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Remaking the world from Madison, Wisconsin

I'm on my way to Madison, Wisconsin, and I hope you are too, and not just for the beer and (veggie) bratwursts. Here are seven other good reasons:
· The Student Power Convergence, Aug. 1-5 (ending now, but folks sticking around).
· The Democracy Convention, Aug. 7-11.
· The Veterans For Peace Convention, Aug. 7-11.
· Marking the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with opponents of war.
· The opening of Dirty Wars with after-screening talks with Jeremy Scahill.
· The daily singing and protesting in the state capitol!
· And the big town hall meeting, Aug. 7, on "Illegal Wars, Torture & Spying: Millions Demanded Bush's Impeachment; Should Obama be Impeached for Continuing Bush's Crimes?"

Activists are converging on Madison, allowing for cross-fertilization and creative planning of future actions for peace and justice in the United States. I recently invited Roshan Bliss of the Student Power Convergence, Ben Manski of Democracy Convention, and Doug Rawlings of Veterans For Peace to discuss these events on my radio show, Talk Nation Radio. Click and take a listen.

Mythical creature sightings: Robust congressional oversight and Nessy in the Potomac

Like all schoolchildren in America, Congress is now on summer recess. Predictably, while unsupervised, they have taken to playground shoving and taunting in earnest. A troika of ardent NSA defenders took to the airwaves Sunday to claim that they were fully informed. Meanwhile a member of the small but growing wing of Congress with the reading comprehension skills to digest the Constitution took to social media to dispute them.

Thursday afternoon at 2:31 an email was sent to Congressional staffers through the House email system called “E-Dear Colleagues.” The system electronically mimics the old style of sending paper memos between lawmakers in what was called a “Dear Colleagues” letter. According to a staffer who was interviewed about the email, this system is high traffic and as a result is used by “less than half of Congressional staffers.” He went on to describe the email list as opt-in only by topic and “kind of spammy.” Most effective communication and appointments made between lawmakers happen through their staff schedulers.

The foreign cloud

The latest bombshell revelation from Edward Snowden via the Guardian newspaper is a program called XKEYSCORE. In a previous article, the Free Press released a drop down menu that allowed NSA analysts to simply fill in the blank defining how an internet user is foreign.

Meanwhile, the redacted 32-page XKEYSCORE document proves that not metadata but content is viewed and stored. The document was created in early 2008 and claimed the NSA kept a rolling buffer for 3 days of content. The NSA has built up its storage capacity massively since then, including bringing online a huge new facility in Utah. It is not clear if XKEYSCORE now has a rolling buffer of months or years. [View Here]

Lies, revelations and aborted transparency hearings

Having agreed to Putin's conditions of not making additional revelations, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden packed his bag and moved to an undisclosed location somewhere in Russia after having been granted temporary asylum. The revelations continued anyway as the Guardian released another top secret document detailing another NSA spying program called XKEYSCORE. The heavily redacted XKEYSCORE document details how the NSA searches internet users actual communications contents as opposed to metadata.

Parsing the public promises to Putin by Holder

On July 26, Attorney General Eric Holder made promises to Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia via Russia's Justice Minister, Alexander Konovalov. In his open letter, Holder claimed that the United States would not execute Edward Snowden for his alleged crimes.

“The charges he faces do not carry that possibility, and the United States would not seek the death penalty even if Mr. Snowden were charged with additional death penalty-eligible crimes,” the letter stated. The letter further explains that Snowden does not face torture on American soil prior to his conviction for espionage, because “Torture is unlawful in the United States.”

The Russia government has vowed that it will not turn Snowden over to American authorities. The United States has threatened to cancel several high level diplomatic meetings over the flap. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has called for a boycott of the 2014 Olympics if Snowden is not returned. Some sources have speculated that Obama may cancel his trip to Moscow after the G-20 Summit over Russia's issuance of temporary asylum to the whistle-blower turned world’s most hunted man.

Bringing Gitmo to the Senate

This is the 57th day of Kauff's hunger strike.

On July 30 we had a combined action both inside and outside the Hart Senate Bldg. A gaunt looking Elliott Adams, on day 73 of his hunger strike, managed to get there from his home in upstate NY and spoke outside the Hart. Perhaps not quite as gaunt, I also spoke to those assembled. Cynthia Papermaster also spoke. Diane Wilson was there and spoke passionately. Tighe and Gail from CODEPINK with Dr. Margaret Flowers commenting staged a simulated forced feeding which was so well done and powerful that for me at least, it was hard to watch.

Seven of us, six VFP members and one from CODEPINK, Cynthia Papermaster, Mike Tork, Margaret Flowers, Will Thomas, Crystal Zevon, Jay Wenk and myself went inside to read compiled accurate information put in first person mode statements from prisoners at Guantanamo and from prisoners in long-term solitary confinement here in the U.S.

John Kerry needs an intervention

If John Kerry was beating his children and promising to stop "very very soon" and then explaining that he meant "very very soon" in a geological sense, he'd be forced to resign his office.

If we even discovered that John Kerry had once beaten one of his children, even many years ago, perhaps shortly after he returned from killing people in Vietnam, he'd be forced to resign.

Imagine if we were to discover that John Kerry was actually murdering children, and women, and men, using missiles shot out of flying robots and promising to stop "very very soon" and explaining that what he meant by that was "I'd like to see you try to stop me you goddamn primitive Pashtun peons."

Would we respond?

We didn't respond when he claimed Bush won Ohio. How'd that work out?

What if we were about to consider possibly responding, and maybe even growing indignant, and John Kerry stood up on a pile of corpses and screamed "Wolf! Giant ass wolf right behind you! Arabic speaking wolf! Wolf! Wolf!"

Help end Whistleblower Vanunu's 10 year struggle for asylum

Israel's Nuclear Whistle Blower was born in Morocco and he has requested asylum from many states ever since he emerged from 18 years [most all in solitary confinement] in a windowless tomb sized cell on 21 April 2004.

Israel has claimed they can not allow Vanunu the right to leave Israel because he "still has a secret" about their WMD Facility that he has not set foot into since 1985.

The Establishment of Israel's very statehood was contingent upon upholding the UN UNIVERSAL DECLARATION of HUMAN RIGHTS and ALL Member States are obligated to hold ALL other Member States to it.

Article 19 enshrines: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Article 13 affirms: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

Urban crime wave

The Manning verdict: Why throw the book when you can catapult the library?

Army private and whistle-blower Bradley Manning was found guilty of 19 separate charges at his court martial on Tuesday. He was not convicted of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, which carried the death penalty. The convictions include six violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. These convictions alone could cost Manning 60 years behind bars. The espionage convictions are considered especially chilling to the press, as now news “sources” can be prosecuted for much more serious charges. Taken together with the recent 4th circuit court of appeals decision against James Risen, which allows a journalist to be jailed for not revealing a source, the net effect is will be to force the press to participate in the potential life imprisonment of any person who reveals war crimes if the government classifies documents related to those crimes.

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