Open Thread Wednesday 05-13-15

Good morning 99ers!
Gulfgal is still traveling so you'll have to put up with me for another day.

Morning News Dump and Johnny Rivers.

McKibben Blasts Obama Over Arctic Drilling as Activists Ready for Fight
Founder of 350.org says that now, "as with Keystone, it will be up to the environmental movement to block Shell's plan."

Faced with the imminent arrival of the Shell drilling fleet and newly announced White House backing for Arctic oil exploration, activists and environmentalists are readying for a fight.

In a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben blasted the Obama administration's decision on Monday to grant the oil giant conditional approval to begin drilling operations in the Beaufort and Chuchki Seas this summer.

McKibben said that, despite his rhetoric, President Barack Obama has repeatedly exhibited "climate denial of the status quo sort," where people "accept the science, and indeed make long speeches about the immorality of passing on a ruined world to our children," but then ultimately "deny the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground."

"Even in this most extreme circumstance, no one seems able to stand up to the power of the fossil fuel industry. No one ever says no," McKibben writes. He notes that now, "as with Keystone, it will be up to the environmental movement to block the plan."

Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors

The debate over the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records has reached a critical point after a federal appeals court last week ruled the practice illegal, dramatically raising the stakes for pending Congressional legislation that would fully or partially reinstate the program. An army of pundits promptly took to television screens, with many of them brushing off concerns about the surveillance.

The talking heads have been backstopping the NSA’s mass surveillance more or less continuously since it was revealed. They spoke out to support the agency when NSA contractor Edward Snowden released details of its programs in 2013, and they’ve kept up their advocacy ever since — on television news shows, newspaper op-ed pages, online and at Congressional hearings. But it’s often unclear just how financially cozy these pundits are with the surveillance state they defend, since they’re typically identified with titles that give no clues about their conflicts of interest. Such conflicts have become particularly important, and worth pointing out, now that the debate about NSA surveillance has shifted from simple outrage to politically prominent legislative debates.

As one example of the opaque link between NSA money and punditry, take the words of Stewart Baker, who was general counsel to the NSA from 1992 through 1994. During a Senate committee hearing last summer on one of the reform bills now before Congress, the USA FREEDOM Act, which would partially limit mass surveillance of telephone metadata, Baker essentially said the bill would aid terrorists.

“First, I do not believe we should end the bulk collection program,” he told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “It will put us at risk. It will, as Senator King strongly suggested, slow our responses to serious terrorist incidents. And it is a leap into the dark with respect to this data.”

A Nation of Snitches

A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in stores, on highways and in public and private buildings. They track us through our electronic devices. They infiltrate our organizations. They entice and facilitate “acts of terrorism” by Muslims, radical environmentalists, activists and Black Bloc anarchists, framing these hapless dissidents and sending them off to prison for years. They have amassed detailed profiles of our habits, our tastes, our peculiar proclivities, our medical and financial records, our sexual orientations, our employment histories, our shopping habits and our criminal records. They store this information in government computers. It sits there, waiting like a time bomb, for the moment when the state decides to criminalize us.

Totalitarian states record even the most banal of our activities so that when it comes time to lock us up they can invest these activities with subversive or criminal intent. And citizens who know, because of the courage of Edward Snowden, that they are being watched but naively believe they “have done nothing wrong” do not grasp this dark and terrifying logic.

Tyranny is always welded together by subterranean networks of informants. These informants keep a populace in a state of fear. They perpetuate constant anxiety and enforce isolation through distrust. The state uses wholesale surveillance and spying to break down trust and deny us the privacy to think and speak freely.

A state security and surveillance apparatus, at the same time, conditions all citizens to become informants. In airports and train, subway and bus stations the recruitment campaign is relentless. We are fed lurid government videos and other messages warning us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. The videos, on endless loops broadcast through mounted television screens, have the prerequisite ominous music, the shady-looking criminal types, the alert citizen calling the authorities and in some cases the apprehended evildoer being led away in handcuffs. The message to be hypervigilant and help the state ferret out dangerous internal enemies is at the same time disseminated throughout government agencies, the mass media, the press and the entertainment industry.

Nearly 200 scientists warn of cellphone health risks

Biological and health scientists from Russia and Iran to the USA are calling on the UN, the World Health Organization and national governments to develop strict regulations concerning devices and cellphones that create electromagnetic fields.

The scientists are from 39 nations and have authored 2,000 peer-reviewed papers on the health and biological effects of non-ionizing radiation, which is part of the electromagnetic field spectrum. In a letter, they say that devices like cellphones pose risks of cancer, genetic damage, changes in reproductive system, and learning and memory deficits.

Putting it bluntly they are damaging the living cells in our bodies and killing many of us prematurely,” said Dr. Martin Blank, from the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University, in a video message.

“We have created something that is harming us, and it is getting out of control. Before Edison’s light bulb there was very little electromagnetic radiation in our environment. The levels today are very many times higher than natural background levels, and are growing rapidly because of all the new devices that emit this radiation.”

Johnny Rivers - Secret Agent Man

Johnny Rivers - Do You Wanna' Dance

Johnny Rivers - I Washed My Hands in Muddy Waters

Johnny Rivers - Rockin' Pneumonia

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that four letter word. I'll pop in when I can.

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And I'm sick with a sore throat, and I have an ear ache. If I don't go to work, I'm in bed. Have a good day.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

cybrestrike's picture

David Dayen: Big Win in the Fight Against TPP

It's going on right now, but it'll be available for playback later on today. So far it's excellent.

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JayRaye's picture

I'll check it out later!

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons

shaharazade's picture

has one of the best articles I've read about the TPP at Salon. Off to read about the TPP brouhaha will be back ....

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/12/the_10_biggest_lies_youve_been_told_abou...

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JayRaye's picture

very much appreciate sources on TPP

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons

Shahryar's picture

I'd comment there but if they're not going to ban me then I'll ban myself!

Anyway, the final straw in the question "is Miss Laura a shill or simply not smart enough to see what everyone else can see?" was answered minutes ago with her diary "Politifact: Jeb Bush can't know a thing that Jeb Bush could totally know"

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/13/1384356/-Politifact-Jeb-Bush-ca...

The short version: Jeb says he and Hillary would have both authorized the invasion of Iraq but (according to Laura) Hillary says if she knew then what she knows now she'd have voted against it. And Miss Laura highlights the Politico comment to make a point.

Bush can’t know what Clinton would have done if she had known that the intelligence was faulty. Here is what we do know: In 2002, Clinton supported the Iraq resolution, but by 2006 she said she regretted it.

And that clinches it. That "faulty intelligence" lie can't possibly be used by anyone other than the soulless (who don't care that they're going to hell for saying such a thing) or the less-than-bright. I now believe it's the latter.

Meanwhile the comments are all anti-Jeb and anti-Politico and no one seems to notice the glaring whopper.

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JayRaye's picture

fact remains that Hillary voted the way she voted, and nothing they can say about who knew what and when they knew it or didn't know it will ever change that fact

The spin is just pathetic.

I won't be voting for Hillary no matter how many times they put her thru the wash and spin cycle.

This pathetic article is just one more reason why I stay off the front page.

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons

JayRaye's picture

thanks for filling in!

Love love love that song, do ya wanna dance

great song to start the day

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons

I listen to it about 10 times every time I post it, guess there's a hopeless romantic beneath this gruff exterior. It brings back memories of young love, young romance, new dreams, new hope, simpler days. OK, enough of that, back to work!

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