In addition to Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, the new Greenwald-Omidya venture has hired Dan Froomkin and Liliana Segura, both well-known journalists with an independent turn of mind. [Read more…]
Starting today, there will be cuts in the benefits paid to poor families under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program. [Read more…]
For those who hate seeing ads and/or those who would like to financially support this network of blogs, Jason Thibeault at Lousy Canuck has set up a system that will give you ad-free access by purchasing a subscription. [Read more…]
The repeated revelations of how the US and UK governments have spied massively on everyone has had the desired effect of turning public opinion against this practice and now all those responsible are trying to evade blame. The revelations of spying on the leaders of friendly nations has been particularly embarrassing for the elites. So we have now entered the stage where everyone who had a hand in this (the White House, the NSA, Congress) is trying to blame everyone else for the fiasco. This is a good thing because it is when there are splits among the ruling elites that we get a glimpse of how things really work. [Read more…]
I watched the film in its recommended 3D version and it was enjoyable. The film belongs to the genre of disaster films where people are stranded in a remote place because of an unfortunate series of accidents. There is no place more remote than outer space and the set up for this film is when a space shuttle repair mission to the Hubble telescope is bombarded by space debris that causes havoc. [Read more…]
When we think of those states the US that are likely to be the last to accept same-sex marriage equality, the Bible Belt in the deep south tend to figure highly, with Mississippi and Alabama vying for the top (bottom?) spot. Al Madrigal of The Daily Show does some careful research to see which state gets the trophy and finds a surprising result. [Read more…]
In a document obtained by Al Jazeera under the Freedom of Information Act, the NSA urges its officials to use 9/11 as a sound bite to deflect any questions about their snooping programs, giving them explicit language to use. And sure enough, NSA director Keith Alexander used it in his congressional testimony. [Read more…]
It turns out that the NSA was spying on all Vatican communications too, including those of pope Francis even before he became the pope and was just cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. The report is from an Italian newsmagazine and has not been confirmed but given all that we know about the NSA’s activities, it would not be at all surprising. [Read more…]
And the Edward Snowden hits keep coming.
Barton Gellman, one of the outlets for the NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden, has another big story that expands yet again the range of spying done by the NSA on American companies and Americans, even to the extent of storing actual content and not just metadata. [Read more…]