Good morning 99percenters!

Chris Hedges: “Why should we be impoverished so that the profits of big banks, corporations, and hedge funds can swell?”
Jeremy Hammond's a hero who exposed surveillance-state secrets. His excessive prison sentence should terrify us all

I sat in the front row of a New York federal court in November 2013 the day Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of a private security firm that works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Marine Corps, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and corporations such as Dow Chemical and Raytheon.

Good morning 99percenters!

'Paddle in Seattle' Protesters Welcome Shell Drilling Rig with Two Words: Go Away
Thursday's protest comes ahead of a larger sHell No! demonstration—including mass flotilla and direct action—planned for the weekend

Paddling activists rolled out the un-welcome mat as Shell Oil's hulking 'Polar Pioneer' drilling rig—whose presence is opposed by many local citizens, environmentalists, and city officials—pulled into the Port of Seattle on Thursday afternoon.

About 20 kayakers met the 307-foot-tall, 400-foot-long rig in the waters of Elliott Bay, singing, chanting, linking arms, and bearing a banner that read, "Arctic Drilling = Climate Change." Among the group were members of the Duwamish Tribe, who paddled through the waves in a long wooden canoe and led the group in chanted songs, according to the Seattle Times.

The Times adds:

Law-enforcement officers were on the water and overhead to enforce a 500-yard safety zone while the Polar Pioneer was in motion. Coast Guard officials warned the activists beforehand that any disruption of safe navigation could result in arrests.

But the authorities allowed the activists relatively close to the rig when it briefly stopped, and there were no disturbances of note during the afternoon demonstration.

Hello everyone. I have mostly checked out of the 24 hour news cycle. That includes expending too much energy slogging through the Internet.

The television side of the business is lacking substance.

How have 24-hour news stations affected society?

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."

Good morning 99percenters!

Spin, Spin, Spin. The War for your Mind wages on. The only one who can slog through the bullshit is you yourself. Here I present different perspectives for your judgement. Make sure to read the first article, thanks Big Al.

Seymour Hersh’s “Zero Truth Thirty” Article Fixes the Narrative of the BS “bin Laden Raid” Story

H/T Big Al
Seymour Hersh was once one of the good guys. Today, he’s joined the ranks of the has-beens and the sell-outs.

Anyone can get something wrong. That’s not what Seymour Hersh did here. The last “clarifying statement” to fix the narrative

“Within days, some of the early exaggerations and distortions had become obvious and the Pentagon issued a series of clarifying statements.” Seymour Hersh

He penned a propaganda article about how ‘Obama lied” about the early morning hour Seal Team 6 raid in Pakistan that supposedly killed Osama bin Laden. That’s click-bait. Seymour claims Obama’s lies are nothing more than his refusal to admit how intimately involved the Pakistani intelligence services (ISI) were in the “raid” and of course the official story they came out with in the days right after the raid.

That’s bullshit.

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Also see this.

Happy Mothers Day 99percenters!

Military Contractors Behind New Pressure Group Targeting Presidential Candidates

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers has formed a new pressure group, now active in Iowa and New Hampshire, to serve as the “premiere national security and foreign policy organization during the 2016 debate” and to “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.”

Roger’s group, Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, is hosting candidate events and intends to host a candidate forum later this year. The organization does not disclose its donors. But a look at the business executives helping APPS steer presidential candidates towards more hawkish positions reveals that many are defense contractors who stand to gain financially from continued militarism:

Advisory Board Member John Coburn is chairman and CEO of VT Systems, a company that delivers communications technology for the Defense Department.

Advisory Board Member Stephen Hadley is a principal at the consulting firm RiceHadleyGates and serves as a board member to defense contractor Raytheon, a position that pays him $228,007 in annual compensation.

New Hampshire Board Member Rich Ashooh lists his employment as Director, Strategy at BAE Systems.

New Hampshire Board Member James Bell is the chief executive of EPE Corporation, a manufacturing company that says it is a “premier supplier to the defense community.”

Advisory Board Member John Engler, the president of the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for major corporations, including defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Northrop Grumman.

New Hampshire Board Member Ken Solinksy is founder of Insight Technologies, a night vision and electro-optical systems firm acquired by L-3 Communications.

New Hampshire Chairman and Advisory Board Member Walt Havenstein is the former chief executive of BAE Systems and SAIC, two of the largest defense contractors in America. Havenstein, who left SAIC in 2012, was paid partially in company stock options.

And blogger Joshua Huminski worked in 2013 as a spokesperson for Aegis Defense Services, a contractor that provided security services to U.S. facilities in Afghanistan. Aegis did not respond to a request asking if Huminski is still employed there.

Good morning 99percenters!
Gulfgal98 is traveling today and is unavailable so I'm covering for her.

NSA Converting Our Spoken Words Into Searchable Text
Yes … They’re Collecting the Content of AMERICANS’ Phone Calls, Too

Dan Froomkin reports today at the Intercept:

Most people don’t realize that the words they speak are not so private anymore, either.

Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.

The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called “Google for Voice” nearly a decade ago.

The Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and “extract” the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest.

***

By leveraging advances in automated speech recognition, the NSA has entered the era of bulk listening.

And this has happened with no apparent public oversight, hearings or legislative action. Congress hasn’t shown signs of even knowing that it’s going on.

Good morning 99percenters!

“It’s pure authoritarianism”: Glenn Greenwald exposes the link between Baltimore’s uprising and the NSA
Award-winning journalist tells Salon why the erosion of civil liberties at home and abroad is interconnected

It got lost in all the hubbub of the uprising in Baltimore, as well as the addition of a few more candidates to the 2016 presidential election, but according to reports from multiple sources last week, it’s looking more probable than ever that the so-called Patriot Act will not be reauthorized until after it’s undergone some privacy-protecting revisions. The distance between vague promises in a report and an actual change to the bill’s infamously broad language is considerable, of course. But absent the waves of outrage inspired by leaks from former CIA contractor Edward Snowden — whose collaboration with Salon alum and Intercept founding editor Glenn Greenwald recently led to an Academy Award — it’s hard to imagine reformers ever getting even this close.

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Greenwald, whose book on his experience with Snowden, “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State,” was recently released in paperback. We touched on the reception to the book, the events in Baltimore, Hillary Clinton’s sincerity and the importance of the controversy involving this year’s PEN Awards and Charlie Hebdo. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.

Good morning 99percenters!
You may have noticed a few aesthetic changes to the site over the last week. Some of the site vernacular has been changed, the articles on the front page are now called "Featured Editorials" rather than "Featured Diaries" and on the community page they have been changed to "Community Writers" rather than "Community Diaries", with essays now being used rather than diaries to describe the written articles. The menu listings have also been changed to reflect these changes. There were also some changes made to the Front Page sidebar, the greeting were expounded on and a "Featured Editorials" list was added as a teaser for any non-members who may happen upon the site.

Good morning 99percenters!
Hope you all are having a fine Sunday.

I finally got tired of the site slowing down and hanging so the aggregator was totally disable and it is running much smoother. I have heard no one complain so I don't think it is missed by anyone. The site is running very well and I think it was worth the trade off.

By now you've probably noticed that we've added a front page with featured diaries. The URL for the front page is caucus99percent.com and the URL for the community diaries page is caucus99percent.com/diaries which is different than what it used to be. You may want to reset your bookmarks by going to the page you use most often, which is probably the community diaries page for most, and bookmark (favorites for IE) it. Also for those members that have diaries featured on the front page you may want to occasionally check them as they have been getting additional comments from the extra exposure.