January 14, 2016

Citizens United files lawsuit for emails from Chelsea Clinton

The conservative group Citizens United on Thursday filed a lawsuit to gain access to emails between Chelsea Clinton and top aides to her mother, Hillary Clinton, from when the Democratic presidential front-runner served as secretary of State.

The Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, first reported by Politico, also requests emails from Clinton Foundation foreign policy chief Amitabh Desai, longtime aide to former president Bill Clinton Justin Cooper, and Oscar Flores, the manager of the Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y., home. But Citizens United President David Bossie told Politico that Chelsea Clinton is the primary figure targeted in the suit.

“The real interesting person here is of course Chelsea Clinton, who is the lead person,” he said.

“We want to see much more about what Chelsea Clinton was up to because she now has put herself out here on the campaign trail, along with Bill Clinton, as a lead surrogate,” he added.

Asked whether Chelsea Clinton was off-limits in her mother’s White House run, Bossie responded: “Absolutely not.”

“She is somebody who has been a player, a senior adviser to her mother,” he said. “She is an officer, somebody with fiduciary responsibility at the Clinton Family Foundation.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/265884-citizens-united-files-suit-for-chelsea-clinton-emails

At least nobody is trying to defend that CU ruling anymore...

January 13, 2016

How Brazil became a leader in cyber surveillance and censorship

RIO DE JANEIRO — A São Paulo judge sent shock waves across Brazil last month with a ruling that required Brazilian telecommunications operators to block the use of the instant messaging platform WhatsApp for 48 hours. Less than 13 hours later, another São Paulo judge reversed the decision, restoring service. But in the meantime, as many as 100 million Brazilians had been seriously inconvenienced, and civil libertarians around the world looked on with dismay.

Brazilians take their social media very seriously. The country has one of the fastest growing populations of Internet users in the world. Online tools like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp are used not only to express opinions; they are an affordable alternative to exorbitantly priced Brazilian telecom providers. One recent study in Brazil found that WhatsApp was used by 93 percent of those surveyed who had Internet access.

The official reason for the judge’s decision to suspend WhatsApp was because its parent company, Facebook, refused to comply with requests to provide personal information and communications records to prosecutors in an investigation into organized crime and drug trafficking. This is not the first time that the Brazilian authorities have jousted with tech companies. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the crimes being investigated, the judge’s action was reckless and represents a potentially longer-term threat to the freedoms of Brazilians.

The ruling was not entirely out of the blue. Brazil’s Congress has been considering legislation that would roll back key provisions of the country’s freshly minted digital bill of rights, known as the Marco Civil da Internet, which was passed in 2014. The new proposal is expected to make it easier for prosecutors to access citizens’ personal information without the nuisance of having to obtain a court order.

Described by critics as “the big spy bill,” it would require Brazilians to register personal details like their home address, telephone number and other private information when accessing websites. It would also expose citizens to possible charges of libel for comments made on social media. At a time when political dissent is vigorous, this bill would surely chill debate...

...These latest efforts to reduce Brazilians’ digital rights are in stark contrast to the country’s former reputation as a champion of Internet freedom. In the wake of scandals over the United States’ National Security Agency’s collection of Brazilian citizens’ communications and phone-tapping of top government officials in 2013, Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, projected the digital freedom agenda onto the global stage — even raising the issue at the United Nations.

https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/687021371390562305
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/opinion/brazils-digital-backlash.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0


As always, Greenwald and Snowden were unavailable for comment...

I told you all a long time ago this Snowald sham existed only to weaken the FVEY while ignoring the rest of the world, and that time would eventually prove me right... So far, slowly but surely, almost every point has been indisputably in my favor...

So -- Any of you Snowdenistas ready to finally admit I was right when I said everybody spies? Oh, of course not! So continue to lob random insults and accusations at me, put me on ignore, and let this thread drop, since that is all you know how to do...

January 12, 2016

David Bowie - Queen Bitch

January 11, 2016

All because of a sausage??

Speaking for the first time about his ordeal, mine worker Michael McFeat said weapon-wielding thugs tried to run him off the road as he fled the former Soviet country in fear for his life.

The 39-year-old sparked a diplomatic incident when he compared the chuchuk sausage – a hugely popular local delicacy – to a horse’s private parts.

His co-workers at the Kumtor gold mine were so enraged by his comment on social media they called a strike and demanded Michael be arrested for race hate crimes.

He’s now revealed he had to be smuggled out of the mine in the back of an ambulance.

His harrowing nine-hour escape ended with him being arrested at the airport and warned by police his comment could have started a war between Britain and Kyrgyzstan.

Now safely back home in Abernethy, Perthshire, with wife Amanda and two children, Abbie, eight, and Logan, five, Michael said: “I’m just relieved to be back in one piece.”

Michael’s troubles began when he shared a picture of his work colleagues enjoying a “fantastic Hogmanay feast” at a party in the mine’s canteen.

He added the caption: “The Kyrgyz people queuing out of the door for their special delicacy the horse’s penis!!!”.

While the post was widely thought to be a joke, Michael believed the traditional chuchuk dish was actually a horse’s penis, not a sausage stuffed with horse meat and spices.

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/british-man-compares-kyrgyz-delicacy-to-horses-penis-causes-strike-at-gold-mine-gets-deported--ZJ1Kv5ZCjg

https://www.sundaypost.com/inside-the-sunday-edition/my-terror-over-kyrgyzstan-horse-sausage-gate-mob-who-tried-to-kill-me/

January 11, 2016

WikiLeaks tried to make David Bowie's death all about Julian Assange and people are angry

Eight years earlier, in 2004, the magazine listed him at number 39 in their top 100 greatest artists of all time.

News broke on Monday morning that the music legend had sadly died, which prompted thousands of tributes to pour in on social media.

But WikiLeaks, which publishes leaked documents from anonymous sources, tried to make it all about Julian Assange - its Ecuadorian Embassy holed-up founder.

Assange was the subject of the Rolling Stone interview when Bowie last appeared on the front cover.
WikiLeaks tweeted...

Of the three people on this Rolling Stone cover, two are dead. https://t.co/yf0iGKNteH pic.twitter.com/O1Awnr6W5Y
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 11, 2016

People are pretty emotional about it.

@wikileaks goddamnit dude take a break from the marketing julian
— Alexander Spamalot (@KendamaGendale) January 11, 2016

@wikileaks bad taste
— tem limite de caract (@sk0rcher) January 11, 2016

@wikileaks and the living one is a wanker who feels the need to insert himself into everything because attention. Fuck off
— Count Derpula (@purserj) January 11, 2016

@wikileaks Guys, not cool. This isn’t about you.
— Aral Balkan (@aral) January 11, 2016

@wikileaks @IanKerr Fuck off, arsehole.
— Sarf East Caff (@SarfEastCaff) January 11, 2016

@wikileaks wow. Are you mad?
— Jeremy Sear (@jeremysear) January 11, 2016

@wikileaks Fuck off. Really. What a thoroughly shameful tweet.
— Paul Niland (@PaulNiland) January 11, 2016

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/wikileaks-tried-to-make-david-bowies-death-all-about-julian-assange-and-people-are-angry--bklsUR2wV3x

January 11, 2016

One tweet explains how twisted politics has become today:

Patrick Monahan @pattymo

2004:
DEAN: BYAHHHHH
PUBLIC: Whoa this guy's nuts

2016:
TRUMP: Say what you want about Hitler, but the man was organized
PUBLIC: Carry on

11:30 AM - 10 Jan 2016


https://twitter.com/pattymo/status/686223629873459205

January 8, 2016

Killer laughed after decapitating Army veteran, court is told

Daniel Wozniak told police that he laughed as he cut the head off the man he had shot to death a day earlier.

"I was actually smiling and laughing," Wozniak said in a videotaped interview with detectives that was shown last month in Orange County Superior Court. When one investigator asked why he laughed, Wozniak replied: "I don't know. I reached a point where I couldn't even believe I was doing this."

Prosecutors highlighted that and other gruesome scenarios Thursday as they closed their case against Wozniak, a 31-year-old community theater actor from Costa Mesa. Jurors convicted Wozniak on Dec. 16 of two counts of murder for the slayings of 26-year-old Army veteran Sam Herr and Herr's friend Juri "Julie" Kibuishi, 23, in 2010.

Prosecutors last month presented evidence that Wozniak shot Herr to death in a Los Alamitos theater on May 21, 2010, and then tried to cover it up. Wozniak used Herr's phone to lure Kibuishi to Herr's apartment, where Wozniak shot her twice in the head. The next day, prosecutors said, Wozniak ripped the pants off Kibuishi's body and propped her remains against Herr's bed to make it seem as though Herr had raped and killed her and fled.

Wozniak then returned to the theater, where he dismembered Herr's body with an ax and a saw before tossing some of the pieces into a Long Beach park, according to detectives' testimony and Wozniak's videotaped confession. Wozniak killed Herr so he could steal Herr's ATM card and access about $62,000 Herr had saved from his Army service.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-killer-laughed-after-decapitating-army-veteran-20160108-story.html

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-father-horror-dismembered-son-murder-20160104-story.html

That's a sick-assed fuck... It took five year just to convict him??

January 8, 2016

Mom found dead, Dad ODs at Children's Hospital

Wesley Landers' stance and posture were unchanged for most of his Friday arraignment until his wife was mentioned. At that moment, Landers dropped his head, closed his eyes and leaned against the lectern in front of him.

His wife – Mary Landers, 31, of Trinity, Alabama, was found dead Thursday of an apparent overdose in the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center room of their 7-month-old daughter.

Wesley Landers, also of Trinity, was found unresponsive in the bathroom with a heroin syringe in his arm, needles strewn on sink, and a loaded and chambered handgun in his pants pocket, according to court documents.

Wesley Landers was transported to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for treatment and was arrested on charges of possession of drugs, carrying a concealed weapon, having weapons while under disability and possessing drug abuse instruments.

Facebook and GoFundMe pages linked to the Landers show they were in Cincinnati seeking medical treatment for their daughter. Posts state the family was seeking assistance with covering out-of-pocket expenses for surgery the baby was undergoing on Wednesday.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2016/01/07/police-investigating-overdose-childrens-hospital/78417828/

January 8, 2016

Libertarian Flip-Flops on Burka Ban

For 24 hours, the leading Libertarian Party presidential candidate seemed like he was to the right of Donald Trump when it comes to Muslims.

In a Wednesday interview with Reason, the former governor of New Mexico said that sharia law is one of his greatest concerns, and that he would ban the Muslim head garb.

“Under sharia law, women are not afforded the same rights as men,” Johnson argued, adding that a burka hides whether a woman has been beaten. “Honor killings are allowed for under sharia law and so is deceiving non-Muslims,” he added.

On Thursday afternoon, Johnson recanted.

Admitting that his decidedly un-libertarian proposal rankled the feathers of many libertarians (and non-libertarians), Johnson told The Daily Beast: “I would not sign that legislation because I think that it would end up being government intrusion on you or I.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/07/libertarian-candidate-gary-johnson-actually-i-wouldn-t-ban-the-burqa.html


I love it when Libertarians paint themselves into ideological corners...

January 8, 2016

The British Left’s Hypocritical Embrace of Islamism

The desire to impose religion over society is otherwise known as theocracy. Being veterans of the struggle to push back against fundamentalist Christians, American liberals are well acquainted with the pitfalls of the neoconservative flirtation with the religious-right. How ironic, then, that in Europe it is those on the left—led by the Guardian—who flirt with religious theocrats. For in the UK, our theocrats are brown, from minority communities, and are overwhelmingly Muslim.

Islam is a religion like any other. Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. When expressed through violence, I call it jihadism. It is obvious to an American liberal that Christian fundamentalism must be made to respect personal choice. Likewise, it is as plain as the light of day to me—a Pakistani-British liberal Muslim—that any desire to impose any version of Islam over anyone anywhere, ever, is a fundamental violation of our basic civil liberties. But Islamism has been rising in the UK for decades. Over the years, in survey after survey, attitudes have reflected a worrying trend. A quarter of British Muslims sympathised with the Charlie Hebdo shootings. 0% have expressed tolerance for homosexuality. A third have claimed that killing for religion can be justified, while 36% have thought apostates should be killed. 40% have wanted the introduction of sharia as law in the UK and 33% have expressed a desire to see the return of a worldwide theocratic Caliphate. Is it any wonder then, that from this milieu up to 1,000 British Muslims have joined ISIS, which is more than joined the Army reserves. In a case that has come to symbolize the extent of the problem, an entire family of 12 recently migrated to the Islamic State. By any reasonable assessment, something has gone badly wrong in Britain.

But for those who I have come to call Europe’s regressive-left how could Islamist tyranny—such as burying women neck deep in the ground and stoning them to death—possibly be anything other than an authentic expression of Muslim rage at Western colonial hegemony? For don’t you know Muslims are angry? So angry, in fact, that they wish to enslave indigenous Yazidi women for sex, throw Syrian gays off tall buildings and burn people alive? All because… Israel. For Europe’s regressive-left—which is fast penetrating U.S. circles too—Muslims are not expected to be civilized. And Muslim upstarts who dare to challenge this theocratic fascism are nothing but an inconvenience to an uncannily Weimar-like populism that screams simplistically: It is all the West’s fault.

It is my fellow Muslims who suffer most from this patronizing, self-pity inspiring mollycoddling. And just as American Muslims, with some reason, fear becoming targeted by right-wing anti-Muslim prejudice, British Muslims are being spoon-fed regressive-left sedatives, encouraging a perpetual state of victimhood in order to score their petty ideological points against “the West.” In the name of cultural diversity, aspiration is being stifled, expectations have been tempered and because Muslims have their own culture don't you know, self-segregation and ghettoization have thrived.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/08/the-british-left-s-hypocritical-embrace-of-islamism.html?via=desktop&source=twitter