In a news report that appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel, former president Jimmy Carter is reported to have said that the leaks by Edward Snowden were “beneficial” to the country and that “America has no functioning democracy at this moment.” [Read more…]
My post on why I supported Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning produced quite a strong reaction in which some people took issue with my harsh criticism of Barack Obama. I wrote a follow-up that addressed some of the concerns and I would strongly recommend that people particularly read the responses by Jeffrey Johnson that appeared in the comments to the latter post because he very thoughtfully took issue with my stand. [Read more…]
There is a documentary based on the book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield (2013) that I am currently reading.
Here is the trailer.
The Queen of England today approved legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, the last formal step in their legislative process. But couples will have to wait until 2014 to get married. The country already has civil partnerships. Churches will not have to conduct those weddings if they do not want to. [Read more…]
So senator Lindsey Graham (R-Crazy) is so upset at the possibility of Russia giving asylum to Edward Snowden that he wants the US to boycott the Winter Olympics if they do so. One can only imagine how ballistic he will get if one of the smaller Latin American countries that have offered Snowden asylum (Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua) make good on their promise. Will he call for an invasion? [Read more…]
In yet another sign of how the proliferation of social media is worrying authoritarian regimes because it allows people to communicate laterally easily and bypass official news channels, the head of the religious police in Saudi Arabia has warned Twitter users that they have pretty much forfeited any hope of a good afterlife. In addition, the country’s most senior cleric (who has the Monty Pythonesque title of ‘Grand Mufti’) has called Twitter users ‘fools’. [Read more…]
Annie Robbins reports that yesterday the European Union has, in a significant step, warned Israel that its continued expansion of illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories has consequences.
“Effective Friday, a new European Union directive with a “territorial clause” bans all EU funding of projects in territories occupied by Israel since the ’67 war: the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. The new directive (pdf), which covers all areas of co-operation between the EU and Israel, culture, academia, sports, economics and science, requires the Israeli government to “recognize in writing that the West Bank settlements are not part of Israel.”
The government’s vicious assault on whistleblowers and those who report the leaks has led them to a confrontation with the press and opened up a debate on who is a journalist and what protections they should have to report the news. The First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and the press should protect everyone who publishes any news or opinion in any forum. But the government does not want that. What they want is a compliant media, and they have sought to find a way to separate the ‘good’ media (i.e., those who know their proper role is to be subservient to the government) from the ‘bad media’ (i.e., those who actually break news even if it is not in the government’s interest). [Read more…]
Documentarian Josh Fox has been on a crusade against the practice of hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) that is used to extract natural gas from shale rock, because of the harm it does to the environment and ground water supplies. He has just released Gasland Part II, the sequel to his earlier Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland that I reviewed two years ago. Here’s the trailer. [Read more…]