Tag: TMC News

Cross posted fromThe Stars Hollow Gazette

The violence continues with casualties mounting on both side with no resolution in sight. Democracy Now! recounts the daily horrors with host Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent based in Cairo.

Mass violence continues in Egypt amidst the bloodiest period in the country’s modern history. Around 900 people have been killed since state forces attacked Muslim Brotherhood protest encampments five days ago. At least 173 people were killed in a “Day of Rage” protest called by the Brotherhood on Friday, followed by at least 79 deaths on Saturday. Around 90 police officers and soldiers have died in the violence, but Islamist supporters of the Brotherhood and ousted President Mohamed Morsi account for the bulk of the victims. On Sunday, at least 36 prisoners were killed in Cairo after guards said they tried to escape while being transferred. But the Muslim Brotherhood accused state forces of a “cold-blooded killing” and demanded an international probe. And earlier today at least 24 police officers were reportedly killed in the northern Sinai after coming under attack by militants.

Amidst rumors that the US had quietly suspended military aid, the White House said this morning that those reports are false.

“The report that we have suspended assistance to Egypt is incorrect,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.

“As the president has said, we are reviewing all of our assistance to Egypt. No policy decisions have been made at this point regarding the remaining assistance,” she added.

Here is a brief summery of the latest news from the live feed at The Guardian:

• The supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, has been arrested in Nasr City in north-east Cairo after the security forces discovered his hiding place, Egyptian media reported. The private ONTV network showed footage of a man it said was Badie after his arrest. In the footage, a sombre looking Badie in an off-white Arab robe, or galabiyah, sits motionless on a sofa as a man in civilian clothes and carrying an assault rifle stands nearby. Badie and his deputy Khairat el-Shater, who was already in custody, are due to go on trial on 25 August for their alleged role in the killing of eight protesters outside the Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters in June.

• The former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, could be freed within 48 hours after judicial authorities ruled that he has already spent too long in custody after one of the charges against him was dropped. News of the imminent release of Mubarak, who was overthrown in the 2011 revolution, looks likely to inflame a highly volatile mood in Egypt.

• Interim president Adly Mansour has declared three days of mourning for the 25 policemen killed by an armed group in the Sinai desert yesterday. Egyptian state TV reports from the scene near the border with Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip town of Rafah said the terrorists had forced the police conscripts off two minibuses and murdered them in cold blood. Three others were injured. Cairo sources describe the killers as “Takfiris” – a term often used for al-Qaida and like-minded groups.

• The Muslim Brotherhood said Badie was facing “political trumped up charges”. It appointed Mahmoud Ezzat, described in the media as the Brotherhood’s “iron man”, as Badie’s temporary replacement.

• An Egyptian court will review a petition for the release of deposed President Hosni Mubarak filed by his lawyer tomorrow raising the prospect of him being released within 24 hours, according to Reuters citing judicial sources. The sources said if the petition is upheld Mubarak will be released as there remain no further legal grounds for his detention, though he is being retried on charges of ordering the killing of protesters in the 2011 uprising. An online poster has been circulating on Facebook today supporting him for president in 2014.

• A state-owned newspaper has accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being being the attack in the Sinai that left 25 policemen dead yesterday. Al-Akhbar ran the headline “Brotherhood Massacre”. The Guardian’s Middle East editor said the headline and the arrest of Badie are part of a propaganda campaign intended to split the Brotherhood’s supporters and to feed into popular sentiment against the Islamist group.

• Security officials say an Egyptian journalist working for a state-run daily has been shot dead by soldiers at a military checkpoint. They say Tamer Abdel-Raouf from al-Ahram newspaper and a colleague were on the road during a military-imposed nighttime curfew and a soldier opened fire after the pair drove off from the checkpoint without permission.

• Amnesty International said today that there has been “an unprecedented rise in sectarian violence across Egypt targeting Coptic Christians” since the violent dispersals of pro-Morsi sit-ins in Greater Cairo on 14 August and has demanded that the Egyptian authorities take immediate steps to ensure their safety. It says several Coptic Christians have been killed, their churches, homes and businesses targeted and graves desecrated, “seemingly in retaliation for their support of the ousting of Mohamed Morsi”,

• A private lawsuit has been issued against the Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradai, who was until recently part of the interim government installed after the ousting of Mohamed Morsi. It charges him with “breaching national trust” (Arabic link). The charge is that by resigning as vice-president he gave the impression that the Egyptian authorities were using excessive force. He has been referred to trial on 17 September.

Democracy Now! hosr Amy Goodman discusses the state of the revolution and the growing divide in Egypt with acclaimed Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, Chris Toensing, executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project and Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

In this week’s segment of “What We Know Now,” Up host Steve Kornacki shares the new things we have learned with guests Krystal Ball, MSNBC’s “The Cycle“; Rick Wilson, Republican media consultant; Sam Seder, radio host; and Nia-Malika Henderson, National Political Reporter, The Washington Post.

Area 51 Location Revealed In Government Document, Still No Mention Of Aliens

Huffington Post

The government shed some light on an age-old mystery on Thursday, releasing documents that included the location and first official government acknowledgment of the secretive Area 51 facility, a staple of conspiracy theories about alien life and futuristic government technology.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University got their hands on the report, eight years after filing a Freedom of Information Act request. The document gives previously classified information on the development of the U-2, a spy plane that was revolutionary in 1955, when a CIA agent signed a contract with Lockheed Martin to begin producing the aircraft.

Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions

by Nicholas Confessore, The New York Times

Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions.

The review echoed criticism of Mr. Clinton’s early years in the White House: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.

And concern was rising inside and outside the organization about Douglas J. Band, a onetime personal assistant to Mr. Clinton who had started a lucrative corporate consulting firm – which Mr. Clinton joined as a paid adviser – while overseeing the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation’s glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities.

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds

by Barton Gelman, The Washington Post

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

Click on image to enlarge

‘The Butler’ to prevail at box office this weekend — Oscars next?

by Glenn Whipp, The Los Angeles Times

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler” will be the No. 1 movie at the box office this weekend after taking in about $9 million in ticket sales last night. That puts the historical drama on track for a $27-million weekend, significantly more than The Weinstein Company’s initial lowball estimate of $15 million.

It also means “The Butler” will open to roughly the same weekend take as DreamWorks’ 2011 civil rights drama “The Help,” which also debuted in August and brought in $26 million on its way to a $169.7-million domestic gross.

Will “The Butler,” which tracks the life of an African American man who worked for 34 years as a White House butler, have the same staying power as “The Help”? Oprah Winfrey, who stars in the film with Forest Whitaker, obviously gave the movie an initial boost at the box office, proselytizing on its behalf to her hugely loyal — and large — following. According to a Fandango poll, 72% of ticket-buyers said Winfrey increased the likelihood that they’d see the film.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The main purpose our blogging is to communicate our ideas, opinions, and stories both fact and fiction. The best part about the the blogs is information that we might not find in our local news, even if we read it online. Sharing that information is important, especially if it educates, sparks conversation and new ideas. We have all found places that are our favorites that we read everyday, not everyone’s are the same. The Internet is a vast place. Unlike “Punting the Pundits which focuses on opinion pieces mostly from the mainstream media and the larger news web sites, “Around the Blogosphere” will focus more on the medium to smaller blogs and articles written by some of the anonymous and not so anonymous writers and links to some of the smaller pieces that don’t make it to “Pundits” by Krugman, Baker, etc.

We encourage you to share your finds with us. It is important that we all stay as well informed as we can.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

This is an Open Thread.

It has been a busy week, with not enough time to cover the other important news, events and just some “stuff”.

First some the election news.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker won the Democratic nomination to fill the Senate vacancy in New Jersey that was left with the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg. He beat Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, Reps. Rush Holt and Frank Pallone.  But, hey, what’s another corporate “bright shiny object” in the Senate. He will face Republican Steve Lonegan in a special election on October 16.

In the New York City mayoral primaries, the focus has been on the Democrats. Anthony Weiner’s lack of self control and awareness has him sinking in the polls giving liberal Bill De Blasio, the current Public Advocate, a chance to shine and shine he did. De Balsio has taken the lead from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. according to Tuesday’s Quinnapiac poll:

Among likely Democratic voters, de Blasio took 30 percent of the vote, followed by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at 24 percent, former comptroller Bill Thompson at 22 percent, former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) at 10 percent, comptroller John Liu at 6 percent and former council member Sal Albanese at 1 percent. Another 7 percent was undecided.

De Blasio also held the lead in three potential runoff scenarios, beating Quinn by 54 percent to 38 percent, Thompson by 50 percent to 40 percent, and Weiner by a whopping 72 percent to 22 percent.

De Blasio’s opposition to Stop n’ Frisk and message that appeals to the middle and working classes have started to resonate.

In the race for NYC’s Comptroller, former governor Eliot Spitzer has a 19 point lead over his opponent Manhattan Borough President Scott Springer. Wall Steet is not happy. Good. They should be afraid. Eliot with subpoena power may be an awesome sight.

The three Republican candidates, John Catsimatidis, George McDonald and Joseph Lhota, met for a debate last night. Essentially their message was: “Good job, Bloomie” and promised more of the same. Not exactly a winning message, guys.

Any way, the NYC primary day is September 10, then the real fun begins.

On to the blogs.

From Firedoglake:

• Google Says Gmail Users Should Have No Expectation of Privacy
  
  by DSWright
• McConnell’s Pathetic Predicament on Obamacare Shutdown Threat
  
  by Jon Walker
• Center For American Progress Says Larry Summers ‘Not A Wall Street Guy’
  
  by DSWright
• New York City Comptroller Calls for Marijuana Legalization
  
  by Jon Walker
• Bradley Manning Pleads With Judge to Allow Him to ‘Return to Productive Place in Society’
  
  by Kevin Gosztola

TBogg says his “farewell” to his blog at FDL, at last.

Over at Corrente:

Lambert‘s Obamacare Cluster F**k continues:

• Out-of-pocket limits delayed for the convenience of insurance companies who didn’t reprogram their systems
• Kaiser explains to poor people in non-Medicaid expansion states how to game the system by lying

This from lambert will either make you sick or raise your blood pressure to stroke levels:

• “Teen Denied Transplant Over ‘Noncompliance'”

Then he asks this question:

• Is James Clapper the origin of “the clap” in the same way that Thomas Crapper is the origin of “crap”?

From transcriber:

• Harry Shearer interviews Maria Garzino on Hurricane Isaac e-mail FOIAs. Uh oh.

At naked capitalism:

• The FBI’s 2010 Mortgage Fraud Report Reveals Why the Banksters Love Holder
  
  by Bill Black
• Fixing Old Markets With New Markets: the Origins and Practice of Neoliberalism
  
  by Nathan Tankus
• The Real Foreclosure Scandal: Why Have Virtually No Lawyers Been Disbarred?
  
  by Yves Smith
• Rajan Calls Krugman “Paranoid” for Criticizing Reinhart’s and Rogoff’s Research
  
  by Bill Black
• Why is Obama So Keen to Appoint Larry Summers to the Fed?
  
  by Yves Smith

From Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel:

• The Two OLC Still-Secret Memos Behind the Cross-Border Keyword Searches?
• Administration’s OWN White Paper Backs Claim Mike Rogers Did Not Share Dragnet Notice

From our friends at Voices on the Square:

• Gender Prison: Ranting by proxy
  
  by Robyn
• Hellraisers Journal: Militia Leaving Michigan Copper Country
  
  by JayeRaye

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

• A Guide to the Deceptions, Misinformation, and Word Games Officials Use to Mislead the Public About NSA Surveillance
  
  by Trevor Timm
• Multiple New Polls Show Americans Reject Wholesale NSA Domestic Spying
  
  by Trevor Timm

I knew there was another reason I admired Bette Midler other than her singing:

The woman rocks in more ways than you’d expect.

Violent clashes broke out with Muslim Brotherhood supporters and government security forces in Egypt have left scores dead and wounded on both sides. A month long state of emergency and a curfew has been declared.

CAIRO – Egypt descended into a chaotic bloodbath – and another political crisis – Wednesday after security forces backed by bulldozers moved into opposition protest camps set up by supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi, sparking deadly violence.

At least 149 people were killed and 1,403 injured, the country’s health ministry said, but the toll looked certain to rise as unrest spread from Cairo to other parts of the country.

It is being reporting that interim Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei has resigned in protest over the crack down by the military and that at least two journalists have been killed.

Here is The Guardian‘s quick summary of events since last might:

• Scores of people have been killed after the Egyptian security forces moved to clear two protest camps in Cairo. Egypt’s official news agency put the death toll at 149, although the chaotic nature of the crackdown made accurate reporting difficult. Violence began after security forces used bulldozers to dismantle camps established by supporters of the ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.

• Troops fired teargas and live rounds, quickly evacuating the smaller camp near Cairo University. But Morsi supporters held strong at the larger encampment, at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in east Cairo. The dawn raids came after two weeks of warnings to protesters to evacuate.

• The Egyptian interim government has declared a month-long state of emergency across the country. It later announced a curfew, beginning this evening at 7pm local time and lasting until 6am. The curfew is in place in Cairo and ten other provinces including Alexandria and Suez, the government said. It will last for one month.

• Egypt’s vice-president, Mohamed El-Baradei, resigned in protest against the crackdown. He said there were peaceful options for ending the political crisis. Witnesses at Rabaa al-Adawiya dozens of bodies, while photographs showed more than 40 dead laid out on the ground. There were reports of snipers firing on crowds of people. The interior ministry denied live rounds had been used despite the casualties. Two journalists, including a British cameraman for Sky News, were among the dead.

• The international community has denounced the violence. The US said it “strongly condemns the use of violence against protesters” and criticised the imposition of a state of emergency. UK foreign secretary William Hague said he was “deeply concerned at the escalating violence”. “I condemn the use of force in clearing protests and call on the security forces to act with restraint,” he said.

You can follow the live up dates from The Guardian here

On this morning’s Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman and Cairo correspondent for The Independent Alastair Beach reported on the crisis.

In this week’s segment of “What We Know Now,” Up host Steve Kornacki talks about the latest news that could “muck up” the GOP’s chances of taking back the Senate in 2014. Joining Steve to discuss what they have learned this week are Christina Bellantoni, PBS’ News Hour; Nick Acocella, Politifax New Jersey; Perry Bacon, Jr., The Grio.com; and Krystal Ball, cohost of MSNBC’s “The Cycle.”

Tea Party favorite Ken Buck files to run for Senate in Colorado

By Jonathan Easley, The Hill

Tea Party favorite Ken Buck (R) filed paperwork Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission to run for U.S. Senate in Colorado.

Buck, who lost a senate bid to Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in 2010, will seek to unseat Colorado’s other incumbent senator, Mark Udall (D-Colo.), in 2014.

According to the Denver Post, Buck will launch his campaign and tour the state in early September.

Buck, a district attorney, joins state Sens. Randy Baumgardner and Owen Hill in seeking the Republican nomination.

Michelle Nunn engages battle for Senate in Georgia

Catalina Camia, USA Today

WASHINGTON — Democrat Michelle Nunn’s decision to follow in her father’s footsteps in Georgia opens a new front in the battle for control of the Senate in the 2014 elections.

Nunn, CEO of a volunteer service organization, is expected to file her paperwork Tuesday to run for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss. The political novice declared her long-awaited candidacy on Monday in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

This is the same Senate seat that her father, Sam Nunn, held from 1972 to 1997 as a centrist Democrat who appealed to GOP voters. The race to succeed Chambliss has already attracted three congressmen and a former Georgia secretary of State on the Republican side.

Georgia Conservatives Like Paula Deen More Than MLK (But Only Slightly!)

By Emma Roller, Slate

From PPP:

   We asked Georgians their opinions about a number of current and historical figures in the state. Martin Luther King Jr. has a 73/15 favorability rating- it’s 83/6 with Democrats but just 59/28 with Republicans. Paula Deen remains quite popular in her home state at a 54/21 spread- she’s very popular with Republicans at 73/11 but seen positively by a plurality of Democrats at 40/33 as well.

Or, more succinctly:

Favorability ratings with Georgia Republicans: Paula Deen 73/11, Martin Luther King Jr. 59/28

— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) August 7, 2013

NRCC Fundraising Off George W. Bush’s Heart Operation

by Perry Stein, Talking Points Memo

The National Republican Congressional Committee is collecting signatures for an e-card and money to send flowers to former President George W. Bush as he recovers from a heart procedure to clear a blocked artery.

Donations are expected to far exceed the costs of a bouquet of Bluebonnets– the Texas state flower–and NRCC did not return calls to CBS on what they will do with the extra cash, though they will likely use it to help elect Republicans to the House.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This week after much hinting, President Barack Obama cancelled his private meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin that was to take place before the G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg in early September. The primary reason for the snub (yes, despite what you are hearing in the American msm, in the international community this is a snub) is Russia’s decision to grant temporary asylum to the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In a statement, the White House said that it had concluded there was “not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda” to hold a US-Russia summit. It cited a lack of progress on arms control, trade, missile defence and human rights, and added: “Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship. Our co-operation on these issues remains a priority for the United States.” [..]

The decision to cancel the meeting was greeted with little surprise in Moscow, where analysts and lawmakers have been predicting such a step. Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said the Kremlin was disappointed that Obama cancelled the meeting with Putin, state news agency RIA-Novosti reported. “It’s obvious that this decision is connected to the situation with the American intelligence services employee Snowden, which was not created by us,” he said.

Nonetheless, the invitation to Obama to visit Moscow remains open, and Russia is prepared to co-operate with the United States on pressing issues, Ushakov said.

Nationalist Duma deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky, perhaps the most rabid of the many critics of the United States in parliament, said the decision shows “disrespect” towards Russia.

“If you postpone or completely cancel meetings between heads of state under the pretext of the refusal to hand over one person, then relations between countries will quickly reach zero,” Zhirinovsky said.

Pres. Obama has no room to criticize Russia for giving Snowden asylum considering the fact that the US has given shelter to internationally wanted criminals and refused to investigate or prosecute Americans accused of war crimes

In his opinion article, Glenn Greenwald high lighted the most glaring cases:

New York Times, February 28, 2007:

U.S. to refuse Italian request for extradition of CIA agents

BRUSSELS – A senior U.S. official said Wednesday that the United States would refuse any Italian extradition request for CIA agents indicted in the alleged abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan, a case investigated by the European Parliament.

“We’ve not got an extradition request from Italy,” John Bellinger, a legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told reporters after meeting in Brussels with legal advisers to EU governments.

“If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite U.S. officials to Italy.”

Washington Post, July 19, 2013:

Panama releases former CIA operative wanted by Italy

A former CIA operative detained in Panama this week at the request of Italian authorities over his conviction in the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan was released Friday and had boarded a flight to the United States, U.S. officials said.

Robert Seldon Lady’s release from Panama appeared to avert the possibility that he would be extradited to Italy, where he faces a sentence of up to nine years in prison for his role in the CIA capture of a terrorism suspect who was secretly snatched off a street in Milan and transported to Egypt.

Lady, who left Panama on Friday morning, was “either en route or back in the United States,” Marie Harf, State Department deputy spokeswoman, told reporters at a midday briefing.

It was not immediately clear what steps the United States had taken to secure Lady’s release.

The Guardian, September 9, 2012:

America’s refusal to extradite Bolivia’s ex-president to face genocide charges

Obama justice officials have all but granted asylum to Sánchez de Lozada – a puppet who payrolled key Democratic advisers

[US refuses Bolivia’s request to extradite its former CIA-supported president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, to stand trial on charges of genocide and other war crimes after de Lozada hires Democratic lobbyists to represent him]

El Paso Times, December 30, 2010:

Luis Posada Carriles won’t be extradited to Venezuela

The US constantly refuses requests to extradite – even where (unlike Russia) they have an extradition treaty with the requesting country and even where (unlike Snowden) the request involves actual, serious crimes, such as genocide, kidnapping, and terrorism. Maybe those facts should be part of whatever media commentary there is on Putin’s refusal to extradite Snowden and Obama’s rather extreme reaction to it. [..]

At his blog Informed Consent, Juan Cole notes that Russia has denied visas to US officials who have been accused of war crimes:

A less remarked-on round in this game of tit for tat (which so far doesn’t rise to the level of being very serious) is the government’s decision last April to deny visas to American officials and former officials who had something to do with torture at Guantanamo, where Russian citizens have been held.

The Moscow Times reports

   “The list of banned officials released by the Foreign Ministry in April included former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington, former U.S. Justice Department adviser John Yoo and various other Justice Department officials alleged to have violated Russian citizens’ human rights. United States Admiral Jeffrey Harbeson, the former head of the Guantanamo prison, was denied a Russian visa in January, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.”

Professor of international law at Princeton University, Richard Falk explained in an article in Al Jazeera, that the granting of asylum to Snowden wasn’t just within Russia’s rights, but was legally compelled.

The most influential media in the United States has lived up to its pro-government bias in the Snowden Affair in three major ways: firstly, by consistently referring to Snowden by the demeaning designation of ‘leaker’ rather than as ‘whistleblower’ or ‘surveillance dissident,’ both more respectful and accurate.

Secondly, they are completely ignoring the degree to which Russia’s grant of temporary refugee status to Snowden for one year was in full accord with the normal level of protection to be given to anyone accused of nonviolent political crimes in a foreign country, and pursued diplomatically and legally by the government that is seeking to indict and prosecute. In effect, for Russia to have turned Snowden over to the United States under these conditions would have been morally and politically scandalous considering the nature of his alleged crimes.

Thirdly, the media’s refusal to point out that espionage, the main accusation against Snowden, is the quintessential ‘political offense’ in international law, and as such is routinely excluded from any list of extraditable offenses. That is, even if there had been an extradition treaty between the United States and Russia, it should have been made clear that there was no legal duty on Russia’s part to turn Snowden over to American authorities for criminal prosecution, and a moral and political duty not to do so, especially in the circumstances surrounding the controversy over Snowden.

And as Mark Weisbot noted

Meanwhile, Snowden and Glenn Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning. At the outset Snowden said his biggest fear was that people would see “the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society and that ‘nothing will change'”. But his disclosures have already created a new debate, and political change will follow. [..]

The spectacle of US attorney general Eric Holder trying to offer Russia assurances that his government would not torture or execute Snowden speaks volumes about how far the US government’s reputation on human rights – even within the United States – has plummeted over the past decade.

Legally, morally and ethically, Pres. Obama has no room to criticize Russia on it human rights violations.  

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

What was Barack Obama thinking when he gave his blessing to a these two clods to represent the US in Egypt, for any reason. Apparently, Republican Senators John McCain (AZ) and Lindsey Graham (SC) not only managed to fail at whatever it was they were sent to accomplish but managed to insult everyone in the military led interim government.

First, didn’t anyone in the State Department brief McCain to put a sock in it and not use the word “coup”?

McCain (R-Ariz.) and Graham (R-S.C.) had used the word “coup” at an afternoon press conference to describe the manner in which Egypt’s military had seized power from the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in early July. [..]

In a statement later on Tuesday, distributed by Egypt’s Middle East News Agency and reported by Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh, a top media advisor to Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, offered a stronger rebuke. The statement accused McCain of twisting facts, and dismissed his remarks as “clumsy,” or “irresponsible,” depending on the translation. (On Twitter, bilingual Arabic speakers debated the best translation for the word, “kharqa,” which also could be interpreted as “moronic” or “irrational.”)

Pres. Mansour went to call McCain’s comments “an unacceptable interference in internal policies”. When later asked by journalists whether the pair really meant that the military-backed overthrow was a coup, a term the US State Department has avoided using, McCain’s response was,  “I’m not here to go through the dictionary. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

These two dolts went on to lecture the Egyptian leadership on ways to reach an accord with the Muslim Brotherhood, urging General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in a Tuesday meeting to release all political prisoners as a starting point for holding free elections. In a press conference after the meeting, Graham further stepped in the diplomatic mire the two had created

“In democracy, you sit down and talk to each other. It is impossible to talk to somebody who is in jail.” [..]

“The people who are in charge were not elected. The people who were elected are in jail. The status quo is not acceptable.”

Really? Could Pres. Obamba sent two worse representatives into such a volitile situation? Maybe he could have sent Bill and Ted, from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Middle East expert and historian Juan Cole weighed in on why McCain and Graham the lack of credibility to talk to the Egyptians:

1. McCain and Graham are urging the interim Egyptian government to engage in dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood. But in winter of 2011 just after the fall of Mubarak, this is what McCain said:

   ” SPIEGEL: What is your assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood?

   McCain: I think they are a radical group that first of all supports Sharia law; that in itself is anti-democratic – at least as far as women are concerned. They have been involved with other terrorist organizations and I believe that they should be specifically excluded from any transition government. “

The phrase “they have been involved with other terrorist organizations” suggests that McCain considered the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, just as Gen. Sisi does. One of the pretexts on which Sisi has jailed several Muslim Brotherhood leaders is their ties to Hamas and “terrorism.” So how would McCain argue him out of that stance.  [..]

2. McCain insisted that there was in fact a military coup in Egypt on July 3, and called for political prisoners (the former Muslim Brotherhood elected government) to be released. But McCain supported the military coup of 1999 by Gen. Pervez Musharraf against the elected government of Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif.

3. Graham doesn’t like people to win elections if he doesn’t like them. When the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, won the Palestine Authority elections in early 2006, Graham rejected their legitimacy [..]

If this mission was meant to help resolve the crisis the crisis in a country that is instrumental in Washington’s Middle East policy, it was a miserable failure that may have actually harmed the US relationship with Egypt.

Cross posted From The Stars Hollow Gazette

Don’t let the enthusiasm of the stock market or some financial reports that the job market and unemployment are improving or that the economy is growing faster. It’s not. None of today’s economics news is good. As a matter of facr, it’s rather depressing.

Better Than Expected Second Quarter Growth? Is the Post Kidding

by Dean Baker, Center for Economic Policy and Research

I somehow missed this Post article touting the 1.7 percent growth rate reported for the second quarter as better than expected. First it is incredible that the piece would leave readers with the impression that this strong growth, [..]

The economy’s rate of potential growth is generally estimated as being between 2.2-2.5 percent. This means that rather than making up some of the 6 percentage point gap between potential output and actual output, the gap increased in the second quarter. [..]

The GDP data released on Wednesday also included revisions to prior quarters’ data. The revision to the prior three quarters’ growth rate (Table 1A) were sharply downward lowering growth over this period by 1.3 percentage points or an average of 0.4 percent per quarter. With the revised data, growth over the last year has been just 1.4 percent. This is supposed to be a justification for withdrawing stimulus?

July Jobs Report Masks Real Problems In U.S. Labor Market

by Mark Gongloff, The Huffington Post

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the official U.S. unemployment rate could mask the real problems in the labor market. He got proof of that in July’s jobs report.

The unemployment rate dipped to 7.4 percent in July, the lowest rate since December 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, down from 7.6 percent in June.

But payroll growth was anemic, wages dropped and more discouraged workers headed for the sidelines, continuing the slowest job-market recovery since World War II. [..]

Employers added just 162,000 jobs to non-farm payrolls in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, down from 188,000 in June, which was revised lower from an initial reading of 195,000. Together, revisions to May and June figures subtracted 26,000 jobs from payrolls, another sign of weakness. [..]

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, fell in part because 37,000 workers dropped out of the labor force, meaning they gave up looking for work. The labor-force participation rate, which measures the percentage of working-age Americans who are working or looking for work, fell to 63.4 percent in July, near a 35-year low.

The civilian employment-population ratio, which measures how many working-age Americans actually have jobs, was flat at 58.7 percent, near the lowest in 30 years and down from more than 63 percent before the recession. [..]

The majority of the jobs that have been created during the recovery have been low-paying jobs, worsening income inequality and keeping the economy sluggish.

The job market is a long way from recovery and with the slow rate of job creation there could be a deficit of 4.6 million jobs in May 2016. Not only that but the quality of the jobs that have been created are not conducive to economic stimulus:

More than half of the jobs added last month were either in retail trade or “food services and drinking places.” People employed in those sectors tend to have much shorter work weeks and much lower hourly wages than everyone else.

Even worse, a recent paper (pdf) by Canadian researchers suggests that many of the people taking these jobs are relatively over-educated. The authors argue that, since 2000, globalization and technological advancement have reduced the demand for “high-skilled” workers. Desperate for employment, these workers ended up pushing the “lower-skilled” out of the job market entirely. This may help explain why the share of people aged 25 to 54 counted as being in the labor force has plunged by 3.5 percentage points since 2000.

The quality of jobs being created is probably connected to the depressing performance of incomes and the decline in the work week. Hourly pay has grown by just 1.9 percent over the past 12 months — basically unchanged since the end of 2009. The data from the BEA tell a similar story. Real after-tax incomes fell in June. Americans still have less purchasing power than they did in November 2012. Our standard of living has barely improved over the past year.

None of this is good news. The other question is what will the Federal Reserve do? Chairmen Benjamin Bernanke has promised to keep its target interest rate near zero at least until unemployment is below 6.5 percent.

The Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said in June that the Fed wanted to end its current round of bond buying around the time the rate hits 7 percent, which he predicted would happen by the middle of next year. That prediction is looking conservative, suggesting the Fed could start tapering when its policy-making committee meets in September.

But Fed officials have cautioned that they want unemployment to fall because people are finding jobs, not because they’re leaving the labor force. And by broader measures, the job market remains weak. Growth is sluggish – just a 1.4 percent annualized pace in the first half of the year – and the share of American adults with jobs has actually fallen since the recession ended.

So the decision is unlikely to be clear-cut, particularly because Fed officials are divided about the benefits and the costs of the bond-buying campaign.

And the decision is not going to be made this week. Officials will see six more weeks of economic data, including one more jobs report.

I’m not all that well versed in economics but it seems fairly clear that there needs to be a huge influx of investment into the economy. Since it doesn’t appear to be coming from the private sector, which is more concerned about profits than quality job creation, then it need to start coming from the government. The likelihood of that happening any time soon is still rather grim.

In the week’s Up segment of “What We Now Know,” host Steve Kornacki and guests Krystal Ball, MSNBC’s “The Cycle”; Rick Wilson, Republican media consultant; Evan McMorris-Santoro, White  House reporter, BuzzFeed.com; and Nia-Malika Henderson, National Political Reporter, The Washingtoacn Post, discuss what they have learned this week.

Cory Booker’s Iowa Scheduling Snafu

by Ben Jacobs, The Daily Beast

Cory Booker isn’t going to Iowa after all.

Booker, the Newark, New Jersey, mayor who is currently a candidate in New Jersey’s special election for the United States Senate, had signed a contract on May 21 to speak at the University of Iowa, according to a university spokesman. The event would take place on August 29 as part of the University’s Welcome Back Week at the beginning of the academic year. He said the event was booked through the speaker’s agency that represented Booker after a committee of students and faculty invited him to speak in early May.

However, Booker campaign spokesperson Silvia Alvarez told The Daily Beast that a visit to Iowa “was not on Booker’s schedule” and said she had no idea how the event ended up on the university’s website.

Documents Show Thatcher-Reagan Rift Over U.S. Decision to Invade Grenada

by Stephen Castle, The New York Times

LONDON – Thirty-year-old documents newly released by the British government reveal just how severely America’s decision to invade the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983 tested the warm ties between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.

While the two leaders had a strong and affectionate personal rapport, the British official papers reveal how little warning Mrs. Thatcher was given about the pending military invasion, a move that left the British irritated, bewildered and disappointed. They also show how Mr. Reagan justified the secrecy as a way to prevent leaks, and how the British later concluded that the invasion had in fact been planned long in advance. At one point during tense written exchanges, both leaders claimed, in defense of their opposing approaches to the unrest in Grenada, that lives were at stake.

Cross posted from Stars Hollow Gazette

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This is an Open Thread.

The mid-Summer Doldrums are here, sometimes called the “Lazey, Hazey Days of Summer” and there isn’t much happening. The news media is focused on Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who continues to embarrass himself with his lack of self-control. No one loves Larry Summers, even the White House has backed off nominating him for the Federal Reserve chair.

Joining other cities, Philadelphia is suing the world’s biggest banks over LIBOR, the interest rate fixing scheme that possibly cost municipalities  billions of dollars:

he parent banks named in the Philadelphia complaint are Bank of America Corp, Barclays Bank Plc, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS AG. [..]

The U.S. municipalities claim that they lost money when they received lower interest rate payments than they should have, or had to pay artificially inflated rates because of the alleged manipulation.

Philadelphia also said local governments were forced to pay “sometimes devastating” penalties to terminate investment agreements.

Russian President Vladimir Putin went fishing and something smells fishy about his tale.

Video footage released by the Kremlin last week showed Putin dressed in camouflage fatigues and sunglasses, fishing, driving a motorboat and petting reindeer in a remote region of Siberia with his prime minister and defense minister.

But the images of the 60-year-old president hauling in a pike which the Kremlin said weighed 21 kg (46 pounds) proved too much for some Russians to swallow.

Within hours, online satirists were questioning whether the incident was staged and whether the pike was really as big as the Kremlin said.

An EU diplomat met with ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and it is rumored that the military backed government is attempting to restore secret police units of the Mubarik regime.

Egypt’s state security investigations service, Mabahith Amn ad-Dawla, a wing of the police force under President Mubarak, and a symbol of police oppression, was supposedly closed in March 2011 – along with several units within it that investigated Islamist groups and opposition activists. The new national security service (NSS) was established in its place.

But following Saturday’s massacre of at least 83 Islamists, interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim announced the reinstatement of the units, and referred to the NSS by its old name. He added that experienced police officers sidelined in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution would be brought back into the fold.

Police brutality also went unchecked under Morsi, who regularly failed to condemn police abuses committed during his presidency. But Ibrahim’s move suggests he is using the ousting of Morsi – and a corresponding upsurge in support for Egypt’s police – as a smokescreen for the re-introduction of pre-2011 practices.

In his latest offer of a “grand bargain” with the recalcitrant Republicans, Jon Walker reports that President Obama is resorting to negotiating tactics used by his predecessor, George W. Bush to cut a deal. Also, even with Social Security still on the table, Obama is still unable to come to budget agreement.

The fighting in Syria continues, over half of Mexico lives in poverty and after his Brazilian tour, Pope Francis went home.

At this writing, we are waiting for the verdict in the Bradley Manning trial, barring any miracle of common sense and jurisprudence, we can all surmise what the verdict will be on all counts.

Now that Bradley Manning has bee fond guilty of 20 violations of an antiquated law from WWI, the sentencing phase begins which could bring up to 136 years in prison.

I’m going to the beach and contemplate those “Lazey, Hazey Days of Summer.”

In this week’s segment of “What We Now Know,” Up host Steve Kornacki and his guests Lizz Winstead, author, “Lizz Free or Die;” Michael Steele, MSNBC Political Analyst, former RNC Chairman; Democratic Strategist Basil Smikle, Jr.; and Lynn Vavreck, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science discuss what they have learned this week.

Honest Tea Finds Most And Least Honest Cities With Unmanned Kiosks

For the past few years, Honest Tea has been conducting a social experiment to figure out which cities were the most (or least) honest. The company places unmanned tea kiosks around the country, and asks people to deposit a dollar for each beverage, using the honor system. Through digital tracking, Honest Tea monitors who is actually paying for the beverages and who isn’t. Last year, Honest Tea found that Chicago was the most honest and New York was the least honest, but this year, results have varied a bit.

Defeated Congressman Taps Campaign Cash to Hire ‘Hula Monsters’ for Party

by Shane Goldmacher

Pete Stark books a Hawaiian-themed band to perform for a backyard party.

What’s a defeated 20-term member of Congress with some leftover campaign cash to do? Throw a party, of course.

More than six months after he was ousted by California voters, Democratic former Rep. Pete Stark hired The Hula Monsters, a Hawaiian-shirt clad band that plays a blend of swing, honky-tonk and more, to perform for a backyard party, according to campaign spending records and an interview with a band member.

Federal politicians aren’t supposed to use campaign accounts for personal benefit – only legitimate political purposes. Messages left for Stark’s accountant and former campaign manager about the spending were not returned. [..]

As of June 30, Stark still had $67,550 cash on hand in his account. The treasurer keeping the books is his wife, Deborah Stark.

Journalism and the world lost one of its greatest on Saturday, the “Dean of the White House Correspondents” Helen Thomas died at her home in Washington. She was 92.

She had a lot of “firsts” for women in journalism. She broke down the walls of the traditional “old boys’ clubs” of the Beltway:

Thomas was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club [..]

In 1962, Thomas convinced Kennedy to not attend the annual dinners held for the White House correspondents and photographers if they disallowed women from attending. Kennedy moved for the dinners to be combined into one event, with women allowed to attend. In 1970, UPI named Thomas their chief White House correspondent, making her the first woman to serve in the position. She was named the chief of UPI’s White House bureau in 1974.

Thomas was the only female print journalist to travel to China with President Richard Nixon during his 1972 visit to China. During the Watergate scandal, Martha Beall Mitchell, wife of United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell, frequently called Thomas to discuss how the Nixon administration was using Mitchell as a scapegoat.

She was the only member of the White House press corp to have her own seat, all the other seats are designated for the media outlets. She often reminded her colleagues, “We are not here to be their friends.”

She was remembered fondly by many this weekend.

She is a the roll model for all us who report the news,