Sunday, April 20, 2014

Brick TeeVee's 420 Special!

4-20 SPECIAL! We hope you tuned it to WRUW-FM's Telethon Week two weeks ago! We had a blast and raised some serious coin while giving our listeners excellent premiums, from logo T-shirts and shot glasses to CDs and special premiums on many of the shows! You can always listen to WRUW on our 128K stream and download shows from our 1-week rolling archive for each show at our Program Guide! And it's not too late to donate! We'll have the SUPPORT WRUW-FM page up for a few more weeks (choose show #61 "LIVE from CLEVELAND"). All the standard premiums are available including our music premiums HERE. The WRUW Tech Crew will be using some of the donations to upgrade our LFC mixing board and outboard gear and purchase a new streaming server! If you missed LFC last Thursday download LIVE FROM CLEVELAND now with Cleveland band "ROGUE" live in Studio A! Good Item! While we were busy with Telethon the world didn't stop. Here are a few items of interest from two weeks ago!
H.O.R.N/Malloy chatter Terris offers Reagan’s Road to Climate Perdition by Sam Parry at ConsortiumNews.com The documentary “A Road Not Taken” chronicles the story of the 32 solar panels that President Jimmy Carter installed on the roof of the White House in 1979, the same solar panels President Ronald Reagan unceremoniously removed..... AND Malloy chatter TimFromLA finds Stuxnet Source Code Released Online - Download Now at thehackernews.com by Mohit Kumar! That's right! Blow up your own nuclear centrifuges! Ryan Grim at HuffPoAOL deadpans Now He Tells Us: McCutcheon Attorney Admits Money Is Not Speech Dan Backer, the lead lawyer behind a landmark case that further opened the campaign finance floodgates, conceded in an interview with HuffPost Live that money is not, in fact, speech. The effort to repeal laws regulating the role that moneyed interests can play in elections has long been animated by the notion that any such restriction is a violation of the First Amendment's right of free speech. Indeed, in his first brief comment to HuffPost Live, Backer, who counseled Shaun McCutcheon, referenced speech no fewer than four times in explaining the Supreme Court's rationale in its McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission decision striking down certain campaign contribution limits last week:
    "I don't understand why anyone should have their free speech limited to help somebody else feel like they can speak more. The Constitution does not envision the idea of, as the court said, 'weakening the rights of some and the speech of some in order to enhance or promote the speech of others.'"
Money quickly transformed in Backer's reasoning. "The court did not say, and really neither does any serious commentator, that money is speech. Money is not speech. Money is a necessary tool to engage in political speech and political association," he said. If money isn't speech, HuffPost asked, then why is it out of line for the government to regulate campaign donations? "It's not out of line. It's allowed to regulate money in elections in order to prevent quid pro quo corruption," Backer answered, referencing the narrow definition of corruption cited by the Supreme Court in the McCutcheon decision. NO SHIT! Watch for yerself at the link! Amazing considering the Cato Instiute and other Libertarian and Tea Bag outlets have long held the view that Regarding expenditures, the Supreme Court has for some time answered this question with “never.” Limits on spending abridge the freedom of speech. That answer makes sense. Really? REALLY? Now comes this from Michael Kreiger at LibertyBlitzkreig.com New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. From a recent study titled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University. In response to the publication of an academic study that essentially proves the United States is nothing more than an oligarchy, many commentators have quipped sentiments that go something like “so tell me something I don’t know.” While I agree that the conclusion is far from surprising to anyone paying attention, the study is significant for two main reasons. First, there is a certain influential segment of the population which has a disposition which requires empirical evidence and academic studies before they will take any theory seriously. Second, some of the conclusions can actually prove quite helpful to activists who want to have a greater impact in changing things. This shouldn’t be particularly difficult since their impact at the moment is next to zero. What is most incredible to me is that the data under scrutiny in the study was from 1981-2002. One can only imagine how much worse things have gotten since the 2008 financial crisis. The study found that even when 80% of the population favored a particular public policy change, it was only instituted 43% of the time. We saw this first hand with the bankster bailout in 2008, when Americans across the board were opposed to it, but Congress passed TARP anyway (although they had to vote twice). Even more importantly, several years of supposed “economic recovery” has not changed the public’s perception of the bankster bailouts. For example, a 2012 study showed that only 23% percent of Americans favored the bank bailouts and the disgust was completely bipartisan, as the Huffington Post points out. Personally, I think the banker bailouts will go down as one of the most significant turning points in American history. ............ Another thing that the study noted was that average citizens sometimes got what they wanted, but this is almost always when their preferences overlap with the oligarchs. When this occurs it is entirely coincidental, and in many cases may the result of public opinion being molded by the elite-controlled special interest groups themselves. How pathetic. I read the entire 42 page study and have highlighted what I found to be the key excerpts below. Please share with others and enjoy: ...... GOOD ITEM! Read on! Speaking of the Oligarchs BTV correspondent MADDY quips "Their motto is supposedly....do no harm. " Google is building up a digital superstate, says German media boss writes Philip Oltermann in Berlin for TheGuardian.com The chief executive of Europe's largest newspaper publisher has accused Google of abusing a monopoly position in the digital economy to discriminate against competitors and build up a "superstate". In an open letter to Google's Eric Schmidt published in Wednesday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the head of Germany's Axel Springer SE publishing house, Mathias Döpfner, said the US company was operating a business model that "in less reputable circles would be called a protection racket", discriminating against competitors in its search rankings. Google's motto was "if you don't want us to finish you off, you better pay", he said. Döpfner – whose publishing portfolio includes Europe's best-selling newspaper, the tabloid Bild, as well as the centre-right broadsheet Die Welt – admitted that his own company was completely reliant on Google, a fact that made him and other publishers scared. "Google's employees are always decidedly friendly to us and other publishing houses, but we don't communicate on a level playing field. How could we? Google doesn't need us. But we need Google." Döpfner argued that there had been a "fundamental shift in opinion" about Google among European citizens since Edward Snowden had revealed "close connections between big US online providers and the US intelligence agencies" last year. "No one knows as much about its customers as Google. Even private and business emails are read by Gmail and analysed if the need exists," he said. He described the view, which he attributed to both Schmidt and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in response to the NSA revelations, that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", as disconcerting. "It stands for a mental attitude and a view of the world that is common in totalitarian regimes, not in free societies. The head of the Stasi or any other secret service in a dictatorship could have come out with a line like that."...... Read the entire letter An open letter to Eric Schmidt - Why we fear Google. In a related matter at WIRED.com's Threat Level Kevin Poulsen reports Snowden’s Email Provider Loses Appeal Over Encryption Keys A federal appeals court has upheld a contempt citation against the founder of the defunct secure e-mail company Lavabit, finding that the weighty internet privacy issues he raised on appeal should have been brought up earlier in the legal process. The decision disposes of a closely watched privacy case on a technicality, without ruling one way or the other on the substantial issue: whether an internet company can be compelled to turn over the master encryption keys for its entire system to facilitate court-approved surveillance on a single user. The case began in June, when Texas-based Lavabit was served with a “pen register” order requiring it to give the government a live feed of the email activity on a particular account. The feed would include metadata like the “from” and “to” lines on every message, and the IP addresses used to access the mailbox. Because pen register orders provide only metadata, they can be obtained without probable cause that the target has committed a crime. But in this case the court filings suggest strongly that the target was indicted NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Lavabit’s most famous user. Levison resisted the order on the grounds that he couldn’t comply without reprogramming the elaborate encryption system he’d built to protect his users’ privacy. He eventually relented and offered to gather up the email metadata and transmit it to the government after 60 days. Later he offered to engineer a faster solution. But by then, weeks had passed, and the FBI was determined to get what it wanted directly and in real time. So in July the government served Levison with a search warrant striking at the Achilles’ heel of his system: the private SSL key that would allow the FBI to decrypt traffic to and from the site, and collect Snowden’s metadata directly. The government promised it wouldn’t use the key to spy on Lavabit’s other 400,000 users, which the key would technically enable them to do. Levison turned over the keys as a nearly illegible computer printout in 4-point type. In early August, Hilton – who once served on the top-secret FISA court – ordered Levison to provide the keys instead in the industry-standard electronic format, and began fining him $5,000 a day for noncompliance. After two days, Levison complied, but then immediately shuttered Lavabit altogether. Levison appealed the contempt order to the 4th Circuit, and civil rights groups, including the ACLU and the EFF, filed briefs in support of his position. But the appeals court today said that the bulk of Levison’s arguments couldn’t be considered, because he hadn’t clearly raised them in the lower court, where he represented himself without a lawyer for much of the proceedings. .................. The Lavabit case is the only publicly documented instance where a district judge ordered an internet company to hand over its SSL key to the U.S. government. If the practice had been given the imprimatur of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, it could have opened a new avenue for U.S. spies to expand their surveillance against users of U.S. internet services like Gmail and Dropbox. “The court focused its decision on procedural aspects of the case unrelated to the merits of Lavabit’s claims,” says ACLU attorney Brian Hauss, in a statement. “On the merits, we believe it’s clear that there are limits on the government’s power to coerce innocent service providers into its surveillance activities.” ....... But wait! There's more! The NSA Flat-Out Denies It Knew Anything About The Heartbleed Bug Before It Was Made Public reports BusinessInsider.com's Karyne Levy Earlier today, Bloomberg reported that the NSA has been using the Heartbleed bug to gather information about Internet users for years. But the NSA quickly denied the report in a tweet, saying that the "NSA was not aware of the recently identified Heartbleed vulnerability until it was made public." The Heartbleed bug is a security flaw in OpenSSL, a popular data encryption standard. This bug allows hackers to see passwords and encrypted information on hundreds of websites. Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the bug quickly became "a basic part of the agency’s tool kit for stealing account passwords and other common tasks." Here's the tweet from the NSA: [.....] Here's the official statement from the NSA: [.....] The National Security Council, a policy-making group that's chaired by President Obama, also sent a statement to NBC News: [....] ...... Kyle Russel has this REPORT: NSA Has Been Using The 'Heartbleed Bug' For Years If you needed further motivation to change your passwords, it turns out that the NSA has been utilizing the giant security vulnerability known as the "Heartbleed bug" to gather information about Internet users, Bloomberg reports. The bug, which takes advantage of a previously unnoticed programming error in a widely used encryption standard to trick Web servers into giving up valuable user data, has affected nearly everyone on the Internet. As we explained on Tuesday, as many as 66% of websites use the software containing the flaw, including major services like Facebook, Yahoo, and Gmail. That makes it an extremely useful tool for the NSA's data collection efforts, though its use throws into question the NSA's intentions and efficacy. After all, it's difficult, maybe even impossible, to determine which puts American cybersecurity at greater risk: leaving American citizens' data vulnerable for two years, to a method that doesn't leave a trace; or the threats that the NSA is fighting against using the bug itself. ....... Holy Encryption Backdoor Batman! Here's a few more from BusinessInsider.com And as BTV previously reported last July Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages! explaining
  • • Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism
  • • Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
  • • Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls
  • • Company says it is legally compelled to comply
Feel safer now? Are the cyberdots being connected in your mind yet? From HeartBleed to HeartBeat law North Dakota Fetal Heartbeat Abortion Law Ruled 'Invalid And Unconstitutional' Associated Press via HuffPoAOL BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that a North Dakota law that bans abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected is "invalid and unconstitutional." U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland on Wednesday ruled that the law passed last year by the North Dakota Legislature "cannot withstand a constitutional challenge." The law would ban abortions as early as six weeks. At The Nation professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University's Stephen Cohen asks Cold War Again: Who’s Responsible? The East-West confrontation over Ukraine, which led to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea but long predated it, is potentially the worst international crisis in more than fifty years—and the most fateful. A negotiated resolution is possible, but time may be running out. A new Cold War divide is already descending in Europe—not in Berlin but on Russia’s borders. Worse may follow. If NATO forces move toward western Ukraine or even to its border with Poland, as is being called for by zealous cold warriors in Washington and Europe, Moscow is likely to send its forces into eastern Ukraine. The result would be a danger of war comparable to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Even if the outcome is the non-military “isolation of Russia,” today’s Western mantra, the consequences will be dire. Moscow will not bow but will turn, politically and economically, to the East, as it has done before, above all to fuller alliance with China. The United States will risk losing an essential partner in vital areas of its own national security, from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan to threats of a new arms race, nuclear proliferation and more terrorism. And—no small matter—prospects for a resumption of Russia’s democratization will be terminated for at least a generation....... We urge you to read all of this then watch Stephen Cohen on DN! "We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We are Well into It": Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis What follows now is a discussion held on the BTV Editors secret bunker blog earlier this week. Please take note. BTV correspondent jen begins
    JebusGawd. Jews in eastern Ukraine told to register with pro-Russian forces, or else 4/17/2014 2:42pm by John Aravosis, America Blog (Yeah wasn't Aravosis a Clarkie? He's on The Obomber Dark Side without a doubt AND NOW a firm part of the neolib echo chamber and carrying their hateful "other" water -Ed.)
      .......Because the neo-Nazis share Putin’s agenda of attacking minorities, including gays, blacks and jews, the Kremlin is fine with letting them continue their criminal enterprise, mostly on the social media site VKontakte (VK.com), controlled by Putin ally Alister Usmanov. Usmanov’s other properties benefit from investments from the NYC and New York State pension funds, and the pension fund of the state of California, CalPERS. NY state and NYC, in addition to the state of California, apparently have no problem investing in Putin-allied Russian oligarchs who run ventures used by neo-Nazis to plan the abductions of 13 year old gay children.
    This could also be true -- from the comment section:
      MG1 • an hour ago The International Business Times actually translated the Novosti Donbassa story. This has all the earmarks of a false flag op by Brennan/Nuland, Inc. trying to make sure the rubes at home (like yourself, John) are fired up enough to back military intervention in Russia. Nothing like accusations of anti-semitism (which is, of course, rampant in the Svoboda and Right Secktor parties who the US used to execute it's coup in Kiev) to get the chronically lied to American people behind a yet another war. The propaganda and misinformation coming out of MSM is breathtaking. It is worse than the run up to the Iraq war
    Bingo. In short:
    • US/NATO co-opt former USSR satellite (SHOCK DOCTRINE)
    • Russia-Ukraine-EU agree to sharing economic agreement then only six hours later . . . . .
    • VIOLENT COUP begins and ends with Victoria Nuland's hand-picked neonazi thug (on BTV)
    • Western media IGNORE these facts (deliberately I surmise)
    • "Putin is aggressor" begins in US media as Crimea is "conquered" but no historical basis, strategic or otherwise, is explained. Peeps know only "horse-riding macho bully Putin" image
    • US/NATO escalates aggression by sending fleets to the area. Peeps say, "Hell Yeah!"
    • US MEDIA COMPLETELY IGNORE THE FACT THAT THE US IS THE PROVOCATEUR for the destabilization of Ukraine.
    WE ARE HERE. See NYU's Stephen Cohen DN! for more. "We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We are Well into It": Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis
    • COHEN: Almost alone among American media, you actually allowed Putin to speak for himself. He’s being filtered through the interpretation of the mass media here, allegedly, what he said, and it’s not representative. The second thing is, let us look just what’s happening at this moment, or at least yesterday.
    • STEPHEN COHEN: You left out one thing that he said which I consider to be unwise and possibly reckless. He went on to say that Russia wouldn’t go to war with us because our conventional weapons are superior. That is an exceedingly provocative thing to say. And he seems to be unaware, President Obama, that Russian military doctrine says that when confronted by overwhelming conventional forces, we can use nuclear weapons. They mean tactical nuclear weapons. I don’t think any informed president, his handlers, would have permitted him to make such a statement. In fact, depending on how far you want to take this conversation about the Obama administration, I don’t recall in my lifetime, in confrontations with Russia, an administration—I speak now of the president and his secretary of state—who seem in their public statements to be so misinformed, even uninformed, both about Ukraine and Russia. COHEN: And I think it’s important to emphasize, though I regret saying this, Russia will not back off. This is existential. Too much has happened. Putin—and it’s not just Putin. We seem to think Putin runs the whole of the universe. He has a political class. That political class has opinions. Public support is running overwhelmingly in favor of Russian policy. Putin will compromise at these negotiations, but he will not back off if confronted militarily. He will not.
    The REAL small d democracy was CO-OPT'D by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Go to ConsortiumNews.com's ROBERT PARRY who explains how Neocons Have Weathered the Storm There you have it. Think about that. EDIT: I think Wes Clark would call this "shaping the battlefield" but Chomsky et.al. would perceive this in a different light, not militarily but as a mass media frenzy I think. Any sightings of Wes? Wonder what the residents of Wes Clark Blvd in the Balkans think.
Our Left Coast Editor ms_in_la was all over this like paparazzi on Kevin Bacon, to wit: Well, funny you should ask that Filthy Rich! This is from a publication from yesterday. I took out the old battle hymn part about Wes trying to start war with Russia blah blah. But it appears a (cough) Democracy (cough) "foundation" sent Wes and a State Dept cohort (whom I'm half afraid to google) over there and they came to the conclusion (surprise surprise) we oughta send a bunch of (cough) weapons and equipment over there....to deliver democracy and maximize defense and all. Read on....
    News that General Wesley Clark, USA (Ret.) visited the Ukraine at the behest of the National Security Advisor there — and also a senior member of Ukraine’s parliament — should be a cause for alarm. A nonprofit foundation was involved in this exercise. There is a sense of open, almost joyful viciousness in all this pro-war, anti-Russian sentiments on opinion pages and television broadcasts. It is certainly racist and demeaning in tone. Such is the first step in convincing the public that the “transgressor” is equivalent to a retrovirus. Interim Report #1: Immediate Improvements Needed in Rapidly Implementing Non-Lethal US Military Assistance for Defense of Ukraine is available at Cryptome (and the New York Times) for viewing. General Clark and a former strategy advisor to Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger named Dr. Phillip Karber, indicates that the two “participated in 35 meetings with senior officials, military commanders and various politicians; with Karber visiting front line formations on the Northern, Eastern and Southern Fronts.” The two aging Cold War Warriors recommend immediate shipments of American Body Armor, Night Vision Devices, Communications Equipment, Aviation Fuel and “to maximize their defense potential” Clark and Karber recommend the acquisition of Mig-29’s, T-72 tanks, Man-Portable Air Defenses, and Anti-Tank weapons. Partial expenses for the Clark and Karber expedition were paid for by the Potomac Foundation, a nonprofit foundation in Vienna, Virginia. According to three of its Form 990’s, over the years it has received grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation, Soros/Open Society Fund, and Boeing. According to an official at the Potomac Foundation, some support is provided to Georgetown University, in particular, to Karber (the Chinese Tunnel guy). The official stated that the group does not have a website The Potomac Foundations also runs China Vitae as a charitable activity. According to China Vitae’s website it “was founded in 2001 with two objectives: to raise the quality and quantity of English language, biographical information on China’s top leadership; and to create a centralized repository of such information available to a worldwide audience.” China Vitae is run by husband and wife team David and Susan Gries. David Gries is on the board of the Washington Institute for Foreign Affairs and has affiliations to the CIA and Georgetown University. Members listed on the China Vitae website have an assortment of affiliations to universities, corporations and the US government. Foreign Internal Defense Operations (FIDO): Standard Playbook Given that US President Obama has blessed the new Kiev government with legitimacy, America now seeks to stabilize the country with infusions of cash, arms and advisors. And that means that FIDO is likely underway there. Former special operations soldiers—now defense contractors—are on the ground in Ukraine, and so are active duty special operators/advisors perhaps out of US Special Operations Command. They are training/tutoring Ukrainian security personnel. The execution of US national security/military strategy, operations, tactics are very predictable and based on using the impressive US Instruments of National Power to shape the target environment in America’s favor. There are many simultaneous operations underway both covert and quite overt. In particular, military information support operations (MISO) begin with manipulating the public consciousness through cyber and meat-space means. That effort is clearly seen in the hyper-hypocritical statements on Russia’s annexation of Crimea made by all top national security officials and members of the US Congress. The official words-of-war are gleefully reproduced by the mainstream media and assorted NGOs for a public seemingly unaware or uncaring of such serious international matters. There is little opposition to the anti-Russian, pro-war madness. Then again American infrastructure is crumbling from sea-to-shining sea and so there is a solid rational that can be made for not caring about foreign affairs. But Americans have seen this movie over and over again since the end of World War II. The script is the same, the bullshit propaganda/myth making is the same, the goals and objectives are the same, and the demonization of the adversary is the same. It is just so formulaic: the USA instigates and creatively destroys; Russia (or any opponent) attempts to counterpunch; China waits for the USA/Russia to commit suicide; and the rest of the world cowers, as they should, selecting to side with whatever one of the three giants can give them the best financial deal or “muscle.” At any rate, according to Joint Publication 3-22, Foreign Internal Defense, 12 July 2010:
      … joint operations, involving the application of all instruments of national power, support host nation efforts to build capability and capacity to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency… An internal defense and development program (IDAD) program blends four interdependent functions to prevent or counter internal threats. Balanced development attempts to achieve national goals through political, social, and economic programs, allowing all individuals and groups in the society to share in the rewards of development, thus alleviating frustration. The security function includes all activities implemented in order to protect the populace from violence and to provide a safe environment for national development. The security effort should establish an environment in which the HN can provide for its own security with limited US support. Neutralization, a political concept, physically and psychologically separates an insurgent or criminal element from the population, thereby making threatening elements irrelevant to the political process. It includes all lawful measures (except those that degrade the government’s legitimacy) to discredit, disrupt, preempt, disorganize, and defeat the insurgent organization. Mobilization provides organized manpower and materiel resources and includes all activities to motivate and organize popular support of the government. Mobilization allows the government to strengthen existing institutions, to develop new ones to respond to demands, and promotes the government’s legitimacy …
    The ideals stated in the American Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution are currently being crushed by those addicted to warfare, power, money and a view that “they” are the anointed ones, the ones that know what’s best for the masses. Great leaders—with all their faults—do not exist any longer in America, nor does a citizenry that vigorously debates and then instructs their representatives to compromise for the sake of the nation, not an ideology.
More at DissidentVoice.org FIDO and General Wes Clark in Ukraine Now you know. Tell everybody. NOW! And lastly here's jen with one victory we can build on from Ashley Curtin at Nation of ChangeVermont Senate Passes Mandatory GMO Labeling Bill . More info and details below! Click ANYTHING and BE INSTANTLY SMARTER! Happy Dingus Day and smoke one for us on Four Twenty!
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)