thenatureofmind

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.

Invisible Americans Get the Silent Treatment

The Real Human Cost of Torture

An interview with Joshua Phillips the author of "None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture," a book about the torture of prisoners in Iraq and the deep psychological scars and the resultant suicides that occurred to the members of one battalion who engaged in torture.

If you have heard Dick Cheney defend torture and the talking heads who openly discuss whether torture is an effective tool, you need to watch this video to find out that not only are the actual people who are tortured the only victims, but also their torturers, those idealistic young people who thought they were defending our freedoms but who instead became the victims of a rogue government who placed themselves above international law.

Please read the Truthout article that published this video and support Truthout for bringing this kind of real reporting that never makes it to the main stream media.

Torture's Other Victims: US Soldiers