Land Of The Flea

‘How to Make Money Selling Drugs’

"'How to Make Money' is full of useful insights from people who know the drug trade well, including reformed dealers, ex-international smugglers, former cops, pundits, lawyers and government insiders. Interviewees include one-time dealer Freeway Ricky Ross, retired Baltimore cop-turned-activist Neill Franklin and rapper 50 Cent, who sold drugs as a 12-year-old orphan. The film’s emerging portrait of the drug war is of a relentless, historical cycle involving poverty, racism, addiction, corruption, political opportunism, local cops dependent on federal dollars, and a $50 billion, commercial prison industry profiting mightily by incarcerating lots of Americans." Continue reading →

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For those concerned about the Voting Rights Act

"It would be a mistake to assume that the Voting Rights Act in any way ensured that all African Americans were able to vote. The biggest factor in suppressing minority vote is not even addressed by the Voting Rights Act — felony disenfranchisement. 5.8 million Americans are unable to vote because of our obsession with over-incarceration and the drug war, and it hits minorities hardest by a long shot. 1 in 13 African-Americans nationally are unable to vote. Drug war incarceration has been referred to as the 'New Jim Crow,' and built right into our drug laws are enforcement incentives that make racist outcomes certain." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFor those concerned about the Voting Rights Act

The new-found desire for privacy is what’s driving all of this new business activity.

"Thankfully, there are companies, like those I’ve mentioned, providing private sector responses to these blatant affronts of our basic freedoms. And more have entered the fray, including TextSecure, a mobile app encryption service, and SpiderOak, a DropBox-like service that can’t see the content of user files. I hope that we will let our elected leaders know that spying on its citizens is not acceptable… and that it is no different than what the German government did post-World War II. I’m proud to say that we’ve been way ahead of the curve on matters of liberty, privacy and encroaching government tyranny." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe new-found desire for privacy is what’s driving all of this new business activity.

Don’t Leave Home Without This

"Since 1986, the U.S. State Department has been informing the IRS of all persons who renew their U.S. passports using a foreign address. Since passport renewals require an applicant’s Social Security number, this information is also used by the IRS to see if applicants have filed income tax returns. An IRS official speaking in Zurich said a special effort was being made by the agency to track all U.S. citizens who’ve renewed U.S. passports while living in Switzerland. So, now we have two out of control U.S. government agencies that have the ability to track your private financial activity and revoke your ability to travel freely through your U.S. passport." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDon’t Leave Home Without This

Here Come The “National Service” Peddlers

"WaPo's Michael Gerson feels a little edgy about Americans 'criticizing the National Security Agency as though it were enforcing the Alien and Sedition Acts.' You see, the serfs are not supposed to question, let alone have a problem with, having their every move monitored and watched by the State. So Gerson, looking for a panacea to this individualistic disease, suggests that 'National service can heal a divided nation.' Adding to Gerson's plea, there's also HuffPo who says 'That a year of full-time national service should become a civic rite of passage for all young Americans.' One must ask: Are the government schools not enough anymore?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingHere Come The “National Service” Peddlers

Steve Wozniak: Snowden ‘Is a Hero Because This Came From His Heart’

"Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is more than a little distressed that the technology he helped develop nearly four decades ago is being used on a massive scale to invade people’s privacy. 'I think he’s a hero,' said the 62-year-old Wozniak, who co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs and invented the Apple I and Apple II personal computers that launched a technological revolution. 'He’s a hero to my beliefs about how the Constitution should work. I don’t think the NSA has done one thing valuable for us, in this whole ‘Prism’ regard, that couldn’t have been done by following the Constitution and doing it the old way.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSteve Wozniak: Snowden ‘Is a Hero Because This Came From His Heart’

In WikiLeaks Probe, Feds Used a Secret Search Warrant to Get Volunteer’s Gmail

"The Justice Department used a secret search warrant to obtain the entire contents of a Gmail account used by a former WikiLeaks volunteer in Iceland, according to court records released to the volunteer this week. The warrant ordered Google to turn over 'the contents of all e-mails associated with the account, including stored or preserved copies of e-mails sent to and from the account, draft e-mails, deleted e-mails [...] the source and destination addresses associated with each e-mail, the date and time at which each e-mail was sent, and the size and length of each e-mail.' The warrant also ordered Google not to disclose the search to anyone." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingIn WikiLeaks Probe, Feds Used a Secret Search Warrant to Get Volunteer’s Gmail

WikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI

"In 2011, a cherubic 18-year-old Icelandic man named Sigurdur 'Siggi' Thordarson walked through the stately doors of the U.S. embassy in Reykjavík, his jacket pocket concealing his calling card: a crumpled photocopy of an Australian passport, a man with a unruly shock of platinum blonde hair and the name Julian Paul Assange. Thordarson was long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key position as an organizer in the group. Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI

California man could face a decade in jail for chalking ‘no thanks big banks’

"A California man’s protest against banking excess could put him in jail for more than a decade, while apparently landing him in the middle of the ongoing feud between the mayor of San Diego and the city attorney. KFMB-TV reported on Tuesday that Jeff Olson has been charged with 13 counts of vandalism by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith for writing statements including 'No thanks big banks' and 'Shame on Bank of America' on the sidewalk outside a Bank of America location between February and August 2012. If convicted, Olson could spend up to 13 years in jail and be forced to pay the bank $13,000 in restitution." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCalifornia man could face a decade in jail for chalking ‘no thanks big banks’

Catholic bishops: Indefinite detention ‘wounds the moral reputation of our nation’

"The top of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States on Tuesday called on U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. 'Detainees have the right to a just and fair trial held in a timely manner,' he told Hagel. 'For at least 86 detainees ‘a crime has not first been proven.’ The indefinite detention of detainees is not only injurious to those individuals, it also wounds the moral reputation of our nation, compromises our commitment to the rule of law, and undermines our struggle against terrorism.' Pates further said reports of forced feedings of prisoners on hunger strike suggested the U.S. was violating basic human rights." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCatholic bishops: Indefinite detention ‘wounds the moral reputation of our nation’