What He Said

In a just released, lengthy New Yorker article, Jane Mayer -- with the diligence and thoroughness she used to expose the Bush torture regime -- examines a topic I've written about many times here: the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers generally, and its persecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake in particular (Drake exposed massive waste, excess and perhaps illegality in numerous NSA programs).

[...]

Thomas Drake is a hero who deserves a Medal of Honor. Instead, the Obama administration seeks to imprison him for decades while steadfastly protecting from prosecution -- or judicial review of any kind -- the high-level government officials who systematically broke the law.

[...]

Mayer's article is what I'd describe as the must-read magazine article of the month, and I encourage everyone to read it in its entirety.

[...]

When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as "often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government." But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks -- more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.

[...]

"The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers."

  Glenn Greenwald

And here’s the link.

And Mayer did not even include this quote about whistleblowers from candidate Obama: "Such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled." Apparently, by "encouraged," he meant: "snuffed out with relentless prosecution and intimidation."

Newspeak.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Countdown to Judgment Day

May 21, they tell me.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

And, By the Way...

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s evident assumption that he has a droit de seigneur to use a Ghanaian maid [however] he sees fit just seems a natural extension of what the IMF does to the Third World every single day.

  WIIIAI

Bingo.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Good News

Cabinet ministers have agreed a far-reaching, legally binding "green deal" that will commit the UK to two decades of drastic cuts in carbon emissions. The package will require sweeping changes to domestic life, transport and business and will place Britain at the forefront of the global battle against climate change.

  UK Guardian

Now we can drop all our pollution regulation and still keep the global amount the same. Win for us!

Frankly, I’m surprised that Britain is doing this.

The committee's report says the new carbon deal will require that heat pumps will have had to be installed in 2.6m homes by 2025. It also says that by the same date 31% of new cars, and 14% of those on the road overall, will be electric. Experts say a total of £16bn of investment will be needed every year to meet the commitment. Some of this money will be raised through increases in electricity prices.

It's Sunday

During Friday night’s “New Rules” segment on Real Time, Bill Maher argued that “non-violence was Jesus’ trademark” and that Christians who celebrated the killing of Osama bin Laden are not faithful to the teachings of Christ.

[...]

“Capping thine enemy is not exactly what Jesus would do [...] Martin Luther King gets to call himself a Christian because he actually practiced loving his enemies, and Gandhi was so fucking Christian he was Hindu”

[...]

“If you’re a Christian and support killing your enemies and torture, you have to come up with a new name for yourself,” Maher said.

  Raw Story

The whole segment is in video at that link.

"And if you think the earth was given to you to kick ass on and then gloat, you're not really a Christian. You're a Texan."

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Everything We Know, We Learned From The English

[The Queen of England] has visited 129 countries in the course of the second longest reign in British history, from Iceland to Indonesia, but never has she ever set foot in the 130th: Britain's nearest neighbour, the Republic of Ireland.

  UK Guardian

Not just her nearest neighbor, but an English conquest. WTF? That is truly arrogant. On the other hand, perhaps not too many Irish would care to have her set foot on their land.

Her four-day visit from Tuesday will be the first by a British monarch since her grandfather, George V, was greeted by cheering crowds in Dublin almost 100 years ago in the boiling hot July of 1911

Not just any crowd, but crowds of supplanted Englishmen, no doubt. Like our George, I’m sure he was buffered.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

What?

US army engineers say they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as Saturday and inundate thousands of homes and farms in Louisiana's Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm's way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.

[...]

Opening the sluice will release a torrent that could submerge about 7,770 sq kms under as much as 7.6m of water, but that should take the pressure off the downstream levees protecting New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.

  alJazeera

I thought those levies were supposed to have been fixed after Katrina. Hmmmm? Rather than find out, we’ll just destroy thousands of other livelihoods.

....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

One Week Left!

Are you ready for the Rapture Saturday, May 21?

I know I am. And I'll be very disappointed if God's children are still here next Sunday.

Reality Check

American WWII hero and Nuremburg prosecutor interviewed regarding bin Laden here.

Before I Go...

At first, the June cover of Men's Health seems par for the course for a magazine that aims to stoke male anxieties about physical perfection to sell products to men the same way that the beauty industry has done to women for decades: a half-naked man in ridiculously good shape, staring at the camera with eyes that dare you to look with awe, envy, and not just a little sexual interest. But if you look at the headline, the image becomes shocking. The man with the sort of abs that The Situation would kill for isn't just some male model or athlete, but a Republican congressman from Illinois, Aaron Schock.

It's a choice that suggests that the congressman intends to live up to his name. It seems incongruous for him to pose half-naked – not just because of his office, but because of his track record as an outspoken opponent of gay rights and an enemy of sexual liberation who voted to defund Planned Parenthood.

  UK Guardian

Not incongruous at all. Par for the Republican conservative sex-obsessed course.

In many irony-devoid rightwing circles, there is no such thing as too outlandish a display of masculinity, and the very idea that such a thing might invite a gaze that sexualises – and therefore feminises – the peacocking man seems to have passed notice.

Ah yes, the irony they personify.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Oh, By the Way

Did you know that the Middle East is awash in uprisings and destruction? We, of course, had no part in that, Mr. Huckabee, I know.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

From Super Power to Super Pariah

While we are busy trying to figure out a way to destroy Julian Assange, elsewhere he is receiving awards.

ht Glenn Greenwald

Assange was awarded this peace prize yesterday because -- unlike other Peace Prize recipients -- his work has been relentlessly devoted to impeding wars (not escalating them) by exposing the truth about the destruction and suffering they spawn.