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.
Today in History: November 1st
The Stamp Act takes effect; The United States explodes the first hydrogen bomb; Sistine Chapel paintings are first shown to the public. (Nov. 1)
Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below
Historic election could return sovereignty to Native Hawaiians
Brittany Lyte, Al Jazeera
KILAUEA, Hawaii — In 1893, Queen Liliuokalani, the last monarch of Hawaii, yielded power to a group of businessmen backed by Marines in order to avoid the bloodshed of her people. She did so believing that the U.S. government, when presented with the facts, would eventually restore the Hawaiian kingdom. Instead, the coup led to the dissolution of Hawaiian sovereignty and the tropical archipelago’s eventual admission to statehood.
Now, more than a century after the overthrow, a historic election seeks to return sovereignty to Native Hawaiians, a people still stinging from the bitter ruin of colonization, when Hawaiians had their lands stolen, their hula outlawed and their language purged from schools.
On Nov. 1, a 30-day voting period will open to more than 100,000 Hawaiians certified by the state-sanctioned Native Hawaiian Roll Commission to elect delegates who will represent them in Honolulu this winter at an eight-week constitutional convention for self-governance. More than 200 Hawaiians on the mainland and across the islands are campaigning for 40 seats at the planned assembly, where the paramount task will be to draft a document that guides the creation of a new government by and for Native Hawaiians. …
FBI spy planes flew 10 times over Freddie Gray protests, documents show
Al Jazeera and Reuters
The FBI deployed at least 10 flights of planes equipped with advanced aerial surveillance technology, including infrared and night-vision cameras, to monitor the Baltimore protests over the death of Freddie Gray earlier this year, according to government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The flights, totaling more than 36 hours and involving at least two planes, occurred over Baltimore from April 29 to May 3, as showed by flight logs provided to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act.
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The widespread and largely secretive use of aerial surveillance has drawn attention in Congress, where lawmakers in recent months have pushed the FBI to be more forthcoming about the legal authority and technical scope of such flights. …
Blair denies ministers were told to ‘burn’ Iraq war legal advice
Frances Perraudin, The Guardian
Tony Blair has denied reports that ministers were instructed to ‘burn’ a report questioning the legality of the Iraq war less than three weeks before British forces invaded the country.
The Mail on Sunday quotes an unnamed senior No 10 figure saying that the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, presented a 13-page legal opinion on 7 March 2003 that suggested the war could be challenged under international law because of the lack of UN backing.
The paper’s source says: “There was pandemonium. The date when war was expected to start was already in the diary, and here was Goldsmith saying it could be challenged under international law. They said ‘burn it, destroy it’ and got to work on the [attorney general].” …
Shaker Aamer feared US would spike his food on flight home
Peter Walker, The Guardian
Shaker Aamer, the British-based former Guantánamo Bay detainee finally freed this week after nearly 14 years in captivity, was so mistrustful of his US captors that he did not eat anything on the plane flying him home for fear it might have been spiked, one of his doctors has said.
David Nicholl, a consultant neurologist who has campaigned over the plight of detainees at the US base and who is part of Aamer’s post-release medical team, said the 46-year-old was currently undergoing tests to determine the state of his health.
Aamer was suffering from severe headaches, sciatica and other back pain, Nicholl, the first doctor to see him on his return on Friday, told the Mail on Sunday. Nicholl told the paper that Aamer had “very serious problems trusting doctors after what happened to him”. During his 14 years at the detention centre, Aamer had his blood forcibly taken and was force-fed when he went on hunger strike. …
New Probe Reveals NSA Targeted Entire Staffs of EU Governments
Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams
A German government-sanctioned special investigation has exposed a “clear breach” of intelligence-sharing agreements—including illegal surveillance of European authorities—between the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its German counterpart, known as the BND.
The news magazine Der Spiegel reported (German) the development on Friday, after having seen a copy of the 300-page report from former federal judge Kurt Graulich, who was appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in July to investigate the NSA’s activities within Germany. Graulich is due to formally submit the report next week to the German Parliament.
In examining a list of so-called “selectors” or “catchwords” given to the BND by the NSA, Graulich uncovered a “surprisingly large number” of European targets said to have been disallowed by Germany’s BND on the grounds that they violated European or German interests. The list of 39,000 keywords—many of them email addresses and phone numbers—included government institutions in two-thirds of all EU member states and commercial enterprises, according to a translation of Der Spiegel’s reporting. …
Court Rejects ACLU’s Plea to End Collection of Telephone Data Early
Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept
An appellate court panel will not be abruptly ending the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone call data, as the American Civil Liberties Union asked them to.
The ruling from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals deferred to Congress, which in June gave the NSA 180 days to shut it down. So the deadline remains November 29.
The appellate panel ruled in May that the domestic collection of information about who is calling who, when, and for how long was not authorized under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, as the NSA had argued. It said the program was too broad, that information about every American’s phone call behavior wasn’t “relevant to an authorized investigation.” …
- Up Close and Personnel
E. Tammy Kim
- Paul Ryan Asked To Name One Thing He Can Accomplish In The Next 6 Months, Can’t Come Up With Answer
Judd Legum
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac:
Swarm of bees attack residents in Arizona subdivision – six people hospitalized
Associated Press in Maricopa, Arizona
…It took fire crews about two hours to find the hive in an opened water valve box at one of the homes, the department said. The bees were sprayed with foam, and the hive was contained and killed.
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Experts say the state is dealing with the Africanized honeybee, also known as the killer bee, which is a crossbreed between the European honeybee and the African honeybee.The killer bee is the result of experiments in Brazil decades ago, and the insects migrated to the US. The bees are more prevalent in warm south-western states such as Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. If their hives are disrupted, they become especially aggressive.
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Well that took a while to figure out.
It’s breakfast somewhere.
For a Sig line I can’t decide between “Sanctimonious Purist”, or “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”