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. 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.
This Day in History
Breakfast Tunes
Live Aid was a dual-venue concert held on 13 July 1985. The event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the “global jukebox”, the event was held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom (attended by 72,000 people) and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States (attended by about 100,000 people). On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative happened in other countries, such as Australia and Germany. It was one of the largest-scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time: an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion, across 150 nations, watched the live broadcast.
Breakfast News
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Emails shed new light on UK link to CIA ‘torture flights’
Police given crucial logs about Diego Garcia’s role in rendition programme when it was allegedly used as a secret prison
Crucial logs revealing flights to a British overseas territory when it was allegedly used as a secret US prison are in the possession of the police, the Observer has learned.
The revelation has raised concerns about why, despite repeated demands, details of the flights have not been shared with lawyers and MPs, who for years have been investigating the role played by Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian ocean, in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme.
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More than a dozen US spies infiltrate German ministries says Bild
The CIA has recruited more than a dozen spies in several German government ministries, according to the Bild am Sonntag tabloid paper. Earlier, Chancellor Merkel said she doubts the US will end its aggressive espionage.
The alleged spies have infiltrated the German defense, development, economic, and interior ministries, reported Bild on Sunday, citing unnamed sources within the US intelligence community.
CIA interest in the Development Ministry stems from Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, using the ministry as cover for clandestine operations.
Due to the diplomat row between Berlin and Washington, the spies are reportedly not meeting with their US handlers at the moment. US intelligence agencies are considering basing their recruitment activities in Warsaw or Prague due to the growing pressure in Germany, according to Bild.
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Russia tightens Internet screws with ‘server law’
Under yet another of several new laws passed by Russia’s Duma this month, Western tech companies hoping to do business in Russia must host their servers on Russian soil starting in 2016 – or go dark.
Authorities insist the move is necessary to protect Russians’ privacy data from the American government. But observers say the law’s real purpose is give Russia’s security services “back door” access to sensitive user profile data held by tech giants such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
Paradoxically, the country that that took in Snowden to highlight U.S. surveillance abuses is now using those revelations to justify their own program.
“After Snowden’s revelations… our authorities said, ‘Ok, we don’t want the Americans to monitor our people, we want to monitor them,'” says Sarkis Darbinyan, a lawyer and Internet activist with the Russian Association of Internet Users.
Whether tech companies will comply is unclear. Representatives from leading tech firms insist no deals have been struck.
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Bizarre Case Of Jose Antonio Vargas Shows That The Border Is More Secure Than Ever
Ask Republicans on Capitol Hill or Sunday show pundits and they’ll tell you the same thing: Our southern border isn’t secure — just look at the crisis overwhelming authorities today. [..]
But ask people who live along the border, and you’ll get quite a different answer. Or ask Jose Antonio Vargas.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning, undocumented journalist traveled to McAllen, Texas this week, fresh off the release of his documentary Documented to give a voice to thousands of children who have been detained at the border, but he didn’t expect to find himself trapped there as well. He didn’t realize how secure the border is. “They’re everywhere. Actually, as I’m talking to you, there’s a border control van parked at the hotel I’m staying at,” Vargas told The Huffington Post in an interview on Saturday.
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Miami, the great world city, is drowning while the powers that be look away
Low-lying south Florida, at the front line of climate change in the US, will be swallowed as sea levels rise. Astonishingly, the population is growing, house prices are rising and building goes on. The problem is the city is run by climate change deniers
Every year, with the coming of high spring and autumn tides, the sea surges up the Florida coast and hits the west side of Miami Beach, which lies on a long, thin island that runs north and south across the water from the city of Miami. The problem is particularly severe in autumn when winds often reach hurricane levels. Tidal surges are turned into walls of seawater that batter Miami Beach’s west coast and sweep into the resort’s storm drains, reversing the flow of water that normally comes down from the streets above. Instead seawater floods up into the gutters of Alton Road, the first main thoroughfare on the western side of Miami Beach, and pours into the street. Then the water surges across the rest of the island.
The effect is calamitous. Shops and houses are inundated; city life is paralysed; cars are ruined by the corrosive seawater that immerses them. During one recent high spring tide, laundromat owner Eliseo Toussaint watched as slimy green saltwater bubbled up from the gutters. It rapidly filled the street and then blocked his front door. “This never used to happen,” Toussaint told reporters. “I’ve owned this place eight years and now it’s all the time.”
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Must Read Blog Posts
Benjamin Lawsky Forcing Other Regulators to Man Up and Charge BIG Fines Yves Smith, naked capitalism
What Americans Need to Know About Iran by Washingtons Blog @ Washington’s Blog
Lawsuit Argues Children Deported by US Government Have Their Due Process Rights Violated by Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter @ FDL
Still Living With Jack Bauer in a Terrified New American World by Rebecca Gordon, Truthdig
The Fifth Surveillance: Corporate Spying On Non-Profits by Glyn Moody, Techdirt
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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee
Cross posted at The Stars Hollow Gazette and Voices on the Square
