Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Steve Scalise Called Himself David Duke Without The Baggage

BY STEPHANIE GRACE

This is what I remember about the first time I met Steve Scalise nearly 20 years ago: He told me he was like David Duke without the baggage.

I was a new reporter covering Jefferson Parish, and Scalise, now the majority whip in the U.S. House of Representatives, was just starting out in the Louisiana Legislature (I’m going from memory, but the exchange obviously stuck with me). It would be several years before I would fully decode just what he meant by the sentiment, which is similar to statements he would later make to at least one Washington news outlet, and what it said about Jefferson Parish and Louisiana politics.

The “baggage,” of course, was Duke’s past, his racist and anti-Semitic views and his former role as a KKK grand wizard. Scalise disavowed Duke then, as he did once again this week, when blogger Lamar White Jr. revealed that Scalise had spoken in 2002 at a meeting hosted by a Duke-founded white nationalist group.

But the other part of the sentence, the part about their similarity, was the rub. Scalise may have been naïve about how to express himself to a newcomer, but he was already a savvy politician who knew that, even though Duke had lost the governor’s race a few years earlier, Duke voters were still around. And those Duke voters also were potential Scalise voters.

This is, in effect, a dirty little secret of Louisiana politics, and the context in which Scalise made the fateful decision to show up at the EURO conference in 2002. The truth, as Scalise suggested that day, was that the actual governmental philosophy Duke espoused isn’t far off from what was becoming mainstream conservative thought, what with its suspicion of taxes, set-asides and safety net programs such as welfare. The problem in his view was the messenger, not the message.

Does Scalise endorse the racist goals of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a group so bigoted that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled it a hate group? I’ve never seen anything to suggest so, although there were times, like when he opposed establishing a holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., when he certainly could have shown more cultural sensitivity. I’ve watched him work closely with his fellow state legislator and now congressional colleague Cedric Richmond, who has defended him, and have seen him at campaign events in support of Richmond and other African-American colleagues, party and ideological differences notwithstanding.

But I also get how the invitation wouldn’t have set off alarm bells, given that Scalise had long since made his awkward peace with the situation.

In fact, by 2002, Scalise may have been so used to the idea of dealing with Duke voters that he really considered EURO just another part of his constituency, even if it was a distasteful one. Maybe not so different in his mind from the League of Women Voters, which he cited in an interview with The Times-Picayune as another group he’d addressed despite the fact that they didn’t agree on everything — an insulting comparison that suggests he still doesn’t fully grasp how bad this all looks from the outside.

Scalise claims he didn’t know the group’s origins, which is pretty implausible given how prominent Duke and his associates were in Jefferson political circles.

Instead, the most charitable explanation is that he chose not to think about it, that he opted instead to focus on areas of agreement. Indeed, sketchy reports of his speech suggest he talked not about race or religion but the legislative slush funds then allotted to urban lawmakers, which were indeed often abused, but which also would have validated stereotypes held by this particular group.

He’d hardly be the only politician to make such a deal with himself. In 1996, commentator and presidential candidate Pat Buchanan disavowed an endorsement from Duke, even as he fielded a Louisiana delegate slate with at least one former Duke campaign official. Former Gov. Mike Foster paid Duke for a valuable voter contact list, then failed to disclose it, explaining once word got out that it wasn’t “cool” to be associated with him.

No, it’s not. But like robbers drawn to banks because that’s where the money is, politicians go where the voters are. And they, I guess, tell themselves what they need to hear in order to sleep at night.

Stephanie Grace can be contacted at sgrace@theadvocate.com. Read her blog at http://blogs.theadvocate.com/gracenotes. Follow her on Twitter, @stephgracenola

Another Philly Charter School Bites The Dust

By Susie Madrak

Guess we know how those kids' parents are spending the holiday -- looking for another school! 
 
Another Philly Charter School Bites The Dust

Once again, a Philadelphia charter school is closing unexpectedly, leaving students and parents in the lurch and screwing the school district out of $1.5 million illegally gotten:
The fallout from the abrupt closing of the Walter D. Palmer Leadership Learning Partners Charter School spreads.
Teachers say they fear they won't be paid money they're owed for working in December.
And amid rumors that the charter's flagship building in Northern Liberties would be liquidated to pay creditors, several teachers decided to retrieve personal items from the building on Monday - and were initially thwarted by security.
Frustrated parents held a protest.
"It's unfair to receive notification over the weekend that the school will be closed," said Jihan Pauling, a parent who organized a rally outside the charter's main campus.
Citing insurmountable financial obstacles, the Palmer charter sent letters to families and staff on Friday informing them that the school would close permanently Wednesday.
The move sent teachers on quests for new jobs and information about filing for unemployment and left families of the school's 675 students in kindergarten through eighth grade scrambling for new schools.
The younger students were based in Northern Liberties. The fifth through eighth graders had attended classes in the former St. Bartholomew Catholic school on Harbison Avenue in Frankford.
John L. Pund Jr., the financial consultant hired by the Palmer charter's board to handle the liquidation, said the board had no alternative to closing after the Philadelphia School District said it would require the charter to begin making monthly payments of $250,000.
That money was to repay the $1.5 million that the courts had ruled that the charter had collected for students it was not entitled to have.
Don't kid yourself that this "reform" is only happening to "bad schools" in urban centers. Once they're done taking over the cities, they're coming for your local schools.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

The Apps You Need Now to Keep Your Privacy Intact

By Jay Cassano

There are the basic things you can do to protect your data and your phone, like avoiding public Wi-Fi networks, enabling built-in tools like "Find My iPhone," and using a good password. Both iOS and Android phones offer options for turning off "location services," so apps can't track your coordinates. But in an age of cyberattacks from renegade hackers, non-state actors, and government spies, it's not a terrible idea to arm your phone with apps that provide encrypted communication, anonymous browsing, and theft protection. Below, a tour of some of the best ones out there.

TextSecure (Android)

TextSecure, like its name suggests, secures your text messages. It's the easiest to use open source end-to-end encrypted messaging app out there. It can act as a full replacement for your default texting app or a standalone Wi-Fi/data messaging app like WhatsApp—or both. When messaging other TextSecure users, your messages are automatically encrypted on the fly, though both parties need to have TextSecure installed to benefit from its encrypted messaging. TextSecure handles all of the necessary key exchanges in the background. The app can be set to send messages only over the Internet or only SMS or to just use whichever is available.
TextSecure has two modes: It can handle all of your text messages or it can be used only for texts between TextSecure users. You might think that there's no reason to use TextSecure as your default texting app since the encrypted messaging only works with other TextSecure users. However, there's another privacy benefit to using TextSecure: All of the messages stored locally on your phone are kept in a password-protected encrypted database. So if your phone is ever lost or stolen, your texts can't be accessed by someone who otherwise compromises your phone.

WhatsApp recently integrated TextSecure's code for encrypted messaging. So WhatsApp users are already benefiting from TextSecure's work on messaging security. But to best ensure your privacy, opt for TextSecure because it's fully open source, with code that can be publicly audited.

RedPhone / Signal (Android / iOS)

RedPhone and its iOS equivalent Signal come from the makers of TextSecure and boasts the same ease of use not commonly found in encryption apps that aren't peddling snake oil. What TextSecure does for texting, these apps do for phone calls. (You remember phone calls, right?) Simply install the Android or iOS app and call a friend who also has one of the apps and your calls will be automatically encrypted. The apps are interoperable, so people who use RedPhone can call Signal users and vice versa.
If you're worried that you won't know who of your friends has one of these apps installed, don't worry, the developers have you covered. When you first launch RedPhone or Signal, you'll be prompted to register your phone in their database. That way, when you open your app, you'll instantly see who in your phone's address book is using RedPhone or Signal.

RedPhone comes with one feature boast over Signal. On Android, if you try to place a regular phone call to someone whose number is registered with either app, RedPhone will prompt you to ask if you want to upgrade to an encrypted call. Signal doesn't have that same functionality, presumably because Apple won't allow for the normal phone call user experience to be interrupted.

Orbot + Orweb (Android)

If you pay any attention to the world of digital privacy, you've most likely heard of Tor, the traffic routing software that makes it harder (but not impossible) for your web browsing to be tracked. Orbot brings Tor to Android. It allows other applications to connect to the Internet through Tor, which can help anonymize your traffic and also circumvent bans on websites that have been blocked by repressive governments.

Any app that can use specify proxy settings can route its traffic through Orbot. That includes the default Twitter app, so that you can tweet anonymously on the fly. But the most practical use case is probably for your general web browsing. Orweb is a mobile web browser that is built to work with Orbot out of the box.

ChatSecure (Android / iOS)




ChatSecure is also made by The Guardian Project, the same people who created Orweb. So naturally, you can run ChatSecure through Orbot to get the same benefits of traffic anonymization and firewall circumvention.
But you don't need Orbot to use ChatSecure (which is good for iOS users who don't have access to Orbot). Even if it doesn't anonymize your traffic through Tor, ChatSecure can still act as an encryption layer for messages you're already using to talk to your friends like Facebook chat. Using ChatSecure is a great middle ground to talk more securely with friends who aren't ready to take the leap off of precipices like Google or Facebook chat.

Prey (all platforms)

Prey is billed as an anti-theft tool. If your phone is lost or stolen, your online Prey account lets you track your phone using its GPS. It also lets you remotely lock your phone, sound a loud alarm, and display a message on your phone to whomever is looking at it. While your device is missing, Prey will send you email reports every five minutes (less frequently, if you'd prefer) that include your phone's location and a picture taken with your phone's camera, which might help you identify where exactly it is or who took it.
If everything goes to hell, Prey is also your nuclear security option. You can use it to remotely wipe your phone so that whoever stole it can't access your personal files and settings. There are lots of comparable anti-theft apps out there. But because you're giving permission to an app to remotely access your camera and location, it's important that you be able to trust that app. Because Prey's client software is open source, independent coders can verify that the app isn't doing anything it shouldn't be doing. Prey versions also exist for your Windows, Mac, and Linux laptops.
 
[Locks: Flickr user Tyler Nienhouse]

Most Of The Population Now Needs Government Assistance To Make Ends Meet

By Susie Madrak

Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
 
Most Of The Population Now Needs Government Assistance To Make Ends Meet

All too true. It always amazes me to see people on my TV singing the praises of the growing new economy, and I think to myself: Don't you know any normal people? Via Political Blindspot:
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
That near poverty statistic is perhaps more startling than the 50 million Americans below the poverty line, because it translates to a full 80% of the population struggling with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on government assistance to help make ends meet.
In September, the Associated Press pointed to survey data that told of an increasingly widening gap between rich and poor, as well as the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs that used to provide opportunities for the “Working Class” to explain an increasing trend towards poverty in the U.S.
But the numbers of those below the poverty line does not merely reflect the number of jobless Americans. Instead, according to a revised census measure released Wednesday, the number – 3 million higher than what the official government numbers imagine – are also due to out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses.
The new measure is generally “considered more reliable by social scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits,” according to Hope Yen reporting for the Associated Press.
Some other findings revealed that food stamps helped 5 million people barely reach above the poverty line. That means that the actual poverty rate is even higher, as without such aid, poverty rate would rise from 16 percent to 17.6 percent.
Latino and Asian Americans saw an increase in poverty, rising to 27.8 percent and 16.7 percent respectively, from 25.8 percent and 11.8 percent under official government numbers. African-Americans, however, saw a very small decrease, from 27.3 percent to 25.8 percent which the study documents is due to government assistance programs.
Non-Hispanic whites too rose from 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent in poverty.

“The primary reason that poverty remains so high,” Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan economist said, “is that the benefits of a growing economy are no longer being shared by all workers as they were in the quarter-century following the end of World War II.”

Saturday, December 27, 2014

TYT: Obviously, “Jihad On Cops” To Be Blamed On ‘PigSharpton’ & deBlasio

“Actor James Woods appears to have gone full crackpot on Twitter this morning, blaming the shooting deaths of two NYPD officers on Al Sharpton and Mayor Bill deBlasio. The series of tweets are from his verified Twitter account @RealJamesWoods.

The 67 year old Ghost of Mississippi actor has called on police officers to turn their backs on the mayor and “PigSharpton” with the hashtag #BlueLivesMatter #TurnYourBacks on #RaceHucksters.”

Cenk Uygur (http://www.twitter.com/cenkuygur) and Ana Kasparian (http://www.twitter.com/AnaKasparian) break it down on The Young Turks.

Read more here from http://thegrio.com/2014/12/21/james-woods-stacey-dash-al-sharpton-bill-deblasio/


Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Antonio Martin, Black Teenager, Fatally Shot By Police 2 Miles From Ferguson, MO

By



A black teen was fatally shot by an officer on Tuesday night just two miles from Ferguson, Mo., police said.

Antonio Martin, 18, was shot at a Mobil gas station in Berkeley, Mo., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The alleged victim's mother, Toni Martin, spoke to The Dispatch and confirmed that her son had been shot by police.

It was originally reported that the shooting occurred early Wednesday. However, according to The Associated Press, the incident actually took place late Tuesday:
County police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schellman says a Berkeley police officer was conducting a routine business check at a gas station around 11:15 p.m. Tuesday when he saw two men and approached them.
Schellman says one of the men pulled a handgun and pointed it at the officer. The officer fired several shots, striking and fatally wounding the man. Schellman says that the second person fled and that the deceased man's handgun has been recovered.
The Berkeley Police Department requested that St. Louis County Police Department's Crimes Against Persons Unit handle the investigation, The St. Louis County Police Department noted on its Facebook page.

"At this time, we cannot confirm the identity of the deceased subject. The investigation is on-going and further details will be provided as the investigation proceeds," the Facebook notice said.

The hashtag #AntonioMartin is trending on social media. Those at the scene, along with The Dispatch, report approximately 60 to 100 people gathered around the gas station where the shooting took place.

Livestreams at the scene show residents verbally clashing with police. A woman identified as Martin's mother could be heard sobbing "That's my baby!" on the feed.
The gas station appears to have security cameras trained on the parking lot, the Dispatch reported, so there may be a video of the incident.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story included an interview with a man claiming to have been at the scene of the shooting and friends with the deceased. As police have released statements saying the second person involved in the incident has fled the scene, the source is now suggesting he was never there.

Beer can be delivered with food in PA

By Angela Couloumbis and Ben Finley, Inquirer Staff Writers


HARRISBURG, PA - 'Tis the season to be . . . hoppy.

Consider it a holiday gift of sorts from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, which has made it officially legal to get a six-pack - or two - delivered to your front door when ordering food.

The LCB, with little fanfare, issued an advisory opinion this month clarifying that restaurants, grocery stores, pizza and sub shops, and other outlets that serve food and beer can also deliver up to two six-packs of beer.

This being Pennsylvania, which has some of the strictest alcohol regulations in the country, there are catches. For instance, customers ordering beer must pay by credit card over the phone, rather than handing cash to the delivery person.

Still, Amy Christie is calling it progress.

"Overall, this is a great win," said Christie, executive director of the Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage and Tavern Association, which represents bars, taverns, restaurants, and alcohol retailers. "I would say there are a couple thousand places that could take advantage of this and use it to improve their business."

Stacy Kriedeman, the LCB's spokeswoman, stressed that the change is not a result of new laws but a legal opinion clarifying existing regulations.

Here's how it works: A business that sells malt-brewed beverages can apply for a "transporter-for-hire" license, which costs about $1,000, depending on the type of establishment. Anyone with that license can transport up to 192 ounces - or just over two six-packs - of beer.

Kriedeman said the license has been around for a long time, and the advisory opinion simply clarified that establishments selling food and beer can take advantage of it. In fact, a customer could call a licensed sub or pizza shop and just order beer, she said.

Most shoppers know that buying six-packs at bars, delis or restaurants - as opposed to cases at beer distributors, which also deliver to residences - usually involves a stiff markup.

Pete Gaeth, a Western Pennsylvania tavern owner whose letter to the LCB sparked the advisory opinion, said he was initially interested in delivering some of his establishment's long list of craft beers to people out-of-state - but may now take advantage of doing so in-state as well.

"That is definitely something we will be looking into," said Gaeth, co-owner of Roff School Tavern and an investor in Voodoo Brewery, both in Meadville.

Still, there are safety considerations. Topping the list is ensuring that minors don't take advantage of the change.

Craig Mosmen, co-owner of the Couch Tomato Café and the Tomato Bistro in Manayunk, which sells artisan pizzas and craft beer, was unaware of the legislation and said he doubted it would have much impact on his business.

"Our takeout beer program hasn't really been a huge draw," Mosmen said. "Most diners that are drawn to our beer list want to drink it here."

Delivering beer also poses liability issues, even if employees use a mobile scanner to check licenses to avoid selling to minors. "When you evaluate risk and reward, it doesn't seem like something that we would be necessarily interested in offering," Mosmen said.

Industry officials counter that restaurants, bars, and other places that sell alcohol have trained staff to seek proper identification and will not serve (or in this case, hand over) beer to people who cannot verify their age.

"You protect against [abuses] the exact same way you do inside your establishment," said John Longacre, who owns three businesses, including the South Philadelphia Tap Room.

Longacre, who is also president of the Philadelphia Tavern Owners Association, said people in his industry have been asking for the change for years - and said the real winner is the consumer.

"It's about convenience," said Longacre. "And it's a great way to make all sides happy."

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

11 Signs Your Neighborhood Is Being Gentrified

A Washington, D.C., resident describes the changes and privilege that have moved into her longtime neighborhood.

By

In Washington, D.C., as in many cities undergoing extreme urban makeovers, if you miss a week of moving about in certain neighborhoods, you’ll miss a whole heck of a lot. Sad times for you if you’re a landmark driver like I am, when even a short trip on familiar streets can induce a fog of confusion. Buildings go down and buildings go up on blocks so quickly, you can be a whole mile out of your way before you realize you’ve been waiting to hook a left at a corner store that is no more.

Besides creating in me a deep regret for not going to college to enjoy what seems like an inevitably profitable career in real estate development, gentrification has impressed me with its swiftness. I don’t pretend or profess to understand the complete politics of it—I’m certain that money is the bottom line and power is the impetus—but I know the bastions of urban-conquer waste no time claiming an area as “up and coming” and then following that up with epic levels of condo-and-coffeehouse building.

What that essentially means: The people already living there are fittin’ to be economically priced out and residentially pushed out. That I’ve learned. In the meantime, there’s a shift to accommodate the newcomers, rarely an effort by the newcomers to adjust to the existing dynamic of a community. The boundless, ceaseless imagination of privilege does it again and again.

Georgia Avenue, the stretch of street that hugs the campus of Howard University, used to be quintessential D.C., full of contagious energy and all-black everything: barbershops and beauty salons, mom-and-pop stores, insurance agencies, restaurants. But you know how it goes: Powers discover that an area is gold, see its potential, put it in their construction crosshairs and start plucking off anything, one by one, that doesn’t fit into the blueprint for their new, improved iteration.

Anyone resilient or fortunate enough to remain needs to adjust in order to survive. Such is the case of Fish in the ’Hood, a beloved institution for college students and local lovers of soulful dining that, in 2012, was christened with a new storefront sign indicative of the changing surroundings: Fish in the Neighborhood. A new name on a 15 year old restaurant is telltale, but there are more indicators that change is gonna come:

1. Neighborhood boundary lines will be strategically reconfigured, and your new redistricted area will be outfitted with catchy, cutesy names.
1gentrification_names
Sign for NoMa, a quirky name for North of Massachusetts Avenue, a newly renovated neighborhood in Washington, D.C.   Janelle Harris

2. Lighting will crop up. Y’all lived for years in near-apocalyptic darkness as existing street lights went long malfunctioning. Now the block is lit up like a night game at FedExField. Magical.


107984331-this-january-3-2011-photo-shows-the-street-sign-for
Lighted street sign in Washington, D.C. KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images
3. “Liquor stores” will be euphemistically renamed “wine and spirits shops.”


3gentrification_wineandspirits_1
Wine and spirits shop in a gentrified area of D.C. Janelle Harris

4. Cops will dutifully patrol your neighborhood in non-emergency situations. On foot, bike and vehicle patrols, sometimes even horses. No one has to call them. They’re already there.


104329363-metropolitan-police-officer-tyrone-gross-writes-a
Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Officer Tyrone Gross (left) writes a warning ticket for a motorist who was talking on her cellphone. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
5. You find out that the way you’ve been living is no longer “current.”


5gentrification_livingcurrent
Real estate ad banner for a mixed-use development Janelle Harris

6. You get a store that stays open 24 hours. Up until now, you had to scream your pump number and request for soda and sunflower seeds through three layers of Plexiglas at the neighborhood gas station. Now doors are allowed to stay open 24-7.


6gentrification_seveneleven_1
A 7-Eleven store Janelle Harris
7. These show up, along with allocated lanes to ride them in the streets. It’s always a sign when people trust the community to borrow stuff and bring it back. (See also: Zipcar.)


7gentrification_bikes
Bike-sharing kiosk Janelle Harris

8. Your block is equipped with speed bumps. Amazingly, they are much more effective than your disapproving scowl in slowing drivers down.


8gentrification_speedbumps
Speed bump Janelle Harris
9. Parking starts getting real exclusive, and you’ll be needing an advanced degree in urban planning to understand when and where you can do it. Also, violations will become more expensive and more frequent.


9gentrification_parking
Parking signage Janelle Harris

10. Wal-Mart will come calling.


screen_shot_20141218_at_3.52.22_pm
Rendering of a Wal-Mart Courtesy of Wal-Mart
11. White people will show up. At first a pioneering few will forage the land, and once the signal goes up, that trickle will become a full-on influx. I have seen folks who would have taken terror steps through my neighborhood just a few months ago now frolicking in it. At night.
white_crowd
Generic image Thinkstock
Dressed up in prettier terms like “redevelopment” and “renewal,” gentrification moves with the swiftness of a swarm of locusts and the ferocity of a band of gangsters. It comes with community upgrades that, in many cases, are long overdue. Not that they’re not good things. It’s just that they come at the expense of people who aren’t intended to enjoy them.

Writer and editor Janelle Harris resides in Washington, D.C., frequents Twitter and lives on Facebook.

Monday, December 22, 2014

O Holy Night worst rendition ever FUNNIEST SONG ON EARTH

If you need a good laugh, and I mean 'can't breathe, stomach hurts' belly laugh, listen to the worst rendition of Oh Holy Night ever. Warning, put all drinks down and take a few deep breaths first so you don't suffocate from laughter. It starts out as sounding like a merely poor rendition of the song, but just wait.

 

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Why the U.S. Can't Punish North Korea

The FBI formally accused the isolated country of the Sony hack, but the White House is basically powerless to do anything to respond

By Adam Chandler

Kevork Djansezian/Reuters

On Friday, the FBI announced that it "now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible" for the Sony hacks that leaked a trove of private data, launched a thousand thinkpieces, and, following some threats, ultimately preempted the release of The Interview.

Speaking in a press conference later in the day, President Obama weighed in, characterizing Sony's decision to pull The Interview as "a mistake." He also said that the United States would "will respond proportionally, and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose."

So what does this very vague promise of retaliation mean for North Korea? As Reuters points out, Washington may not have a lot of options. Despite decades of sanctions against the isolated communist regime, "the U.S. Treasury has so far directly sanctioned only 41 companies and entities and 22 individuals."

Compare that to Russia or Iran, whose economies have been laid low by a strenuous sanctions regime across several industries and against countless companies and individuals. Part of it is that North Korea doesn't have much of an economy to punish. According to CIA figures, the country ranks 198 out of 228 in gross domestic product with just 1.3 percent growth in 2012. Reuters also pointed to Pyongyang's aversion to traditional banks, saying that the country has "become expert in hiding its often criminal money-raising activities."

But there's much more to it than that. Scott Snyder, a Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council for Foreign Relations, has his own take on l'affaire Sony.

He explained that part of why it's difficult to sanction and further isolate North Korea is that Pyongyang "isn't integrated with the rest of the world." That has made the country difficult to sanction or punish in the past as well. As Snyder reminds us, this isn't the first time we've had trouble with North Korea.
Historically, I think that North Korea has a record of having engaged in provocations that have international ramifications with relative impunity. So if we go back and look at the record of controversial provocations, we see the difficulty and the challenge of holding them to account. It goes back decades.
Those transgressions have included, at least recently, the holding of American hostages, the (alleged) sinking of a South Korean boat in 2010, along with the bombardment of a South Korean island.

Given that the United States has now named North Korea in the Sony hacks and given what's already happened, Snyder says we shouldn't expect much to come of it.

"All of these are examples of cases that have resulted in behavior or responses that are pretty exceptional compared to the way that other countries have been dealt with in similar circumstances," Snyder explains.

He adds that what makes this ordeal much more difficult to move away quietly from is Sony's decision to pull The Interview from theaters, a move that naturally begs a response from the United States.

"I do think that decision put the administration into a much more difficult circumstance," he said, adding that Sony's actions have created more pressure for the administration to respond. Essentially, Obama has to figure out a way to ensure The Interview cancellation hasn't convinced America's enemies that "these kinds of threats actually may be working."

Friday, December 19, 2014

Dick Cheney Should Be in Federal Prison, Not on Meet The Press




Journalist Glenn Greenwald did not mince words on Thursday when asked to respond to comments made by former vice president Dick Cheney when he appeared on NBC's Meet The Press last Sunday.

"The reason why Dick Cheney is able to go on 'Meet The Press' instead of being where he should be—which is in the dock at The Hague or in a federal prison—is because President Obama and his administration made the decision not to prosecute any of the people who implemented this torture regime despite the fact that it was illegal and criminal," Greenwald said in an interview with HuffPost Live's Alyona Minkovski.

In Sunday's interview with host Chuck Todd, Cheney claimed that CIA torture "worked" and announced he would "do it again in a minute" if given the opportunity.

As human rights advocates and international law experts have renewed their call for prosecutions against former Bush administration officials who ordered the CIA to torture detained terrorism suspects in the aftermath of 9/11, Greenwald said that whether tortured "worked" is irrelevant—"nobody should be interested in that"—and argued that much of the blame for the fact that Cheney still has the liberty to go on national television and brag about violating domestic and international laws should be placed at the feet of President Obama.

"When you send the signal, as the Obama administration did, that torture is not a crime that ought to be punished, it's just a policy dispute that you argue about on Sunday shows, of course it emboldens torturers like Dick Cheney to go around and say, 'What I did was absolutely right,'" Greenwald said.

Watch:

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Analyst: We underestimated North Korea

By Dana Ford, CNN



(CNN) - As the United States gets ready to blame the Sony hack on North Korea, a troublesome question is emerging: Just what is North Korea capable of?

Experts say the nation has spent scarce resources on building up a unit called "Bureau 121" to carry out cyber-attacks.

North Korea has been blamed in the past for attacks in South Korea, but the Sony hack - if indeed North Korea is behind it - would seem to represent an escalation of tactics.

"I think we underestimated North Korea's cyber capabilities," said Victor Cha, director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University. "They certainly didn't evidence this sort of capability in the previous attacks."

Cha was referring to attacks on South Korean broadcasters and banks last year.

In March 2013, South Korean police said they were investigating a widespread computer outage that struck systems at leading television broadcasters and banks, prompting the military to step up its cyber-alert level.

The South Korean communications regulator reportedly linked the computer failures to hacking that used malicious code, or malware.

An investigation found that many of the malignant codes employed in the attacks were similar to ones used by the North previously, said Lee Seung-won, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Science.

North Korea denied responsibility.

A spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army labeled the allegations "groundless" and "a deliberate provocation to push the situation on the Korean Peninsula to an extreme phase," according to KCNA, the North Korean state news agency.

North Korea has similarly denied the massive hack of Sony Pictures, which has been forced to cancel next week's planned release of "The Interview," a comedy about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But KCNA applauded the attack.

"The hacking into the SONY Pictures might be a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers with the DPRK," it said, using the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "The hacking is so fatal that all the systems of the company have been paralyzed, causing the overall suspension of the work and supposedly a huge ensuing loss."

Experts point to several signs of North Korean involvement. They say there are similarities between the malware used in the Sony hack and previous attacks against South Korea. Both were written in Korean, an unusual language in the world of cyber crime.

"Unfortunately, it's a big win for North Korea. They were able to get Sony to shut down the picture. They got the U.S. government to admit that North Korea was the source of this and there's no action plan really, at least publicly no action plan, in response to it," said Cha. "I think from their perspective, in Pyongyang, they're probably popping the champagne corks."

CNN's Gregory Wallace, Brian Stelter, Evan Perez, K.J. Kwon and Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Tom Tomorrow's Yesteryear Coverage of Today's U.S. Senate Report on Bush-Era CIA Torture

By Brad Friedman

It's difficult to know where Rightwingers are now when it comes to the release of today's remarkable, horrifying, redacted 528-page executive summary [PDF] of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's 6,000-page report on Bush-era CIA torture.

"Torture never happened!," they used to say. Then, "Okay, it happened, but it wasn't torture!" Then, "Okay, torture happened, but it was necessary!" Now, "This report is just meant as a distraction from America's real problem: ObamaCare!"

You get the idea. So did legendary syndicated cartoonist and blogger Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins), and he's been covering it with brilliant, dead-on satire for years. With the release of the Senate report, almost a decade in the making, we're posting a few very-much-related Tom Tomorrow toons from over the years below, as self-selected by Perkins on Twitter today.

"It's not as if we've learned nothing in ten years," he tweeted. "In a 2004 cartoon, I still had to explain what 'waterboarding' was."

And, as he also made clear, none of what we are learning today is ultimately a surprise. "Presumably if the cartoonists knew about it, the White House did as well."

They did indeed, as a glance at these toons from over the years makes clear yet again...
2004
2005



2006

2009



2014

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Woman visits Toys R Us, pays off everyone's layaway

By SUZAN CLARKE

‘Tis the season.

A woman is being hailed as a layaway angel after she went into a Toys ‘R’ Us store in Bellingham, Mass., on Wednesday and paid off every open layaway account -- giving about 150 customers with items on layaway an early Christmas present.

The generous donor paid $20,000 to wipe the entire layaway balance at that location, a spokeswoman for Toys ‘R’ Us confirmed to ABC News on Thursday.

“This incredible act of kindness is a true illustration of holiday giving at its best,” the company said in a statement.

The donor made the payment anonymously, but the Milford Daily News reported that she was a local resident who said she would sleep better at night knowing the accounts had been paid.

The newspaper reported that the store’s layaway customers were in tears when they heard the good news.

The holidays have inspired many others to do similar good deeds for total strangers.

Tom Gubitosi went to his local Walmart in Farmingdale, N.Y., on Wednesday, and gave $100 shopping sprees to about 200 children each. Gubitosi donated the money in honor of his late mother, who loved children, WABC TV reported.

Also on Wednesday, dozens of police officers in Cape Cod, Mass., treated 26 children to lunch and $200 gift cards for the annual "Shop with Cops" program.

Earlier this month, Houston Texans receiver Andre Johnson bought $16,266.26 worth of toys for 11 children in the care of Child Protective Services, ESPN reported. At Toys "R" Us, he gave them each 80 seconds to place what they could in shopping carts. He's been hosting shopping sprees for kids since 2007.

Last year, a Florida man used more than $21,000 of his own money to pay down layaway account balances at a Walmart in central Florida.

Greg Parady, who runs a financial planning company, told ABC News that his mother had struggled when he was growing up and he wanted to help others who may have had a similar experience.

“I was a layaway kid so it's nice to be able to help," he said.
 
ABC News’ Susanna Kim contributed to this report.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

URGENT: Time Running Out to Stop Congress Roll Back of Wall Street Reform


Campaign for America's Future








Republicans put a big and dangerous giveaway to Wall Street in the budget, despite protests from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and votes against it by many House Democrats.
The Senate will soon vote on this spending bill. It's up to you and me to convince enough senators to take it out.
The provision – written by Citibank lobbyists – allows Wall Street banks to gamble on high-risk derivatives – the exotic instruments that helped blow up the economy. Worse, they get to pocket any winnings with taxpayers guaranteeing any losses. They will make ever bigger bets. And we will be played once more as the saps.
The link will connect you to one of your senator's offices. Tell the person who answers that you want the senator to support stripping the Wall Street gambit out of the budget bill. A vote could happen within the next few hours, so please make the call now.
Here's a sample message:
I’m a constituent. My name is…
I’m calling about the giveaway to Wall Street in the funding bill before the Senate. I want the senator to vote to take out the provision (in Section 630) that allows big banks to gamble using high-risk derivatives. Please tell the senator that his constituents want him to vote against the budget unless this dangerous gift to Wall Street is removed. I will be following your vote on this.





           


© 2014 Campaign for America's Future Inc. 1825 K Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006

Friday, December 12, 2014

Thanks, Dick Cheney, for Incriminating George W. Bush (and Other Conservative Reactions)



Let us now praise infamous men. The desiccated husk of a demi-human that is named Dick Cheney, former Vice President of these here United States, dragged his decaying body and scent of rot into his home away from home, Fox "news" studios, to discuss the Senate's report on the CIA's program of torturing suspected terrorists.

He was speaking with Bret Baier, who obviously must worship mad Lovecraftian gods in order to be in the presence of such a barren soul with such black eyes and a mouth torn to shreds by the speaking of endless lies without vomiting endlessly. How many sacrifices have to be made at an altar covered in the blood of Iraqi children to keep Cheney alive? How many virgins, fresh for fucking and devouring, did Baier have to provide Cheney in order to secure the interview?

However, oddly, Cheney ought to be thanked for what he told Baier. When asked about President George W. Bush's awareness of the CIA's interrogation methods, which the report says he was kept in the dark about, Cheney responded, "He was in fact an integral part of the program. He had to approve it before we went forward with it...I think he knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program. There's no question... I think he knew certainly the techniques that we did discuss the techniques. There's nothing - there was no effort on our part to keep him from that. He was just as with the terrorist surveillance program. On the terrorist surveillance program, he had to personally sign off on that every 30 to 45 days. So the notion that the committee's trying to peddle it, somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis, and we weren't being told or the President wasn't being told is just a flat-out lie." Cheney totally and without hesitation said that Bush committed war crimes.

Now, one way to look at Cheney's remarks is to say, as several people have, that the former VP threw Bush under the bus, a kind of "Fuck you, I'm not taking the fall." But it's more than that. It's the beginning of a legal defense. Cheney may be an entity of concentrated malice, but he's not stupid. With United Nations officials saying that there need to be prosecutions for the crimes described in the report, with the potential for other nations to want torturers and torture architects arrested, even if the likelihood of anything happening along those lines is slim to "America is awesome," Cheney knows that he might need a legal defense. And the only defense for a vice president is to point the finger at the president and say, "That's where the buck stops."

While some on the right, like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and, really, The American Conservative magazine (seriously), have honorably stood up and said that the torture program was an unmitigated wrong, most conservatives have gone nutzoid in defense of the CIA. For instance:

MSNBC's host with the inbred eyes, Joe Scarborough, tweeted, "Senate Intel Report investigators refused to interview the accused. Sounds like Rolling Stone's journalistic approach on their UVA story." And that'd be totally true if Rolling Stone had had access to a treasure trove of documents from the students accused of rape at the University of Virginia. But the magazine didn't review six million pages of emails, memos, and internal reports from the alleged rapists, things that in a court of law are often seen as more legitimate than the recollections of someone years after the fact. There's 6000 pages more we haven't seen of the torture report, with, it's reported, tens of thousands of footnotes. You can bet that many of them are not just interviews with the victims - they include internal interviews with the people involved, including by the CIA's inspector general.

The whole charge is bogus because, as Dianne Feinstein noted, while the report was being put together, the CIA was being investigated by the Justice Department for destroying evidence of torture. The agency couldn't compel anyone to testify to the committee because "CIA employees and contractors who would otherwise have been interviewed by the Committee staff were under potential legal jeopardy." And Joe Scarborough can go fuck himself with that Starbucks travel mug.

The rest of the conservative arguments against the report are equally bullshit filled. There's the "Who the fuck cares?" camp, who say things like, "Without a nation we have no values. And without torture, regardless of the latest politically correct views, we have no nation." (That's from Daily Caller tough guy David Lawrence.) There's the "It worked" argument, best exemplified by the desperate ass-covering of things like the website CIA Saved Lives, the Wall Street Journal editorial by former CIA directors, and torture-approver John Yoo.

Yoo is an especially skeevy cock knob about the report, which he calls "the Feinstein Report" (which will no doubt become the talking point). He wants to know what else would have worked to get information he claims stopped terrorist plots: "The Feinstein Report claims that the CIA would have captured all of these operatives anyway...Feinstein provides no reason to conclude, counter-factually, that the U.S. would have killed or captured these al Qaeda leaders without the high-quality intelligence from interrogations. The United States and its allies certainly had not done so before the interrogations started—it did not even know about many of them before 9/11. But we do know that armed with the intelligence from interrogations, the U.S. succeeded."

So his argument boils down to saying that burning down the house was the only way to get rid of the mice because we don't know if traps would have worked. In fact (and by "fact," the Rude Pundit means, "What happened"), we got all the intelligence we needed out of people like Abu Zubaydah before they were tortured, which proves the traps work, put the fucking gas can down.

There's two more arguments that the Rude Pundit will deal with tomorrow.

It would have been very simple to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo. Here’s how.

By Seth Morris

Seth Morris has been a deputy public defender in Alameda County, California, since 2008.
It is, we are told, very hard to get grand jurors to indict police officers — which supposedly explains why Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo walk free, despite the men they killed in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island. But as a public defender, I know exactly what it takes to get an indictment. I could get one in either case. In fact, I am ready and willing to fly to any town in this country to get an indictment in any case where a police officer kills an unarmed civilian.  It’s just not that hard.

I’d start by saying this. “A man, a member of our community, has been killed by another. Only a trial court can sort out what exactly happened and what defenses, if any, may apply. I believe in our trial system above all others in the world. I ask for an indictment so that all voices can be heard in a public courtroom with advocates for both sides in front of trial jurors from the community. This room is not the room to end this story. It’s where the story begins.”

I’d do it by asking the grand juries to apply the law to these men as the law demands it be applied — equally. I’d ask them to consider the recent fateful events as the work of ordinary humans, not police officers. I’d explain that the cases are too important to be settled in a secret grand jury room. The lives lost are too valuable to avoid a public trial.



I’d ask them not to consider the defenses the men may raise at trial, because these are irrelevant to the question of indictment. Judges routinely tell my clients — indigent, poor, often young men of color — that they will face trial because probable cause is an exceedingly low standard of proof. All it requires is a suspicion that a crime occurred and a suggestion that the defendant may be responsible for the crime.

Of course I’d present the facts, and exculpatory evidence if I had it. But the most important question is what suspicion is raised by the subject’s conduct, not what excuse he furnishes in his defense. I’d advise grand jurors to treat with caution any self-serving statements offered by someone who has killed another person. We indict on facts, not explanations. The “presumption of innocence”? It doesn’t apply. Affirmative defenses such as self-defense or “reasonable use of force”? Those are “better left to the jury,” just as my clients are most often told.

I’d share with them the stories of how often police officers lie and shade the truth to advance their positions: I’ve watched cops lie about minor, irrelevant details — fare evasion, driving without a seat belt, reaching for a waistband — when they know how important those details are for the district attorney’s case. I’d say how I’ve confronted police officers for lying or omitting facts from their reports or even pretending not to see or hear something captured by a chest-mounted camera when that thing is exculpatory to the person they arrest.

The prosecutors in these cases failed to share stories such as these because they don’t routinely have to confront police officers as part of their job. It’s also because they never wanted an indictment in the first place.

I practice in Oakland, Calif., a city plagued by violent crime. I do this work because I believe in a fair process for every person, even those charged with doing unspeakable things. I have represented hundreds of defendants — in robberies, rapes, carjackings, kidnappings and murders — during preliminary hearings, which, like grand juries, determine whether a person should stand trial. In my hearings, the district attorney charges the defendant first and then presents evidence pointing to probable cause. The judge in these hearings, almost always, orders the defendant to stand trial. When defendants do testify, they typically do it at trial, not before the grand jury (as Wilson did). And the district attorney tells the jurors that the defendant would say anything to go free.

So how is it that police shoot an unarmed boy in Ferguson and strangle an asthmatic man on Staten Island, and nobody found probable cause? The only explanation is that, rather than acting like prosecutors, these district attorneys acted like the officers’ attorneys. They did not push the grand juries to indict. In fact, they suggested that it would be okay not to indict. They presented mitigation.  

They didn’t cross-examine the killers. Remember, grand juries only see one lawyer – the prosecutor. There is no judge present and no adversary to the district attorney. When there is only one lawyer in the room, and that lawyer has asked for indictments in every other case he has presented, and he stands before you and tells you he wants you to do whatever you think is right, the outcome is almost preordained. Here’s what the right approach would have been:

Unarmed men were killed. Let’s have a trial.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Former St. Louis cop alleges racism on the force

Chris Hayes speaks with a former St. Louis police officer about the now-infamous testimony from Witness #40 and the "lack of integrity" he sees in the system.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Sony hacks continue: PlayStation hit by Lizard Squad attack

By Alice MacGregor, CloserStill Media
Hacker group, Lizard Squad, has claimed responsibility for shutting down the PlayStation Network over Sunday night, the second large scale cyber-attack on the Sony system in recent weeks.

Users had been experiencing issues with log in overnight and into this morning, greeted by an error message reading “Page Not Found! It’s not you. It’s the Internet’s fault.”

PSN support acknowledged the downtime and confirmed that it had been investigating the issue. However, no details were shared as to the nature or cause of the issue.

“Thanks for your patience as we investigate,” the Japanese firm shared at midnight last night.
The company has now tweeted that the issue has been fixed: "If you had difficulties signing into PlayStation Network, give it a try now."

Although apparently unrelated, the outage comes just weeks after the much larger cyber-attack to the tech giant’s film studios Sony Pictures, which leaked confidential corporate information and unreleased movies.

An outfit calling themselves Guardians of Peace released the private data, including details on employees’ and actors’ salaries and addresses. Princess Beatrice was one of its victims, whose pay details and home address was forwarded to media firms across the U.S.

Speculations suggested that the Sony Pictures hack was linked to North Korea over its reported filmatic mocking of the national leader Kim Kong-Un. The country has denied engineering the attack, however the North Korean National Defence Commission released an official statement saying that the cyber-theft had been a “righteous deed.”

The group claiming to have taken down PSN today, Lizard Squad, first appeared earlier this year with another high-profile DDOS, or distributed denial of service attack, on Xbox Live and World of Warcraft in August.

Lizard Squad shared a link to a White Hose petition calling for the Obama Administration to “Stop the infamous DDOS hackers, and fake bomb threat callers, called Lizard Squad” – which currently counts 7,598 signatures.

The hacker collective claimed that this attack was just a taste and a ‘small dose’ of what was to come over the Christmas period.