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Miscellaneous Madness While many of the low-info voters concentrate their resources on the NCAA's made-for-corporoteevee March Madness many other things went down they refused to cover and failed to discuss with their viewers and listeners. What a surprise. Following up on last week's MEK story Laura Rozen now reports Treasury issues subpoenas in investigation into funding for pro-MEK lobby campaign (yahoo news) The U.S. Treasury Department has issued subpoenas in an investigation into several prominent former senior American officials taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees to promote a controversial Iranian terrorist group, the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK). Among the former cabinet level officials whose speaking agencies have received subpoenas in the investigation are former Pennsylvania governor and DNC chair Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania governor and Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, former FBI director Louis Freeh, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton, NBC's Michael Isikoff reported Friday. Rendell first disclosed that his speaking agency had received a subpoena in the investigation in a report by the Washington Times' Guy Taylor last week. The Treasury Department investigation, which dates back to last summer, is seeking to understand where the money for the pro-MEK lobbying campaign is coming from, people familiar with the investigation said. At least 11 subpoenas have been issued to date in the probe, one source briefed on it said Friday. .... .... Calls by Yahoo News Friday to the office of Tom Ridge, and Ridge's speaker's bureau the Washington Speakers bureau were not returned. A spokesman for Louis Freeh told Yahoo News Friday that he did not have immediate comment on the case. The irony, both Jacobson and Marashi said, is that for all the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent on the MEK public relations campaign, it is unlikely to affect the State Department's decision. "This is a big waste of their money," Jacobson said. "These decisions are based upon the facts. They are based upon evidence and they are based upon foreign policy determinations." ... NEXT Matt Taibbi Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that." I put down my notebook. "Just that?" "That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there." Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people. The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars. .... "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once." But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up. Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing..... MORE TAIBBI! Watch his interview on DN! below discussing his latest at Rolling Stone Bank Of America: Too Crooked to Fail (WAY TOO MUCH TO SNIP) and Matt's interview with SAM SEDER below! After reading this don't be afraid to MOVE YOUR MONEY and "Invest in Main Street NOT Wall Street"! YES! Over at HuffPoAOL Laura Basset reports how Texas Loses Entire Women's Health Program Over Planned Parenthood Law The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that it will cut off all Medicaid funding for family planning to the state of Texas, following Gov. Rick Perry's (R) decision to implement a new law that excludes Planned Parenthood from the state's Medicaid Women's Health Program. Cindy Mann, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations (CMSO), wrote Texas health officials a letter on Thursday explaining that the state broke federal Medicaid rules by discriminating against qualified family planning providers and thus would be losing the entire program, which provides cancer screenings, contraceptives and basic health care to 130,000 low-income women each year. "We very much regret the state's decision to implement this rule, which will prevent women enrolled in the program from receiving services from the trusted health care providers they have chosen and relied upon for their care," she wrote. "In light of Texas' actions, CMS is not in a position to extend or renew the current [Medicaid contract]." The federal government pays for nearly 90 percent of Texas' $40 million Women's Health Program, and nearly half of the program's providers in Texas are Planned Parenthood clinics. But the new law that went into effect earlier this month disqualified Planned Parenthood from participating in the program because some of its clinics provide abortions, even though no state or federal money can be used to pay for those abortions. ..... The GOPher War on Women continues in Arizona where Arizona Lawmaker: Women Should ‘Watch An Abortion Being Performed’ Prior To Having It
The Arizona legislature is considering at least two separate bills that would significantly limit women’s access to abortion by banning the procedure after 20 weeks of gestation and strip funding to Planned Parenthood. But those restrictions don’t go far enough for conservative lawmaker Rep. Terri Proud (R) who told a constituent in an email that women should be required to “watch an abortion being performed” prior to having it ...... Proud is now co-sponsoring a measure that would allow employers to opt out of covering birth control in their health insurance plans. That's one creepy hypnotized woman! Next DDay at FDL explains the Misnamed JOBS Act – Which Deregulates Financial Markets – Gets Senate Vote Today .....And before you curse the damn Republicans for selling out to the finance lobby again, consider that only a couple dozen Democrats voted against the JOBS Act in the House, that Chuck Schumer is pushing this bill along in the Senate, it was initially a Democratic bill written by Rep. Jim Himes, and that the White House supports it. Johnson calls it “legislative madness.” The investor protections that Carl Levin and Jack Reed want to add ameliorate the bill somewhat, but considering the purpose of the enterprise is to deregulate the financial markets, I don’t see why you would pass it under any circumstances..... MORE DDAY!
American Jobs Act Fails First Senate Cloture Vote As expected, the American Jobs Act failed to pass a cloture vote last night. The vote was 50-49. Democrats held the vote open so “New Englander of the Year” Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) could return from Boston and cast the final vote in favor, giving them the talking point that a majority supported the bill. Tom Coburn, under treatment for prostate cancer, missed the vote. Harry Reid switched his vote to no at the last minute to enable him to bring it up again, so Shaheen’s vote was needed for that majority. Two Democrats, Jon Tester and Ben Nelson, voted with all Republicans save Coburn against the legislation. Nelson gave no explanation, while Tester released a statement saying that “The things I support in this bill are outweighed by the things I can’t support.” [...Tester gobbledygook...] I find that to be mostly gobbledygook. What he calls “bailing out states” I call “saving the jobs of teachers and cops and firefighters.” And any look at the unemployment rolls shows that the loss of 500,000 jobs in the public sector since 2008 is one of the major drags on growth. His alibi amounts to “this bill doesn’t solve every problem ten years out in the manner I want so I’ll vote no.” It’s a typical politician’s dodge. Nelson would at least just say “I don’t want to raise taxes on anyone” and be done with it; Tester’s excuse is more of an insult. Just because there was majority support for the cloture vote doesn’t mean there was majority support for the legislation. Joe Manchin, Jim Webb and Joe Lieberman all expressed their opposition to the underlying bill. So the bill itself is going nowhere, though it was a political vehicle all along more than a serious piece of legislation. Now the plan is to break the bill up into component parts and to call out Republicans as obstructionists. That was the focus of the President’s statement after the vote:... (OF NOTE: the Republicans have set a New World Record for Most Filibusters. -Ed.) Did your city or region set any new high records last week? If so then go to Common Dreams for Silent Spring Dawns Hot, Dry and Merciless by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez ... This year, as I see how the natural world around me is struggling to provide for the chipmunks, the bear and the turkeys; as I greet the arrival of the few straggling migrant birds who have managed to run the gauntlet of a landscape devastated by chemical warfare and industrial agriculture; as I gaze out at the bare trees shimmering in the unnatural midday heat, I know in my heart that it is only a matter of time before our turn comes. Today it is the indigenous people of Indonesia who are going down with their forests. It is the desert people of North Africa who are starving, and the teeming masses of Asia who are fleeing the floods of torrential rains. We in the huge, pampered gated communities of North America and Europe will be insulated from these shocks for much longer than those on the outside. But our time will come. And when it comes, it will be with the full force of every violent futuristic film we’ve ever dreamed up. Waterworld, anyone? Mad Max? Yeah. As Obama Vows More U.S. Oil Production as Pipeline Gets Priority in his visit to Cushing OK Bill McGibbon & 350.org issued this press release at 350.org

Cushing, OK -- Today President Obama will make a speech in Cushing, OK on his Administration’s work to fast track the permitting of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline: Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org who has led protests against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, issued the following statement: “Barack Obama has done a little more than his predecessors about climate change. But nowhere near enough. And no movie producer, fifty years from now, will be able to resist a scene that explains the depth of our addiction to oil: the president coming to the state that just recorded the hottest summer in American history, in the very week that the nation has seen the weirdest heat wave in its history, and promising not to slow down climate change but instead to speed up the building of pipelines. It's clear that the power of the oil industry drives political decision-making in America--that's why we need to go after them directly. The first step is an effort to remove the subsidies that they and the rest of the fossil fuel industry enjoy.” 350.org is helping coordinate protests at Ohio State University this afternoon, where students will call on President Obama to stop Keystone XL, fracking, and other "extreme energy" projects. Last August, 1,253 people were arrested at the White House to push President Obama to stop Keystone XL. More than 12,000 people surrounded the White House last November to stop the pipeline, leading to an administration commitment to delay a permit for the project.

Listen to Bill McGibbon on APM's Marketplace "Obama's 'all of the above' plan means nothing" (mp3) From the Spill Baby Spill department Reuters reports Chevron, Transocean charged in Brazilian oil spill (Reuters) - A Brazilian federal prosecutor filed criminal charges on Wednesday against Chevron and drill-rig operator Transocean for a November oil spill, raising the stakes in a legal saga that has added to Chevron's woes in Latin America and could slow Brazil's offshore oil boom. Prosecutor Eduardo Santos de Oliveira also filed criminal charges against 17 local executives and employees at Chevron and Transocean, owner of the world's largest oil rig fleet. Among the defendants is George Buck, 46, a U.S. national in charge of Chevron's operations in Brazil, the prosecutor's office said in a statement. "The spilling of oil affected the entire maritime ecosystem, possibly pushing some species to extinction, and caused impacts on economic activity in the region," Santos de Oliveira, a prosecutor in the oil district of Campos de Goytacazes, said in the filing. "The employees of Chevron and Transocean caused a contamination time bomb of prolonged effect." The charges stem from a 3,000-barrel leak in the Frade field, about 120 km (75 miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. They include: failure to realize protocols to contain the leak; failure to take steps to kill the well and stop the drilling process; breach of licenses, legal norms and regulation, including altering documents; and failure to meet legal and contractual duties. Chevron and Transocean strongly disputed the charges. ..... Chevron's troubles in Brazil could force it to rethink its Latin American strategies. A shortage of trained workers, engineers and equipment have driven up costs in Brazil and Chevron faces an $18 billion environmental verdict in Ecuador. Oliveira's filings allege that Transocean's Sedco 706 rig, which drilled the well that leaked, had "grave" equipment failures that were detected by Brazil's national petroleum agency, the ANP. In addition to Buck, prosecutors leveled criminal charges against other Chevron and Transocean employees, including five other Americans, five Brazilians, two Frenchmen, two Australians, a Canadian and a Briton. Among them was Guilherme Dantas Rocha Coelho, 38, the Brazilian head of Transocean's operations in the country. All were ordered to turn in their passports last Saturday and remain in the country. Each individual will be required to post 1 million reais ($550,000) bail and each company 10 million reais ($5.5 million) to ensure payment of future fines. JAIL TIME UNLIKELY - Prison sentences could be as lengthy as 31 years, the filings said. Oliveira told Reuters in January that jail terms for the oil workers would be unlikely and a "last resort." .... Yep pay the fine, move on, it's only the "cost of doing business" right? NEXT Grace Wyler has this BusinessInsider EXCLUSIVE: Documents Show Homeland Security Was Tracking Occupy Wall Street Even Before The First Protest The Department of Homeland Security has been tracking the Occupy Wall Street movement since well before protesters first took Zuccotti Park last September, according to internal DHS memos obtained by Business Insider through a Freedom of Information Act Request. The documents show that DHS alerted its agents to the Wall Street protests — and specifically the involvement of the hacker group Anonymous in organizing the protests — sometime before the Sept. 17 kickoff of the protests in downtown Manhattan. In an undated memo, titled "Details On 'Anonymous' Upcoming Operations: 17 September 2011: Occupy Wall Street; U.S. Day of Rage," the DHS Office of Intelligence notes that the hacker group had came out in support of the planned Sept. 17 Wall Street protests. The memo provides details of a YouTube video released by Anonymous that called on protesters "to adopt a non-violent 'Tahrir-acampadas model,'" and to "flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months." The memo warns that AdBusters, the original organizers of the OWS protests, had also planned a demonstration on the National Mall to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in October 2011.Another DHS Intelligence memo provides further warnings about the impact and likelihood of upcoming Anonymous Operations. ... See all the DHS memos in full at the link! In the wake of the incredible uproar over the shooting of Traymon Martin the NYT's Gail Martin writes Pity the Poor Gun Lobby ....This year, in search of new worlds to conquer — or at least to arm — a couple of states are giving serious attention to bills that would allow gun owners to carry their concealed weapons in places like day-care centers and school buses. People, do you think there is a loud public outcry for more guns on school buses? I truly believe that this is all the product of a desperate N.R.A., trying to show its base that there are still lots of new battles to be won. “I subscribe 100 percent to that theory,” said Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a group that is never going to suffer from a problem of not having anything left to work on. Why, other than a frantic search for ways to show your gun bona fides, would legislators pass something like the Stand Your Ground law? As the whole country learned this week, 21 states now have laws allowing people to shoot anyone they feel is putting them in imminent physical danger, whether they’re at home, in a bar or on the street being hassled by an irritating panhandler. It was thanks to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law that a crime-watch volunteer was not arrested after he fatally shot an African-American teenager with no criminal record — and, as far as we can tell so far, no intent to do anything more dangerous than carrying home a bag of Skittles. “Florida is the N.R.A. utopia,” said Malte. “Make it as easy as possible to carry a loaded gun in public, virtually anywhere. And then instill the mentality that you can shoot first, ask questions later.” The N.R.A. did not respond to my request for comment, although, to be fair, they’ve been having a pretty busy week. ..... Since no amount of gun-related tragedy seems sufficient to get state lawmakers to dial back on their firearms-friendly laws, we need to find a different approach, or face a future in which citizens of some states are required to carry a weapon with them at all times except when bathing. I am thinking that the best solution for all concerned would be a strict national gun-control law that makes it very difficult to get a concealed weapons permit, permits gun dealers to sell only one handgun per individual per year, and makes it illegal for even permit holders to keep handguns anywhere but their home, store or car glove compartment unless they are employed in the security business. The N.R.A. would have a whole new lease on life, and the donations from the gun industry would come flooding in. Legislators in red states would be kept out of other mischief for a decade, while they devoted their entire careers to passing new gun-friendly laws. And it’s very possible that the purple states would find that they like the new order of things just fine. Everybody wins! No need to thank me. It’s the least I could do for the school bus drivers. Meanwhile The Nation's John Nichols reports that Florida's Senator Marco Rubio Stands His Ground for Deadly 'Stand Your Ground' Laws ... Rubio served in the legislature as an ally of the National Rifle Association and a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the shadowy group funded by the Koch brothers to craft and promote passage of measures such as the “Stand Your Ground” law. In reviewing Rubio’s tenure, the Miami Herald noted: “Rubio had an ‘A’ rating by the National Rifle Association. Rubio voted for major NRA priorities such as a 2005 ‘castle doctrine’ law allowing people to use deadly force if attacked in their home or any place a person ‘has a right to be.’ Rubio also supported a 2008 law allowing most employees to bring guns to work, as long as they held a concealed weapons license and kept the gun in their cars.” Two other ALEC members, state Representative Dennis Baxley and state Senator Durell Peadon were the primary sponsors of the “Stand Your Ground” law. Now—as African-American legislators are calling for the repeal of the measure—Florida media outlets report that “Baxley says it is worth revisiting to determine whether the law should be amended.” And Florida Governor Rick Scott, Jeb Bush’s Republican successor, has appointed a task force to consider changes to the “Stand Your Ground” law. Scott says that, in light of the Trayvon Martin killing, it is necesssary to “thoroughly review Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and any other laws, rules, regulations or programs that relate to public safety and citizen protection.” But Rubio—who has felt pressure from the NRA in the past, at rare points where he has tried to balance public safety and gun rights concerns—knows he can’t disappoint the gun lobby if he wants a place on the GOP ticket. So Rubio is standing firm for the measure that Kendall Coffey, the former US attorney for Southern Florida, calls a “license to kill.” The Tampa Bay Times reports that the senator says it is “too early” to say whether the “Stand Your Ground” law should be repealed or—at the very least—clarified. Remarkably, Rubio continues to caution against criticism of the law . “I voted for it and I think there is rational behind it but we have no idea whether that applies at all in this case,” says Rubio. “I think that’s very important to understand.” It’s not just Jeb Bush who says Marco Rubio should be the Republican nominee for vice president. Rubio’s name tops most lists of prospects for the number-two position on what now looks like a Mitt Romney-led ticket. .... There are Florida officials who backed the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law, and who still stand strong for gun rights, but who now acknowledged that the law needs to be rewritten or retracted. Marco Rubio is not one of them..... Glenn Greenwald has a list of Ironies in American justice and political cheerleading so go read all of them but we though this one was most ironic: (3) After Bradley Manning was arrested on charges that he leaked documents to WikiLeaks, he was held in intense solitary confinement for ten months until political pressure finally forced his transfer to more humane conditions in Fort Leavensworth; the top U.N. torture official last week concluded that Manning’s treatment during those 10 months was “cruel and inhumane.” By stark contrast, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales — the prime suspect in the slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians — is already at Fort Leavensworth and is receiving this treatment:

Bales arrived at Fort Leavenworth last Friday and is being held in an isolated cell. He is “already being integrated into the normal pretrial confinement routine,” prison spokeswoman Rebecca Steed said. The routine includes recreation, meals and cleaning the area where he is living. Steed said once his meetings with his attorneys are complete later in the week, Bales will resume the normal integration process.

An ABC News article back when Manning was transferred to Fort Leavensworth included these details:

The 150 inmates at the facility — including eight who are awaiting trial — are allowed three hours of recreation a day, she said, and three meals a day in a dining area.

That likely means that there will be some substantial interaction between Bales and Manning. Think about that: if you expose to the world previously unknown evidence of widespread wanton killing of civilians (as Manning allegedly did), then you will end up in the same place as someone who actually engages in the mass wanton killing of civilians (as Bales allegedly did), except that the one who committed atrocities will receive better treatment than the one who exposed them. That’s a nice reflection of our government’s value system (similar to the way that high government officials who commit egregious crimes are immunized, while those who expose them are aggressively prosecuted). If the chat logs are to be believed, Manning decided to leak those documents because they revealed heinous war crimes that he could no longer in good conscience allow to be concealed, and he will now find himself next to a soldier who is accused of committing a heinous war crime. And do check out Glenn's (4) Op-Ed in The Guardian on the quick removal of Bales from Afghanistan and the resulting exclusion of Afghans from the investigation into what happened. Listen to Glenn's interview with SAM SEDER on Ring Of Fire Radio below! James Bamford reports at Wired.com The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) ... Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors. Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy. But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.” ... —there is no doubt that [nte NSA] has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created. In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever..... Read the shocking rest at Wired.com and see Bamford's interview on DN! below. In a related matter Truth-Out.com has NYT's Charlie Savage Total Information Awareness: Sweeping New Surveillance Measures Approved in the US The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday signed new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center, which was created in 2004 to foster intelligence sharing and serve as a terrorism threat clearinghouse. The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and "data mining them" using complex algorithms to search for patterns that could indicate a threat. ... The changes are intended to allow analysts to more quickly identify terrorism suspects. But they also set off civil-liberties concerns among privacy advocates who invoked the "Total Information Awareness" program. That program, proposed early in the George W. Bush administration and partially shut down by Congress after an outcry, proposed fusing vast archives of electronic records — like travel records, credit card transactions, phone calls and more — and searching for patterns of a hidden terrorist cell. .... "We're all in the dark, and for all we know it could be a rerun of Total Information Awareness, which would have allowed the government to make a computerized database of everything on everybody," said Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, who criticized the administration for not making the draft guidelines public for scrutiny ahead of time. ... The ACLU responded with ACLU Statement on Extension of Time U.S. Can Retain Info on Innocent Americans in Counterterror Databases Michael German, ACLU senior policy counsel and a former FBI agent said: “The decades-old rules limiting the collection and retention of U.S. citizen and resident information by the intelligence community and the military existed for a very good reason: to ensure that the powerful tools designed to protect us from foreign enemies are not turned against Americans. Authorizing the 'temporary' retention of non-terrorism related citizen and resident information for five years essentially removes the restraint against wholesale collection of our personal information by the government, and puts all Americans at risk of unjustified scrutiny. Such unfettered collection risks reviving the Bush administration’s Total Information Awareness program, which Congress killed in 2003. .... American citizens and residents should not be considered potential terrorists until the NCTC decides otherwise. Having innocent people’s information in intelligence databases for five years without any suspicion of wrongdoing creates an unacceptable risk to Americans’ privacy through error and abuse.” Out LAST WORD goes to CUNY Professor Frances Fox Piven who appeared on Democracy Now! last Monday discussing the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall St. (link to video below) Well, I think the movement is reconnoitering at the—after two months of occupations, which were dramatic, brilliant, imaginative, I think captured something for the American people. I think the American public resonated to the "We are the 99 percent" Occupy Wall Street slogans. After two months, a lot of the occupations were leveled. And I think that what has been happening is that the occupiers and all the people who really responded to their rhetoric, to their dramatic depiction of financial capitalism in control and out of control, what people have been figuring out how to do is to move the protest into the neighborhoods, into the workplaces, into the schools. I think, in the end, it may turn out that evicting the occupations was the precipitant of expanding the movement, because the movement’s agenda has broadened, and they’re now experimenting with reoccupying foreclosed homes, for example, with ways of rallying to the defense of workers who are locked out or on strike. And with the spring, I think there’s going to be a lot of protest in the universities and the colleges. And young people are very responsive to the appeals of Occupy, to their cultural style. And everybody in the colleges understands that high unemployment, high student debt spells foreclosed opportunities for a life. ... Well, no, [Occupy has] not gone away. I don’t think it’s gone away at all. Everywhere I look, I hear about Occupy East Harlem, Occupy the South Bronx. I think Occupy has spread out. And this kind of mobilization, this kind of building outrage, confronts a financial steering mechanism in the American economy, which is very vulnerable. It’s very vulnerable to the indignation and outrage of the millions and millions of ordinary people who are losing their nest egg. They’re losing their home, everything they put into their hopes for a stable future. They’re losing their pensions. They are graduating from the college they worked so hard to get into and to stay in; they’re graduating with massive debts. Well, in the background of this, there is, I think, the basic relationship between these lenders and these debtors. They have made so many Americans into debtors. Well, you know, it isn’t true, necessarily, that debtors are powerless and lenders have all the power, because the lenders depend on those debtors accepting their debts and putting their shoulder to the wheel and taking the extra job and working very hard until they pay the massive debts that have been piled on their heads. So I think financial America is—the financial corporations are also vulnerable at this point in time, if we can mobilize the indignation, the outrage of the people who have been screwed. Yes. I think that not only in the 1960s and in the Great Depression, but from the beginning of the American Republic, it has been these periodic risings of ordinary people that have humanized American society. And sometimes the reforms that were implemented in response to the outrage, the indignation and the defiance, sometimes they did not last. But something lasted. Something lasted of the Revolutionary-era mobs who demanded radical democracy. Something lasted of the struggle of abolitionists for the freeing of the slaves. And something lasted of the Populist movement. Something lasted of the labor uprisings of the 1930s. And of course a lot lasted of the victories of the civil rights movement. But without these movements, what happens is that the big corporation of America really flood, overflow democratic processes with propaganda and with their lobbying and with their campaign contributions. Democracy doesn’t work in the absence of protest movements. Protest movements are what give us that part of democracy that we have achieved. And I’m absolutely convinced that Occupy is the beginning of another massive protest movement. Protest movements have a long life—10, 15 years—and they are what we have to rely on to take our country back. Well said! For your Sunday Funnies the White House Limo carts around White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe on This Snufagopolis, State of the Candy and even FAKE SNOOZE. Good brick targets are on Face the Bob with Theocrat SICK SANITARIUM and Budget Destroyer PAUL "Budget Bullshitter" RYAN and kwazy Theocrat Michele Bachmann still being taken seriously by This Snufagopolis! Haha! The unofficial BTV count this week is 5-2 GOP vs. Dems on the bobblehead shows. Yep that "goddamned librul press" is at it again! True dat. Huh. Sorry for the short post this week but we were in a week-long intense seminar on the "virtues of server virtualization", commanding most of our CPU, Network, Storage and Memory resources! Haha! The Brick TeeVee crew nevertheless has been glued to the Bracketology Games and we were crushed when the Ohio University Bobcats lost in overtime to North Carolina! But the OSU Buckeyes are going to the Final Four again after squeaking out a win against a determined Syracuse Orange squad! With the incredible warm weather our garden efforts begin in earnest as we have to prep the garden and get some early spring goodies in the ground. We hope you get the opportunity to do the same! For you beginners or if you want to maximize your home garden we recommend Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. Good item! Have a great week and Occupy Somewhere!




BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!_©



»»» Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux & CUNY's Frances Fox Piven @ Democracy NOW! Police Arrest 73 in Occupy Wall Street Crackdown as Protesters Mark Six Months Since Uprising Began March 19, 2012 & RELATED Strategic Directions for Occupy Wall Street: Foreclosing Banks, Defending Homes, Making History

»»» Ina May Gaskin @ Democracy NOW! Ina May Gaskin on Rising U.S. Maternal Mortality Rate, Midwifery and Home Births March 19, 2012

»»» Trayvon Martin Coverage @ Democracy NOW! March 20, 2012: Attorney Jasmine Rand representing Trayvon Martin’s family Walking While Black: Florida Police Resist Calls to Arrest Shooter of Unarmed Teen, Trayvon Martin AND Florida Democratic State Representative Mia Jones Florida Legislative Black Caucus Urges Full Federal Probe of Police Handling of Trayvon Martin Death PLUS "A Modern-Day Lynching": Outrage Grows over Killing of Trayvon Martin by Neighborhood Watch Patrol with Shelton Marshall, president of the Black Law Students Association at Florida A&M University College of Law AND Florida’s "Shoot First" Law Critiqued by Gun Control Advocates Following Shooting of Trayvon Martin with Caroline Brewer of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

»»» Investigative reporter James Bamford @ Democracy NOW! Exposed: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center in Bluffdale, Utah March 21, 2012
»»» Thomas Drake & Drake’s attorney Jesselyn Radack @ Democracy NOW! NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Prevails Against Charges in Unprecedented Obama Admin Crackdown March 21, 2012

»»» Matt Taibbi @ Democracy NOW! March 22, 2012 "Too Crooked to Fail": Matt Taibbi Says Bailouts, Fraud are the Secrets to Bank of America’s Success RELATED: Matt Taibbi on the Explosive Resignation of Goldman Sachs Executive Greg Smith

»»» Ben Jealous @ Democracy NOW! March 22, 2012 NAACP’s Ben Jealous: Justice for Trayvon Martin Begins with Killer’s Arrest, Police Chief’s Ouster
»»» 350.org's Bill McGibbon @ Democracy NOW! Bill McKibben: Winter Heat Wave Underscores Need for Obama to Reject, Not Fast-Track, Keystone XL

»»» OWS Activist Cecily McMillan @ Democracy NOW! Exclusive: OWS Activist Cecily McMillan Describes Seizure, Bodily Injuries in Arrest by NYPD March 23, 2012




»»» GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders

»»» FEATURED SHOW The Laura Flanders Show...coming soon! After three years in daily production, GRITtv is transforming into the Laura Flanders Show, for distribution online and on public TV later this year.

BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!_©

»»» NASCAR on FOX It's the Auto Club 400 at the 2-mile Fontana Speedway! Coverage begins 2:30 p.m. ET

»»» NCAA Basketball Tournament on CBS More coverage of this year's college tourney! Spots for the Final Four coming up Sunday! 2:20 ET: #3 Baylor vs. #1 Kentucky then at 5:05 ET: #2 Kansas vs. #1 North Carolina

»»» NBA on ESPN ESPN Sunday double-header Heat @ Thunder 8 pm et then Grizzlies @ Lakers! And Friday double-header Mavs @ Magic 8 pm et then Blazers @ Clippers!


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.

October2011.org Sign the Petition to Get the 99% Deficit Proposal Heard in Congress

Please SIGN THE PETITION in support of the "99%'s Deficit Proposal" and plan direct actions to tell the Super Committee that the 99% have better solutions to our nation's crises. You can plan your own action at your Congressmember's office or join us in Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC for marches to Capitol Hill. Check our calendar for announcements.

NET NEUTRALITY! SaveTheInternet.org A Push for Privacy in the Wake of the Carrier IQ Controversy Remember Carrier IQ, the company that makes the secret spying software that’s installed on more than 140 million phones? You know, the software that can record our most sensitive personal data? ... Thanks in part to the 22,000 people who joined Free Press’ call for a congressional investigation, some of those questions are closer to being answered and mobile users are closer to being protected. The protection comes in the form of a bill from Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey. Markey released a draft of a bill called the “Mobile Device Privacy Act” that would require phone companies to disclose to users just what is being done with all of their data. If the bill passes, an opt-out provision would go into effect a year later and would require companies to allow users to opt out of data-collection schemes like the one developed by Carrier IQ........


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! Also visit Rep Alan Grayson's site www.savedemocracy.net And Alan Grayson is running again in FL-8! Help out at CongressmanWithGuts.com


SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT See CourageToResist.org and Bradley Manning Support Network
UPDATE! Ed Pikington of the Guardian UK reports Bradley Manning's treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source. Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture. "The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence," Mendez writes. .... Mendez, who runs the UN office that investigates incidents of alleged torture around the world, told the Guardian: "I conclude that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement (regardless of the name given to his regime by the prison authorities) constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture. If the effects in regards to pain and suffering inflicted on Manning were more severe, they could constitute torture." ..... But the Pentagon's arguments did not impress the special rapporteur. He stressed in his final conclusions that "solitary confinement is a harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse effects on individuals regardless of their specific conditions." Moreover, "[d]epending on the specific reason for its application, conditions, length, effects and other circumstances, solitary confinement can amount to a breach of article seven of the international covenant on civil and political rights, and to an act defined in article one or article 16 of the convention against torture." He also said that the US government had tried to justify Manning's solitary confinement by calling it "prevention of harm watch". Yet the military had offered no details as to what actual harm was being prevented. ... Much more at link!
UPDATE II ! Jesselyn Radack on March 16, 2012 at The Whistleblogger Bradley Manning Hearing: Government Foiled By Its Own Policies Bradley Manning's attorney (David Coombs) requested that charges against Manning be dismissed because the prosecution had so badly bungled discovery obligations. Josh Gerstein of Politico reported in detail: At a hearing last month, prosecutors in the case against Pfc. Bradley Manning noted that they didn't receive the messages but could not explain why. Chief prosecutor Capt. Ashden Fein said at a hearing Thursday that the messages had been "blocked by a spam filter for security." However, it fell to defense attorney David Coombs to explain precisely why the e-mails about evidence issues in the Manning case never made it. "Apparently, they were blocked because the word 'WikiLeaks' was somewhere in the e-mail," Coombs said. The government's own WikiLeaks policies are now hampering the prosecution's work in the case against Manning. Yesterday's Manning hearing also revealed that the U.S. claims that Manning aided al-Qaeda by allegedly giving documents to WikiLeaks. What about the New York Times, which also posted the WikiLeaks documents? Much more at link plus video of whistleblower and author Peter Van Buren on Channel 9 WUSA news.


DONATE YOUR OLD CELL PHONES TO T.J. MARTELL FOUNDATIONHelp save lives. Donate your old & used iPhone, Blackberries, Droid and other phones to help the T.J. Martell Foundations fund life-saving cancer & AIDS research. For more information, go to www.tjmartellfoundation.org


CELLULAR PHONE TASK FORCE EDUCATION, ADVOCACY, SUPPORT at CellPhoneTaskForce.org The Cellular Phone Task Force is dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe. We provide: education to the public concerning electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog); advocacy for an electromagnetically cleaner environment; support for individuals disabled by radiation from wireless technology and other sources.

B R I C K T E E V E E



_{image ©2006 arkysue}

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The essential guide for watching government propaganda

IRAQ: 4,486 US Military Dead as of March 23, 2011

AFGHANISTAN: 1,915 US Military Dead as of March 23, 2012

The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises
Considering Democracy: 8 Things to ask your Representative

• This Week (ABC) anchor George Stephanopoulos
  • Fact Checking ABC's "This Week" at NPR "On the Media" - Jake Tapper, interim host of ABC's "This Week," liked the idea of fact-checking his guests' comments, so he set up a partnership with Politifact, a non-partisan fact-checking organization. See Politifact Statements ABC News 'This Week'
  • Obama senior advisor David Plouffe
  • Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN
  • ROUNDTABLE: George Will and Cokie Roberts, Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile, political strategist and ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, and "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran
  

• Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
  • Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum
  • House Budget Chairman Republican, Representative Paul Ryan
  • Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, Senator Chuck Schumer
  

• 60 Minutes (CBS)
  • Resurrecting Chrysler - Just a few years ago, Chrysler was in chapter 11, its future bleak. Now, with a new leader in Sergio Marchionne and a new company forged by an alliance with Fiat, the automaker has made a remarkable turnaround to profitability. Steve Kroft reports. Frank Devine and Maria Gavrilovic are the producers.
  • Evidence of Innocence - Michael Morton was finally freed when DNA evidence exonerated him after 25 years in prison; he speaks out in his first interview. As Lara Logan reports, Morton's case is one of a series of high profile wrongful convictions that have cast a harsh light on prosecutors. Andy Court and Anya Bourg are the producers.
  

• Meet the Press (NBC) Host David Gregory
  • Meet the Facts at NPR "On the Media" - Last December, NYU professor Jay Rosen proposed something simple yet revolutionary: why don't the Sunday morning chat shows fact check their guests? After "Meet the Press" host David Gregory declined, two college students launched a website to do it for him. One of them, Chas Danner, explains what they're trying to accomplish. See their website MeetTheFacts.com updating soon!
  • White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe.
  • MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow joins us for a conversation about her provocative new book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power that tries to answer the question: “When did America make peace with perpetual war?”
  • ROUNDTABLE: Fmr. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R); head of the NAACP, Ben Jealous; NPR’s Michele Norris; presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin; and the New York Times’ David Brooks.
  

• State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) At 9 AM ET, Candy talks to the power players: politicians, business leaders and international newsmakers who will make Monday morning's headlines. At NOON ET, Candy wraps it all up with fresh interviews and the best of the earlier hours.
  • White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe
  • Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
  • Florida’s Governor Rick Scott (R)
  • Time Magazine’s Mike Duffy and USA Today’s Susan Page
  

• HEAD ON RADIO with Bob Kincaid
  
  Headon Radio with Bob Kincaid 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific, 2300 GMT. Duration: 3 hrs. To be part of Conversation Radio on Head-on Radio, call toll-free (877) 443-2366, or use our Liberal community line at 304-658-3333. Email bob [at] headonradio [dot] com during the show!
  • PRAYER MEETIN' WEDNESDAY!!!!! Uber Pope/Rabbi/Imam Bob leads the discussion of yet more religioso fanatics! Plus all the regulars chime in! Listen HERE (mp3) NOW! Amen to the White Rose Society! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!
  

• YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT
  
  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' - March 22, 2012 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Zombie Keystone pipeline rises again, as Obama fast-tracks southern leg; The Waxman cometh with a deficit-cutting carbon tax proposal, while the GOP protects Big Oil's billion-dollar subsidies; Exxon Valdez to the scrap heap of history; PLUS: It's World Water Day --- do you know where your clean water is?... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): GOP vs. the Navy on clean energy; Fracking: Is Dimock’s water really safe?; U.S. slaps low tariffs on Chinese solar panels; Beekeepers urge ban on toxic pesticide; Myths and Facts: Germans switch from nukes to renewables; SCOTUS rules against EPA; Denmark to boost offshore wind; Damage to oceans could cost $2tr by 2100 ... PLUS: House Republican accidentally tells truth about Solyndra investigation ... and much, MUCH more! ...
  • BRADCAST! 'The BradCast' on KPFK: GOP Empire Strikes Back at the Ron Paul Revolutionaries Today, on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show, I was joined by two of the key players at both of those of remarkable scenes. My guests were Brent Stafford, the Paul organizer seen, incredibly enough, being arrested while trying to reconvene the aborted caucus in St. Charles after pandemonium had broken out inside, and Lori Bone of Athens, who was seen (also on video, thankfully) trying to demand an explanation from Republican Party officials in GA after they'd rammed through a slate of delegates at the Clarke County GOP convention, and then ended the proceedings, ignoring the Paul supporters majority --- all in blatant violation of the official rules.
  • BRAD on RT! Brad on RT TV: 'Republican Party Establishment Hates Democracy (and Ron Paul Supporters)' I was back on RT TV this afternoon (this time, without a wingnut loon to waste our time), to discuss the GOP caucus chaos over the weekend in MO, where Ron Paul supporters stood up for themselves, rather than allowing the Republican establishment to railroad them. Once again, the host was RT's Liz Wahl. Here's what happened today... WATCH THE VIDEO!!
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE: Did Walker Conspire to Violate Employee Residence Law? Motion by his indicted former deputy suggests 'WalkerGate' file still growing, as criminal probe appears to target the Republican Guv's tenure while County Executive in Milwaukee...
  Visit BradBlog.com to see who counts yer votes! Now up to 9,200+ Election Protection posts! Reference yer background/research at Who's Counting? too.
  

• 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
  • PBC Podcast 412 Sue Wilson of “Broadcast Blues” Talks About Boycotts of Limbaugh Sponsors; Will Durst Says We’re All Muppets Media activist Sue Wilson joins us to talk about the sponsor boycotts of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show; Will Durst reacts to the Goldman Sachs guy who bailed: “We’re all Muppets”.
  • PBC Podcast 414 Boiling Frogs: Attorney Jon Eisenberg’s Kafka-esque Fight vs. Illegal Wiretapping Two strong views on the Middle East: Jennifer Lowenstein teaches Middle East studies at U of Wisconsin; Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council.
  • PBC Standard Podcast Marxian Economist Richard Wolff on Causes of Economic Mess; “Solartopia” Author Harvey Wasserman is Optimistic About Shutting Down Vermont Yankee Nuke Plant Prof. Richard Wolff teaches at New School in New York, writes for Truthout, and is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan; Harvey Wasserman is longtime anti-nuke activist, author of Solartopia.
  • PBC Standard Podcast Boiling Frogs: Peter van Buren Speaks Out for Whistleblowers As He is Being Drummed Out of State Dept. Peter van Buren, author of We Meant Well, defends other whistleblowers even as he is being forced out of his 20+ year career at the State Department in this Boiling Frogs interview, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds.
  

• 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 Week on Ring of Fire! March 23, 2012
  • best-selling author and Harpers Magazine contributor Thomas Frank will tell us who will really be choosing the next Republican Presidential nominee.
  • Investigative journalist Greg Palast will be here to discuss the recent BP oil spill settlement.
  • Criminal defense attorney Leo Thomas will join us for a legal discussion on the Trayvon Martin killing.
  • Mark Potok from the Southern Poverty Law Center will be here to tell us why American hate groups are expanding at an unprecedented rate.
  • And author and clinical psychologist Bruce Levine will be here to tell us why America’s obsession with money is killing us as a society.
  • VIDEO! Sam Seder: Obama Continues Disastrous Bush-Era Foreign Policies During the Bush years, Americans weren’t shy to express their anger over the former administration’s policies regarding people they deemed to be “terrorists.” Whether it was the indefinite detention and torture at Guantanamo Bay, or the killing of civilians in the Middle East, Americans made it clear that they were angry with the Bush Administration. So today, with some of those same policies – or even worse policies – in place, where is that outrage? Sam Seder talks about how the Obama administration is still carrying out some of the nastiest deeds of the Bush administration with Salon.com contributor and author Glenn Greenwald.
  • VIDEO! Papantonio: Zimmerman Charge Should Be Premeditated Murder Mike Papantonio appears on MSNBC’s The Ed Show to discuss the legal ramifications for George Zimmerman under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law for killing 17-year old, unarmed Trayvon Martin.
  • Support Those Who Support Progressive Media! 2011 has certainly been a great year for Ring of Fire, and we’ve had some great sponsors that have helped support the show throughout the year. We wanted to take the time to personally thank each and every one of them, and we encourage all of our listeners to take the time to support those who have support us.
  • 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 8-11 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 11:30 am et @ Majority.fm!
  
  • Ryan Devereaux on the Police Violence at Occupy Wall Street's 6 Month Anniversary [03•19•12]
  • Jeff Smith of Occupy Wall Street with his 1st Hand Account of Occupy's Anniversary [03•19•12]
  • Jonathan Cohn on Obamacare vs Supreme Court [03•20•12]
  • Jonathan Cohn on Obamacare vs Supreme Court [03•20•12]
  • Brian Beutler on the Paul Ryan Budget, Obama Admin + more [03•21•12]
  • Josh Orton with an Update from Wisconsin [03•22•12]
  • Matt Taibbi on the Bank of America Con [03•22•12]
  • Cliff Schecter and Sam Seder discuss Trayvon Martin, Gun Laws, Paul Ryan's Budget + more! [03•23•12]
  
  MORE Podcast Interviews at majorityreport.official.fm!
  

• On the Edge with Max Keiser 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!
  • NEW! MaxKeiserTV on YouTube! MaxKeiserTV PLUS here is Max Keiser’s official Facebook page And here is the official Keiser Report page
  • EThey have become abattoirs where the real wealth of the nation is taken and slaughtered by maxkeiser - READ When the Abuse of Insider Information and Control Grows So Large as to Become the Market BTV jessescrossroadscafe
  • VIDEO! How America Avoided Fascism in 1933 by maxkeiser WATCH How America Avoided Fascism in 1933 jessescrossroadscafe
  • VIDEO! Max Keiser, the host of RT’s Keiser Report calls Smith’s diatribe an “embarrassing confession of the firm’s wrong doings” by maxkeiser GO TO Goldman Sachs exec leaves sinking ship in disgust on rt
  • KEISER REPORT [KR263] Keiser Report: Rip out eyes, tear off head We discuss ripping out client eyeballs and losing millions for a free breakfast; maggots of risk and plastic financial apartheid. In the second half of the show Max talks to filmmakers William Gagan and Geoff Shively about their crowd funded journey to Syria and ‘fake’ activists and, with the introduction of anti-free speech laws in Chicago, the filmmakers discuss the small drone helicopters they have acquired for reporting on the NATO summit.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR264] Keiser Report: Guns vs Gadgets We discuss ‘anti-human, bigoted algos’ buying Apple shares; new technology versus old-fashioned gunpowder and the American economy as a lava lamp. In the second half of the show Max talks to musician Tomas Kalnoky of Streetlight Manifesto about wanting to be the first band to sell no records while the RIAA and record industry executives crash and burn with their dying model.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR265] Keiser Report – Unbanked & Unworthy We discuss the great ‘unbanked’ masses dumping gold believing in a ‘recovering economy’ and an end to money printing while banks and insiders buy gold and mortgage backed securities in preparation for more quantitative easing by the Fed. In the second half of the show Max talks to Mark Melin of Uncorrelated Investments about MF Global, JP Morgan and the future of the futures market. They also discuss the Charles Mansons of the futures industry and the branch office of the too big too fail banks formerly known as the SEC. Your thoughts below on why the MF Global crime has not apparently interested the Occupy Wall Street crowd.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR266] Keiser Report: Selective Amnesia for Brokers & Murderers We discuss Irish stoicism and social ostracism, boycotts and ponzis and the banking practices of Chuckie. In the second half of the show Max talks to independent journalist, Lars Schall, about his recently published investigation into insider trading around the 9-11 terrorist attack as well as his pursuit of Germany’s elusive gold reserves.
  • ON THE EDGE [OTE150] On the Edge with Chris Cook Stacy Summary: Dang, where else can you find such consistently amazing information and thought-provoking ideas!? My primary question to you the viewer regarding this interview with Chris Cook is – do you agree with his analysis regarding oil prices and his prediction that they will collapse in the second half of the year?
  • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-358] The Truth About The Pain For Motorists Stacy Summary: We talk about the price of petrol rising in the UK and the Bats IPO being pulled. Download show HERE (mp3)
  • Donate to ResonanceFM here!
  

• ANTIWAR RADIO with Scott Horton
  LIVE (9-11am Pacific, 12pm - 2pm Eastern) Plenty of archives too!
  Listen at antiwar.com/radio
  • Peter Certo March 22, 2012: Peter Certo, editorial assistant at Right Web and the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses his article “U.S. Government Finally Catching up With MEK Boosters Like Ed Rendell;” the shocking development that the rule of law might actually apply to former high-level US government officials; the usual suspects – humanitarian activists and Muslims who upload videos on YouTube – who face “material support” of terrorism charges under the PATRIOT Act; and the connection between the MEK’s terrorist-group designation, Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and Iran-war fever.
  • Barbara Slavin March 22, 2012: Barbara Slavin, author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation, discusses her article “Subtle Signs Obama Diplomacy May Work on Iran ;” who was really at fault for Iran’s failed uranium fuel-swap deal in 2009; growing concern with Iran’s 20% enrichment process that yields medical isotopes and a “breakout” capability; and why the Treasury Department’s investigation of MEK shills like Edward Rendell may be Obama’s way of reaching out to Iran.
  • Kevin Zeese March 22, 2012: Kevin Zeese, Executive Director of VotersForPeace and Co-Chair of Come Home America, discusses his article “Dismissal Is the Only Option in Bradley Manning Case;” the prosecution’s withholding of government damage-assessment reports, which could help disprove Manning’s “aiding the enemy” charge; statements from President Obama and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey (last paragraph) that bolster an “unlawful command influence” defense; and whether Judge Col. Denise Lind will rule fairly, resisting the government pressure and bribes that accompany cases of this magnitude.
  • Lawrence Wittner March 23, 2012: Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany, discusses his article “Try a Little Nuclear Sanity ;” the “SANE” legislation introduced by Congressman Edward Markey that would cut the budget and scope of the US nuclear weapons program; how Russia is threatened by “missile defense,” that supposedly exists to protect Europe from Iran but actually gives the US an unanswerable first-strike capability; why the Cold War military budget and mindset persist even though the USSR was dissolved over 20 years ago; and the unspoken Ronald Reagan/liberal agreement on nuclear disarmament.
  • Many more interviews at Antiwar Radio!
  

• fauxnews
  • Senior Adviser to President Obama, David Plouffe
  • House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan
  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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Lies on Wall St. Over at 4ClosureFraud.org we now have what everyone's been waiting for! Robosigned | Foreclosure Fraud Settlement Documents Released, Read Them Here! See Mike Papantonio with attorney Peter Mougey about what this settlement actually means in plain English at our Ring of Fire section below. Yves Smith at NakedCapitalism digs into the details with The Legal Lie at the Heart of the $8.5 Billion Bank of America and Federal/State Mortgage Settlements .... Bear in mind that investors, analysts, and commentators have objected to the very premise of this arrangement. A settlement involves a release of liability, and in anything other than the through-the-looking-glass world of rule by banks, the party that did the bad stuff is the one that pays for the settlement. This deal is like stealing your neighbor’s gold watch and using it to resolve charges of embezzlement. But what about this investor approval that Donovan says he has? He has told both journalists and mortgage investors directly that the bulk of the mods will come from Countrywide deals and he has consent via the $8.5 billion Bank of America/Bank of New York settlement. Huh? First, it seems more that a bit cheeky to rely on a major piece of a program via a deal that has not yet gone through (the Bank of America settlement was removed to Federal court and has now been sent back to state court, and there will be discovery in the state court process, so approval is not imminent). But second and more important, investors approved nothing. Bank of New York is trying to act well outside its authority as trustee for the 530 Countrywide trusts in the settlement. It’s tantamount to having a friend that you gave a medical power of attorney claim that it gave him the authority to sell your car and write checks on your account. ..... It is hard to conclude anything other than that Gibbs & Bruns, the firm representing Bank of New York, lied to the court about what the settlement constitutes and what the PSAs permit. The PSAs have very clear terms on modifications and changing them should require an amendment. But lying to the court seems to be standard operating procedure for Kathy Patrick, the partner leading the settlement deal. Alison Frankel of Reuters described how Gibbs & Bruns lied about why they were leading this action: [....] You need to read the Alison Frankel article in full to have some appreciation as to what happened. .... It’s not hard to guesstimate that this settlement is worth easily ten times the $8.5 billion Bank of America plans to pony up. And Mr. Market agrees. BofA’s stock was trading below $6 when both settlements were in doubt; it’s now up more than 33%, closing last Friday at $8.05. So why would Pimco and Blackrock abandon a strategy that would seem likely to bear more fruit? Recall that Blackrock signed on to the Gibbs & Bruns negotiated settlement while it was still 49% owned by Merrill, um, Bank of America. So its motives seem straightforward, even if they also happen to be a breach of its fiduciary duty to its investors. .... Now let’s go back to the Donovan lie, which depends on the Gibbs & Bruns lie not being challenged by the court, or the $8.5 billion settlement not coming unglued for some other reason. .... Now the railroading of investors may not seem all that important to many of you. But you are in fact all exposed. Yes its LIES LIES LIES all over the place in this alleged "deal" so read all the details at NakedCapitalism! Next Tyler Durden reports The Greek PSI Lawsuits Begin You didn't think investors would voluntarily give up on the potential to generate returns between 50% and 333% now did you following the 'coercively voluntary' (aka Schrodinger Spanish Inquisition) Greek debt exchange? Because here they come. Reuters reports that a Hamburg law firm representing 110 Greek bond holders have formed a class action group and intend to sue banks and the Greek state following the Greek swap. It is unclear yet if there are any hedge funds participating in the group, or if these are the entities represented by Bingham. Most likely not: those will almost certainly seek non-class action status so as not to dilute the legal effort, if not fees. However, now that the precedent is set, look for the onslaught of lawsuits to start in earnest. What is probably quite important is that European taxpayers will now be delighted to know they are paying the Troika lawyers' $1000/hour legal fees (and uncapped expenses). .... Zerohedge also has Zeus Yiamouyiannis, from Of Two Minds with this Guest Post: Money from Nothing - A Primer On Fake Wealth Creation And Its Implications (Part 1) This primer will detail the major components and basic evolution of fake wealth creation, accelerating debt expansion, hollowing out of the economy, and inevitable financial implosion. Stage one—Fiat money origination, multiplication, and distribution. Do read this great primer on "How we got here". Then WATCH this ten-minute VIDEO "How Goldman Sachs masked Greece's debt"! Nomi Prins also has a Guest Post: The Audacity of Bonuses At MF Global In the spirit of George Orwell’s Animal Farm commandment: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal then others” comes the galling news that bankruptcy trustee, Louis Freeh, could approve the defunct, MF Global to pay bonuses to certain senior executives. This, despite the fact that nearly $1.6 billion of customer funds remains “missing” or otherwise partially accounted for, yet beyond the reach of those customers, perhaps forever, since before the firm declared bankruptcy on October 31, 2011. .... Three wrinkles of audacity underscore the potential MF Global bonus approvals. First, there is the moral responsibility layer. MF Global, classified as a broker-dealer wasn’t specifically subject to the investment-advisor fiduciary rule that requires ‘systemic safety and soundness’’ with respect to retail customers. But, comingling customers’ funds inappropriately with the firm’s, as former chief, Jon Corzine’s European bets were blowing up, was an abject misinterpretation of the rule's intent. Aside from that, MF Global lied about funds segregation to its customers, which constitutes fraud. The final page of the firm’s brochure touts “the strict physical separation of clients’ assets from MF Global accounts.” ..... The reason for possibly allowing bonuses for MF Global chief operating officer, Bradley I. Abelow, finance chief, Henri J. Steenkamp, and general counsel, Laurie R. Ferber follows the same twisted logic pervading Wall Street: no one else can do the job as well. These people are apparently so special that despite incompetence, negligence or potential malfeasance in diverting customers’ funds away from their rightful spots, their expertise is critical to the bankruptcy proceeding. In that realm, their ‘job performance’ will help Freeh "maximize value for creditors of the company”. Translation: it will ensure banks like JPM Chase keep their cut, since customers are not creditors. Again, plain wrong. But forget simple matters of right and wrong for a moment. After all, this is Big Finance: what's most important is what’s not necessarily what’s legal or illegal, but more practically, what you can get away with and what you can’t. In that regard, the sheer impotence of regulators, the Department of Justice, and the FBI are enabling factors in perpetuating financial crimes. ..... Meanwhile, two senators have taken on the bonus-pay fight. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), member of the Senate Agriculture Committee investigating MF Global, wrote to Freeh that the plan is "unacceptable." Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.), whose constituency includes a number of farmers with funds in the ‘missing’ category, called it "outrageous.” Next Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone comments On Goldman Executive Greg Smith's Brave Departure Wall Street is buzzing this morning about a resignation – a historic one. Greg Smith, the executive director and head of Goldman Sachs’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, not only decided to quit Goldman, he decided to do it in the New York Times, eloquently deconstructing the firm’s moral slide in a lengthy op-ed piece. The essence of Smith’s piece is devastating. He points to one simple, specific problem in the company: the fact that Goldman routinely screws its own clients. .... The resignation will have an effect on Goldman’s business. The firm’s share price opened this morning at 124.52; it’s down to 120.72 as of this writing (it dropped two percent while I was writing this blog), and it will probably dive further. Why? Because you can stack all the exposés on Goldman you want by degenerates like me and the McClatchy group, and you can even have a Senate subcommittee call for your executives to be tried for perjury, but that doesn’t necessarily move the Street. But when one of the firm’s own partners is saying out loud that his company liked to "rip the eyeballs out" of "muppets" like you, then you start to wonder if maybe this firm is the best choice for managing your money. Hence we see headlines this morning like this item from Forbes.com: "Greg Smith Quits, Should Clients Fire Goldman Sachs?" This always had to be the endgame for reforming Wall Street. It was never going to happen by having the government sweep through and impose a wave of draconian new regulations, although a more vigorous enforcement of existing laws might have helped. Nor could the Occupy protests or even a monster wave of civil lawsuits hope to really change the screw-your-clients, screw-everybody, grab-what-you-can culture of the modern financial services industry. ...... The game now is about getting paid as much as possible and as quickly as possible, and if your client doesn’t like the way you managed his money, well, fuck him – let him try to find someone else on the market to deal him straight. These guys have lost the fear of going out of business, because they can’t go out of business. After all, our government won’t let them. Beyond the bailouts, they’re all subsisting daily on massive loads of free cash from the Fed. No one can touch them, and sadly, most of the biggest institutional clients see getting clipped for a few points by Goldman or Chase as the cost of doing business. The only way to break this cycle, since our government doesn't seem to want to end its habit of financially supporting fraud-committing, repeat-offending, client-fleecing banks, is for these big "muppet" clients to start taking their business elsewhere. ...... Update: Well, the blowback is already here. The Wall Street Journal this morning has stooped already to helping Goldman smear Smith. Here's their take: [.....] You just knew that sooner or later, the bank was going to come out and say that Smith was actually a janitor in Goldman's Mozambique office or something. It's just surprising they did it so quickly. Anyone who reads these critiques and even thinks about believing them should go back and look at Senator Levin's report on Goldman..... Wait! There's more! ZeroHedge reveals Terminated CBO Whistleblower Shares Her Full Story With Zero Hedge, Exposes Deep Conflicts At "Impartial" Budget Office ....What we are 100% certain of, however, is that yet another whistleblower has stepped up, this time one already known to the general public, and one that Zero Hedge covered just over a month ago: we refer to the case of former CBO worker, Lan T. Pham, who, as the WSJ described in early February, "alleges she was terminated [by the CBO] after 2½ months for sharing pessimistic outlooks for the banking and housing sectors in 2010" and who "alleges supervisors stifled opinions that contradicted economic fixes endorsed by some on Wall Street, including research from a Morgan Stanley economist who served as a CBO adviser. As part of the review, Sen. Grassley's staff is examining whether Wall Street firms or others exert influence that compromises the office's independence." As we observed in February, "what is most troubling is if indeed the CBO is nothing but merely another front for Wall Street to work its propaganda magic on the administration. Because at the core of every policy are numbers, usually with dollar signs in front of them, numbers which have to make sense and have to be projected into the future, no matter how grossly laughable the resultant hockeystick." As it turns out, somewhat expectedly, the WSJ version of events was incomplete. There is much more to this very important story, one which has major implications over "impartial" policy decisionmaking, and as a result, Ms. Pham has approached Zero Hedge to share her full story with the public. As we stated earlier, we will present any and every whistleblower's statement in its entirety, and without editing, and so we will, however we want to bring our readers' attention to several key aspects of Ms. Pham's termination from the CBO, because it may have substantial implications over the enacted $25 billion robosigning settlement. The reason for this is that Ms. Pham was fired because of her work voicing skepticism over precisely the same 'chain of title' validity issues that snarled foreclosure to a halt for much of 2011, which as Adam Levitin has said present a "potential systemic risk to the US economy" and which have necessitated the recently enacted Robosettlement to avoid massive losses for the banks (and in the process yet another shadow taxpayer bailout for the Too Big To Fail banks). The bottom line is that the CBO was warned at least by Ms. Pham (and possibly others) over the dangers of precisely the issue that Attorneys General are scrambling to shove under the rug in exchange for a wristslap to all mortgage originators (i.e., the same banks that somehow are now getting bailed out by taxpayers and the GSEs on an annual basis). And just like every other issue that merely gets a cosmetic and very transitory liquidity facelift, nothing ever is actually fixed. .... Here are some key remarks:

• ...excerpts from my letter to Senator Grassley: …Issues at the heart of the foreclosure problems pertain to securitization….and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), which purports to have legal standing on electronic records of ownership on about 65 million…mortgages… MERS…facilitated Wall Street’s ability to expedite the pooling of subprime mortgages into MBSs by bypassing standard ownership transfer procedures as the housing bubble escalated .... risks put into question the ability of investors or bondholders to make claims on the collateral (the homes) that underlies trillions of dollars in MBSs, the bulk of which are now guaranteed by …Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This affects $10 trillion in residential mortgage debt outstanding, of which $7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBSs)…
  
• “The chain of title problems are highly technical issues, but they pose a potential systemic risk to the US economy. If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever…"
• Essentially, the chain of title on securitized mortgages appears broken, whether or not there is a foreclosure. ... Recall that these same entities founded MERS, which expedited securitization and purported to have foreclosure authority from its electronic records of ownership on about 65 million mortgages. “Robo-signing” emerged as fraudulent or defective documents were used or created to establish the legal authority to foreclose as MERS faced legal challenges; as of July 22, 2011, foreclosures could no longer be initiated in MERS’ name. At last year’s pace, some figures suggest it could take lenders in New York 62 years to clear their foreclosure inventory, 49 years in New Jersey and a decade in Florida, Massachusetts, and Illinois.
• ....if the entity that has been taking the homeowners’ mortgage payments is not the real owner, what happens when the true owner(s) of the mortgage shows up? Are homeowners on the hook again for those ‘missed’ mortgage payments?

Scott Shane at NYT reports U.S. Supporters of Iranian Group Face Scrutiny For more than a year, prominent former American officials have been giving well-paid speeches in support of an Iranian opposition group that is fighting to reverse its 15-year-old designation by the State Department as a terrorist organization. Now the Treasury Department appears to have begun an inquiry to see whether the speaking fees were being paid by the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, known as the M.E.K. Americans are prohibited by law from doing business with designated terrorist groups. Edward G. Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and an outspoken supporter of the M.E.K., said on Monday that William Morris Endeavor, which handles his speaking engagements, received a subpoena last week seeking information on fees he had received for M.E.K.-related speeches. The Treasury Department declined to comment on whether it is conducting an investigation. But the subpoena to Mr. Rendell, earlier reported by The Washington Times, raises the possibility that a long list of former officials who have accepted fees to speak on behalf of the M.E.K., including former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, could come under scrutiny for any payments traced to the group. .... The M.E.K., which supported Saddam Hussein and is described by critics as a cult, has faced open hostility from the current Iraqi government, which has close relations to Iran. Iraqi security forces clashed last year with M.E.K. supporters at Camp Ashraf, resulting in the death of at least 36 of the camp residents. Mr. Rendell said he thought it was a “disgrace” that M.E.K. supporters had been killed with weapons supplied by the United States and despite promises of security for the camp from the Bush administration. He said he agreed to speak up for the group in part because he was dismayed by the violence and never would have spoken for the money alone. “I made a lot of money last year,” Mr. Rendell said. “I don’t need the money. I would never sacrifice my reputation for any amount of money.” .... Among former officials who have spoken for the M.E.K. at conferences are two former C.I.A. directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; as well as prominent Republicans, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, and Democrats like Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont. What are the chances any of these gentlemen will be charged with treason under the Espionage Act of 1917? For more info read Phillip Geraldi's The MEK’s Useful Idiots at AntiWar.com and Scott Horton's interview with Reza Marashi below in our AntiWar Radio section. In a related matter The Nation's Jeremy Scahill appears on RT Jeremy Scahill: Obama After Whistleblowers Worldwide Common Dreams has the VIDEO! Scahill discusses his new piece at The Nation Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen? On February 2, 2011, President Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two discussed counterterrorism cooperation and the battle against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At the end of the call, according to a White House read-out, Obama “expressed concern” over the release of a man named Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom Obama said “had been sentenced to five years in prison for his association with AQAP.” It turned out that Shaye had not yet been released at the time of the call, but Saleh did have a pardon for him prepared and was ready to sign it. It would not have been unusual for the White House to express concern about Yemen’s allowing AQAP suspects to go free. Suspicious prison breaks of Islamist militants in Yemen had been a regular occurrence over the past decade, and Saleh has been known to exploit the threat of terrorism to leverage counterterrorism dollars from the United States. But this case was different. Abdulelah Haider Shaye is not an Islamist militant or an Al Qaeda operative. He is a journalist. Unlike most journalists covering Al Qaeda, Shaye risked his life to travel to areas controlled by Al Qaeda and to interview its leaders. He also conducted several interviews with the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. Shaye did the last known interview with Awlaki just before it was revealed that Awlaki, a US citizen, was on a CIA/JSOC hit list. ...... There is no doubt that Shaye was reporting facts that both the Yemeni and US government wanted to suppress. He was also interviewing people Washington was hunting. While the US and Yemeni governments alleged that he was a facilitator for Al Qaeda propaganda, close observers of Yemen disagree. “It is difficult to overestimate the importance of his work,” says Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen scholar at Princeton University who had communicated regularly with Shaye since 2008. “Without Shaye’s reports and interviews we would know much less about Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula than we do, and if one believes, as I do, that knowledge of the enemy is important to constructing a strategy to defeat them, then his arrest and continued detention has left a hole in our knowledge that has yet to be filled.” .... “Certainly Shaye’s reports were an embarrassment for the US and Yemeni government, because at a time when both governments were seeking and failing to kill key leaders within AQAP, this single journalist with his camera and computer was able to locate these same leaders and interview them,” says Johnsen. “There is no publicly available evidence to suggest that Abdulelah was anything other than a journalist attempting to do his job, and it remains unclear why the US or Yemeni government refuse to present the evidence they claim to possess.” .... Much more to read! Also see Jeremy Scahill on DN! below. Carl Herman writes at Washington's Blog War Criminal Obama again threatens unlawful war with Iran: who will arrest him? President Obama criminally threatened to murder Iranians today (Wednesday) with fellow War Criminal British PM Cameron. The language in their press conference included multiple lies and insults. Let’s consider the history of the US with Iran before we consider what Obama said: ..... Read on for all the embedded links! Anybody remember when Dennis Kucinich read his Articles of Impeachment of the Bu$h regime on the U.S. House floor? The Dems will have NONE of that anymore! See Glenn Greenwald's Dennis Kucinich and “wackiness” Kucinich’s fate was basically sealed when the new district contained far more of Kaptur’s district than his. His 18-year stint in the House will come to an end when the next Congress is installed at the beginning of 2013. Establishment Democrats have long viewed Dennis Kucinich with a mixture of scorn, mockery and condescension. .... So let’s recap the state of mental health in establishment Democratic circles: the President who claims (and exercises) the power to target American citizens for execution-by-CIA in total secrecy and with no charges — as well as those who dutifully follow him — are sane, sober and Serious, meriting great respect. By contrast, one of the very few members of Congress who stands up and vehemently objects to this most radical power — “The idea that the United States has the ability to summarily execute a US citizen ought to send chills racing up and down the spines of every person of conscience” — is a total wackjob, meriting patronizing mockery... We're betting the Impeachment of The Great O!rator is "off the table" as the Administration is leaning toward yet another illegal war. We would be remiss in our weekly missive if we didn't mention the senseless killing in Afghanistan last week. Said The Great O!rator "The killing of innocent civilians is outrageous, and it's unacceptable. It's not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military." (link) Let's parse this a bit: "It's not who we are as a country." No. It isn't. It's just you and your psychopath friends in the "MILITARY Industrial Media" complex. "...it does not represent our military." But isn't that the definition of Military? Military people launching cruz missiles from ships, dropping cluster and DU bombs from the sky, firing chemical weapons and generally shooting at will, from checkpoints to mosques, ALL AT civilian areas!! How are the drone operators any different from the "troop" who went off on this village when it comes to murder? They just call it "collateral damage" now, don't they? Well posse comitatus is legal again. At the same time habeas corpus is suspended. Fourth Amendment? Nah. FIRST AMENDMENT? Not so much. Words vs. actions. How stupid does he think the 99% of the world is? See BBC 13 Mar 2012 THAT SAME DAY Pakistan: US drones 'kill 15' in South Waziristan The US does not normally comment on drone operations, which have killed hundreds of people in recent years, but in January President Barack Obama confirmed for the first time that the covert programme targets militants on Pakistani soil. .... and from ONE YEAR AGO in Salon U.S. doesn’t count civilians killed by drones The big focus of the Obama administration in the last week has been, in President Obama’s words, “to stop the violence against civilians.” That’s in Libya, of course, where Moammar Gadhafi was threatening to quell a rebellion based in Benghazi. In this context, it’s particularly striking to read the news from the ACLU — which has been waging a legal battle to wring information from the government about American drone strikes — that the military doesn’t even keep a tally of civilian deaths caused by drones: [...] While the Pentagon does apparently have “individual assessment” reports on each drone strike, the government has said those are classified, ACLU attorney Jonathan Manes tells me. Moreover, these attacks typically are in areas — like Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan — where it’s extremely difficult for reporters to operate safely and on their own. Thanks to the work of independent researchers, we do have some information on civilians killed by drones. The administration, of course, says that all possible steps are taken to limit civilian casualties. But it’s impossible to scrutinize that claim when the government is keeping all the data secret. Grrrr. To illustrate this point we return to Glenn Greenwald NPR and NYT on Americans v. Afghans: So as we can see, while Afghans don’t seem to mind civilian slaughter — as evidenced by the less-than-robust street protests in Kabul — Americans actually cherish human life and thus will simply not tolerate it. Do read all of this, Greenwald's most tongue-in-cheek account yet. And catch Glenn on Ring of Fire Radio below! MEANWHILE Gareth Porter describes how Alleged Photos of "Clean-up" at Iran's Parchin Site Lack Credibility at OpEdnews.com News stories about satellite photographs suggesting efforts by Iran to "sanitize" a military site that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said may have been used to test nuclear weapons have added yet another layer to widely held suspicion that Iran must indeed be hiding a covert nuclear weapons program. But the story is suspect, in part because it is based on evidence that could only be ambiguous, at best. The claim does not reflect U.S. intelligence, and a prominent think tank that has published satellite photography related to past controversies surrounding Iran's nuclear program has not found any photographs supporting it. ..... The satellite photographs described to Jahn did not come from U.S. intelligence. Former CIA counter-terrorism official Phil Giraldi told IPS that a U.S. intelligence official had confirmed to him that the officials in question were not talking about intelligence provided by U.S. intelligence. U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland refused to answer specific questions at a Mar. 8 briefing about whether U.S. intelligence had such satellite photos or whether the U.S. believes that such intelligence exists. She referred to such intelligence only in the conditional tense. "Any evidence that Iran is seeking to cover its tracks would raise only further concern about the true nature of the program," she said. That means that the officials were either from Israel or one of its three European allies -- the British, French and Germans -- who have been working closely with Israel to undermine and finally force a revision of the U.S. intelligence community's 2007 conclusion that Iran has not worked on developing a nuclear weapon since 2003. Israel provided a series of documents to the IAEA after that intelligence estimate -- as recounted by former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei in his 2011 memoir -- aimed at proving that Iran had secretly tested a detonator for an implosion device and had worked on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007. The timing of the story -- just after the possibility of an IAEA inspection visit to the site had been suggested by Iran -- is also suspect. ... Further casting doubt on the motive behind the story, the same allegation was made to the same AP reporter more than three and a half months earlier. On Nov. 22, Jahn reported that a single official of an unidentified state had "cited intelligence from his home country, saying it appears that Tehran is trying cover its tracks by sanitizing the site and removing any evidence of nuclear research and development." That assertion came in the wake of the IAEA Board of Governors meeting in November, as the IAEA Safeguards Department was planning to request a visit to the site at Parchin, where the agency had just reported nuclear weapons-related testing had been carried out in a large explosive containment chamber, according to unnamed "Member States." The claim of satellite intelligence showing Iranian efforts to clean up a site at Parchin has not been supported by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), the Washington, D.C. think tank that had defended allegations in last November's IAEA report about foreign expertise having assisted in the alleged construction of a containment vessel at Parchin in 2000. .... Speaking of Philip Giraldi, this former CIA officer outlines who is Lobbying for War: That the United States is in such a parlous condition is directly due to the effective work of Israel’s principal lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has just completed its annual convention. Consider what AIPAC and its friends in Congress and the media have accomplished: Understanding that the truth about Iran would not support their case, they have completely skewed the narrative about the threat posed by that country. Iran has no nuclear weapon, has not made a decision to acquire one, and may not even have the technical ability or financial resources to do so even if its government decides to move in that direction. Yet, AIPAC has succeeded in convincing the American public that Iran is already a nuclear power and is somehow a threat to the United States, all despite the fact that Iran, far from being an aggressor, has been on the receiving end of covert operations run by Washington and Tel Aviv that have killed scores of Iranians. President Barack Obama has unhesitatingly endorsed the AIPAC line, emphasizing in his speech to that organization on March 4 that Iran is a security problem for the United States and the entire world, an elaboration straight out of Israel’s playbook that was noted approvingly by no less than Tom Friedman of The New York Times. Friedman asks “whether he [Obama] is the most pro-Israel president in history or just one of the most.” AIPAC has also been effective in lining up Capitol Hill in its support. ..... Why pick on Iran? Because that is what Israel wants (Israel, one might add, has, unlike Iran, attacked a number of its neighbors in recent years). Israel also possesses its own secret nuclear arsenal, giving it a combination of political recklessness and potentially cataclysmic military power that apparently causes no heartburn in Congress. ..... On March 9, 86 Republican members of Congress demonstrated how it will work, sending a letter to Obama pledging “unwavering support” for Israel and concluding that the White House must “make our offer of support and assistance to Israel crystal clear if Israel finds it necessary to take action against Iran.” So Israel is empowered to make the decision whether America goes to war or not, at least for those 86 Republicans, who would almost certainly be joined by numerous Democrats. Given that reality, if someone can come up with an alternative scenario in which automatic American involvement does not take place, it has yet to be explained plausibly. Will Obama simply refuse to play? In an election year? Not likely. Many are convinced the war is coming, including White House senior staff. So what can the rest of us do when the war comes? Very little. ..... Hmmmmmm. March 12, 2012 was "WORLD DAY AGAINST CYBER CENSORSHIP". Reporters Without Borders (RSF - Reporters sans frontieres) just released their new report "The 2012 list of the Enemies of the Internet" at Beset by online surveillance and content filtering, netizens fight on This report, which presents the 2012 list of countries that are “Enemies of the Internet” and “under surveillance,” updates the report published on 12 March 2011. ...In 2011, netizens were at the heart of the political changes in the Arab world and elsewhere. They tried to resist the imposition of a news and information blackout but paid a high price. At the same time, supposedly democratic countries continued to set a bad example by yielding to the temptation to prioritize security over other concerns and by adopting disproportionate measures to protect copyright. Internet users in “free” countries have learned to react in order to protect what they have won. Some governments stepped up pressure on technical service providers to act as Internet cops. Companies specializing in online surveillance are becoming the new mercenaries in an online arms race. Hacktivists are providing technical expertise to netizens trapped by a repressive regime’s apparatus. Diplomats are getting involved. More than ever before, online freedom of expression is now a major foreign and domestic policy issue. ...... Internet content filtering is growing but Internet surveillance is growing even more. Censors prefer to monitor dissidents’ online activities and contacts rather than try to prevent them from going online. The police chief in the United Arab Emirates, for example, has acknowledged that the police monitor social networks. The security services no longer interrogate and torture a prisoner for the names of his accomplices. Now they want his Facebook, Skype and Vkontakte passwords. It is the same in Bahrain, Turkmenistan or Syria. .... To enhance their surveillance abilities, repressive regimes turn to specialized companies for ever more effective equipment and software for filtering, monitoring and Deep Packet Inspection. The SpyFiles which WikiLeaks has published are a mine of information on the subject. The companies they use are very often western ones that have been lured by a very lucrative market. They include the US company BlueCoat, criticized for its activities in Syria, the French company Amesys, which supplied Col. Gaddafi, and Vodafone, the target of an ANHRI suit in Egypt. The Italian company AreaSpa finally pulled out of Syria after an international campaign criticizing its cooperation with the Assad regime. The European Parliament has adopted a resolution supporting tougher regulation of exports to repressive countries. A bill with similar aims is currently before the US congress. In her book Consent of the Networked, journalist and Internet specialist Rebecca MacKinnon has rightly stressed the need for Internet users the world over to raise questions about the way technology is used in order to ensure that their rights and freedoms are protected. ...... Speeches by U.S. officials on the importance of the fight against online censorship and their financial support for anti-censorship tools is belied by the treatment of WikiLeaks (see the Reporters Without Borders report on the United States and the Internet). Using Visa and MasterCard to cut off its access to funds has hampered the site’s operations. Bradley Manning, suspected of being one of WikiLeaks’ informers, has been detained for several months in dreadful conditions. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is the subject of a “secret indictment” which Reporters Without Borders urges the U.S. authorities to clarify. Response of Internet users and netizens of the “free world” Internet users in Western countries cut their teeth with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many of them took to the streets to protest against the repressive U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which sacrificed Internet freedom for the sake of copyright protection. The operation Stop SOPA and the 24-hour blackout observed by many websites, including Wikipedia, mobilised Web users throughout the world who were potentially affected by these bills to an unprecedented extent. The campaign took off again with a new wave of protest against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which up till then had left most people indifferent despite campaigns by the NGOs La Quadrature du Net and Reporters Without Borders. Netizens from all sides understood that these bills could affect on their day-to-day activities. Eastern Europe spearheaded the campaign. Several governments held off ratification. Resistance to ACTA is stronger than ever and the treaty may not see the light of day. Vigilance must be maintained. The next target for Internet activists could be the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), proposed by the European Union to clamp down on infringements of intellectual property law, which could potentially lead to large-scale filtering of the Internet. Another blow for Web neutrality. ... So much more to read so click over there! Also see their Press Freedom Index 2011/2012 The Nation's Ari Berman explains The GOP War on Voting at Rolling Stone As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. "What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century," says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C. Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. "I don't want everybody to vote," the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP's effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process. All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans. Taken together, such measures could significantly dampen the Democratic turnout next year – perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP. .....A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop. Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud – and many of the cases involved immigrants and former felons who were simply unaware of their ineligibility. A much-hyped investigation in Wisconsin, meanwhile, led to the prosecution of only .0007 percent of the local electorate for alleged voter fraud. "Our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere," joked Stephen Colbert. A 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a leading advocate for voting rights at the New York University School of Law, quantified the problem in stark terms. "It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning," the report calculated, "than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls." ..... Read the rest at RS and see Ari Berman's inverview on DN! below. In related voting matters BradBlog reports DOJ REJECTS TEXAS GOP'S POLLING PLACE PHOTO ID RESTRICTION LAW ....[Monday], the DoJ objected to the new law after determining that the state had not met it's "burden of showing that a submitted change [to an election law] has neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect"... The finding was based on an analysis of two different sets of data submitted by TX to the DoJ for review in their Section 5 examination of the new law. Both sets were sent following a series of questions for TX by the DoJ last September when the federal agency also rejected the state's new Congressional redistricting plan, as similarly passed by Republicans and signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry (R). At the time, the DoJ had determined that TX had created the new voting districts "at least in part, for the purpose of diminishing the ability of citizens of the United States, on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group, to elect their preferred candidates of choice to Congress." The redistricting was found to be purposely discriminatory and was rejected by the DoJ under Section 5 of the VRA.... and more good news from BradBlog Second Injunction, This One Permanent, Issued Against WI GOP's Photo ID Restriction Law In an unambiguous finding stating that "the legislature and governor have exceeded their constitutional authority" and that "voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression," a second Dane County Circuit court in less than a week, has determined that the Wisconsin GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction on voters is in strict violation of the state Constitution. [Monday], in his 12-page ruling on the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess found that "Act 23," the new law which strips voters of their right to vote unless they are able to produce a state-issued Photo ID at the polling place violates the WI Constitution's Article III which guarantees the right to vote to all state residents who are 18 and over (Section 1) other than in cases where the legislature may place restrictions on convicted felons and those adjudicated to be incompetent (Section 2). Niess has issued a permanent injunction on the law today, in a complaint filed last October by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin arguing that legally registered voters would be unconstitutionally barred from exercising their guaranteed right to vote under the Republican's new restrictive law. ..... And THIS JUST IN from BradBlog: WI GOP Loses State Senate Majority as Republican Senator Resigns Before Recall State Sen. Pam Galloway --- one of four Wisconsin Senate Republicans scheduled to face upcoming recall elections in the still-redounding blowback from the state GOP's assault on collective bargaining rights last year --- has announced her resignation today. The result is that GOP's 17-16 majority over Democrats in the chamber prior to today (it had been a 19-14 majority until the first round of recall elections last year) is now gone. For the moment, the chamber is now evenly split at 16-16. The GOP has lost sole control of the chamber. Galloway is citing family health issues as the reason for her surprise resignation today. .... As per WI recall rules, the contest for her seat, the three other Senators and the offices of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, will move forward as planned. The GOP will be allowed to replace Galloway on the ballot. The dates for those elections are now set for May 8th and June 5th. ... See our BradBlog section below for more info including Brad on RT shooting down another RW Loon spewing LIES about imaginary "voter fraud". Excellent! THEN Check out this film Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections an explosive new documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 - and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This controversial feature length film by Emmy award-winning director David Earnhardt examines in factual, logical, and yet startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S. Noted computer programmers, statisticians, journalists, and experienced election officials provide the irrefutable proof. ... UNCOUNTED is a wakeup call to all Americans. Beyond increasing the public’s awareness, the film inspires greater citizen involvement in fixing a broken electoral system. As we approach the decisive election of 2008, UNCOUNTED will change how you feel about the way votes are counted in America. We leave our LAST WORD to MICHAEL MOORE who celebrates the 6-month anniversary of OWS at The Nation The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street. What other political movement in modern times has won the sympathy and/or support of the majority of the American public—in less than two months? How did this happen? I think it was a revolt that has been percolating across the country since Reagan fired the first air traffic controller. Then, on September 17, 2011, a group of (mostly) young adults decided to take direct action. And this action struck a raw nerve, sending a shock wave throughout the United States, because what these kids were doing was what tens of millions of people wished they could do. The people who have lost their jobs, their homes, their “American dream”—they cathartically cheered on this ragtag bunch who got right in the face of Wall Street and said, “We’re not leaving until you give us our country back!” By purposely not creating a formal, hierarchical organization with rules and dues and structure and charismatic leaders and spokespeople—all the things their parents told them they would need in order to get anything done—this new way allowed people from all over the country to feel like they were part of the rebellion by simply deciding that they were part of the rebellion. You want to occupy your local bank—do it! You want to occupy your college board of trustees—done! You want to occupy Oakland or Cincinnati or Grass Valley—be our guest! This is your movement, and you can make it what you want it to be. .... But with Occupy Wall Street, you don’t have to convince the majority of Americans that greed rules Wall Street, that the banks have no one’s interests but their own at heart or that corporate America is out to squeeze every last bit of labor and wages out of everyone’s pocket. Everybody gets it. Even those who oppose it. The hardest part of this or any movement—building a majority—has already happened. The people are with us. So now what do we do? Here’s what we don’t do: don’t turn Occupy Wall Street into another bureaucratic, top-down organization. That will certainly kill it. Baby boomers who grew up working within traditional organizations need to calm down and not shoehorn this movement into the old paradigm of “Let’s elect people to office and then lobby them to pass good laws!” Let Occupy take its natural course. The candidates for office that we need are in this movement. (Are you one of them? Why not? Someone has to do it, and it would be better if it was you!) .... And in town after town across America, people need to do similar things, but on a local level. Evictions of people who have been foreclosed upon must be met by citizens occupying the front door of the repossessed home and nonviolently blocking the bank from tossing the family out to the curb. When a neighbor can’t get the medical procedure she needs, people in town must occupy the hospital or the lobby of the insurance company. When a university raises students’ tuition for the umpteenth time, those students must occupy the administration’s office until the board of trustees relents. It’s important to remember, though, that Occupy Wall Street is about occupying Wall Street. The other Occupies that have sprung up around the country are in solidarity, and while they attack the tentacles and the symptoms of the beast that exist locally everywhere, the head can be chopped off only in one place—and that place is in downtown Manhattan, where this movement started and must continue..... they are taking a different path from ours. Let them. The kids are all right. Do they know where their path will lead? Not necessarily—but that’s the beauty of Occupy Wall Street. The mystery of what’s ahead is the lure. Millions want in on that adventure because, deep down, they know they have no choice. And they know that there’s more of them than the men on Wall Street who currently occupy America. They have no choice but to win. Well said Michael! Thanks! Of course the Sunday Beltway Bubalas won't go near most of this! First off FAKE SNOOZE gets GEORGE CLOONEY with the co-founder of the Enough Project JOHN PRENDERGAST! Can you believe it? This might be the ONE TIME ALL YEAR the propaganda outlet lets real news out but we're hedging our bets they use the interview to push for MORE WAR, this time with Hollywood heartthrob Clooney's recent experience in Sudan as their premise. How easy! Throw bibles at SICK SANITARIUM and Mississippistan Guv HALEY BARBOUR on This Snufagopolis and bricks at REINCE PRIEBUS on Face the Bob. CLOONEY will also be on Meet the David after JOHN "Bomb bomb bomb Iran" MCCAIN. Save a few Brick Bibles for Sanitarium on State of the Candy and GOPher hack ED GILLESSPIE also on Face the Bob. Stick with our regulars including Majority Report with RT's ALYONA host of The Alyona Show and RICHARD WOLFF plus Ring of Fire with ERIC BOEHLERT and GLENN GREENWALD, Max with CHRIS MARTENSON and the rest of the BTV Alerts and UPDATES on Bradley Manning! Good stuff the corporomedia won't mention! The Brick TeeVee Crew is watching the NCAA Bracketology games cheering on the #13 Ohio University's HUGE UPSET of #4 Michigan and the nail-biting #2 OSU Buckeye's win over #7 Gonzaga. And we're counting down the 24 Days until MLB Opening Day! We think the 70+ degree March weather is highly irregular despite what anti-science troglodyte James Inhofe (R-12th century) thinks! See Green News Report for details! Have a great week and as Mike says "The kids are alright!" Occupy somewhere! BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!_©

»»» Kabul-based peace activist "Hakim." @ Democracy NOW! Afghan Massacre: Peace Groups Call for U.S. Withdrawal After Army Sergeant Kills 16 Afghan Civilians March 12, 2012 & RELATED Afghan Massacre: After Losing Homes in NATO Attacks, Victims Moved Near U.S. Base Hoping for Safety with Graham Bowley of the New York Times March 14, 2012
»»» Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence @ Democracy NOW! Kathy Kelly on Afghan Humanitarian Crisis, Civilian Casualties and Drone Warfare March 12, 2012
»»» Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the Kyoto-based group Green Action @ Democracy NOW! Contamination Fears Linger for Japanese Children, Workers One Year After Fukushima Meltdown March 12, 2012
»»» Arne Gundersen @ Democracy NOW! Nuclear Engineer Arnie Gundersen: Fukushima Meltdown Could Result in 1 Million Cases of Cancer March 12, 2012 »»» Ali Abunimah, co-founder of “The Electronic Intifada.” @ Democracy NOW! Ceasefire Reached After Israeli Air Strikes Killed 26 Palestinians in Gaza March 13, 2012
»»» Benjamin Jealous @ Democracy NOW! NAACP Head Benjamin Jealous in Geneva Seeking United Nations Help to Protect Voting Rights in U.S. RELATED: NAACP Slams Fox News Attack on Obama for Praising, Hugging Pioneering Black Prof. Derrick Bell March 13, 2012
»»» The Nation's Ari Berman @ Democracy NOW! Ari Berman: "GOP War on Voting" Targets Swing States with New Voter ID and Registration Laws March 13, 2012 »»» ProPublica’s Joaquin Sapien @ Democracy NOW! Behind the Afghan Massacre: Accused Soldier Suffered Brain Injury After Multiple Deployments in Iraq & Brain Wars: How the Military Is Failing Its Wounded–ProPublica’s Joaquin Sapien March 14, 2012
»»» Jeremy Scahill @ Democracy NOW! Jeremy Scahill: Why is President Obama Keeping Yemeni Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in Prison? March 15, 2012 »»» Journalist Neil Shea @ Democracy NOW! Afghan Massacre Sheds Light on Culture of Mania and Aggression in U.S. Troops in Afghanistan March 16, 2012
»»» Afghan businesswoman Rangina Hamidi @ Democracy NOW! Afghan Women’s Activist Rangina Hamidi: Worsening Conditions Should Hasten U.S. Withdrawal March 16, 2012
»»» Peter Van Buren @ Democracy NOW! State Dept. Seeks Firing of Peter Van Buren, Whistleblower Who Exposed Wasteful Iraq Projects March 16, 2012

»»» GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders
»»» FEATURED SHOW The Laura Flanders Show...coming soon! After three years in daily production, GRITtv is transforming into the Laura Flanders Show, for distribution online and on public TV later this year. BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!_©
»»» NASCAR on FOX BRISTOL! Coverage begins 12:30 pm et
»»» NCAA Basketball Tournament on CBS, TNT More coverage of this year's college tourney! Check yer local listings! 7:10 ET Sun.: No. 13 Ohio-No. 12 South Florida! Go OU Bobcats! Then 9:40 ET Sun.: No. 6 Cincinnati-No. 3 Florida State. The Sweet Sixteen begins Thursday!
»»» NBA on ESPN ESPN Sunday double-headers Magic @ Heat 7 pm et then Blazers @ Thunder! And more doubleheaders on Wed & Fri! Check yer local listings!
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.

October2011.org Sign the Petition to Get the 99% Deficit Proposal Heard in Congress

Please SIGN THE PETITION in support of the "99%'s Deficit Proposal" and plan direct actions to tell the Super Committee that the 99% have better solutions to our nation's crises. You can plan your own action at your Congressmember's office or join us in Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC for marches to Capitol Hill. Check our calendar for announcements.

NET NEUTRALITY! SaveTheInternet.org A Push for Privacy in the Wake of the Carrier IQ Controversy Remember Carrier IQ, the company that makes the secret spying software that’s installed on more than 140 million phones? You know, the software that can record our most sensitive personal data? ... Thanks in part to the 22,000 people who joined Free Press’ call for a congressional investigation, some of those questions are closer to being answered and mobile users are closer to being protected. The protection comes in the form of a bill from Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey. Markey released a draft of a bill called the “Mobile Device Privacy Act” that would require phone companies to disclose to users just what is being done with all of their data. If the bill passes, an opt-out provision would go into effect a year later and would require companies to allow users to opt out of data-collection schemes like the one developed by Carrier IQ........
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! Also visit Rep Alan Grayson's site www.savedemocracy.net And Alan Grayson is running again in FL-8! Help out at CongressmanWithGuts.com
SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT See CourageToResist.org and Bradley Manning Support Network UPDATE! Ed Pikington of the Guardian UK reports Bradley Manning's treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source. Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture. "The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence," Mendez writes. .... Mendez, who runs the UN office that investigates incidents of alleged torture around the world, told the Guardian: "I conclude that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement (regardless of the name given to his regime by the prison authorities) constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture. If the effects in regards to pain and suffering inflicted on Manning were more severe, they could constitute torture." ..... But the Pentagon's arguments did not impress the special rapporteur. He stressed in his final conclusions that "solitary confinement is a harsh measure which may cause serious psychological and physiological adverse effects on individuals regardless of their specific conditions." Moreover, "[d]epending on the specific reason for its application, conditions, length, effects and other circumstances, solitary confinement can amount to a breach of article seven of the international covenant on civil and political rights, and to an act defined in article one or article 16 of the convention against torture." He also said that the US government had tried to justify Manning's solitary confinement by calling it "prevention of harm watch". Yet the military had offered no details as to what actual harm was being prevented. ... Much more at link! UPDATE II ! Jesselyn Radack on March 16, 2012 at The Whistleblogger Bradley Manning Hearing: Government Foiled By Its Own Policies Bradley Manning's attorney (David Coombs) requested that charges against Manning be dismissed because the prosecution had so badly bungled discovery obligations. Josh Gerstein of Politico reported in detail: At a hearing last month, prosecutors in the case against Pfc. Bradley Manning noted that they didn't receive the messages but could not explain why. Chief prosecutor Capt. Ashden Fein said at a hearing Thursday that the messages had been "blocked by a spam filter for security." However, it fell to defense attorney David Coombs to explain precisely why the e-mails about evidence issues in the Manning case never made it. "Apparently, they were blocked because the word 'WikiLeaks' was somewhere in the e-mail," Coombs said. The government's own WikiLeaks policies are now hampering the prosecution's work in the case against Manning. Yesterday's Manning hearing also revealed that the U.S. claims that Manning aided al-Qaeda by allegedly giving documents to WikiLeaks. What about the New York Times, which also posted the WikiLeaks documents? Much more at link plus video of whistleblower and author Peter Van Buren on Channel 9 WUSA news.
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

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The essential guide for watching government propaganda

IRAQ: 4,486 US Military Dead as of March 9, 2011
AFGHANISTAN: 1,910 US Military Dead as of March 9, 2012
The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises Considering Democracy: 8 Things to ask your Representative

• This Week (ABC) anchor George Stephanopoulos
  • Fact Checking ABC's "This Week" at NPR "On the Media" - Jake Tapper, interim host of ABC's "This Week," liked the idea of fact-checking his guests' comments, so he set up a partnership with Politifact, a non-partisan fact-checking organization. See Politifact Statements ABC News 'This Week'
  • GOP Candidate Rick Santorum
  • ROUNDTABLE: George Will, former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, Priorities USA co-founder Bill Burton, Washington Post national political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson, and Washington Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius
  

• Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
  • chief Obama strategist David Axelrod
  • Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus
  • ROUNDTABLE: former RNC Chairman and Mitt Romney supporter Ed Gillespie, the editor of National Review and TIME Magazine contributor Rich Lowry, and CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Norah O'Donnell
  

• 60 Minutes (CBS)
  • SpaceX - Elon Musk was the first private citizen to launch a space vehicle into orbit and bring it back to Earth. Now, the founder of SpaceX is competing against larger, more entrenched aeronautical companies to become the first private venture to put a man into orbit. Scott Pelley reports. Harry Radliffe is the producer.
  

• Meet the Press (NBC) Host David Gregory
  • Meet the Facts at NPR "On the Media" - Last December, NYU professor Jay Rosen proposed something simple yet revolutionary: why don't the Sunday morning chat shows fact check their guests? After "Meet the Press" host David Gregory declined, two college students launched a website to do it for him. One of them, Chas Danner, explains what they're trying to accomplish. See their website MeetTheFacts.com updating soon!
  • John McCain (R-AZ)
  • Just back from a dangerous trip to Sudan, actor George Clooney
  • ROUNDTABLE: Author and Afghanistan War veteran Wes Moore; author of the bestselling book “Where Men Win Glory” about the death of Pat Tillman, Jon Krakauer; Founder and Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Paul Rieckhoff; the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward; and the New York Times’ Helene Cooper
  

• State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) At 9 AM ET, Candy talks to the power players: politicians, business leaders and international newsmakers who will make Monday morning's headlines. At NOON ET, Candy wraps it all up with fresh interviews and the best of the earlier hours.
  • Afghan Ambassador to the United States, Eklil Hakimi
  • Rick Santorum
  • ROUNDTABLE: former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie
  

• 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 the conversation on Head-on Radio, call toll-free (877) 443-2366, or use our Liberal community line at 304-658-3333. Email: bob [at] headonradio [dot] com.
  • THORN IN THE SIDE THURSDAY!!!!! Bob tells about his adventures in D.C. "lobbying" congresscritters on the damage the coal industry is doing to his state of West Virginia! Plus all the regulars chime in! Listen HERE (mp3) NOW! Amen to the White Rose Society! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!
  

• YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT
  
  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' - March 15, 2012 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: War with China? Trade war, that is; March heatwave kills spring, brings early summer for US; Keystone XL pipeline more bad than good for the economy and the environment; PLUS: TV weatherman singlehandedly overturns the laws of physics ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): Planet-saving, Nobel-winning ozone scientist passes; US, UK set to agree to emergency oil stocks release; Gulf Coast to get 80% of BP fines; Refiners Push EPA to scrap gas rule wanted by automakers; US solar grows to new record; 'Dark days' for coal; GOP 'playing politics' with wind credits; Water pollution from farming worsening ... PLUS: Will your city see record flooding in 2020? There's a map for that ... and much, MUCH more! ....
  • BRADCAST! Guest Hosting 'Malloy Show' Thursday! TONIGHT: GOP's War on EVERYTHING!; GUEST: U.S. Marine vet turned away from TN poll after refusing to give Photo ID...
  • BRAD on RT! VIDEO: Brad v. Wingnut Loon Seton Motley on GOP Photo ID Voter Suppression on Russian TV
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE: WI Appellate Court Rejects Walker Admin Attempt to Overturn Photo ID InjunctionThe GOP is furiously racking up court losses in the Badger State. This one, late on Friday, is likely to hurt come recall election time...
  Visit BradBlog.com to see who counts yer votes! Reference yer background/research at Who's Counting? too.
  

• 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
  • PBC Podcast 408 Jennifer Lowenstein on Recent Israeli Strikes on Gaza and More; Trita Parsi Comments on Obama-Netanyahu Summit and the Threat of War on Iran Two strong views on the Middle East: Jennifer Lowenstein teaches Middle East studies at U of Wisconsin; Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council.
  • PBC Standard Podcast Sue Wilson of “Broadcast Blues” Talks About Boycotts of Limbaugh Sponsors; Will Durst Says We’re All Muppets Media activist Sue Wilson joins us to talk about the sponsor boycotts of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show; Will Durst reacts to the Goldman Sachs guy who bailed: “We’re all Muppets”.
  • PBC Standard Podcast Boiling Frogs: Attorney Jon Eisenberg’s Kafka-esque Fight vs. Illegal Wiretapping Media activist Sue Wilson joins us to talk about the sponsor boycotts of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show; Will Durst reacts to the Goldman Sachs guy who bailed: “We’re all Muppets”.
  

• 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 Week on Ring of Fire! March 16, 2012
  • Media Matters’ Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert will join us to discuss the many ways in which corporate America has turned its back on Rush Limbaugh.
  • Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald will tell us why Eric Holder is defending the government’s policy of targeting and executing U.S. citizens without actually charging them with a crime.
  • Brian Beutler from Talking Points Memo will tell us how Republicans are trying to sabotage the economic recovery.
  • Documentary filmmakers Barker White and Harper Robinson will be here to talk about their new film on the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster called “Beyond Pollution”.
  • And A.F.S.C.M.E. Secretary Treasurer Lee Saunders will be joining us to talk about the continued assault on organized labor coming from Republican politicians.
  • VIDEO! Papantonio: Why The Occupy Movement Is Still Necessary It’s been six months since protestors began the Occupy Wall Street movement that made headlines across the world, but the actual movement was in the works for almost an entire year before it caught on. Several attempts to create a mass movement had already taken place in Zucotti Park, but never reached the fevered pitch that we saw last September. Mike Papantonio talks about this with author David DeGraw, one of the men who helped bring the plight of the 99% to the public’s attention, and his calls to action were the backbone of the Occupy Movement.
  • VIDEO! Papantonio: The Truth About the Mortgage Fraud Settlement Recently, the federal government announced that they had reached a $25 billion dollar settlement with the nation’s biggest banks to repay the victims of the mortgage industry’s greed and corruption. These banks have swindled millions of Americans out of their homes, and until recently, had received little more than a slap on the wrist from federal regulators and investigators. But this new settlement isn’t the cure-all for mortgage fraud, and Mike Papantonio spoke with attorney Peter Mougey recently about what this settlement actually means for the homeowners who were taken advantage of by our country’s biggest banks.
  • Support Those Who Support Progressive Media! 2011 has certainly been a great year for Ring of Fire, and we’ve had some great sponsors that have helped support the show throughout the year. We wanted to take the time to personally thank each and every one of them, and we encourage all of our listeners to take the time to support those who have support us.
  • 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 8-11 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 11:30 am et @ Majority.fm!
  
  • Karl Grossman on the Fallout from Fukushima [03•13•12]
  • Professor Richard Wolff on the Failure of Capitalism [03•14•12].
  • Abigail C. Field on the Dirty Details of Mortgage Settlement [03•15•12]
  • Alyona Minkovski and Sam Seder Talk Disappointment of Obama Administration [03•16•12]
  MORE Podcast Interviews at majorityreport.official.fm!
  

• On the Edge with Max Keiser 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!
  • NEW! MaxKeiserTV on YouTube! MaxKeiserTV PLUS here is Max Keiser’s official Facebook page And here is the official Keiser Report page
  • EThey have become abattoirs where the real wealth of the nation is taken and slaughtered by maxkeiser - READ When the Abuse of Insider Information and Control Grows So Large as to Become the Market BTV jessescrossroadscafe
  • VIDEO! How America Avoided Fascism in 1933 by maxkeiser WATCH How America Avoided Fascism in 1933 jessescrossroadscafe
  •Once the SWIFT codes for Iranian banks are deleted, Iranian banks will no longer be able to transfer funds to and from other worldwide banks by maxkeiser READ Iran Deleted From the World’s Banking Computers slashdot
  • KEISER REPORT [KR260] Keiser Report: Hackers & Pirates – true GDP boosters We discuss hackers and pirates as true GDP boosters and independent artists being censored by the financial industry. In the second half of the show, Max talks to independent journalist Teri Buhl about a crowd-funded investigation, “Swinging in New Canaan” …
  • KEISER REPORT [KR262] Keiser Report: White Man’s Debt Burden KR 261? We discuss how a video not featuring Justin Bieber went viral and how Max Keiser started a gold stampede. They also talk about “the white man’s debt burden” of Uganda’s resources and Afghanistan’s “crony capitalism”. In the second half of the show, Max talks to David Morgan about silver circles, ounces and manipulation.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR262] Keiser Report – Yoghurt Kamikazes! We discuss yoghurt kamikazes, David Cam-Moron and oozing debt wounds. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Goldcore’s Mark O’Byrne about Germany’s gold, Ireland’s austerity and a trial for Bertie Ahern.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR263] Keiser Report: Rip out eyes, tear off head We discuss ripping out client eyeballs and losing millions for a free breakfast; maggots of risk and plastic financial apartheid. In the second half of the show Max talks to filmmakers William Gagan and Geoff Shively about their crowd funded journey to Syria and ‘fake’ activists and, with the introduction of anti-free speech laws in Chicago, the filmmakers discuss the small drone helicopters they have acquired for reporting on the NATO summit.
  • ON THE EDGE [On the Edge with Chris Martenson Posted on March 17, 2012 by stacyherbert | Stacy Summary: This is a definite must watch. Great interview with Chris Martenson....
  • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-356] The Truth About Markets – 10 March 2012 Download show HERE (mp3)
  • Donate to ResonanceFM here!
  

• ANTIWAR RADIO with Scott Horton
  LIVE (9-11am Pacific, 12pm - 2pm Eastern) Plenty of archives too!
  Listen at antiwar.com/radio
  • Jasmin Ramsey February 28, 2012: Jasmin Ramsey, an Iranian-born journalist and editor of Lobe Log, discusses her article “10 Myths About Iran — And Why They’re Dead Wrong ;” making it clear that Iran is a nation of 70 million individuals, not some great amorphous threat signified by lines drawn on a map; US hypocrisy on international monitoring – demanding that Iran comply with intrusive IAEA inspections while refusing the UN torture chief’s request to interview Bradley Manning privately; why Iran is not a military threat to Israel or the US, so long as its leaders are “rational actors;” the PR machine selling the MEK as a legitimate opposition group, even though it still has no support in Iran; and why Iranians, though displeased with their government, prefer reform to another revolution.
  • John Feffer March 15, 2012: John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses his new book Crusade 2.0: The West’s Resurgent War on Islam ; how the Obama administration is “bribing Israel ” with offers of bunker buster bombs and long range aircraft if Israel will wait until after the election to attack Iran; looking at the pros and cons – for Iran – in pursuing a nuclear weapon; and the lack of resolve in US policy on Syria.
  • Jason Leopold March 15, 2012: Jason Leopold, lead investigative reporter of Truthout and author of News Junkie, discusses his article “US Subjected Manning to Cruel, Inhuman, Degrading Treatment, UN Torture Chief Concludes;” how Manning’s treatment highlights the State Department’s stunning hypocrisy when they finger-wag at other countries for human rights violations; why most Americans think Manning is a traitor and deserves whatever punishment he got in custody, even though he hasn’t been convicted of anything; and UN torture investigator Juan Méndez’s inability to talk with Manning without a government minder (like in some totalitarian state).
  • Reza Marashi March 17, 2012: Reza Marashi, Research Director for the National Iranian American Council, discusses his article “Money vs. Facts: The Mujahedin-e Khalq Is a Terrorist Organization ;” the chorus of voices turning the tables on the MEK’s latest PR campaign; the Treasury Department investigation of Ed Rendell (and other prominent ex-politicians who are paid to speak on MEK’s behalf – a.k.a. providing “material support” to terrorists); and why Israel is the most likely source of MEK funding – meaning the “only democracy in the Middle East” is really a state sponsor of terrorism.
  • Many more interviews at Antiwar Radio!
  

• fauxnews
  • Exclusive interview with presidential candidate Mitt Romney
  • George Clooney with the co-founder of the Enough Project John Prendergast
  

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