to U.S. citizens’ rights of speech, association and privacy. “The connections revealed by the extensive database of telephone records gathered under the program will necessarily include relationships established among individuals and groups for political, religious, and other expressive purposes,’’ it said. “Compelled disclosure to the government of information revealing these associations can have a chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights.” ............ The board rejected the contention made by officials from Obama on down that the program was necessary to address a gap arising from a failure to detect an al Qaeda terrorist in the United States, Khalid al-Mihdhar, prior to the 2001 attacks. Mihdhar was in phone contact with a safehouse in Yemen, and though the NSA had intercepted the calls, it did not realize at the time that Mihdhar was calling from San Diego. ............. Second, the report said, the government need not have collected the entire nation’s calling records to identify the San Diego number from which Mihdhar made his calls. It asserted that the government could have used existing legal authorities to request from U.S. phone companies the records of any calls made to or from the Yemen number. “Doing so could have identified the San Diego number on the other end of the calls,” though, it noted, the speed of the carriers’ responses likely would vary. ............ “The Board believes that the Section 215 program has contributed only minimal value in combating terrorism beyond what the government already achieves through these and other alternative means,” the report said. “Cessation of the program would eliminate the privacy and civil liberties concerns associated with bulk collection without unduly hampering the government’s efforts, while ensuring that any governmental requests for telephone calling records are tailored to the needs of specific investigations.” Trying not to be politically outmaneuvered the GOPhers close ranks to try to win some electoral favor (and some CYA too). Writing for TIME's "Swampland" blog Zeke J Miller tells us Republican Party Calls For End To NSA Domestic Phone Records Program In the latest indication of a growing libertarian wing of the GOP, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution Friday calling for an investigation into the “gross infringement” of Americans’ rights by National Security Agency programs that were revealed by Edward Snowden. The resolution also calls on on Republican members of Congress to enact amendments to the Section 215 law that currently allows the spy agency to collect records of almost every domestic telephone call. The amendment should make clear that “blanket surveillance of the Internet activity, phone records and correspondence — electronic, physical, and otherwise — of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court,” the resolution reads. ........... BUT Long Island Republican Rep. Peter King slams RNC on NSA resolution reports POLITICO's Katie Glueck ........ “We’re going to make the Democrats and Barack Obama the party of national security,” he said. “It’s signing our own death warrant as a party.” ...... “Republicans are supposed to be the party of national defense,” King said. “It would be one thing if people wanted to pass legislation [posing] questions. But to talk about ‘spying’ and unconstitutionality … it’s basically repudiating the policies of the Republican Party over the last 12 years, policies that kept us safe.” Apparently King is all good with NSA refus[ing] to deny spying on members of Congress. FED UP? TAKE ACTION at Represent.US American Anti-corruption Act petition and more HERE! The BTV Last Word goes to J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alfred McCoy at TomDispatch.com. Here's what Tom Englehardt has to say. Spying has a history almost as ancient as humanity itself, but every now and then the rules of the game change. This post-9/11 moment of surveillance is one of those game-changers and the National Security Agency (NSA) has been the deal-breaker and rule-maker. The new rules it brought into existence are simple enough: you -- whoever you are and wherever you live on Planet Earth -- are a potential target. Get used to it. The most basic ground rule of the new system: no one is exempt from surveillance. But then there’s human nature to take into account. There’s the feeling of invulnerability that the powerful often have. If you need an example, look no further than what key officials around New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were willing to commit to emails, even in this day and age, when it came to their scheme to tie up traffic on the George Washington Bridge. Something similar has been true of the system NSA officials set up. Its rules of the road were that no one was to be exempt from surveillance. (Call me Angela Merkel.) They then plunged their creation into the deepest secrecy, in part because they couldn’t imagine a world without at least one categorical exemption: themselves. As it happens, Edward Snowden’s revelations fit the logic of the system the NSA created to a T. What the former agency contractor revealed, above all, was that the surveillance of anyone and everyone was the essence of our new world, and that not even the NSA would be exempt. He made that agency his own object of surveillance and so opened it up to the scrutiny of the rest of the planet. He gave its officials a dose of their own medicine. Much of the ensuing outrage from the U.S. intelligence community, including the calls for his head, the cries of “treason,” the demands to bring him to “justice,” and so on, reflect outrage over the fact that the agency had gotten a full-scale dose of its own rules. It turns out that you don’t have to be an ordinary citizen or a world leader to feel terrible when someone appropriates the right to surveil your life. When it happened to agency honchos, they undoubtedly felt just like Merkel or Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff or so many other figures who discovered that their lives and communications weren’t private and weren’t their own. In a perfectly human manner, reality being far too ugly for their taste, they wanted payback. There’s humor in the fact that the key figures involved in creating the foundations of a new, all-encompassing global security state simply couldn’t imagine the obvious happening. Unfortunately, as TomDispatch regular and historian of U.S. surveillance practices Alfred McCoy points out, what the NSA set up, despite the blowback it's now causing, is irresistible to Washington. Not surprisingly, as new information about the agency's methods continues to ooze out, the president’s recent NSA speech makes it clear that genuine “change” or “reform” isn't on the agenda, that little that matters will alter in the NSA’s methodology, and that nothing will be allowed to shake the system itself. - Tom READ Surveillance and Scandal: Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power by Alfred McCoy at www.tomdispatch.com. Read all of this! Hope you are staying warm and safe! See more news and views below! Click anything and be instantly smarter! We'll see you next week!

BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!_©

Headlines Monday, Jan. 20, 2014

• MLK DAY SPECIAL: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words We play his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, "I Have Been to the Mountain Top," that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.
  

Headlines Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2014

• AARON SWARTZ The Internet’s Own Boy: Film on Aaron Swartz Captures Late Activist’s Struggle for Online Freedom Today we spend the hour looking at the new documentary, "The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz." We play excerpts of the film and speak with Swartz’s father Robert, his brother Noah, his lawyer Elliot Peters, and filmmaker Brian Knappenberger.
  

Headlines Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014

• Kit Gruelle, a domestic violence survivor & Cynthia Hill, director of the new HBO documentary film "Private Violence" Private Violence: Survivors & Advocates Confront Victim Blaming & the Epidemic of Domestic Abuse
  
• Dan Cohen, social worker and the founding executive director of Music & Memory with Michael Rossato-Bennett, the director and producer of "Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory" Alive Inside: How the Magic of Music Proves Therapeutic for Patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia
  

Headlines Thursday, Jan. 23, 2014

• Richard Ray Perez, film director and producer. His most recent film, "Cesar’s Last Fast" "Cesar’s Last Fast": How Cesar Chavez Risked Death to Protect the Lives of Farmworkers He Championed
  
• Stanley Nelson, award-winning director of the new documentary, "Freedom Summer" Freedom Summer: How Civil Rights Activists Braved Violence to Challenge Racism in 1964 Mississippi
  
• Thomas Allen Harris, the director and producer of the new documentary, "Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People" Through a Lens Darkly: How African Americans Use Photography to Shape Their Cultural Representation
  

Headlines Friday, Jan. 24, 2014

• Hubert Sauper, director of the new documentary, “We Come As Friends” South Sudan Reaches Ceasefire, But Will Nascent State Survive Oil-Fueled Neocolonialism?
  
• Maryam Alkhawaja, Acting President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights We Are the Giant: Bahrain’s Top Family of Activists Pays Heavy Price for Challenging US-Backed Gov’t
  
• Gillian Robespierre, Director of the new romantic comedy about abortion called “Obvious Child” Romantic Comedy "Obvious Child" Offers Groundbreaking Cinematic Take on Abortion
  

GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders
»»» FEATURED SHOW Esther Cooper Jackson at 96: "Still in the Struggle" While we celebrate Dr. King on this hard-fought-for holiday, let us also remember the change-making heroes and she-roes living around us. People like Esther Cooper Jackson, now 96. ........ more!

BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!_©
»»» NFL Pro Bowl on ESPN AFC vs. NFC from Aloha Stadium in Honolulu! 7:00 pm et Sunday
»»» NBA on TNT Thursday Doubleheader! CAVS @ Knicks 8 pm et then Clippers @ Warriors 10:30 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 communities. The A.C.H.E. Act Is Re-Introduced In The 113th Congress!

Washington, DC – Today a group of U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers introduced the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act (ACHE Act, H.R. 526) to protect Appalachian families and communities from the nation’s most extreme form of coal mining, mountaintop removal. The Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act’s leading sponsors are Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), joined by original cosponsors Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD), Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA), Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Rep. Janice Schakowksy (D-IL), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and Rep. Jared Polis (DCO).

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! Tell the FCC: Restore Net Neutrality An appeals court just dealt the latest blow to the open Internet. The court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order because of the questionable legal framework the agency used when it adopted its Net Neutrality rules in 2010. This ruling means there is no one who can protect us from ISPs that block or discriminate against websites, applications or services. But there’s hope: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler can correct the agency’s past mistakes and truly protect our nation’s communications infrastructure. The agency must take the necessary steps to make broadband networks open, accessible, reliable and affordable for everyone. Tell the FCC to start treating broadband like a communications service, and to restore its Net Neutrality rules.

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! UPDATE! Legalize Democracy Film Premieres on Free Speech TV Jan 21 Move to Amend is thrilled to announce that the premiere of our mini documentary, Legalize Democracy, will be airing on Free Speech TV (FSTV) next week to coincide with the "anniversary" of Citizens United. Legalize Democracy is a 28 minute film by Dennis Trainor, Jr. about the movement to amend -- why it is needed, and how you can get involved. Watch live on our website here. 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 and check out his latest effort DontAttackSyria.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 From the Bradley Manning Support Network Announcing the Private Manning Support Network! August 26, 2013, By attorney David Coombs and the Private Manning Support Network (formerly the Bradley Manning Support Network). Additional clarification on PVT Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's request regarding her gender and name. With your continued support, our network will continue its advocacy efforts in support our heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower through this new phase of her life. ....... UPDATE! Chelsea Manning Awarded Sam Adams Integrity Prize for 2014 JJanuary 22, 2014. By the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII). Chelsea Manning has been awarded this years's Integrity in Intelligence award for "casting much-needed daylight on the true toll and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq; human rights abuses by U.S. and “coalition” forces, mercenaries, and contractors; and the roles that spying and bribery play in international diplomacy." ..... AND Update 01/22/14: Manning should be set free immediately, but parole could happen by 2020 Looking beyond the immediate clemency appeal, there is no reason Chelsea will not be set free in 2020 when she first becomes eligible for parole. Chelsea has sent a letter with the exact rules and conditions parole will entail. .....

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. WATCH THIS MOVIE at Top Documentary Films Resonance: Beings of Frequency Now we live an an ocean of electromagnetic radiation. It’s all around us now, invisible, but we know it’s there. Every time you lift up your mobile phone you know it’s there. It is very hard to turn the clock back, in fact it is impossible, but we need to be aware of the adverse health effects so that we can have the choice of taking precautions against the exposures. How we could have possibly thought that putting microwaves to our brain was safe. We just don’t fully understand what we’re doing. "Resonance: Beings of Frequency" is the first documentary to investigate the actual mechanisms by which mobile phone technology can cause cancer. The film takes a deeper look at how humanity is reacting to the most profound environmental change the planet has ever seen. Read more HERE!!

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: 2,309 US Military Dead as of Jan. 24, 2014
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
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media at informationclearinghouse

• This Week (ABC) Host George Stephanopoulos
  • White House press secretary Jay Carney
  • House Counterterrorism and Intelligence Sub-Committee Chair Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.
  • ROUNDTABLE: ABC News’ Cokie Roberts, Yahoo News national political columnist Matt Bai, CNN “Crossfire” co-host Van Jones, Patriot Voices chair and former Sen. Rick Santorum, and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.
  • filmmaker Greg Whiteley discusses his unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the Romney family and campaign for his new documentary “Mitt,” premiering on Netflix this weekend.
  

  
  

• Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
  • Tea Party Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas
  • Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
  • chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas
  • Tennis star Billie Jean King and Brian Boitano
  • ROUNDTABLE: Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard and President Obama's former Chief of Staff and CBS News Contributor Bill Daley.
  

  
  

• 60 Minutes (CBS)
  • The Fox 'News'-ification of CBS News and '60 Minutes': 'The Cleantech Crash'
  • Coming Up Sunday, Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. ET
  • Virginia Senator recounts mentally ill son attacking him
  • Jay Leno on losing "The Tonight Show" twice
  • Youth jobs program helping Fortune 500 companies
  

  
  

• 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.
  • Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul
  • Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
  • Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden’s legal advisors and also National Security and Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project
  • Tennis legend Billie Jean King
  • Assistant Majority Leader Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)
  • ROUNDTABLE: Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-CA); former FCC Chairman, now President and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Michael Powell; Republican Strategist Mike Murphy; New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Carolyn Ryan; and NBC's Chuck Todd.
  

  
  

• State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) Sunday at 9 am ET and Noon ET.
  • Exclusive interview with Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, Russia’s Ambassador to the US on the Sochi Olympics
  • White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer
  • House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
  • Deputy Majority Whip Tom Cole (R-OK).
  • Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
  

  
  

• 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 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!
  • THURSDAY! Bob continues updates on the WVA Freedom Industries chem leak! Plus a call from Cleveland's own Mr. Stress in Hour 3! Listen NOW HERE - Thursday, January 23rd, 2014 (mp3)! Amen to the White Rose Society! Bob's show archives at the White Rose HERE! Keep Bob on the air! 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' - January 23, 2014 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Surprise! Second toxic chemical also contaminating WV's water supply; Texas homeowners don't care for fracking earthquakes; Southern leg of Keystone XL pipeline now open for business; Score one for the Arctic - court setback for Shell's Arctic Adventure; PLUS: Full speed ahead for L.A.'s first-ever outdoor pro hockey game --- in a record heat wave... All that and more in today's Green News Report! IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links at site): Obama: Fossil fuels are here to stay; Targets of climate hate mail rally to support one another; Coal terminals and climate chaos: is this the future we want?; WA State moves on its own to stop ocean acidification; How Oil Drilling Is Like the "Civil Rights Revolution"; Extreme El Nino events to double ... PLUS: Big Green to Obama: "All of the above" a compromise we can't afford ... and much, MUCH more! ...
  • 'Green News Report' - January 21, 2014 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: It's official: 2013 was 4th warmest year on record globally; West Virginia's water polluter Freedom Industries declares bankruptcy; Coal responsible for 50% of toxic water pollution; Halliburton exec gets probation for destroying evidence on 2010 BP Gulf spill; PLUS: California drought emergency - Arizona and New Mexico, you're next ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! Romney Admits to Being a 'Taker' New documentary captures the failed Presidential candidate admitting that he 'started off with money and education' thanks only to his father who was 'the real deal'...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! Judge Finds PA Photo ID Law Unconstitutional Issues devastating ruling, permanent injunction on state GOP's polling place restriction, finding no 'compelling state interest' for infringing on state constitution's 'fundamental right'...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! Bipartisan Presidential Commission Releases Report on Electoral Reform Key point on 'fraud' certain to disappoint Republicans, be somewhat ignored by Democrats...
  • BRADCAST! Lawsuit Against FEC After GOP Commissioners Give Pass to Rove's Crossroads GPS: KPFK 'BradCast' PLUS: 'Red-baiting' Snowden; MORE!... dollar development" that may explain it all; PLUS: Bob Kincaid from WV on the chemical spill...
  

  
  

• 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 News & Comment 22 Jan 2014 PBC News & Comment: Snowden Rejects Spy Smear: “I Acted Alone” Smeared by House Intel chair Mike Rogers on Sunday political TV show, Ed Snowden tells The New Yorker: “I acted alone”….
  • PBC News & Comment 23 Jan 2014 PBC News & Comment: Journalist Shuler Marks 4 Months in Jail, as Media Blitz Justin Bieber’s DUI Corporate media outlets offer detailed coverage of pop star’s arrest, as Roger Shuler marks 4 months in jail, no end….
  • PBC Standard Podcast January 22, 2014Harpers Columnist Thomas Frank Says Dems Already Making Excuses for Expected 2014 Losses
  

  
  

• 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! January 24, 2014 Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern. Best of Ring of Fire Radio!
  • Best-selling author Cliff Schecter will be here to discuss the news of the week.
  • David Cole from The Nation magazine will tell us why we need an overhaul of our nation’s privacy laws.
  • Healthcare blogger Maggie Mahar will expose the media’s lies about Obamacare.
  • And author Michael Klare will tell us why the natural gas boom will do nothing to stop the world from hitting peak oil output.
  • NEW! This Week on Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV! January 25, 2014 Sundays at NOON!
  »» Attorney Mike Burg is going to talk about the GOP’s plan to dumb down the country, which will help make more loyal Republican stooges.
  »» Dr. Tom Schneider will explain the use of “telemedicine,” which could bring professional care to those who likely would never receive it.
  »» Investigative journalist Alexis Goldstein is going to explain the Volcker Rule, and what that is going to mean for the future of investor protections.
  »» And Ring of Fire co-host Sam Seder will be here to talk about the biggest news of the week that the corporate-controlled media refuses to cover.
  • Ring of Fire’s Weekly Rewind Posted on December 21, 2013 by Joshua Schwitzerlett - Ring of Fire’s top stories from the past week.
  • 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.”
  • Ring of Fire’s Weekly Rewind Posted on January 25, 2014 by Joshua Schwitzerlett
  • VIDEO! Seder: How Citizens United Destroyed Politics (VIDEO) Ring of Fire co-host Sam Seder and author Cliff Schecter discuss the 4 year anniversary of Citizens United v. FEC, and the negative consequences the ruling has had on our political campaign system.
  • VIDEO! Papantonio: How To Stick It To Wall Street Bankers (VIDEO) Wall Street bankers made billions of dollars selling toxic subprime mortgages to people who had no idea what they were agreeing to, but they were sold on the idea that the bank would take care of them and they would finally be able to buy a house. After these people were duped into signing, the banks raised interest rates, forcing more mortgage defaults than you could count. But now cities across the country are fighting back against the banks. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio speaks with author Les Leopold about how they are protecting homeowners with something called “reverse eminent domain.”
  • 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 1/20/14 Martin Luther King Jr. Day Happy Martin Luther Jr. Day. Today’s show is a compilation of clips including excerpts from “The Frank McGee Sunday Report: Martin Luther King Profile,” NBC News, May 7, 1967, followed by a brief excerpt from a speech at Cleveland, Ohio, on April 28, 1967. Then extended excerpts of a sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967, then the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite reporting on the assassination on 4-4-68 and finally, Nina Simone singing “Why?” recorded live three days after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • TUESDAY 1/21/14 Josh Orton: Citizens United Turns 4 & The Beginning of The End For Christ Christie
  • WEDNESDAY 1/22/14 Janet Reitman: The Stealth War on Abortion
  • THURSDAY 1/23/14 Wendell Potter: Single Payer, Obamacare Plusses & Minuses
  • FRIDAY 1/24/14 Casual Friday: Cliff Schecter
  • 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
  • KEISER REPORT ON FACEBOOK 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
  • Assange: How cryptography is a key weapon in the fight against empire states by maxkeiser - READ What began as a means of retaining individual freedom can now be used by smaller states to fend off the ambitions of larger ones (guardian.co.uk)
  • Gold Mint Runs Overtime in Race to Meet World Coin Demand by Stacy Herbert - READ Gold Mint Runs Overtime in Race to Meet World Coin Demand (bloomberg.com)
  • HSBC Bank Allegedly on Verge of Collapse: Second Major Banking Crash Imminent by maxkeiser - READ Concerns about an imminent bank crash were further fuelled today at news that HSBC are restricting the amount of cash that customers can withdraw from their own bank accounts. (iacknowledge.net)
  • The Recent “New High” in Stocks Is as Bogus as the Unemployment Rate by Charles Hugh Smith - SThis is what happens when the Status Quo is incapable of reforming itself or recognizing reality: propaganda and bogus statistics are substituted for actual solutions. The most heavily touted statistical “proofs” that the U.S. economy is “recovering” and “growing” are the unemployment rate and the stock market. Both are completely bogus. Yes, bogus, as in phony, wrong, rigged, misleading, carefully crafted propaganda..........
  • FT questions ‘pixelated gold’ nonexistent in London and NY vaults and suggests Germany won’t ever get their Gold back by maxkeiser - READ The FT Goes There: “Demand Physical Gold” As One Day Paper Price Manipulation Will End “Catastrophically” (zerohedge.com)
  • KEISER REPORT [KR552] Keiser Report: Hand Jive of Fraud We discuss the fact that brokerages and exchanges have been become so packed with fraud, there’s hardly room to commit fraud and so the hand jive of bank fraud has been born as brokers front run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, defrauding the hapless American taxpayer. In the second half, Max interviews Sandeep Jaitly of Fekete Research about the gold market.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR553] Keiser Report: Vassal State of Troika In this episode of the Keiser Report, we discuss the fact that a vassal state of the Troika has been listed as number 9 in terms of economic freedom by the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal. With that, they ask what is economic freedom in a neo-liberal, hyper-contractualized and financialized world run by big business, big banks and big bureaucrats. In the second half, Max interviews Payu Harris and his attempt to bring Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Payu suggests cryptos and the blockchain can offer unbreakable, sacrosanct contracts. [Here is the link to the MazaCoin account at Twitter. Do your own research.]
  • KEISER REPORT [KR554] Keiser Report: Endless Fiat money supply We iscuss populations trading economic sovereignty for an endless supply of fiat lottery tickets which somehow always come up losers and the water cannon of financial fraud making its way to the UK in preparation for austerity protests. In the second half, Max interviews Dr. Clive Peedell, co-leader of the National Health Action Party, who claims that David Cameron has, indeed, begun privatizing the National Health Service if you were to use the definition by the World Health Organization. They discuss the impossibility of ever having a market in healthcare where there is always going to be an asymmetry of information between doctor and patient (or, ‘customer,’ in the case of privatization).
  • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-1302] The Truth About Markets – 11 January 2014 Stacy Summary: First episode of 2014! We discuss the recent Keiser Report interview with Kim Dotcom; their observations on Jacob Applebaum’s talk at Chaos Computer Club conference about the NSA spying programs – Turbine and Turmoil. They also talk about the role of corporations like Microsoft and Yahoo degrading the infrastructure and security of the internet. And they ask what hope is there when Bill Gates is voted the ‘most admired person in the world.’ 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 from 3-5 PM Eastern HERE.) Plenty of archives too!
  • Scott Horton Radio Show Progress Report: All right, yall, welcome back to the show to the inaugural Scott Horton Show progress report! It’s been an eventful year since the show and I (amicably) parted ways with Antiwar.com, so I thought I would highlight just a few of the show’s important milestones, as well as preview some of the exciting projects to look for in the near future. ........ The show on Pacifica KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., still called Antiwar Radio, has now moved to join their Sunday morning public affairs line up (8:30 am pt), and remains the largest source of listeners, with 15,000-20,000 people tuning in weekly. The future: Liberty Express Radio is growing and bringing me along for the ride. The great Charles Goyette hooked me up with Alan Butler and the Liberty Express earlier this year, and what has been the daily replay there from 3-5 eastern time has become my best listened-to show. And now they’re adding my friend Tom Woods to the lineup from 2-3 PM. That does it. I’m making the switch! Starting Monday, October 14, the live show is moving to 3-5 PM Eastern time on LibertyExpressRadio.com, as well as NoAgenda and my own stream.......
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 01/22/14 Philip Giraldi: Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the intelligence community’s role in furthering an Iran nuclear deal; a common sense foreign policy vs. the Israel lobby; the international businesses lining up to trade with a sanctions-free Iran; and why the US might start the war on terror all over again.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 01/23/14 Robert P. Murphy: Robert P. Murphy, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism", discusses the incredible wealth possessed by the 85 richest people on the planet; Bill Gates’ proclamation that there will be no more poor nations; and the bubbles in real estate, stocks, and the dollar itself.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 01/24/14 Sheldon Richman: Sheldon Richman, vice president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, discusses the leftist hack-job on Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald in The New Republic; why Democrats are afraid of young people turning to libertarianism; and the anti-authoritarian common ground that’s uniting people from across the political spectrum.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 01/24/14 Gareth Porter: Gareth Porter, an independent investigative journalist and historian, discusses Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis’s whistleblowing on senior Army officials lying about progress in Afghanistan; why the Afghan army would rather make deals with the Taliban than fight them; and the 2007 Iraq “surge” – David Petraeus’s dubious claim to fame.
  • Visit his blog Stress. See ScottHorton.org for archives! Send emails to Scott at scotthorton.org to help Scott keep his podcast going!
  • Older interviews at Antiwar Radio!
  

  
  

• fauxnews
  • White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer
  • Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
  
  
  

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