Maine"s senators will vote to declassify torture report summary. But don"t expect to read it soon

Sens. Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and Susan Collins, a Republican who is as close to a maverick as the party includes these days, announced Wednesday that they will vote to declassify the “Finding & Conclusions” and the Executive Summary of the 6,300-page torture report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Both senators are members of the 15-member committee, which is scheduled to vote on declassification Thursday.

Good to hear. But even if the vote is favorable, as now seems probable, it might be months or longer before the public actually sees the report, which was completed 16 months ago. It has been the subject of review by the CIA and unproductive discussions between committee members and the agency, which ran the torture program whose methods became euphemized as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The CIA would almost certainly seek a final review of the parts of the report the committee seeks to declassify.

Having the CIA handle such a review is especially troubling given the details of the report that have been leaked to the press. In addition to what was already known, what those details show is that the agency intentionally released false information to persuade people that torture works and that it employed methods of torture not previously confirmed. Nobody should be surprised by either of those revelations.

More on the report and possibility of declassification below the fold.

Daily Kos

Maine"s senators will vote to declassify torture report summary. But don"t expect to read it soon

Read before jumping into the deep end of NCAA pool

FILE – In this Dec. 18, 2012, file photo, Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins calls to his team during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against North Carolina State in Raleigh, N.C. If Johnny Dawkins and Craig Neal were still playing _ instead of coaching _ against each other, there’s no doubt which one you’d pick. The two will be back on opposing benches Friday night March 21, 2014, 28 years after they faced off as players. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

FILE – In this Dec. 18, 2012, file photo, Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins calls to his team during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against North Carolina State in Raleigh, N.C. If Johnny Dawkins and Craig Neal were still playing _ instead of coaching _ against each other, there’s no doubt which one you’d pick. The two will be back on opposing benches Friday night March 21, 2014, 28 years after they faced off as players. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

FILE – In this March 8, 2014, file photo, New Mexico coach Craig Neal tries to rally his team during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against San Diego State. If Johnny Dawkins and Craig Neal were still playing _ instead of coaching _ against each other, there’s no doubt which one you’d pick. The two will be back on opposing benches Friday night March 21, 2014, 28 years after they faced off as players. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi, File)

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., gives a thumbs-up to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Senate Committee on Environment, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 11, 2014, as Democratic senators finish an all-nighter, working in shifts into Tuesday morning to warn of the devastation from climate change and the danger of inaction. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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Welcome to BracketRacket.

Think of it as one-stop shopping on game days for all your NCAA tournament needs. We’ll have interviews with celebrity alums drawn from sports, entertainment and politics, plus occasional “bracket-buster” picks, photos, news, gossip, stats, notes and quotes from around the tourney sites — all of it bundled into a quick read that gives diehard fans and office-poolers alike something to sound smart about.

So without further ado:

TAKE THIS JOB … AND DUNK IT

The business of America is business, and the NCAA tournament is bad for business; ergo, the NCAA tournament is bad for America.

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas proved it by wasting a few hours again this year calculating how much U.S. employers could lose while employees (like this one, via wordpress.com: http://bit.ly/1fYuFac ) obsess over the tournament. In an annual report, the company set the figure at $ 1.2 billion for every unproductive hour.

“You have employees talking about which teams made or didn’t make the tournament. You have other workers setting up and managing office pools. Of course, there are the office pool participants,” Challenger’s statement cautioned, “some of whom might take five minutes to fill out a bracket, while others spend several hours researching teams, analyzing statistics and completing multiple brackets.”

Never mind that the math behind the estimate is fuzzy, or that both academic researchers and corporate managers who looked at the problem concluded the real numbers were considerably lower, mostly because employees tend to make up for lost time by working outside traditional hours.

So what should an employer do?

“Despite all of the scary numbers, Challenger suggests that employers not try to clamp down on March Madness,” the statement added. “Initiatives to block access to sports sites and live streaming in order to boost productivity in the short term, could result in long-term damage to employee morale, loyalty and engagement.”

Is this a great country or what?

___

CELEBRITY ALUM

Think the folks in Congress have trouble making up their minds now? Just wait. Nothing gets politicians procrastinatin’ and prevaricatin’ like the NCAA tournament.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia dispatched at least one representative into the 68-team field that began play Tuesday night. California topped the list with five, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas boasted four each, six others had three and Indiana — a.k.a, the “heartland of hoops” — had zero.

Generally speaking, elected officials from states with more than one entrant fear voters so much they’d rather talk about raising taxes than which school they’re backing. They make picking between them sound like “Sophie’s Choice.”

That made Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow thumbing her nose at the maize-and-blue recently seem refreshing.

“Oh, Michigan State! Michigan State,” she gushed during a groundbreaking ceremony at the university Monday.

“I have to tell you, after yesterday,” Stabenow added, referring to the Spartans’ win over state rival Michigan in the Big Ten championship game, “we are back. We’ve got the full team going, Coach (Tom) Izzo is primed and ready and I think we’ll take it all.”

Just to rub it in, she unveiled the little rhinestone number — courtesy of MSU Today alumni magazine — pictured here: http://bit.ly/1eiqiFK

Stabenow received both her undergraduate and graduate (magna cum laude) degrees from Michigan State, so while she might need those Democratic votes over in Ann Arbor someday, it won’t be until 2018 at the earliest.

Even then, Stabenow barely cracks the “how-to-alienate-alumni” list. Since-retired North Carolina Sen. (and UNC alum) Brad Miller locked up the top spot in 2012 when he told BracketRacket: “I have said very publicly that if Duke was playing against the Taliban, then I’d have to pull for the Taliban.”

___

DON’T I KNOW YOU FROM SOMEWHERE?

Speaking of “Sophie’s Choice,” a Pennsylvania high school coaching legend named John Miller could be facing one come early April.

That’s when Miller’s sons — Sean, who coaches No. 1 West seed Arizona; and younger brother Archie, who coaches No. 11th South seed Dayton — could meet in the Final Four. It’s a longshot, sure, especially since the Flyers only got off the bubble and into the bracket after winning nine of their last 10 games.

Then again, what were the odds that brothers from a tiny town in western Pennsylvania would wind up coaching in the same tournament? (Short answer: Who knows? The Beaver County (Pa.) Times said it was believed to be the first time that’s happened, but added such record-keeping at the NCAA was “sketchy.”)

“Sean, you kind of always figured he was going to be a coach. Archie always said he wasn’t going to coach,” John Miller, who won four state titles and more than 650 games before retiring from Blackhawk High in Beaver Falls, told the newspaper. “It was only three or four days after graduation, though, when we talked. He said, ‘All my contacts are in basketball, maybe I should try coaching.’”

After a number of stints as an assistant elsewhere, Archie’s best contact (and brother) came through with a two-year deal at Arizona.

“No question, being part of the tournament is going to be great for him,” Sean said.

John will be on hand Thursday in Buffalo, when Archie makes his NCAA tournament debut against Ohio State and coach Thad Matta, whom both Millers served under as assistants. But he’ll have to settle for watching Arizona’s opener Friday against Weber State in San Diego on TV. And even if both boys somehow get their teams to Arlington, Texas, on the tourney’s final weekend, John, who still coaches a youth team now and then, isn’t making any promises.

“This March Madness,” he fumed, “is getting in the way of basketball.”

___

DON’T I KNOW YOU FROM SOMEWHERE (Part 2)?

If Johnny Dawkins and Craig Neal were still playing — instead of coaching — against each other, there’s no doubt which one you’d pick.

The two will be back on opposing benches Friday night, 28 years after they faced off as players. But it looks like Neal has the upper hand now. His No. 7 New Mexico squad will be a slight favorite over Dawkins’ No. 10 Stanford when they meet in St. Louis.

The last time they did — competitively speaking — was the 1986 ACC tournament title game. Neal, who kicked around basketball’s minor leagues for seven seasons, played for Georgia Tech in that one. Dawkins, who was in his senior year at Duke, went on to win the game and become the ACC tourney MVP in 1986, as well as Duke’s career scoring leader until 2006.

Small wonder the Cardinal coach was happy to reminisce with AP’s Janie McCauley.

“He was younger than I was, so it was a little different,” Dawkins recalled. “We played in a great game. … It was an amazing environment.”

After a nine-year NBA career, the coaching racket hasn’t gone quite as smoothly. Stanford finally made the tourney in Dawkins’ sixth season there, amid talk that his job depended on it.

___

STAT OF THE DAY

From 2005 through 2009, a No. 1 seed was like an invitation to the Sweet 16. During that stretch all 20 top seeds got there. More recently, though, the big dogs haven’t been quite as lucky, according to research by STATS. One No. 1 has been eliminated in the first weekend three of the last four years. The mighty who fell: Kansas in 2010 (to Northern Iowa), Pittsburgh in 2011 (to Butler) and Gonzaga in 2013 (to Wichita State).

But if it’s any consolation, Butler and Wichita State wound up riding those upsets all the way to the Final Four.

___

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“She’ll probably be in tears, so that will be good.” — Peter Hooley, one of four Australians who play for the University of Albany, about how his mother and 20 other family members who got up at 3 a.m. to watch the game back home would react to the Great Danes’ win over Mount St. Mary’s.

___

TUESDAY’S RESULTS

At Dayton, Ohio

First Four

Albany (N.Y.) 71, Mount St. Mary’s 64

N.C. State 74, Xavier 59

WEDNESDAY’S GAMES

Cal Poly (13-19) vs. Texas Southern (19-14), 6:40 p.m.

Iowa (20-12) vs. Tennessee (21-12), 30 minutes following

Associated Press

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Read before jumping into the deep end of NCAA pool

READ: Excerpt from "A Sliver of Light" Ahead of Tuesday"s Extended Interview with Iran Hikers

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READ: Excerpt from "A Sliver of Light" Ahead of Tuesday"s Extended Interview with Iran Hikers

What Should We Read Into FL-13? Maybe Nothing.

Tonight, votes will be tallied in Florida’s 13th Congressional District special election to replace deceased Congressman Bill Young, a Republican. Here are three basic thoughts on the race:

1. My sense is that the Democratic candidate, former state chief financial officer and 2010 gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink, will probably win. 

Back in mid-January, I was corresponding with a left-of-center analyst about a St. Petersburg Times poll, and I commented that “53-47 Sink is about what I’d predict.” That’s about where I am right now, though I think a narrower Sink win is likely, maybe in the three-to-four point range. 

We’ll discuss this more in bullet point No. 3, but this is a district that has gradually trended Democratic over the past few decades, where Democrats have an unusually strong (though still somewhat flawed) candidate, and where Republicans have a candidate who is average at best. In a swing district, that seems to be a recipe for a Democratic win.

There hasn’t been much independent polling in this race. The Tampa Bay Times and Saint Leo University released polls in early February showing Sink up 7 and 9 points, respectively. A PPP poll conducted the weekend before Election Day for the League of Conservation Voters showed Sink with a smaller, 48-45, advantage.

On top of this, if there were ever a case where we’d expect a massive polling failure, it would be a special election for a legislative seat. Witness the special election to replace Tim Scott in South Carolina, where polls predicted anywhere between a big Democratic win and a close race, but which ended up in a nine-point GOP blowout.  Legislative seats are just difficult to poll in our gerrymandered universe, especially when the unpredictable turnout from a special election is figured in.

But if there’s one thing that seems to tip the scales in Sink’s direction, it’s that Democrats seem to be outperforming their early voting/absentee metrics from 2012.  That race ended up with an Obama victory in the district, albeit a narrow one. Of course, Election Day turnout may drop off if Democrats are simply cannibalizing their regular voters, but for now, things seem to point in Sink’s direction.

2. There is some symbolic importance to this election.

The 13^th District is the lineal descendent of one created in 1952 and won by Republican Bill Cramer.  Cramer was the first Republican from Florida since 1882, when Horatio Bisbee represented a district that spanned the entire eastern half of the Florida Peninsula (it was based in Jacksonville, as Miami wouldn’t be incorporated for another 14 years).  Cramer’s win was the face of the “New Southern Republicanism,” a creation of immigrants from the North who caused sleepy Sun Belt hamlets to explode in population and who transformed the political dynamic in the South.  These sorts of victories were replicated during the ’50s in places like Dallas, Charlotte, N.C., and Arlington, Va., before spreading to the countryside starting in the ’70s and turning swing regions into Republican ones.

Republicans have already lost Tampa and have had to cede most of St. Petersburg proper to that Tampa-based district in order to keep the Pinellas peninsula red.  Losing one of the first Republican redoubts in the South doesn’t mean terribly much in the big picture, but it is a useful reminder that things really do change, sometimes quickly, even in the South.

3. There are very few electoral lessons to be drawn here.

The Hill and USA Today both agree that there is a broader lesson to be learned from this race about the 2014 elections.  I’m much less certain. To begin with, special elections aren’t bellwethers, except when they are. If that doesn’t sound particularly helpful, well, it isn’t meant to.

As we might expect, wave elections are often preceded by surprising wins for the victorious side. In 1974, a number of surprising special election Democratic wins in historically Republican districts were the first signals that things were about to go massively awry for the GOP, and played a role in convincing Richard Nixon to resign. In 1994, Democrats lost historically Democratic districts in Kentucky and Oklahoma.  In 2008, GOP losses in Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana seemingly presaged the rout in the fall.

But sometimes waves aren’t preceded by surprising wins. In 2006, the GOP managed to hang on to a seat with a badly flawed candidate in southern Ohio, and kept a San Diego-based district that many saw as a test of Democrats’ chances in the fall.  In 2010, the GOP lost a special election in southwestern Pennsylvania that had been trumpeted as the only district won by both John Kerry and John McCain.

Of course, there are also special election upsets that herald nothing. Democrats were riding high in 2004 after winning special elections in South Dakota and central Kentucky, but all of that amounted to nothing in the fall.

But even if all that weren’t the case, I’m still not sure what we could read into this particular race.  As mentioned above, this seat is politically marginal, voting near the national margin in two straight elections.  Democrats fielded a reasonably strong candidate in Sink, who had won statewide office, had very nearly won the governorship in a terrible Democratic year (albeit against a damaged opponent), and who carried this district twice in her statewide bids.  This is a profile more commonly found among Senate candidates than House candidates.

Republicans fielded a first-time candidate, David Jolly, who had served as a lobbyist and who faced a competitive primary — indeed a primary that split Young’s family. While Politico’s “airing of grievances” piece should be taken with a grain of salt — jilted/nervous consultants turn on campaigns with regularity — it does serve as a nice compendium for the public mistakes by Team Jolly.

If we must say something, it is this:  If Sink wins, we will know that a strong Democrat without a voting record, who is running in an open swing district, can defeat a middling Republican candidate.  To be honest, that’s actually a somewhat important data point for Democrats, because it wasn’t clear that there was much of anything that they could do to avoid their drop-off problem. Also, some level of support for Obamacare isn’t an automatic kiss of death. But there are very few competitive House races will fit this mold, and none of the competitive Senate races will.

If Jolly wins: Because this is a seat that Sink should win in a neutral year, should she lose despite all her advantages we’ll have another data point that this is not shaping up as a neutral year. But we already intuited this; there are much better data points highlighting the Democrats’ likely midterm blues.

As for my bottom line? I think the Democrat will win this race, but I think there’s a pretty good chance that it will prove as meaningful as their win in southwestern Pennsylvania in 2010.

RealClearPolitics – Articles

What Should We Read Into FL-13? Maybe Nothing.

You Read It Here First: Government Spies On Innocent People Via Webcams, Laptops, Xbox

Latest Snowden Leak confirms story Infowars first broke EIGHT YEARS AGO

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
February 27, 2014

The latest revelation concerning mass government spying confirms an issue that Infowars has been covering for close to a decade. British and American governments are spying on people in their own homes via web cams, laptop microphones and devices such as the X-box.

The London Guardian has the details in a report based on information leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The British surveillance agency GCHQ, with help from the NSA, actively spied on nearly 2 million Yahoo users via webcams built into their computers. The documents show that the agency intercepted millions of images as part of a secret program codenamed OPTIC NERVE.

The report also states that Americans were almost certainly targeted as part of the bulk collection of data, and that there is no law to prevent such activity in Britain.

The documents show that images were collected from webcams at regular intervals, one image every five minutes, and were used by the spy agency to trial automated facial recognition programs.

The Guardian describes the process as “eerily reminiscent of the telescreens evoked in George Orwell’s 1984.”

The documents dub the practice as “bulk access to Yahoo webcam images/events”, and spies working at GCHQ compared it to a police database of mugshots. “Face detection has the potential to aid selection of useful images for ‘mugshots’ or even for face recognition by assessing the angle of the face,” the papers read. “The best images are ones where the person is facing the camera with their face upright.”

Essentially, the spy agency appear to have been building a huge digital database containing the faces of Yahoo users.

The documents advise employees at GCHQ on how to use the system, noting “[I]f you search for similar IDs to your target, you will be able to request automatic comparison of the face in the similar IDs to those in your target’s ID”.

In one presentation contained within the documents, more technologically advanced systems, such as iris recognition cameras, are discussed as potential surveillance tools. The paper even chillingly states “think Tom Cruise in Minority Report”.

The documents state that Yahoo users were specifically singled out because “Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets”.

The papers also note that a large quantity of the data collected contained nudity or sexually explicit imagery. The spy agency seemingly made no effort to prevent the collection of such images.

Yahoo described the practice as “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy,” and strenuously denied having any knowledge of the program.

Infowars first reported in 2006, EIGHT YEARS AGO, that innocent people were being spied on through their computers. We specifically described the practice as Minority Report style technology, as the GCHQ had done.

We have since covered the issue consistently, warning that “Hundreds of millions of Internet-active Americans will all be potential targets for secret surveillance.”

Of course, some quarters dismissed our reports as “conspiracy theories”, while worried internet users questioned whether the reports were accurate.

The GCHQ program was seemingly not limited to Yahoo user web cams either. Another presentation within the leaked internal papers discusses the capabilities of the Xbox 360′s Kinect camera, saying it generated “fairly normal webcam traffic” and that it was being evaluated as a potential surveillance tool.

We have also documented the potential use of Xbox for surveillance purposes, noting that Skype calls made on the devices can be intercepted. We have also warned that the ‘always on’ camera of the new Xbox One, which is so powerful it can see through clothing, is wide open to abuse by hackers and government agencies.

According to the leaked documents, the OPTIC NERVE program began as a prototype in 2008 and was still active in 2012. There is no indication that the program has been deactivated.

Security expert Bruce Schneier writes that this latest revelation highlights how there is no distinction between actively spying on a person and what he called “Eavesdropping by algorithm”, in other words, automated computer surveillance. The NSA and the Obama administration have attempted to argue that what they are doing cannot be called “spying” or even “collecting” data, because when the data is gathered, a person is not looking at it. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper still uses this explanation to claim he never lied to Congress when he answered ‘no’ to the question “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

The fallout from the OPTIC NERVE program, the creation of facial recognition databases, and the fact that spooks provably looked at images of people, even NAKED images of people, highlights the fact, Schneier argues, that the “NSA’s definition of ‘collect’ makes no sense whatsoever”, and that our governments are indeed actively spying on us.

—————————————————————-

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

This article was posted: Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:18 am

Tags: big brother, domestic spying

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Infowars

You Read It Here First: Government Spies On Innocent People Via Webcams, Laptops, Xbox

Israel: MUST READ Open Letter to John Kerry

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Israel: MUST READ Open Letter to John Kerry

Let’s Read the Polls About Amnesty

Poll numbers reveal that amnesty leads to big government and fewer rights

Phyllis Schlafly
Eagle Forum
February 18, 2014

The Congressional Budget Office just reported that Obamacare will shrink the U.S. workforce by 2.5 million full-time jobs. That’s stunning confirmation of how Barack Obama’s favorite legislative legacy is (as even Democrats have admitted) a “train wreck.”

The job loss is caused by businesses reducing their employees’ hours in order to avoid paying the employee mandate to buy insurance. Even more striking is the callous way Obama’s friends are trying to put a happy face on this bad news by claiming that Americans who are reduced to part-time jobs by Obamacare will be better off because they are liberated to exercise choice about how they spend their unemployed hours. As the New York Times wrote, it will be “more possible” to leave jobs (or reduce hours for less pay) because “new government subsidies will help pay premiums.”

Fifty million Americans of working-age (18 to 65) are not employed, and this number has held constant throughout the Obama presidential years. That’s an awesome 31 percent, a devastating blow to families’ livelihood, self-respect, and belief in America as the land of opportunity.

Republicans should be addressing the issues of jobs and Obamacare, but the tone-deaf Republican Establishment (the chamber-of-commerce, country-club types) keeps pushing for various versions of amnesty that will import millions of foreigners to take jobs from Americans, all the way from entry-level jobs to college graduates imported on H-1B visas. Establishment spokesmen talk a lot about devotion to the free-market system, but they ignore the Economics 101 lesson that increasing the labor supply reduces job opportunities and wages.

Businesses do market research to identify public opinion about their products, and politicians buy a lot of public opinion polls to identify voters who support their views and learn how those numbers can be increased. Today’s public opinion polls prove that Republicans are fools to support any form of amnesty or continuing to import millions of foreigners who reject conservative views and will vote for the Democrats who support big government and spending.

The Pew Research Center found that 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants prefer a “bigger government providing more services” and only 19 percent of Hispanics and only 36 percent of Asian immigrants prefer a smaller government. So why is anybody surprised that 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Obama in 2012?

The 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 69 percent of immigrants support Obamacare. Pew Research found that 53 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, which is even higher than views of self-identified supporters of Occupy Wall Street.

Polls show that Republican emphasis on patriotism and national sovereignty is likely to alienate many immigrants. A Harris poll found that 81 percent of native-born Americans believe that our schools should teach students to be proud of being American compared to only 50 percent of immigrants who have become naturalized U.S. citizens.

A survey that compared immigrants’ views on the U.S. Constitution and international law is particularly shocking. A Harris poll found that 67 percent of native-born citizens believe our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, but only 37 percent of naturalized citizens share that view.

Even the mainstream pro-Obama media admit the significance of these poll results. The New York Times Washington bureau chief admitted that “The two fastest-growing ethnic groups — Latinos and Asian-Americans — are decidedly liberal.” University of Alabama Political Scientist George Hawley observed, “immigrants are well to the left of the American public on a number of key issues.”

Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute pointed out that it “is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic Party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation.”

Ronald Reagan signed a generous amnesty in 1986. Then, in the 1988 election, George H.W. Bush received only 30 percent of the Latino vote, seven percentage points less than Reagan himself had received.

Amnesty advocates like to point to the effective assimilation of millions of immigrants from about 1880 to 1920 as a model to encourage similar large-scale immigration today. However, that was followed by a national pause in immigration from the 1920s to the 1960s, which allowed newcomers to assimilate, to learn our language and customs, and to adapt to our unique system of government.

Moreover, it still took decades before those immigrants moved into the Republican column. Before they did, those immigrants and their children provided much of the political support to pass the New Deal and the Great Society.

The bottom line is that amnesty or any version thereof is suicide for the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

This article was posted: Tuesday, February 18, 2014 at 1:12 pm

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Let’s Read the Polls About Amnesty

Read & React: Super Bowl Commercial Hypocrisy?

The AXE Peace commercial previewed on YouTube ahead of its national Super Bowl XLVIII debut illustrates an agenda promoting coexistence among governments that are notorious for various human rights infringements.

This global peace agenda is backed by many politicians, as well as those in the entertainment and national media industries.

In comparison, the same politicos and media outlets will not support companies such as Daniel Defense, a firearms and accessories company in Black Creek, Georgia, to run its commercial, which promotes the constitutionally protected individual right of law-abiding Americans to decide how best to defend themselves.

It is interesting to note that one early reason the Daniel Defense commercial was denied for viewing during the Super Bowl was that it featured the silhouette of a semiautomatic AR-15-type rifle at the end of the spot. However, even after Daniel Defense offered to replace the image with an American flag, the commercial was again rejected from airing during the game.

In this AXE Peace commercial, a similar type of firearm, a select-fire M16A1, is shown as carried, then dropped by a soldier.

The problem that media outlets and organizations that do not support gun rights have with Daniel Defense’s commercial is in obvious regard to its message. This message can be interpreted as promoting the right to personal defense, or it casts a positive light on an otherwise demonized firearm, the AR-15-pattern rifle, which was specifically targeted in 2013 by legislative efforts to be banned or restricted in many states.

The juxtaposition of a global peace agenda and a government’s attempt to create limits on families’ options to secure their homes is worth inviting a civil discussion.

Watch both videos, and tell us your thoughts by leaving a comment.

AXE Peace Super Bowl Commercial:

Daniel Defense Super Bowl Commercial (BANNED):

Guns & Ammo

Read & React: Super Bowl Commercial Hypocrisy?

Israeli Tech WILL read your mind - For Airport and Company use!!

posted on Jan, 22 2014 @ 11:51 AM

These should be mandatory for every Presidential and Congressional election, as well as Supreme Court candidates. They should also be used for Congressional hearings and police miscconduct investigations.

AboveTopSecret.com New Topics In General Conspiracies

Israeli Tech WILL read your mind - For Airport and Company use!!

Santa Claus Is Real: Read His Story

This painting shows Saint Nicholas saving three innocents from the sword

Daddy! Daddy! Read the story. Please. “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…”

Before long he got to the part where the round and rather elfish fellow in the red suit slides down the chimney and leaves the presents. The best part for me was not the presents. It was decorating the tree and laying the fire – which never hurt Santa – and pretending to be sitting next to him while we shared the milk and cookies that were always left for him. It was the essence of family in my imagination. It was a warm and wonderful fantasy, and when my parents told me there was no Santa I just kept imagining the Christmas scene anyway. It was too wonderful to let go.

Trouble is – if you want to call it trouble – there really is a Santa. His real name is Nicholas and he lived in the city of Myra in what is now called Turkey. He was a bishop in the Catholic Church in a time when there was only one Church. He served during a time of savage persecution of Christians; he was arrested and tortured for his faith, although he did not die of it. He was one of the leaders participating in the Council of Nicea, called by Emperor Constantine after legalization of the faith, and he had a hand in composing the (still) only universal summary statement of the Faith. He was designated a saint following earthly death and hence the Santa joins the Claus in his name.

The most amazing news about Nicholas is that – amid all he suffered and labored and tended to in his life and ministry – he found great joy traveling the streets of his city and leaving coins in the shoes children placed on their window sills at the end of day. He had a special heart for sailors as well as for children, and he may even be the left-handed source of the proverb that God takes care of sailors and children. His concern for the poor was both real and poignant, yet he is remembered not just as a man of compassion, but of compassion laced with whimsy. Reminiscent of the God He served so well.

In our time we are much more attuned to a fat man in a red suit who will give us anything we ask for – and especially a new boy or girlfriend for Christmas if the seasonal movies tell us anything – than to the child of a carpenter born to die for us in a shabby manger located in a small cave in a forgotten town in Judea where all they produce are the lambs to be ceremonially killed in the capitol city. The fat man requires nothing of us but a willingness to be dazzled by fantasies like my five-year-old Christmas scene; the child wants our whole life to be given over to Him as He gives His for us. On top of that, the child insists on meeting our needs rather than our wants. The trouble is, what powers the fat man’s generosity is the child’s sacrificial reality. Nobody is more aware of that than a fat man who gave his heart and his body in gratitude for the Child.

When I was a parish priest we observed a Christmas custom in each church I led. I had long since replaced cookies and milk with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper on Christmas Eve, although God knows to this day I still love the Christmas scene I cherished when I get home from church. At the church we would have one of our members dress as Santa and enter the nave or sanctuary just as I prepared to pray over the Supper. I would catch sight of him and greet him from my station behind the altar. I would acknowledge the pleasure of seeing him, with all the work he had ahead of him this night. He would tell me he wanted to do first things first – on this night of all nights – and that meant worshipping the living Reason for the Season. He would then come forward to receive Communion with the church’s children in tow, and all of us would receive a joy-filled and much needed adjustment to our perspective.

Santa Claus is real, a servant of God and no substitute for Him. Nobody is clearer than St. Nicholas on the nature of the relationship. He is first to say, “Jim, your idea of Christmas as a child comes true only because another child was born, lived and died for you. First things first.”

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net

Ron Paul predicts “major crash of the dollar” … here’s how to protect your savings

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Western Journalism

Santa Claus Is Real: Read His Story

Sick of “Love Actually”? Read a romance novel!

“Love Actually” is not about romance. When Chris Orr made this point in The Atlantic, the Internet exploded with briefs for and against. Having watched “Love Actually” for the first time to see what all the fuss was about, I have to say that I think Orr is correct. Also, the film is terrible.

If it’s not about romance, though, then what is this movie, billed as “the ultimate romantic comedy,” actually about? That’s easy. It’s about romantic comedies — or, more generally, about movies. In fact, “Love Actually” is positively obsessed with its own movieness; with spectacle, performance and audience. Set in the holiday season, the narrative opens by encouraging the audience to visit an airport and see all the people greeting each other — “love actually is all around,” the voice-over insists, meaning that love is visible, and encouraging you (and you, and you) to turn your holiday travels into a rom-com in miniature. Watch people as if they are in a movie, the voice-over insists; they are all performing love and affection for your emotional and aesthetic pleasure. And then, of course, watch the movie to teach you how to watch life. “Love Actually” does not eschew authenticity, as Noah Gittell suggests. Rather, it presents the movie itself as authenticity, the lens through which to view the world.

Continue Reading…

Salon.com

Sick of “Love Actually”? Read a romance novel!

On the Fence About Syria? Read This!

A quick reader on why military intervention in Syria is a big mistake – and what we should be advocating instead.

Some progressives remain conflicted about how the United States should respond to Syria’s increasingly violent civil war. This internal division has only deepened as the Obama administration considers launching a military strike on Bashar al-Assad for an alleged chemical attack by regime forces on civilians last month.

Many progressives are rightly skeptical about involving the United States in yet another war in the Middle East, but others are increasingly convinced that only a U.S.-led military strike can check Assad’s well-documented brutality. In recent weeks, many leading progressive commentators, members of Congress, and ordinary citizens have reluctantly come to this conclusion.

But it’s a mistaken one. However well intentioned this effort may be, there’s no evidence to suggest that the “quick and surgical” strikes proposed by the Obama administration will meaningfully change Assad’s behavior. But there’s ample reason to conclude that they could make things much worse.

For progressives who are on the fence about this issue, here’s a quick reader on why military intervention is a mistake and what we should be advocating instead.

We can’t escalate this war.

Let’s start with something I hope we can agree on: we really, really don’t want to escalate this war.

The Assad regime is surely brutal, but make no mistake: this is a civil war, not a one-sided slaughter. Earlier this summer, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that 43 percent of the 100,000 Syrians thought to have died in this conflict were fighting for Assad, surpassing estimates for both noncombatants and anti-regime forces.

And although some of those anti-Assad forces originally sprung up to protect the nonviolent protesters being gunned down by the regime, they have since been eclipsed by al-Qaeda-affiliated groups like the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In addition to committing serious human rights abuses of their own and establishing Taliban-style fiefdoms in their areas of control, many of these fighters belong to the same Sunni extremist groups the United States fought for nearly a decade in Iraq. If a U.S. attack on Assad changes the balance of the war, these are the groups best positioned to gain from it. (And for anyone who thinks they’ll return the favor with gratitude, recall that Osama bin Laden himself was among the mujahedeen fighters that Washington supported against the Soviets in Afghanistan.)

Syria’s civil war has already spread into Iraq and Lebanon, with fighters on all sides of the conflict carrying out car bombings and waging pitched gun battles in the streets. A large-scale U.S. bombing campaign could push more fighters and refugees into these fragile states, destabilizing them further and potentially dragging the United States—as well as major Assad backers like Russia and Iran—into a tailspin of regional turmoil.

Military intervention could have other unintended effects as well. When NATO intervened in the Serbia-Kosovo war in 1999, for example, both sides accelerated their ethnic cleansing campaigns. And after NATO forces joined the war in Libya, anti-Gaddafi fighters launched a terrifying campaign of racial violence against dark-skinned Libyans thought to be loyal to the regime. (And then there was that whole Mali thing.)

But what about a limited, “surgical” strike?

Say the United States only launches a quick cruise missile strike on the 36 military targets the Pentagon is thought to be eyeballing. What happens next?

One possibility is that Syria would retaliate. As Phyllis Bennis and Scott Charney have pointed out, there are U.S. forces all over the region—in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, and elsewhere—that could be vulnerable to attack from Syria, Iran, or one of their proxy groups. If Iran gets involved, it could target U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf or close the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil passes. If any of this happens, the United States could instantly be dragged into a larger war that would become immeasurably more violent.

Suppose Assad doesn’t strike at the United States but continues using chemical weapons (assuming he actually has already). Does Washington keep bombing—unavoidably killing civilians and potentially rallying some Syrians around the regime—until he stops? Even if he swears off chemical weapons categorically, civilians on all sides of the conflict will still die in droves from conventional attacks. The only meaningful change will be an elevated risk for escalation.

The Wilson Center recently put together a great short list of four “quick military strikes” that had long-running consequences. Remember when Ronald Reagan bombed Libya in 1986? Two years later Libyan agents blew up Pan-Am Flight 103 in retribution. And Bill Clinton’s 1998 strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan? These helped precipitate the al-Qaeda attacks on the USS Cole and eventually the World Trade Center. All of these led to much larger-scale wars later on. Obviously there were other factors in each case, but the point is that the United States can’t just dunk its toes in the water without getting wet.

But don’t we have to enforce the international norm against chemical weapons?

Yes. But here’s the awkward part: the United States actually has a long, painful, and surprisingly recent history of its own with these weapons.

Declassified documents, for example, recently confirmed Washington’s long-suspected cooperation with Saddam Hussein’s chemical attacks against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. And more recently, reports out of Fallujah, Iraq—where the United States used white phosphorus and potentially depleted uranium during a large-scale assault in 2004—have shown spikes in cancer rates and birth defects outpacing even Hiroshima’s after its nuclear holocaust. This doesn’t mean the United States doesn’t have a responsibility to act, but it does suggest that the international norm against the use of these weapons has survived some pretty grievous abuses already.

More to the point, there’s another norm we need to be upholding here, and that’s the international prohibition on unilateral military action. Since Syria has not attacked the United States and the UN Security Council hasn’t authorized any international military action, a U.S. strike on Syria would be unambiguously illegal under international law. Even with the best of intentions, enforcing a humanitarian norm with an illegal war is a lousy way to uphold international justice.

If we fail to act here, won’t that give Iran a green light to develop nuclear weapons?

Nuclear weapons, as Maysam Behravesh has written, are a response to insecurity. No country that decides it really needs nuclear weapons will wait for Washington’s clearance.

Look at the region from Iran’s perspective. Washington garrisons warships and thousands of troops to Iran’s south and southwest, sells weapons to its Sunni enemies across the Gulf, and supplies its main regional rival—Israel—with billions of dollars each year in military aid. And in the last decade alone, Iran has seen the United States invade and occupy countries on both its eastern and western borders. If Washington also attacks Syria, Iran’s most important ally in the region, Iran will be more likely—not less—to decide it needs a nuclear deterrent.

Moreover, the timing couldn’t be worse. Iran just elected a relatively moderate new president who campaigned on establishing a more cooperative relationship with the West. If the United States and Iran get into a proxy war in Syria, you can kiss those negotiations over its nuclear program goodbye. (In fact this is exactly what some neoconservatives want.)

Now is actually the perfect time to redouble efforts to engage Iran, whose president—no doubt remembering Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iranians—recently condemned Syria’s alleged use of sarin gas.

So what can we do instead?

To someone with just a hammer, they say, every problem looks like a nail. Same goes for superpowers and their militaries. Fortunately there’s a lot more in our toolkit than that. Check out Phyllis Bennis’ great piece on Al Jazeera for a full list.

Among other options, Phyllis writes that the United States can call for a second UN investigation team to determine not only whether chemical weapons were used, but also who used them. And better still, if the U.S. Senate ratifies the International Criminal Court—the international body charged with prosecuting war criminals—it will be much better placed to eventually prosecute the culprits for the attack. The lack of a bombing campaign now doesn’t mean that these criminals won’t have to account for their actions later.

Most importantly, instead of butting heads with the Russians and trying to get UN authorization for a strike on Syria, the United States needs to engage directly with the parties arming the belligerents in Syria to negotiate a full international arms embargo. That includes principally Russia and Iran on the pro-Assad side and Turkey, the Gulf States, Europe, and the United States on the anti-Assad side. Especially among its allies, the United States has considerable leverage in terms of withholding arms sales and other assistance to extract concessions. Until these parties reach a deeper understanding of each other’s regional interests, they’ll continue to use Syria as a proxy battleground.

It’s a tall order, but with neither the rebels nor the regime able to break the stalemate, there’s not much other hope for a solution. An encouraging piece in Foreign Affairs suggests that “leaders in Damascus could offer amnesty to the rebels to initiate negotiations for a formal cease-fire, which would include international monitoring and peacekeeping troops. That would create the space to begin a slow, deliberate process of formal mediation that addresses all of the major conflict issues. Mediation ought to involve third parties and all the major factions of the opposition. Of peace agreements that have met those conditions, less than five have failed in the last 25 years.”

And don’t forget: many, many Syrians are desperately in need of humanitarian aid. The UN estimates that this war has turned over 2 million Syrians into refugees, and international aid has fallen far short of what’s required to help them.

But won’t our “credibility” suffer if Obama doesn’t intervene like he said he would?

Look. There’s nothing worse for your credibility than making a huge mistake just because you promised something you shouldn’t have. Better that Obama learns to speak more carefully than the rest of us learn—again—that we can’t bomb our way to a more peaceful Middle East.

What can I do?

Sign a petition. Call your representative. Get out in the streets.

United for Peace and Justice is compiling a running list of places where people are gathering to oppose this war. CREDO Action, MoveOn, and Avaaz have drawn up antiwar petitions, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation has all the information you need to contact your member of Congress.

And if it helps, you can share this article with any of your friends who are on the fence.

Truthout Stories

On the Fence About Syria? Read This!

NSA has ability to read 75% of all US internet traffic – report

Newly unveiled National Security Agency programs detail how the US government has the ability to monitor approximately 75 per cent of American internet traffic, and further discloses how telecommunications companies are compelled to provide such data.

The programs – known as Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium, and
Stormbrew – are able to monitor the writing of emails, not just a
message’s metadata, according to The Wall Street Journal. The
programs also affect digital phone calls placed inside the US.

Among other capabilities, the systems can “reach roughly 75
per cent of all US internet traffic, including a wide array of
communications by foreigners and Americans.”

The NSA commands internet service providers (ISPs) to send
“various stream internet traffic it believes most likely to
contain foreign intelligence,” then copies that data and
searches through it.

© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2013. All rights reserved.

Republished from: RT

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

NSA has ability to read 75% of all US internet traffic – report

“Monsanto Stocks a Market Risk” – Can’t Legally Label GMO Foods, but You CAN Say, “GMO FREE”

Before it’s News – by Tom Dennen

Human beings, along with all other life on Earth, have been evolving together for some fifty million years in what is known as the Biosphere aka Planet Earth.

That means food is not only necessary for our life, but part of our genetic make up and raw, ‘organic’ food fits us like a glove or part of an infinitely small jigsaw puzzle, each piece fitting seamlessly at the mitochondrial cellular level.   

But sh*t happens and it gets into the food chain, which is where the liver comes in – a giant de-tox factory that throws out the garbage (pity there isn’t one in Washington).

When the liver can’t handle all the crap, you get the Wal-Mart Generation… and people like the ones who run Monsanto want to make this worse… but things are happening to Monsantowhere it hurts, in the wallet – Tom Dennen:

“I was shocked to read a story in Canada’s highly conservative national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, a couple of days ago in which well-known investor and columnist Chris Umiastowski, P.Eng., MBA, warned of the risk in holding Monsanto stock.  It was refreshing to read the views of an investor who is not just concerned about the bottom line but also the potential health and environmental risks in such a conservative paper. I knew that this was a victory-of-sorts for all of us who share a concern over the increasingly genetically-modified nature of our food supply.

In his column, “Monsanto:  A food stock with a bad aftertaste,” he shares: “it’s just as important to know what stocks to avoid as it is to know which ones to invest in. Most growth trends don’t last forever and you don’t want to be stuck holding the bag when growth disappears or reverses.” Here is an investor who is recognizing the “battle raging between consumers and Monsanto” that could leave fallout for investors left holding the bag when consumers take back their right to know what is contained in the food they eat.

While labelling of GM-foods is not legally required in Canada or in the United States, consumer groups are gradually certifying an increasing number of foods as “GM-Free” as a way to take back a right that regulators are not recognizing that we deserve. Consumers are waging a peaceful revolution against Monsanto and other GM-food suppliers as well as the government agencies that turn a blind eye to the environmental and health ramifications of GM-foods and crops. As an aside:  European governments have been more progressive in recognizing the human right to know when our food supply has been tampered with and many countries there consider labeling of GM foods standard practice.

MORE HERE AT GREEN LIVING

http://beforeitsnews.com/new-world-order/2013/08/monsanto-stocks-a-market-risk-cant-legally-label-gmo-foods-but-you-can-say-gmo-free-12.html

“Monsanto Stocks a Market Risk” – Can’t Legally Label GMO Foods, but You CAN Say, “GMO FREE”