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❝ I am one of the many people who are in love with the sparse, hypnotic and majestic landscape of Iceland and its wonderful people. In case, you need more convincing, check out this website and some stunning photographs. Then pack your bags and go visit. It might be cold in winters, but still stark and amazing. Iceland haunts me!
— Om Malik
Thanks, gocomics.org
❝ ‘I’ve been waiting 40 years for someone like you.” Those were the first words Daniel Ellsberg spoke to me when we met last year. Dan and I felt an immediate kinship; we both knew what it meant to risk so much – and to be irrevocably changed – by revealing secret truths.
❝ One of the challenges of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency; who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint. They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths. It is a double tragedy: what begins as a survival strategy ends with the compromise of the human being it sought to preserve and the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice…
❝ A single act of whistleblowing doesn’t change the reality that there are significant portions of the government that operate below the waterline, beneath the visibility of the public. Those secret activities will continue, despite reforms. But those who perform these actions now have to live with the fear that if they engage in activities contrary to the spirit of society – if even a single citizen is catalysed to halt the machinery of that injustice – they might still be held to account. The thread by which good governance hangs is this equality before the law, for the only fear of the man who turns the gears is that he may find himself upon them.
Hope lies beyond, when we move from extraordinary acts of revelation to a collective culture of accountability within the intelligence community. Here we will have taken a meaningful step towards solving a problem that has existed for as long as our government.
❝ Not all leaks are alike, nor are their makers…There are authorised leaks and also permitted disclosures. It is rare for senior administration officials to explicitly ask a subordinate to leak a CIA officer’s name to retaliate against her husband, as appears to have been the case with Valerie Plame. It is equally rare for a month to go by in which some senior official does not disclose some protected information that is beneficial to the political efforts of the parties but clearly “damaging to national security” under the definitions of our law…
If harmfulness and authorisation make no difference, what explains the distinction between the permissible and the impermissible disclosure?
The answer is control. A leak is acceptable if it is not seen as a threat, as a challenge to the prerogatives of the institution. But if all the disparate components of the institution – not just its head but its hands and feet, every part of its body – must be assumed to have the same power to discuss matters of concern, that is an existential threat to the modern political monopoly of information control, particularly if we’re talking about disclosures of serious wrongdoing, fraudulent activity, unlawful activities…
RTFA. Please. Edward Snowden provides historical context and constitutional validation for transparency our government is scared crapless about enabling – even by an act of courage.
❝ …Jean-Michel Jarre and Edward Snowden recently released a track they worked on together called “Exit.” It’s a freaky and aggressive little piece of electronic music that calls for an equally strange visual. Well today, The Verge has the premiere of the song’s new video, and it’s definitely strange.
Writers and editors at the Verge must live in a small bubble universe tied to days of yore when the Cleveland Browns were dominant in American football. Or Pat Boone was fashionable outside of Bill O’Reilly’s musings.
❝ The video itself is… quite literal. In case you somehow missed the fact that the song was about surveillance and our uneasy relationship with technology, the video should make that clear. As the song plays, the clip hits you with jittery flashes of news headlines, satellites in space, security cameras, and other paranoid imagery; like hands rapidly typing on keyboards, phones, and men in sunglasses. There’s also an old interview with Snowden in there, now adorned with Matrix-style falling code.
“Exit” comes off Jarre’s upcoming album, Electronica 2: The Heart Of Noise, out May 6th
Lizzie – you really should get out more. 🙂
As a really old cranky old geek I’m always astounded when someone I first heard a long, long time ago [not in a galaxy far, far away, though] is still around. I recall premiers of “Oxygen” by Jarre in the 1970’s. While comparisons to Edgar Varese were inevitable, classical music lovers knowledgeable of experiments like this back to the 1930’s were accepting, interested in his work.
The merger of these two, Jarre and Snowden, is a success. Obama and the NSA would try to have it banned if this were 1948. The year Jarre was born.
❝ Jane Mayer’s remarkable new book makes it abundantly clear that the Kochs, and the closely connected group of billionaires they’ve helped assemble, have spent [million of dollar$] over the past few decades, and that in the process they’ve distorted American politics in devastating ways, impairing the chances that we’ll effectively respond to climate change, reducing voting rights in many states, paralyzing Congress, and radically ratcheting up inequality.
❝ In this election cycle, for instance, the Kochs have publicly stated that they and their compatriots will spend $889 million, more than either the Republican or Democratic parties spent last time around. According to a recent analysis in Politico, their privatized political network is backed by a group of several hundred extremely rich fellow donors who often meet at off-the-record conclaves organized by the Kochs at desert resorts. It has at least 1,200 full-time staffers in 107 offices nationwide, or three and a half times as many as the Republican National Committee. They may be the most important unelected political figures in American history.
❝ As a result, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money — a detailed accounting of their rise and rise — is absolutely necessary reading for anyone who wants to make sense of our politics. Lay aside the endless punditry about Donald’s belligerence or Hillary’s ambition; Mayer is telling the epic story of America in our time. It is a triumph of investigative reporting, perhaps not surprising for a journalist who has won most of the awards her profession has to offer. But she had to cut through the secrecy that these men have carefully cultivated, unraveling an endless list of front groups. And she had to do it despite real intimidation; apparently an arm of what some have called “the Kochtopus” hired private investigators to try to dig up dirt on her personal and professional life, a tactic that failed because there wasn’t any. She’s a pro, and she’s given the world a full accounting of what had been a shadowy and largely unseen force.
I can’t say more than that. I needn’t say more than that. If you’re the book-reading sort – and I hope you still are – get this and give it a read. More equipment in the battle for economic and political democracy in America.
And read the details in the review. A bit more motivation, eh?
Thanks, gocomics,org
There are some sharper cartoons around, today, that might fit the edges of this blog better. But, I just couldn’t pass this one up.
My favorite bumper sticker, here in New Mexico, says, “Hey, man, I’ve been this way since 1969.”
Actually, I’ve been this way since about 1955. 🙂
A Justice Department report says the US government questioned, arrested or subpoenaed journalists 14 times during 2014, including the high-profile subpoena issued to New York Times reporter James Risen.
Former US attorney general Eric Holder said in February 2014 that the department would release information on how law enforcement officials use its tool to investigate the news media.
The four-page annual report released on Friday includes 14 incidents, including the subpoena issued to Risen, who refused to divulge his CIA source for a chapter of his book about the Iran nuclear program. The informant, Jeffrey Sterling, was convicted on nine counts in January.
“Today’s report is an important step in the Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to promote the freedom of the press, to keep the American people informed and to improve transparency and accountability regarding media-related process,” said attorney general Loretta Lynch.
Also included in the report are a handful of attorney general-authorized questions, arrests, charges or subpoenas for court orders or search warrants.
Most of the cases involved the department attempting to get information about criminal investigations obtained through reporting, often with the news companies voluntarily submitting to questioning or complying with the department’s request…
Lynch said the report includes the information, so blah, blah, blah-de-blah.
You don’t need the actual words, do you? If you’re the sort of curious mind, the kind of individual who feels individual liberties must not be set aside in the normal course of growth and progress, you know the boiler-plate phrases our politicians are accustomed to rolling out to make us all calm and quiet.
Well, most of us. The ones who think limits on political parties, a tame press, theocracy and ignorance are all part of the natural state of affairs.
Click to enlarge
Thanks, Huffington Post
Thanks, SmartAlix
Eideard 