Edward Snowden has given an interview to the South China Morning Post. In it, he says that he will provide more revelations in due course, something that Glenn Greenwald has also said will happen. I am certain that they are they are telling the truth and it will happen. [Read more…]
Jesse Berney tries to clear things up with the NSA, just to avoid any misunderstandings.
Mike Huckabee is a smooth-talking bigot but he said something to the annual convention of his Southern Baptist church that I totally agree with, and that is that they should give up their tax-exempt status. He wants to do this so that his church can go into full throttle battle mode against the right to abortions and homosexuality. [Read more…]
I want bring attention to this video of the appalling treatment of a woman who complained of being sexually assaulted by a court official. It happened in a Las Vegas courthouse under the nose of a judge and I learned of it via Max Read.
States that are embracing modernity tend to be moving in the direction of greater acceptance of equal rights for the LGBT community. But Russia is clearly going in the other direction. By a vote of 436-0, the Russian Duma has passed an anti-gay bill that bans “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”. It seems likely that it will pass the upper house and be signed into law by Russian president Vladimir Putin. [Read more…]
It has been fascinating to observe the reactions to the Edward Snowden whistleblowing, There has clearly been an immediate groundswell of popular support for Snowden among ordinary people who see him as a young person who had the courage of his convictions to risk his entire future to reveal government wrongdoing. There are already over 60,000 signatures on a White House petition calling Snowden a “national hero” and that he “should be immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.” Of course this is not going to happen but it must be encouraging for Snowden to know that so many people support him. [Read more…]
Whenever I have seen a ship being launched in the past, it has always slid into the water stern first and it is usually pretty smooth and graceful. In this video, the ship was launched sideways and went into the water like a diver’s belly flop, splashing water over a vast area that not only soaked spectators who tried to run away but sent debris flying dangerously toward them. It is a wonder no one was hurt. For a moment I thought that the ship had actually capsized. [Read more…]
As expected, there has been a lot of chatter about the personal life of Edward Snowden, even to the extent of details about his girl friend. What surprised me is the amount of time spent on the fact that he did not graduate from high school and had some community college education, and yet at the age of just 29 had a very well-paying job with a major firm that gave him access to a lot of top-secret government information. This is clearly troubling to some people. [Read more…]
One other argument that is being made against Snowden is that by revealing that the US government is spying on practically everyone wherever it can, it has given valuable information to the terrorists and is thus aiding the enemy because it compromises the security of the US. This is absurd. [Read more…]