YOU CAN’T PLAY FAST & LOOSE WITH THE 5TH AMENDMENT
https://www.aclu.org/national-security/al-aulaqi-v-panetta
(Might be helpful for those who think Congress can pass laws that are on their face UNCONSTITUTIONAL and/or that the Executive can make/implement secret interpretations at variance with a law’s intent and legislative history.)
By Elizabeth Murray, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
This cuts us hoi polloi out of a very rich – indeed, invaluable – source of raw, unadulterated information to analyze. I’ll bet that the hoi aristoi – the favored journalists, newspapers, and academics – will still get the feed, as long as they remain “cooperative,” apply the approved spin, and don’t act up. That may be why there is no hue and cry this time from the usual quarters. Have they ALL been co-opted?
For the rest of us, it will now be much harder convincingly to expose distortion and spin, since we shall lack access to the original raw material being spun. For example, we will no longer be able to prove that senior Iranian leaders never threatened to “drive Israel into the sea,” or “wipe Israel off the map.”
Perhaps it is the case that one has to have had deep experience working in the political science sub-discipline of media analysis to realize what lucrative intelligence it can yield – today just as much as in the past. Proper analysis of a foreign leader’s remarks is often of far more intelligence value than the hundred million conversations that NSA collects every day and adds to the haystack against the day one or two might come in handy. Or as Dick Cheney has put it, “You never know when you might need it.”
The loss of access to original open sources is a major blow to those of us who know what a fertile field open media is to plow. This decision will be very bad news if it is not reversed.
The crowd funded ‘Thank You Ed Snowden’ bus ad campaign, launched this week, was organized by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).
“The elites in D.C. may not ride the bus, but they can’t avoid reading the bus!” the group wrote on it’s donation site.
http://rt.com/usa/thank-you-snowden-buses-311/
Ray comments to RT on Karzai’s latest flip-flop; Nov. 21, 2013
(Ray’s segment runs from 2:46-12:40.)
By Silkie Carlo, November 2013
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/finding-snowden
This is a follow-up to Silkie Carlo’s initial article of Sept. 2013 (see link below “In the Wistleblower Chalet”) describing us whistleblowers at OHM2013 near Amsterdam wondering how and when they might get to Moscow to present the Sam Adams Award for Integrity to Edward Snowden.
What happened was remarkable: the 3,000 participants at OHM2013 passed the hat and collected enough to “crowdsource” our travel; WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison worked out the arrangements in Russia; and, Voila!, there we were, presenting the award and having a long, relaxed conversation with Ed Snowden.
Ray interviewed on Skype by presstv, Nov. 18, 2013 (5 min.)
Excerpts of Ray’s talk in Bellingham, WA, Oc 22, 2013 (about 30 min.)
Dave McConnell of radio station KSVR’s “Speak Up, Speak Out” program recorded the talk and broadcast excerpts on Nov. 13.
Ed Snowden’s remarks to Ray & visiting whistleblowers on Oct. 9; Ray comments on NSA crimes (domestic) & adolescent overreach (foreign), and describes the incestuous system that breeds morally defective generals like former NSA & CIA head Michael Hayden. Hayden, the 1st NSA director to trash the 4th Amendment, now stars as CNN expert defending his own crimes and those of his successor, Gen. Keith Alexander.
Ray interviewed by Mike McCormick, KEXP 90.3 FM, Seattle, Nov. 8, 2013 (56 min.)
The perpetrators? The usual suspects, of course: Feinstein, Rogers, complicit corporate media…