Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler was interviewed on the Scott Horton Show last week. He's a potential expert witness in the Bradley Manning case and has written an article in The New Republic, “The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case:”
(Strangest fact I read: "..the [Obama] Administration revived the World War I Espionage Act, an Act whose infamous origins included a 10-year prison term for a movie director who made a movie that showed British soldiers killing women and children during the Revolutionary War and was therefore thought to undermine our wartime alliance with Britain..." Seriously? And Obama says let's do it again .. and again .. and again ... ???)
(This is the first of two posts regarding an extremely dangerous free trade treaty, known as the Transpacific Partnership, that is being negotiated in total secret – and a new treaty, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, that China and some ASEAN nations are promoting)
On Thursday, August 16, US military veterans in Portland OR, Oakland CA, and Los Angeles CA, occupied Obama 2012 campaign offices. Six veterans and activists in Oakland, and six more in Portland, OR, were arrested Thursday night at Obama campaign offices for occupying the spaces in solidarity with accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower PFC Bradley Manning. Dozens of veterans and anti-war demonstrators coordinated a West Coast set of actions that also included protests in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Seattle. Read below the fold...
As the saying goes ""It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes.". And considering all the hoopla over Olympic apparel being made in China, it's incredible to me that there is simply no media coverage or outrage about the fact that the means by which elections are held in the U.S. is on systems made in countries other than the U.S. And that doesn't even take into account all the issues associated with electronic voting.
So to that end, publishing with permission: Read below the fold...
If you think the new world order Obama alluded to in his 5-22-10 9th-crop-of-cadets-as-MidEast-cannon fodder-for-the-new-world-order-(hegemony)-killing-fieldsspeech at West Point this past Saturday has any remote benefits for those of us not in the top 1% of global income holders, there is an oil well in the Gulf I’d like to sell you. Read below the fold...
Kevin Hall of McClatchy Newspapers reports that on April 20 the big Italian oil company Eni put off its deal with Gazprom, the big Russian oil company.
SCORE big and bloody for the US (and France). This has been a goal of the US for three years according to Wilikleaks documents claims Hall. Read below the fold...
Resist" the main fundraising site for Bradley Manning. : http://www.bradleymanning.org/16185/payp...
And then, I read that some English judge has ruled to extradite Assange to Sweden. I am beyond outraged. The oligarchy is responding just like Mubarak, like Qaddafi, and they will go down just like those despots did. I would be in despair if not for Wikileaks and Anonymous, and millions of freedom-loving activists aroused throughout the world, like Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Bahrainis, Yemenis, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Algerians, etc, and now, in the US, we are seeing an uprising centered on Wisconsin but spreading, just like in the ME. Read below the fold...
Keller is the NYT's Executive Editor and a neocon. Here he illustrates why the Gray Lady's brand of journalism sucks in both form and content. I put this up as a quick hit because to be honest I didn't make it through the first page. There are nine. It is all so contrived. Here I'll imitate Bob Woodward breathlessness and Watergate-ishness. There I'll evoke Assange's undependability and shiftiness. Over there I'll remind you again how we are the REAL journalists even though we somehow turned Assange and not the leaks into the STORY. Read below the fold...
I still glance through FDL to see what topics are being covered. I found this promoted diary by Rohan Jayasekera on the My FDL page. Jayasekera is one of these David Horowitz types who started out on the left as an opponent of censorship but then involuted into his own opposite. In his diary, he basically recycles an Administration argument that Wikileaks has put lives at risk. Whose? Well according to Jaysekera mouthing an argument fed him by a US diplomat, those of human rights activists in repressive countries who talk to US consular officials. Read below the fold...
So you are a little girl in grammar school in 1917. Your name is Christine Shupp. You related to a neighbor here in Montana that as a child you were forced every morning after the pledge of allegiance to the flag to kneel down on the floor and kiss the flag. It is because you were German. And say you are a rancher in Rosebud County, Montana in 1918 and you call WWI “a millionaire’s war”. Whamo, you are dragged off by neighbors to jail. You're in a saloon and call war time food regulations "a big joke" and you are sentenced to from 7 to 20 years. http://www.seditionproject.net/index.htmlRead below the fold...
Americans Organize to Support WikiLeaks Transparency
Washington, D.C. In opposition to efforts by the U.S. Attorney General Holder to extradite Julian Assange, Editor in Chief of WikiLeaks, prominent authors, academics, lawyers, whistleblower activists concerned with eroding civil liberties, government accountability, electronic freedom, opposition to war, and protection of whistleblowers have signed on to a strongly worded statement (below) condemning 'U.S efforts to fraudulently criminalize the legitimate journalism of Julian Assange...". Read below the fold...
On December 9, 2010, Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), published a largely incoherent rant in the Huffington Post against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Read below the fold...
The most recent release of wikileaks docs has provoked all the standard reactions we have come to expect. The punditocracy, both governmental and media, have thrown everything they could think of at them hoping something will stick.
We are told that the docs are an attack on our national security and not just that but the international community. Then we are told often by the same people that they are of no importance, that they are full of mistakes and inaccuracies, that they are essentially gossip, that foreign leaders say even worse and more impolitic things about our leaders. Read below the fold...
