thenatureofmind

On the Legacy of Hugo Chávez

I first met Hugo Chávez in New York City in September 2006, just after his infamous appearance on the floor of the UN General Assembly, where he called George W. Bush the devil. “Yesterday, the devil came here,” he said, “Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.” He then made the sign of the cross, kissed his hand, winked at his audience and looked to the sky. It was vintage Chávez, an outrageous remark leavened with just the right touch of detail (the lingering sulfur!) to make it something more than bombast, cutting through soporific nostrums of diplomatese and drawing fire away from Iran, which was in the cross hairs at that meeting.

The press of course went into high dudgeon, and not just for the obvious reason that it’s one thing for opponents in the Middle East to call the United States the Great Satan and another thing for the president of a Latin American country to personally single out its president as Beelzebub, on US soil no less.

On the Legacy of Hugo Chávez

Idle No More

Petraeus Case Raises Concerns About Americans’ Privacy

“There should be an investigation not of the personal behavior of General Petraeus and General Allen, but of what surveillance powers the F.B.I. used to look into their private lives,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. “This is a textbook example of the blurring of lines between the private and the public.”

Petraeus Case Raises Concerns About Americans’ Privacy

David Petraeus: run to ground

There are many ironies in what still remains – unless new facts come to life – a tacky, low-rent tale in which motives go no higher than suburban socialite rivalry: Rabbit, Run set in Tampa, Florida. The most obvious one is that a CIA director was brought down by covert surveillance. The surveillance state ran amok and consumed one of its own. If, as the Washington Post reported, the National Security Agency intercepts and stores 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other types of communication each day, it is inevitable that the same machine should worm its way into the draft email cue of the gmail account that the general and his lover shared.

David Petraeus: run to ground

The Election

Oh Yeah, I think Obama won the US Election Spectacle. He has been sentenced to another 4 years.

Feds Charge Activist with 13 Felonies for Rogue Downloading of Academic Articles

Another egregious case of the Federal Government attacking one of the best and brightest of our young thinkers for acts that can only be said to be misdemeanors at best. Seeing the problems in antiquated systems and exploting them to make the information, all of which is public domain, available to real serious researchers, is seen to be a felonious act for which he should be imprisoned. This is the reaction of an antiquated dying culture, adverse to change and entranced by its own power.

Feds Charge Activist with 13 Felonies for Rogue Downloading of Academic Articles

Probation Officials Looking Into Man Tied To Anti-Muslim Film

The U.S. Probation Office for the Central District of California is reviewing the case of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the California man most closely tied to the anti-Muslim film blamed for sparking violence and demonstrations in the Middle East this week.

Probation Officials Looking Into Man Tied To Anti-Muslim Film | TPMMuckraker.

Birthers Take Over Kansas: Kansas State Board Considers Removing Obama From Ballot

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an informal advisor to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said on Thursday he and his fellow members of a state board were considering removing President Barack Obama from the Kansas ballot this November.

Kansas State Board Considers Removing Obama From Ballot | TPMMuckraker.

Laura Flanders: Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Glenn Greenwald: Why didn't CNN's international arm air its own documentary on Bahrain's Arab Spring repression?

In late March 2011, as the Arab Spring was spreading, CNN sent a four-person crew to Bahrain to produce a one-hour documentary on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in the region. Featuring on-air investigative correspondent Amber Lyon, the CNN team had a very eventful eight-day stay in that small, US-backed kingdom.

Why didn't CNN's international arm air its own documentary on Bahrain's Arab Spring repression? | Glenn Greenwald | World news | guardian.co.uk.