IN A deal with “U.S. national security authorities,” tech giants Facebook and Microsoft have an agreement with the Obama administration that allows modest transparency. Google is still negotiating with the U.S. Government, with talks getting stuck on an agreement of “a combined figure for all requests.” It’s an ignominious development for the most powerful brands [...]
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Schmoozer in Chief, the JFK Model
TAKING A page out of the JFK play book is never a bad idea, which is what President Obama did on Monday, surprising reporters with an appearance and an off-the-record chat. Media outlets reportedly were not told Obama would be in the schmooze session. Reporters who attended Monday’s session with the president were loathe to [...]
ACLU Sues Over Secret Surveillance Dragnet
The American Civil Liberties Union [A.C.L.U.] on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its “dragnet” collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed by a former National Security Agency contractor last week — is illegal and asking a judge to both stop it [...]
Wherein Jeffrey Toobin Plays Rube for Obama
SOME OF the attacks on Edward Snowden, like what Jeffrey Toobin unloaded in the New Yorker, reveal where this discussion is heading in some quarters, but at least the transparency President Obama once promised is being forced on him, which is obviously the only way it was going to happen. The screen capture at top [...]
IT Security Analyst Edward Snowden is NSA Whistblower
“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” but “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.” – Edward Snowden WHEN Glenn Greenwald said there would be more reporting coming [...]
Allying with Sen. Rand Paul to Take on Obama’s Snooping [Video]
“I’m going to challenge this at the Supreme Court.” – Senator Rand Paul NOTHING inspires libertarians to act out more than a federal government overstepping its authority, with Sen. Rand Paul making quite a statement on Fox News Sunday. I wrote the other day that President Obama’s invasive, extra-constitutional, anti civil liberties snooping was igniting [...]
Greenwald: NSA Mining Data from Google, Facebook, Apple…
Mr. Obama clearly had no intention of revealing this eavesdropping, just as he would not have acknowledged the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, had it not been reported in the press. Even then, it took him more than a year and a half to acknowledge the killing, and he is still keeping secret [...]
Retro Report Revisits Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley
RETRO REPORT has done a fifteen-minute documentary on the Tawana Brawley story, which starred MSNBC’s Al Sharpton. A short history as a refresher: In 1988, the nation learned the truth about the alleged crimes against Tawana Brawley, but the shocking story was far from over. In the late 1980s, Tawana Brawley became a household name [...]
Update on Turkey from Occupy Gezi
**Updated** AN update from Animal New York: Sunday witnessed the broadest turnout yet, with tens of thousands of people streaming into Takism – and overflowing out into its arteries like Istiklal — and news of smaller protests in other provinces and indeed in other countries brought hope to the weathered protesters. While more-organized and established [...]
Griffin on MSNBC: We Don’t Break the News
IF ANYTHING explains MSNBC falling off the edge of the media world, this is it. The boss says they’re not in the breaking news business. From Bill Carter: At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBC’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent. The explanation, in the [...]
The Erotic Revolution in Iran
Again, there are no good countrywide statics on the number of prostitutes — the head of Iran’s state-run Social Welfare Organization recently told the BBC: “Certain statistics have no positive function in society; instead, they have a negative psychological impact. It is better not to talk about them” — but available figures suggest that 10 [...]
Uproar Leads to El Salvador’s Beatriz Getting C-Section
A seriously ill Salvadoran woman whose struggle to get a medical abortion drew international attention received permission on Thursday to end the troubled pregnancy with a Caesarean section. El Salvador’s health minister on Thursday approved the C-section for the 22-year-old woman suffering from kidney failure and lupus, a day after the Supreme Court ruled that [...]
Facebook Responds After Hate Speech Campaign
THE ACTION from Facebook came as Women, Action & the Media (WAM) demanded the social media giant do something about the hate speech on their platform. Claiming over “60,000 tweets and 5000 emails,” the coalition allied “100 women’s movement and social justice organizations” to take on Facebook policy. Buzzfeed has a compilation of violent photos [...]
Obama Administration Investigated David Sanger, Too
“…our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” – Thomas Jefferson LONG BEFORE the Obama administration began unleashing secret searches and dragnets on journalists, making reporting a crime, the governmental fetish to police reporting was utilized by the Bush administration, too. The Obama administration, through Eric [...]
Fundraiser: Support TM.com
Newer posts appear below the fundraiser. IT’S A FUNDRAISER. Because advertising alone doesn’t cut it. Final days of the annual late spring fundraiser, so if you haven’t jumped in, now’s the time. Several months ago I lost two-thirds of my advertising, the company I’d been using for years folding. It’s been an ugly advertising year, [...]
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