The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. As I’ve written many times, one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush War on Terror and National Security State into their biggest proponents: exactly what the CIA presciently and excitedly predicted in 2008 would happen with Obama’s election. -Glenn Greenwald

Apparently, US Senator Dick Durbin asked the NSA Chief at a hearing today how Edward Snowden—the NSA leaker—arrived at his sensitive position of employment with the NSA without ever having graduated high school (I think Snowden eventually got his GED or something equivalent, but don’t quote me on that).

Don’t know about you, but I can’t help but think that a lot of people like him  are probably mad because Snowden didn’t get his proper, mandated, US ‘education’, if you know what I mean. Why would you ask that question? Obviously, Snowden was skilled at what he does. He learned his trade by being passionate about engaging with technology and the Internet and teaching himself, like a lot of people of my generation. He was allegedly making upwards of $200,000/year for being skilled at what he does. I don’t have a degree in computer science, but I taught myself a lot starting at a young age and can do and know just about as much as someone who does have a degree.

The formal US education system remains a joke, and so to is the over-reliance on degrees when it comes to employment.

Another joke is Rep. Peter King, who thinks that Glenn Greenwald should be charged with some kind of crime for doing his job as an investigative journalist working for a free press.

In the not-too-distant future, people don’t seek asylum in the United States. They seek asylum from the United States.

In a near-future, hyper-militarized, hyper-networked, dystopian America shaped by fear, every citizen walks around like zombies in a derivative, personalized, corporate-sponsored meta-reality wearing mandatory Google Glass equivalents—crowdsourced surveillance. One of many always-on apps will randomly choose a citizen to receive a drone camera feed that is about to strike a target. As a formal test of patriotism, the citizen is given a choice of remotely ‘pushing the button’ and watching the aftermath (upon which they will receive a bunch of Walmart credit). If they refuse to initiate the strike, they will be ‘disconnected’ and exiled from the networked society to live their life performing menial labor to uphold and maintain the technoclass.

compagno-dell-ombra:

bulletbakas:

Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama administration

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian,requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

Oops! Obama might have to crack a joke on a late night comedy show to get out of this one. Good thing I don’t use Verizon.

While it should be kept in mind that these warrants for the phone logs on Verizon do not include actual contents of phone calls, that doesn’t make this any less venal or despicable. Didn’t The Obama Administration promise to repeal the Patriot Act? Now the President is hiding behind it every chance he gets.

When it comes to the systematic erosion of civil rights, the Obama Administration has been one of the worst offenders in recent history, the (mostly rhetorical and legislatively shallow) bone it threw to folks regarding gay marriage aside.

I lean so far left you have to tilt your head sideways to see me, but fuck Barack Obama. Seriously.

The more you know… (lol @ late night comedy charm offensive line).

I honestly don’t understand this unspoken debt of gratitude everybody’s supposed to have for the US military. President Obama mentioned this in a somewhat admonitory tone today in a speech, that the American people don’t fully grasp the sacrifices made and costs endured by soldiers, and that the military is slipping from the public consciousness. There’s a good reason for this general disengagement with the US military if you ask me (see sexual assault scandal, leadership problems, Iraq debacle/needlessly destabilizing an entire society, indiscriminate droning, indefinite detention, and more). Ever since WWII, I think you can easily make an argument for the negatives outweighing the positives.

This gratitude, to me, is a bullshit sentiment in light of all that stuff. In spite of the tired line repeated over and over, there’s no imperiled freedom being protected while abroad. The US military is mainly an instrument to further agendas (whose high tendency to backfire would be amusing if the stakes and price were not so high). It’s offensive, not defensive or protective. People, I think, see this dissonance at hand, and either they mostly ignore the military as not worth their time, or they’re upset and speak out. If anything, I don’t feel gratitude, but I do feel sorry for the people who get caught up in it out of necessity or idealism and discover it’s not what they signed up for. And I feel angry toward those that consciously contribute to the historical inertia.

socialismartnature:

I hate this country’s hypocritical bullshittery concerning the “sanctity” of law, due process, and the “rights” of citizens. There is actually a debate amongst media pundits and politicians as to whether or not he should even be tried in a civilian court! Why don’t we just fucking declare martial law already and get it over with?

Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights? [Slate]

kateoplis:

The Rise of Americans With No Religion

[Potential Bioshock spoilers]

Re America as a religious country: in this new Bioshock game I’m playing, it lays out a vision of an alternate history where a floating American city, Columbia, was conceived around the early 1900s, and the founding fathers and other key American figures in the early history are revered holy figures (Washington, Jefferson, Edison) that people pray to.

laaurel:

This gets worse with every paragraph.

I read stuff like this, and I re-experience this kind of shame of living in and being associated with a country that can (and actually wants to) go around the world and screw people over with relative impunity. The Iraq War was a joke—like a sick, fucked-up joke. I remember watching the bombardments live, and the line of tanks streaming into Iraq with embedded reporters, and feeling like ‘what the hell is going on here?’ And it’s just a nightmare that gets worse and worse, a quagmire, a Vietnam so ironically and painfully soon after people thought that that specific history would serve as a deterrent and an enduring monument to the United States’ sins.

Shane Todd was an American engineer who was found dead in his apartment in Singapore in June 2012. Local authorities said Todd had committed suicide, but, based on various circumstantial evidence and testimonies, his parents believe he may actually have been murdered, possibly in connection with the work he had been doing at the Institute for Micro Electronics (“IME”), part of the Singaporean government-run Agency for Science, Technology and Research (“A*STAR”) involving a gallium nitride-powered amplifying device for the Chinese telecom company Huawei.^[1]

Todd’s family noted that police had failed to properly investigate the scene of the crime, that the police neglected to dust for fingerprints, that the suicide notes ostensibly left by Todd were out of character, that the crime scene did not match the description given by authorities, and that a pathologist in the United States found that his body showed evidence of a struggle, rather than a suicide.^{[citation needed]}

In the months leading up to his death, Todd had told his family that he was increasingly anxious at work, and worried the project he was working on with an unnamed Chinese company may have been endangering U.S. national security. He had also told his family that he felt he was under threat because of his work with the Chinese.^[1]

findingschmomo:

browncoat-named-cauthon:

excitabletortoise:

god bless america

I hope this the last remaining photos of our presidents

Is no one going to talk about Ronald McDonald fighting in Clinton’s background.

uh-mazing. lol, this sums up the ethos of the US (Badass Inc.) pretty well. Taming the “wilds” with well-written words and a well-placed fist, apparently.  Also, Ben Franklin Wolverine. 

A good summary of today’s proceedings, in which Bradley Manning spent over an hour reading a 35-page statement he prepared to the military tribunal trying him for crimes related to the leaking of classified information to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organization. He pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him, which carry in total up to a 20-year sentence. Importantly, he pleaded not guilty to the most serious accusation of ‘aiding the enemy’ (which carries a potential life sentence).

In the statement, Manning details some of the events and thoughts leading up to and after the leak. Another thing of note is that he does not implicate Julian Assange in the leaks.