May 28, 2014 – DocuDharma

May 28 2014

In Memoriam: Maya Angelou 1928 – 2014

By TMC in News, Politics

Author, poet, singer, dancer, actress, but most of all, Civil Rights Activist, Maya Angelou died this morning at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C. She was 86 years young.

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Blessed be

May 28 2014

Another Betrayal

By ek hornbeck

What really bugs me is how little the D.C. elite seem to care about exposing themselves as bald faced liars and incompetant fools.

Today’s cases in point- it turns out Barack Obama and Joe Biden never had the least intention of removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year and instead are going to maintain a residual force of between 10 and 12 thousand (depending on NATO contributions).

Of course they make the same empty noises about needing to continue the “training mission”, but that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about providing a security force so we can continue our illegal and murderous drone strikes in Pakistan and our torture chambers at Bagram Air Field.

President Obama looks to keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan

By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE and PHILIP EWING, Politico

5/27/14 12:26 PM EDT

President Barack Obama will announce Tuesday afternoon that he plans to keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan after the end of the year to continue training Afghan forces and supporting operations against Al Qaeda, a senior administration official said.

…

The White House did not detail Monday how many non-U.S. troops might remain in Afghanistan, but American commanders have said they’ve endorsed a plan for as many as 12,000 total NATO troops. If that figure remains an official goal, the balance of the ultimate force would likely come from Europe.

…

Obama’s announcement, scheduled for the Rose Garden at 2:45 p.m., follows two days after the president made a surprise visit to Afghanistan to renew his pledge to end all combat operations by the end of the year and meet with commanders on the ground about steps forward.

…

American military commanders have said they would not support leaving behind a force in Afghanistan without a BSA, which would protect U.S. troops from being prosecuted in Afghan courts and set other important policy for their time there.

So there’s the lie exposed just 2 days after he said exactly the opposite.

Now the incompetance-

White House staff tried to ‘un-ring the bell’ after revealing CIA chief’s identity

Tom McCarthy, The Guardian

Monday 26 May 2014 13.24 EDT

The agent in question, listed as chief of station, would be a top manager of CIA activity in Afghanistan, including intelligence collection and a drone-warfare programme under which unmanned aerial vehicles mount cross-border attacks into Pakistan.

The name appeared on a list of attendees requested by White House officials for the president’s visit to Bagram air base to mark Memorial Day, the national day of tribute to fallen service members. The list of 15 people was drawn up by the military, written into a routine press report and sent to Washington. The Obama press office then sent the list, unredacted, to the larger group.

The mistake did not come to light until the reporter who had filed from Afghanistan, the veteran Washington Post correspondent Scott Wilson, looked more closely at what he had sent and noticed the name and title.

“I drew it to their attention before they had noticed what had happened,” Wilson said on Monday, hours after returning from the 33-hour trip overseas.

But wait! There’s more!

Former CIA Director And Defense Secretary Says CIA Tried, But Failed, To Do Economic Espionage

by Mike Masnick, TechDirt

Tue, May 27th 2014 9:55am

US intelligence officials still seem to think that there’s some big distinction between the kind of intelligence work the US does versus the kind that other countries do. US officials time and time again claim that they don’t do “economic espionage” — even though it’s pretty clear that [they do it ], just through indirect means (i.e., while they don’t hand trade secrets over to companies, they’re certainly using economic information to impact policy and trade discussions).

Former Defense Secretary and CIA boss Robert Gates continued this sort of tone deaf line of thinking from US intelligence defenders by claiming that French intelligence downloads the contents of laptops from businessmen visiting Paris.

…

Throwing everyone else under the bus does nothing to make the US and the NSA’s activities any better, and it’s bizarre that intelligence officials seem to think they have the moral upper hand here. Almost no one sees it that way. They just look petty.

Even more bizarre: for all of Gates’ talk about how the US doesn’t do economic espionage… he then basically admits that he tried to do exactly that and failed.

…

(H)e says “this is something we don’t do” while admitting that he tried to do exactly that. He was just stymied by whoever was Commerce Secretary. If a more… permissive Commerce Secretary were in the job, it would be a very different story, now wouldn’t it? In fact, this is a pretty major admission. For all the talk of “we don’t do that,” what Gates really means is “we tried to do economic espionage, and we would do economic espionage, if we could.”

Do you feel any safer after Elliot Rodger’s killing spree? Maybe if he had a obviously Muslim name?

Where was the NSA before the Isla Vista Mass Shooting?

By: Peter Van Buren, Firedog Lake

Tuesday May 27, 2014 7:47 am

He stabbed three men to death in his apartment and shot the others as he opened fire on bystanders on the crowded streets of Isla Vista, California. Rodger then killed himself. Three semi automatic handguns, along with 41 loaded ten-round magazines- all bought at local gun stores- were found in his car. There could have been many more dead.

So where was the NSA?

For the year since Edward Snowden revealed in detail the comprehensive spying on every aspect of American lives, we have been assured by the president and the NSA that every single one of those intrusions into our life was necessary to protect us. The now-former NSA chief said he knows of no better way his agency can help protect the U.S. than with spy programs that collect billions of phone and Internet records. “How do we connect the dots?” he said, referring to often-hidden links between people, events and what they do online. “There is no other way that we know of to connect the dots. Taking these programs off the table is absolutely not the thing to do.”

So where was the NSA?

Elliot Rodger posted on his social media, presumably monitored by the NSA, about suicide and killing people. His family asked police to visit Rodger’s residence. But when they showed up, Rodger simply told deputies it was a misunderstanding and that he was not going to hurt anyone or himself. No search was conducted.

Barely 24 hours before the killing spree, Rodger posted a video on YouTube, presumably monitored by the NSA, in which he sat behind the steering wheel of his black BMW and for seven minutes announced his plans for violence. The video has been leaked- see it here.

And finally this gem- GCHQ and the NSA has identified their hardware hacks (the chips they are replacing in your laptop so they can more easily spy on you) by their very specific and targeted destruction when the raided The Guardian’s offices.

GCHQ targeted input components in Guardian newspaper raid

By Graeme Burton, Computing

23 May 2014

The government had demanded that The Guardian destroy the documents, which it did. But that was not enough for the security services, and police were sent in to seize computing equipment.

“Surprisingly, however, GCHQ were not just interested in hard drives nor did they destroy whole devices,” claims Privacy International, which has led an examination of the hardware that the security services targeted.

It continued: “During our investigation, we were surprised to learn that a few very specific components on devices, such as the keyboard, trackpad and monitor, were targeted along with apparently trivial chips on the main boards of laptops and desktops.”

Indeed, when the devices were returned to The Guardian, these chips had clearly been ripped out.

Coming at the same time that it was revealed that US security services have tampered with exports of networking equipment in order to plant bugs, the particular seizures of these devices indicates that they may have played a role in UK security services’ eavesdropping.

Excellent tradework you morons.

May 28 2014

The Breakfast Club: 5-28-2014

By poligirl in Community

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when ~~we’re not too hungover~~ ~~we’ve been bailed out~~ ~~we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED)~~ the caffeine kicks in. Everyone’s welcome here, no special handshake required. Just check your meta at the door.

Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpg

This Day in History

Beer, That Group, The Breakfast Club

May 28 2014

On This Day In History May 28

By TMC in News

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

May 28 is the 148th day of the year (149th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 217 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1961, the British newspaper The London Observer publishes British lawyer Peter Benenson’s article “The Forgotten Prisoners” on its front page, launching the Appeal for Amnesty 1961–a campaign calling for the release of all people imprisoned in various parts of the world because of the peaceful expression of their beliefs.

Benenson was inspired to write the appeal after reading an article about two Portuguese students who were jailed after raising their glasses in a toast to freedom in a public restaurant. At the time, Portugal was a dictatorship ruled by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Outraged, Benenson penned the Observer article making the case for the students’ release and urging readers to write letters of protest to the Portuguese government. The article also drew attention to the variety of human rights violations taking place around the world, and coined the term “prisoners of conscience” to describe “any person who is physically restrained (by imprisonment or otherwise) from expressing…any opinion which he honestly holds and does not advocate or condone personal violence.”

“The Forgotten Prisoners” was soon reprinted in newspapers across the globe, and Berenson’s amnesty campaign received hundreds of offers of support. In July, delegates from Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland met to begin “a permanent international movement in defense of freedom of opinion and religion.” The following year, this movement would officially become the human rights organization Amnesty International.

Born in London as Peter James Henry Solomon to a Jewish family, the only son of Harold Solomon and Flora Benenson, Peter Benenson adopted his mother’s maiden name later in life. His army officer father died when Benenson was aged nine from a long-term injury, and he was tutored privately by W. H. Auden before going to Eton. At the age of sixteen he helped to establish a relief fund with other schoolboys for children orphaned by the Spanish Civil War. He took his mother’s maiden name of Benenson as a tribute to his grandfather, the Russian gold tycoon Grigori Benenson, following his grandfather’s death.

He enrolled for study at Balliol College, Oxford but World War II interrupted his education. From 1941 to 1945, Benenson worked at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre, in the “Testery”, a section tasked with breaking German teleprinter ciphers. It was at this time when he met his first wife, Margaret Anderson. After demobilisation in 1946, Benenson began practising as a barrister before joining the Labour Party and standing unsuccessfully for election. He was one of a group of British lawyers who founded JUSTICE in 1957, the UK-based human rights and law reform organisation. In 1958 he fell ill and moved to Italy in order to convalesce. In the same year he converted to the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1961 Benenson was shocked and angered by a newspaper report of two Portuguese students from Coimbra sentenced to seven years in prison for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom during the autocratic regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar – the Estado Novo. In 1961, Portugal was the last remaining European colonial power in Africa, ruled by the authoritarian Estado Novo regime. Anti-regime conspiracies were vigorously repressed by the Portuguese state police and deemed anti-Portuguese. He wrote to David Astor, editor of The Observer. On 28 May, Benenson’s article, entitled “The Forgotten Prisoners,” was published. The letter asked readers to write letters showing support for the students. To co-ordinate such letter-writing campaigns, Amnesty International was founded in Luxembourg in July at a meeting of Benenson and six other men. The response was so overwhelming that within a year groups of letter-writers had formed in more than a dozen countries.

Initially appointed general secretary of AI, Benenson stood down in 1964 owing to ill health. By 1966, the Amnesty International faced an internal crisis and Benenson alleged that the organization he founded was being infiltrated by British intelligence. The advisory position of president of the International Executive was then created for him. In 1966, he began to make allegations of improper conduct against other members of the executive. An inquiry was set up which reported at Elsinore in Denmark in 1967. The allegations were rejected and Benenson resigned from AI.

While never again active in the organization, Benenson was later personally reconciled with other executives, including Sean MacBride. He died of pneumonia on 25 February 2005 at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, aged 83.