December 10, 2010 archive

Assange lawyer says US spying indictment imminent

RawStory today…

Update: Assange attorney says he’s not been allowed to meet with his client

London lawyer, Mark Stephens, told Voice of Russia, the Russian government’s international radio broadcasting service, that British officials will not allow him to meet with Julian Assange until the day before a Dec. 14 court hearing.

“The one thing that is slightly frustrating is that we have another court hearing on December 14 and I’ve not been permitted a legal visit until December 13, which, of course, gives me less than 24 hours to prepare his case,” Stephens said.

Second update: Glenn Greenwald notes that if the Department of Justice is successful in prosecuting Assange, it will be the first time a non-government employee is convicted under the Espionage Act.

[snip]

This video is from ABC’s Good Morning America, broadcast Dec. 10, 2010.

More details in the RawStory report…

Open Vincent

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Docudharma Times Friday December 10




Friday’s Headlines:

An empty chair, but Nobel jury makes its point

USA

Obama Weighs Tax Overhaul in Bid to Address Debt

Looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right

Europe

Commission dismisses petition on GM foods ban

Anger at ‘slave trader’ Assange: WikiLeaks loyalists decide to break away

Middle East

Iranian woman threatened with being stoned to death ‘is freed’

Turkey and Israel continuing talks on Gaza boat deal

Asia

Broadside fired at al-Qaeda leaders

Shanghai test scores have everyone asking: How did students do it

Africa

Kenya old guard ‘continues to resist fundamental change’

Mugabe elite ‘enriched by illicit diamond trade’

Latin America

Haiti to ‘review’ election results

Goldman has an unexpected ally in court: federal prosecutors

The banking giant, which has been under relentless scrutiny for its role in the financial crisis, relies on the U.S. government to protect its trade secrets in a trial of a former worker accused of stealing valuable computer code.

By Nathaniel Popper, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from New York – Goldman Sachs, the most powerful firm on Wall Street, makes an unlikely victim.

That, however, is the role that the bank has played over the last two weeks in a Manhattan courtroom, where prosecutors have argued that Sergei Aleynikov, a skinny, bespectacled former computer programmer at Goldman, stole valuable computer code from the bank before moving to a start-up firm that was trying to build its own trading operations.

Although the code in question was a mere 32 megabytes – less than a 10th of what fits on a data CD – Goldman executives have said it was a central cog in their high-frequency trading operations, a lucrative division at one of the most profitable companies in the world.

The I Got Nuthin Files: Don Blankenship of Massey Energy

 

On April 5, 2010 a mine blast killed 29 miners at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine – 50 miles from Charleston.  It was the deadliest mine disaster since 1970 and is the subject of criminal and civil investigations.

Don Blankenship – the CEO of Massey – is retiring.  

He is set to receive $12 million as well as $5,000 monthly payments as a consultant to the company.

He will have healthcare for two years.

Investors cheered the retirement.  Now it seems Massey is in a better position to be sold.

“It may increase the chances that Massey could be merged or acquired” said Michael Dudas, an analyst with Jefferies & Company.  “Now they’re moving on with an acquisition.  The stock has reacted very favorably.”  

the above from AP.

Don is not worried about the investigations apparently.  Says Don:

“I pretty well think I know what happened and what the outcome will be, so I’m not concerned anymore about the investigation.  I think its pretty much behind us.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. debated Don at the University of West Virginia in January 2010.  Don was totally unprepared.  RFK Jr. was totally prepared with and reeled off fact after fact about declining mining employment in West Virginia, the age of Appalachian ecosystems and the impossibility of recovering them, the number of Clean Water Act violations from Massey, etc.  Every fact was geared toward a plea to West Virginians:  Look, this man is making himself rich by making you poor.  He’s sapping your state of jobs, income, health and a future.  

Don had nothing but “resentment and nativism.”  Over and over his statements mentioned: “rhetoric” and “just false.”  He asked the crowd to dismiss them on crude stereotypes about out-of-state environmentalists, environmentalists are overly emotional – pesky regulations mean we should all learn Chinese.  (from an article by David Roberts (www.grist.org)

According to David Roberts:

He still talks like that.  ….stuck to his narrative that global warming is a hoax, hippie environmentalists are strangling free enterprise, out of staters have no right to questions here and China is going to take over. We’re crazy to be worried about pollutants.  We’re in a ruthless global competition for dominance, etc. etc.    

WWL Radio #91 Atty Kurt Haskell on Rape Scanners

Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm EST, via BlogtalkRadio, with Host and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective….  her Joplinesque voice speaking straight from the heart about the real-life implications of the Political and the Class War on everyday American Citizens like you.

The “MSM Headline” stories are treated by what they are NOT telling you, as much as by what they are. From Domestic Policy to International Politics, WWL Radio also speaks freely about the un-and-under reported stories, a vigilant watchdog of what you should know.

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Our Topic This Week:

WWL Radio had the honor of interviewing Atty Kurt Haskell last January 8th, following his eyewitness accounts of the attempted “underwear bombing” on Flight 253 into Detroit.

He returns tonight, to update us on what, if anything, resulted in his reporting at the time: The well dressed man walking Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab around security. He has since attempted to see Umar in Prison, perhaps offer his services as a Lawyer, to a complete roadblock. Most importantly? Kurt has much to say about the “Rape Scanners” being sold to an unwilling and unwitting Public as a money-making scam that has nothing to do with our safety.

Here’s Kurt’s hilarious spoof on the Scanners, which can be found, along with more of the Haskell’s commentaries on “Lori’s Liberal Realm”.

Video Kurt created discussing the Underwear Bomber with Michael Chertoff.

WWL bringing you “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective with interviews, op/eds and straight talk since January of 2009!

Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread…. all with a grain shaker of irreverent humor.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

You laugh at me because I am different; I laugh because you are all the same.

–Daniel Knode



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Late Night Karaoke

Work and Play in Sar-e Pol Province, Afghanistan

sar-e_pol-e_zahab_anubanini_drawing

What kind of game are these idiots supposed to be playing?

Nobody knows, and on the original tablet (circa 3000 BCE) in Sar-e Pol Province, Afghanistan, an inscription only explains that “Anubanni the Great and Mighty King of Lullubia carved himself and the Goddess Ninni on Mount Badir, and if anyone defaces this tablet, may Anum and Anat, Enkit and Belkit, Adad and Ninni, Sin and Shamas kill and curse him.”

It would be an understatement to say that nobody knows much about the Lullubians and their kings, and after describing a lot of scholarly speculation, the Encyclopedia Iranica admits that “It is impossible to indicate the boundaries of the land of the Lullubians.”

So all we really know about Anubanni the Great and Mighty King of Lullubia is that he carved himself a ridiculous monument once upon a time and vanished, and many another king and kingdom likewise in the very old world of Afghanistan, but for hard-working children on the streets of Sar-e Pol City, how much has changed in the last 5000 years?

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Vibration

 Blue far above and blue far below, suspended between them blue-black raven flies.  This high up the jet streams beneath his wings and the flaps are few and effortless. But suddenly the deep many hued endless blue below changes to an blinding flash of emerald green.  Raven diving, feeling no specific or particular change in his being as comes the experience and the delicate graceful joy of concentrated falling headlong ten thousand feet to the earth. His blue-black streak a momentary bridge between earth and sky. The ever larger blindingly green island growing somehow not quite alarmingly beneath him.  The green is green as green can be.  

The green of a rare beam of clear sunlight through a bamboo forest of the deepest interior. The green of Irish fields after a fine spring rain and the raven plummets towards it, leveling out a few scant feet above the glowing sod. Banking slightl left to miss the large white standing stone before it.  Flying forward over small rivulets splitting tghe vast sea of green grass laid out before it, the green so bright, so intense, so vibrant that soon it feels as if the raven is flying down a tunnel of green glowing light.  With spots of white and glimpses of blue and occasionally a small farmhouse with the smoke rising from its chimney.

The edge of a cliff looms before and the raven plunges over the edge, diving down, down towards the blue of gthe sea.  And then back up climbinb climbing tgowards the sun.  The intensity of blue, the intensity of green powering it upwards, seeking the source, seeking the bright light that the raven magical creature that he is knows without thinking is the same light within.  That gives him the power to play amongst the apparent solidity of the energy form that he both creates, inhabits and knows is illusion.

The raven vanishes into the sun.

Dump Obama: we who have nothing to lose

Battle lines are being drawn. Finally. The Obama tax cut deal was a betrayal too far. And now Dump Obama has become part of the national dialogue big time. First there were a few squeaks. Then columns by Michael Lerner Save Obama’s presidency by challenging him on the left, and Clarence Jones Time to Think the Unthinkable: A Democratic Primary Challenge To Obama’s Reelection, among others. On the New York Times front page, Matt Bai of the Times wrote a skeptical piece Murmurs of Primary Challenge to Obama (demoted from its original title Talk on the Left of a Primary Challenge), in which he tellingly concludes:

should the president’s progressive critics warm to the idea, it might not take a particularly credible primary challenge to weaken Mr. Obama’s chances for re-election. It might only take a challenge designed to do exactly that.

This was followed by the inevitable counter-attack, from the likes of Ed Kilgore and David Broder, plus any number of lesser lights, touting three points:

(1) The tax cut deal was a masterful stroke – stimulating the economy and ensuring Obama’s re-election in 2012; and

(2) No “serious” challenger would dare risk their credibility and prestige by entering the primaries, the ultimate proof being that they haven’t done so yet.

(3) A primary challenge would only serve to harm the very Democratic Party that we all hold so dear.

One

Greatest hits, Jul 20, 2009



We are One People.

We are One Planet.

We are One Heart…or are we?

We are only one people, though some people want to divide us.

We have only one planet, though some people want to destroy it.

There is only one world economy, because there are only one set of resources on the planet….though some people want to steal them for themselves.

We have only one heart, that cries out when the children are starving, when the elders can’t get the care they need when a family is foreclosed from its home, when someone is unjustly jailed…or when someone is tortured or killed.

Yet the same people who want to divide us…are the same people who want to destroy the planet, they are the same people who want all the planets resources for themselves, leaving others in poverty, they are the same people who starve the children, they are the same people who deny the elders health care, they are the same people who kicks families out of their homes, they are the same people who send us to jail for smoking pot, they are the same people who torture and kill.

We are one people, who wish to live in peace, share with our neighbors, protect the mother earth, and see equal justice for all.

But then again, we are not. We are not One, after all then, are we? We are Two, there are the We and there are the They. There are seven billion of us and only a few million of them. And yet, they have all the power.

It is hard for us, those who are of the One Heart, who know that we are ALL of the One Heart, to exclude anyone. It makes us sad to even think that way.

But wait, there are actually THREE of us. Those of Us of the One Heart that wish to live in Peace, those of Them that wish to divide us……and the people that they have been successful at dividing from the One Heart. Those of Us who do not understand that they have been divided, those who are confused about which group of Us they belong to.

But wait! There are actually FOUR of Us!

Those of Us of the One Heart that wish to live in Peace, those of Them that wish to divide us, those of Us that they have been successful in dividing from the One Heart…..and those of Us They have divided…..who are now waking up to the stone cold fact that They who would divide Us would as soon kill them and their children as give them the time of day.

It is indeed painful for those of the One Heart to contemplate and realize that there is not just One. Of Us. It is hard for us to have to fight against Them. When all we want is Peace and Justice and prosperity for ALL of Us.

But the only way we can have peace and justice and prosperity IS for all of Us to fight, non-violently and with as little hate as we can, against those with the power to divide us, those with the power to starve children, to create economic inequality, to wage war, to torture. it is only through pointing out what They are doing and how They do it that we can decrease the size of Group Number Three and increase the size of Group Number Four.

Increase it until there are so few of Us who are still confused about where the true interests, the true Greater Good lies….that They are left all alone. With none of Us to do Their bidding.

This is a unique time for Us. A time when They, empowered by the Selection of one of Them…

…FAR overplayed Their hand.