Recall the story of how the NSA was intercepting the shipment of US-made routers and secretly installing backdoors in them that would enable the NSA to gain access to their entire traffic and users before re-sealing the packages and forwarding them to the unwitting recipients.
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Today is the 60th anniversary of the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that said that ‘separate but equal’ practices were unconstitutional in the field of public education. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the unanimous opinion:
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The massive Indian election is over with the ruling Congress party utterly routed, winning perhaps just 60 seats in the 543-seat parliament. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader Narendra Modi have swept into power with possibly 350 seats, a clean majority that will enable them to govern that sprawling country without having to form a coalition.
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What amazes me is that in their desire to keep taxes low and eliminate government regulations, the oligarchs in the US seem to be succeeding in convincing many ordinary people to deliberately set about destroying the very things that America was once noted for.
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The great revolution called Operation American Spring that was to take place today has proven to be a bust. The plan was that 10 million to 30 million red-blooded patriots would converge on Washington DC today and when the leaders of government saw that so many opposed them, they would abdicate and would be replaced by people who would follow the constitution, which as any true patriot knows contains just five Articles:
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Mark Follman writes about a recent disturbing trend among people who oppose any restriction at all on the free and unfettered access to guns, who turn even on women who are fellow supporters of the right to own guns because they are not willing to go as far as them. What happened to Jennifer Longdon is a prime example of the kind of disgusting behavior that can ensue.
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Jason Jones is exasperated with Jon Stewart because he does not seem to be able to grasp the fact that while there may be great similarities between the two nations, there is a simple difference that makes Russia an oligarchy while America remains a democracy.
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Who knew that moocher rancher Cliven Bundy would be the face of the next American revolution? Emboldened by their victory over the Bureau of Land Management where he and his supporters drove away the jack-booted thugs of the government in order to return to their cows their god-given right to eat where they damn well please, they have now set their sights even higher.
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I cannot believe that we are talking about Monica Lewinsky again. It should have been a non-story when it originally happened in 1998 and it should be even less of a story now. It was incredible how a consensual affair between two adults actually led to impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton and to an unbelievable level of voyeurism masquerading as news and moralizing.
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Last night I watched online the above two-hour Frontline program that was broadcast earlier this week on public television and it is well worth seeing. It tells the history of the NSA’s secret surveillance programs, focusing on the period from just before the events of 9/11 and leading up to soon after Barack Obama took office as president in 2008. The story of Edward Snowden and his leaks are used to bracket this story but is not the main focus. Part 2 deals with the role of the major internet companies and will be broadcast next week on public television stations and will also be on the internet.
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