Presstitutes

The Imaginary Trial of Dietrich Schmoller

"Dietrich Schmoller: I plead Not Guilty. Presiding Judge: (screaming) What do you mean, 'Not Guilty'? The facts are crystal clear and undisputed! You disclosed to a journalist for a foreign newspaper what we were doing to inmates inside the Auschwitz concentration camp. As a camp guard at Auschwitz, you took a solemn oath to the German state to keep what we doing inside that concentration camp secret. You knew full well that everything we were doing inside that camp was classified 'Top Secret.' You knew that German law required you to keep such matters secret. You are guilty, guilty, guilty!" Continue reading →

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First Amendment lawyer: ‘It is a terrible time to be a journalist’

"Jeff Portnoy was referring to the Obama administration’s secret subpoenas for journalists’ phone and Internet records, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice’s secret investigation into Associated Press and Fox News reporters 'in the name of national security.' Portnoy received a First Amendment award for his work in trying to prevent Hawaii’s five-year-old Journalism Shield law from expiring June 30. The version which passed eliminated from protection bloggers, online journalists and non-traditional journalists. Journalists who investigate fraud, waste and corruption are a 'dying breed,' Portnoy said, but they are needed now more than ever." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFirst Amendment lawyer: ‘It is a terrible time to be a journalist’

Peter Schiff: The Golden Cycle

"This analysis provides a good representation of the current conventional wisdom. The only twist here is that the article from which this summary is derived appeared in the August 29, 1976 edition of The New York Times. When the gold price approached $100 per ounce, a nearly 50% decline, the obituaries came fast and furious. Everyone assumed that the gold mania would never return. Although the writer of The Times piece did not yet know it, the bottom for gold had been established four days before his article was published. Few realized at the time that the real economic pain of the 1970's had (to paraphrase The Carpenters 1970's hit) 'Only Just Begun'." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPeter Schiff: The Golden Cycle

Snowden Is Not the Story

"Deep Throat was not the story in 1972, and Edward Snowden is not the story today. The abuse of America’s intelligence agencies is. And yet, we are not having an open discussion. We are instead seeing a media circus. The messenger, Edward Snowden, has been made 'the story.' Keeping under safe political cover, President Obama is deferring to the Justice Department—the same Justice Department which seized the Associated Press’ phone records and criminalized Fox News reporter James Rosen to pursue a leak investigation into a former State Department contractor." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSnowden Is Not the Story

PRISM Takeaway: Are We Citizens or Serfs? Should Obama Resign?

"The leaked news about the FBI and NSA PRISM surveillance project may well be the most important news event of your life. I would say it is the most important news story. They so far are downplaying revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts every email and text and other data and stores them on a giant supercomputer in Utah, placing the NSA coverage below such pressing concerns as immigration reform and Supreme Court decisions concerning gay marriage. Alternatively, I would call it the PRISM scandal, but I can’t do that either. It’s not a scandal unless people are up in arms, and there is no evidence of that." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPRISM Takeaway: Are We Citizens or Serfs? Should Obama Resign?

No Rose Can Mask the Stench of Obama’s Tyranny

"Mr. Obama considers government's power to be illimitable, and individual freedom to be a revocable gift conferred by those who presume to rule the rest of us. This was made abundantly – and redundantly – clear in a recent interview Obama gave to the repellently sycophantic PBS host Charlie Rose regarding the totalitarian NSA surveillance program. Speaking about what he called 'tradeoffs' between freedom and security, Obama said: 'I don’t think anybody says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports.' There are dozens of imaginable variations on the official lie Obama decanted on the Charlie Rose program." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNo Rose Can Mask the Stench of Obama’s Tyranny

Mass State Surveillance Not About Privacy

"The way we’re encouraged to cope with this is to make it about privacy: to turn inwards, take stock of our personal inner domain, and decide just how much of our lives can be offered up to the state. Large scale, bureaucratic intrusion into our personal lives is a given, but we can fill out a customer response card if we have any comments about the degree of the intrusion. If this is about privacy, the onus is on us to define its limits, to guide our servant institutions to the right policies that will protect our newly cordoned-off personal space. And so they invent a clever distraction about what the limits of privacy should be." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMass State Surveillance Not About Privacy

Snowden vs. the Soyuz

"Russian drones aren’t plying the skies above distant countries, raining death and terror on helpless neighborhoods. Putin the ex-KGB chief doesn’t have Tuesday meetings to authorize summary executions on the basis of a 'Kill List' compiled by anonymous and unaccountable functionaries. Moscow doesn’t provide arms, training, and support to terrorist groups in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere; that’s Washington’s gig. And since September 2001 it has Washington, not Moscow, that employs the services of KGB-trained secret police in countries like Uzbekistan and Syria." Continue reading →

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David Gregory Does Some Hard-Hitting News Coverage

"While I'm not a big fan of Frank Rich, I did enjoy his absolutely devastating stream of insults hurled at David Gregory, the NBC 'journalist' who accused Glenn Greenwald of being a traitor. Rich then linked to this video of David Gregory showing his great journalist chops by dancing with Psy, Gangnam Style. Rich is wrong that there's anything bad about dancing with Psy, who is a better human being than any member of Congress. The truly revealing video of David Gregory is this one in which he is dancing and yukking it up with Karl Rove. We're supposed to believe that Gregory will deliver hard hitting journalism about people Gregory gets drunk with?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDavid Gregory Does Some Hard-Hitting News Coverage

Smearing Glenn Greenwald: The Gregorian Connection

"The campaign to demonize Edward Snowden, whose revelations about the National Security Agency’s ubiquitous and ongoing spying on the American public has the Obama regimein furious disrray, has taken on a new dimension – now they’re going after Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter and columnist Snowden chose to tell his story. Glenn has alreadypreempted some of this in his Guardian column, but there is sure to be more. What’s interesting about this effort is that it tells us far more about the smear-merchants – and who they serve – than it does about Greenwald." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSmearing Glenn Greenwald: The Gregorian Connection