It's Friday!

I have to admit, I have been having difficulty knowing which day of the week I occupy. Leaving the work force is both liberating and disorienting.

Today is one of those special Fridays, the eagle flies today.

Prior to my recent hiatus, I had been posting a series of diaries on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the Wednesday Open Thread. I had intended to post at least one more diary in that series, and will do so as a stand alone diary later this week. Instead I am going to keep this week's Open Thread relatively light as you will read below.

Blog participation and the 90-9-1 rule. -OR- How I learned to quit worrying and embrace the participation inequality.

This isn't my first time for this rodeo. About 10 years ago I created and ran a blog/forum for the Home Owners Association that I lived in. I was the Association President at the time and if you've ever lived in a Association and involved in the politics then you are well aware of what I call the "big fish in a little pond" syndrome and the "I, me, mine" factor. Those darling human traits certainly were not only expressed in the politics but also spilled over into the blog/forum as well as I had to deal with an over abundance of city folks transplanted to the country life that had a hard time making that adjustment. It was then that I researched and became aware of the community participation ratio and learned to quit worrying and embrace the participation inequality.

Summary: In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

Source

Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Lucinda Williams.

As Spying Foes Look to 'Sunset' Patriot Act, White House Turns up the Pressure
Justice Department memo reveals pressure campaign as two competing spy bills head to vote

With key provisions of the Patriot Act set to expire at the end of the month and congressional in-fighting over the legality of government surveillance continuing to rage, the National Security Agency (NSA) will reportedly begin "winding down" bulk surveillance operations this weekend.

Good morning 99percenters!
A morning news dump and music from The Band.

How America’s ‘News’ Media Killed America’s Democracy: TPP & TTIP

by Eric Zuesse
“TTP & TTIP will produce ‘a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots.’”

A deal was worked out in the U.S. Senate on the early afternoon of May 13th to "Fast-Track" through to approval U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed trade deals, TPP with Asia, and TTIP with Europe. (It should have been reported on the nightly TV news programs, but most of them ignored it then, and reported the news only the next day when the Senators made it official.)

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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