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Every time I look at the news I get more convinced that Chomsky et al. are right that pols, big business and the media are all in cahoots (wittingly or just lemming-like) to keep us in the dark and not disturb the status quo. Latest example is this piddle-shit new leak at the Hanford site in Washington state, where for many decades we cooked up our plutonium stocks: http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/us/washington-hanford-leak/index.html?c=homepage-t This report has it like this is a big new development, and that of course by this public reporting and hand-wringing the press, govt, etc. is on it and will take care of it. What horse shit. I know some of the Bechtel people who have been long involved in cleaning up this Superfund site, and they in private are frank that it simply can't be done. There are a dozen or more enormous underground plumes of radioactive very bad stuff leaching from the reactor-waste storage tanks toward the Columbia River, and there is nothing anyone can figure out to do about them. Except to prepare supermarket ad campaigns for two-headed fish.

I cant stand Bieber, BUT If that were REAL, I would still suck him off while thinking "What a Douchebag" !

On the Espionage Act charges against Edward SnowdenWho is actually bringing 'injury to America': those who are secretly building a massive surveillance system or those who inform citizens that it's being done? Glenn Greenwald guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 June 2013 07.18 EDT A new NSA data centre sits beyond a residential area in Bluffdale, Utah. It will be the largest of several interconnected data centres spread throughout the US. Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images The US government has charged Edward Snowden with three felonies, including two under the Espionage Act, the 1917 statute enacted to criminalize dissent against World War I. My priority at the moment is working on our next set of stories, so I just want to briefly note a few points about this. Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That's because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now seven such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that? For a politician who tried to convince Americans to elect him based on repeated pledges of unprecedented transparency and specific vows to protect "noble" and "patriotic" whistleblowers, is this unparalleled assault on those who enable investigative journalism remotely defensible? Recall that the New Yorker's Jane Mayer said recently that this oppressive climate created by the Obama presidency has brought investigative journalism to a "standstill", while James Goodale, the General Counsel for the New York Times during its battles with the Nixon administration, wrote last month in that paper that "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom." Read what Mayer and Goodale wrote and ask yourself: is the Obama administration's threat to the news-gathering process not a serious crisis at this point? Few people - likely including Snowden himself - would contest that his actions constitute some sort of breach of the law. He made his choice based on basic theories of civil disobedience: that those who control the law have become corrupt, that the law in this case (by concealing the actions of government officials in building this massive spying apparatus in secret) is a tool of injustice, and that he felt compelled to act in violation of it in order to expose these official bad acts and enable debate and reform. But that's a far cry from charging Snowden, who just turned 30 yesterday, with multiple felonies under the Espionage Act that will send him to prison for decades if not life upon conviction. In what conceivable sense are Snowden's actions "espionage"? He could have - but chose not - sold the information he had to a foreign intelligence service for vast sums of money, or covertly passed it to one of America's enemies, or worked at the direction of a foreign government. That is espionage. He did none of those things. What he did instead was give up his life of career stability and economic prosperity, living with his long-time girlfriend in Hawaii, in order to inform his fellow citizens (both in America and around the world) of what the US government and its allies are doing to them and their privacy. He did that by very carefully selecting which documents he thought should be disclosed and concealed, then gave them to a newspaper with a team of editors and journalists and repeatedly insisted that journalistic judgments be exercised about which of those documents should be published in the public interest and which should be withheld. That's what every single whistleblower and source for investigative journalism, in every case, does - by definition. In what conceivable sense does that merit felony charges under the Espionage Act? The essence of that extremely broad, century-old law is that one is guilty if one discloses classified information "with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation". Please read this rather good summary in this morning's New York Times of the worldwide debate Snowden has enabled - how these disclosures have "set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance" and "opened an unprecedented window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype" - and ask yourself: has Snowden actually does anything to bring "injury to the United States", or has he performed an immense public service? The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of "espionage". It seems clear that the people who are actually bringing "injury to the United States" are those who are waging war on basic tenets of transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens - and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they're doing - rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done. The Obama administration leaks classified information continuously. They do it to glorify the President, or manipulate public opinion, or even to help produce a pre-election propaganda film about the Osama bin Laden raid. The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted. It's a completely one-sided and manipulative abuse of secrecy laws. It's all designed to ensure that the only information we as citizens can learn is what they want us to learn because it makes them look good. The only leaks they're interested in severely punishing are those that undermine them politically. The "enemy" they're seeking to keep ignorant with selective and excessive leak prosecutions are not The Terrorists or The Chinese Communists. It's the American people. The Terrorists already knew, and have long known, that the US government is doing everything possible to surveil their telephonic and internet communications. The Chinese have long known, and have repeatedly said, that the US is hacking into both their governmental and civilian systems (just as the Chinese are doing to the US). The Russians have long known that the US and UK try to intercept the conversations of their leaders just as the Russians do to the US and the UK. They haven't learned anything from these disclosures that they didn't already well know. The people who have learned things they didn't already know are American citizens who have no connection to terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of citizens around the world about whom the same is true. What they have learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them. And that is precisely why the US government is so furious and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures. What has been "harmed" is not the national security of the US but the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability. If anything is a crime, it's that secret, unaccountable and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/22/snowden-espionage-charges

One thing for sure is that the harder the feds make it for him, the harder it will be to shove the genie back in. Snowden wanted a national dialogue and he's got one. I, for one, am very glad. Imagine if this issue had stayed in the closet for another decade.

That reminds me, I've got to clean the fridge this weekend.

Gosh, does this mean that every annoying, hypocritical, racist TV personality will be leaving the airwaves?

Because the US and UK governments are sharing all this stolen data with each other. Get it?

Pols and Big Business no doubt. That is the American Way. We have the best government that money can buy -- pick your party. The media? You given them too much credit. They spend most of their time chasing phantom scandals, teaparty antics and grizzly moms, and sex or blood anywhere they can find it. All of 'em want to be Woodward or Bernstein but rather than do the tedious and painstaking gumshoe work, they spend their time trying to trick principles into making public mistakes with the 'have you stopped beating your wife' questions or trying to set them up after putting words in the principle's mouths. The few outlets that have much of a news act cannot be everywhere all of the time. And they dilute their product too chasing the crazies on parade. Have you noticed the about-face by Fox on immigration? The movers and shakers of the Republican establishment i.e. big contributors and Chamber of Commerce let it be known to Roger Ailes that immigration reform must happen if there is to be a viable GOP in the future. He got onboard because he knows where is bread is buttered.

Has anyone really denied they are doing this or have they mainly just said it is legal to do so. Yes, I have heard BO make his pronouncements but for all I know that just mean he personally is not listening (to our conversations or much of anything else). No one has denied that they have the capability of doing what they are being accused of, have they? The entire "defense" seems to be, what we are doing is legal, we aren't doing what you think we are doing and anyone who disagrees is a traitor and doing something illegal themselves. Classic misdirection and political pandering. Best regards, RA1

Three choices: I either did not make the association implied, I don't remember it or it happened during the first 40 years and is therefore mostly irrelevant. Best regards, RA1

Maybe her rotten, two spoiled sons have off put you on her as well. "Fame" only goes so far. At some point one has to actually do something aka produce. Best regards, RA1

Last week in an unrelated topic I suggested that the economic situation in Brazil was worrisome. It took just 2 days for the country explode with violence. The feel-good and biased reaction on the forum was, as expected, total derision. Well, today, a week later, the country saw the biggest riot in all it's history, vastly documented in all news sites. I also mentioned that Brazilian currency was free-falling. More derision! Today it reached the lowest in 5 years. How long the favorable currency will last? Nobody really knows. Neither if is gonna go even lower. If you dont mind some eventual tear-gas, book your flight. There is a sauna-boy waiting for you.

Riots? Violence? More like large peaceful demonstartions. After all, down here they are calling these manifestacoes or demonstrations. I was in he city last week on Thursday and Friday and again this past Tuesday and outside of the demonstatration areas, things appeared perfectly normal. Rio de Janeiro is not a city in flames or under siege with the populace looting supermarket shelves bare. Reality has come to the real with the lowering of sky-high interest rates and money searching for other markets with better returns. But ya know, being alarmist and shocking makes for much better headlines. Just remember W., Dick and the WMD.