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Photos by: joanneleon. August, 2013.
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Here's a Twitchy feed (collection of tweets filtered by someone) about the Time magazine's Michael Grunwald salivating at the thought of Julian Assange being killed by a drone strike. There are probably a bunch of other ones in Storify, another place to collect tweets and publish them.
Time’s Michael Grunwald deletes tweet about droning Julian Assange
Grunwald tries in a number of different ways to turn himself into the victim after the blowback starts but really just makes matters worse by taking shots at both the right and left.
Huffington Post picks it up. In this article you can see some tweets that have since been deleted.
Michael Grunwald, Time Magazine Reporter, Sends Out Shocking Tweet About Julian Assange
A TIME magazine reporter caused ire on Twitter Saturday night when he said that he "can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out" Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Michael Grunwald's tweet, since deleted, was quickly met with outrage and bewilderment. Glenn Greenwald, who recently broke several revelations about NSA surveillance programs based on documents provided to him by leaker Edward Snowden, was particularly vocal in expressing his disgust with Grunwald's statement.
RT picks it up too.
Assassination TIME: Sr. journalist ‘can’t wait’ to justify drone strike that will kill Assange
The unethical and legally questionable statement made by TIME magazine’s senior national correspondent has been met with a barrage of criticism. Although Michael Grunwald deleted the comment and apologized, WikiLeaks is still pushing for his resignation.
We already know that Assange is not a fan of Time magazine. They have a history, apparently and he made a subtle jab at them on a recent Sunday morning news show. Assange fights back using the Wikileaks Twitter account.
Jeff Jarvis.
The White House credibility deficit
The NSA leaks ended the power of Obama officials to ration access. No self-respecting journalist believes what they say
According to Britons, Americans are incapable of irony – and our president is certainly proving their point.
In his address about Egypt's military coup – or whatever bowdlerizing euphemism is permitted this week in Washington – Obama condemned the notion that "security trumps individual freedom." Really?
After his press conference announcing an oversight commission for the NSA, it emerged that the NSA's truth-challenged director of national intelligence, James Clapper, would apparently oversee the oversight. [...] administration – which supposedly welcomes this discussion and at first permitted a spokesman to defend the administration on the record – tried to withdraw his quotes and replace them with a new statement.
Editorial from Bloomberg news calls for a new Church Committee.
The NSA’s Alarming Misbehavior
Under two presidents, the NSA has been found to be exceeding its legal authority, systematically “overcollecting” data and failing to exercise adequate oversight. Its leadership has obfuscated, misled the public and issued statements that now look like something very close to outright lies.
President Barack Obama, in a news conference that sounds a lot worse today than it did last week, asserted that one of the NSA’s programs “is an important tool in our effort to disrupt terrorist plots.” But he offered no evidence, so as with most things involving the NSA, no one has any idea if it’s true. That makes judging the costs and benefits of such programs extremely difficult -- the benefits are entirely secret, but the costs keep piling up in public.
[...]
There’s one branch of the government that can, and that’s Congress. Congressional inquiries are not always the most high-minded affairs. But we’ve reached the point where an expansive, intrusive and transparent investigation -- modeled on that of the Church Committee in the 1970s -- may be the best way to fully protect Americans’ security and privacy. If NSA officials find themselves under uncomfortably public and revealing scrutiny, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
Text of President Obama remarks on Egypt
The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt's interim government and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom or that might makes right. And today the United States extends its condolences to the families of those who were killed and those who were wounded.
Given the depths of our partnership with Egypt, our national security interest in this pivotal part of the world, and our belief that engagement can support a transition back to a democratically elected civilian government, we've sustained our commitment to Egypt and its people. But while we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back.
From the UK Independent's journalist, Alastair Beach, who is on the ground in Cairo, reporting on Friday's "Day of Rage" protest.
'This is not our country any more': Gun battles rage in Egypt as death toll continues to rise
Army helicopters hover over Cairo as forces continue bloody crackdown
With army helicopters hovering high over the city centre and security services marshalling firepower to continue their bloody crackdown, Egypt looked in danger of sinking into greater violence.
Last night there was no confirmed death toll, but dozens of civilians were reported to have been killed. The violence spread across the country, with deaths reported in numerous provinces, including eight in Damietta, and four in Ismailia.
“The army and the police are killing their own people,” said Mohamed Mahmoud, an Islamist who had made his way to central Cairo for a rally. With bursts of machine-gun fire rattling around the central train station, he told The Independent that “this is not our country any more”.
This morning, from the Guardian.
Egypt braces for more unrest as Muslim Brotherhood calls for fresh protests
Military-backed government signals that crackdown will continue amid defiant campaign to rebuff international criticism
Egypt braced for further unrest on Sunday after the Muslim Brotherhood called for fresh marches in Cairo and the military-backed government signalled a continuing crackdown and a defiant campaign to rebuff mounting international criticism of the killing of hundreds of Islamists over the last week.
Armoured vehicles were deployed around the presidential palace and constitutional court after the Brotherhood said its protests against the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi would go on despite the bloodshed.
The EU said it would urgently review relations with Egypt, and William Hague condemned the "disproportionate use of force by the security forces or violent actions by some demonstrators".
Hours after Egyptian security forces cleared Brotherhood protesters out of a mosque in central Cairo, state media was pumping out attacks on what it called "terrorists", accusing them of having desecrated a holy place by firing from the minaret at troops and police in the street below.
This comes from Sharif Kouddous, an independent journalist and correspondent to DemocracyNow!
I find the government's argument here to be astounding, given the way they've tried to completely control the narrative in Manning's case and the lengths to which independent journalists and bloggers had to go just to get any kind of reporting out there on it. Why are they so afraid of what Barrett Brown will say? Isn't keeping him in prison for more than a year before his trial enough? Isn't trying to throw him in jail for more than a century enough? With Manning, they had a lot more control since he was in a brig. Brown is in a civilian prison. It's not like he can give press conferences whenever he wants. This is really interesting and if they succeed in gagging him, what kind of precedent will that set? How far will this administration's war on journalists and bloggers go? But here's another really significant point. When the DoJ published their new safeguards for the media, they did not include bloggers in those protections, or at least it's vague. But when the govt. decides to gag Barrett Brown, look who they refer to: "The Gag Order is for all parties to refrain from talking to members of any television, radio, newspaper, magazine, website (including bloggers), or other media organization about this case, other than in matters of public record."
The government wants media gag for Barrett Brown
The journalist-come-hacktivist faces a century in prison and the prosecution want him silenced
There is good reason to pay attention to Brown and his case, which could set a troubling precedent for liability when reposting information online were he to be found guilty. However, the government prosecution has filed a motion for a “Gag Order” (to disallow media).
Brown’s defense has pointed out to the presiding judge that despite writing from jail and speaking to a handful of journalists, Brown has made no justice-obstructing statements. The government’s argument is that they want to ensure Brown’s case is tried in court rather than put on public trial in the media, with Brown’s and his defense team controlling the narrative.
Marine brings the fight to the NSA—1 county at a time
So Mahoney convinced the Jonestown Borough Council—population around 1,000, with borders only barely more than half a square mile—to formally oppose NSA spying. It has since adopted a resolution Mahoney wrote. Among other things, it declares "broad based drag net seizure and storage of every individual citizen’s private electronic data is a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution."
"I think the fight needs to start locally," Mahoney, a 32-year-old Iraq war veteran, told the Daily Dot in an email. "People need to take action within their own towns. It's too easy to get drowned out at the Federal level where lobbyist money speaks louder than constituent voices."
[...]
Mahoney's not stopping with Jonestown. On Thursday, at his behest, Swarta Township—30 miles away and containing about 4,000 people—adopted the same resolution. He plans to get all six boroughs and 17 townships that remain in Lebanon County, too.
"I am trying to get every town in the county to approve this," he said. "I have a long way to go since most of them only meet once a month."
I'm not sure what to make of this NYT piece. Some interesting things, but big grain of salt. Personally, I need to know more about what the U.S. and NATO did to stir this up first before considering the lamenting of how they tried and lost control of the situation. What role did the CIA play in this coup? What kind of meddling was done in the lead up to this? This is a long, four page piece that goes through the whole sequence of events and describes the actions of a number of different countries who have a hand in this. It was written by several different journalists and really has to be read in full.
How American Hopes for a Deal in Egypt Were Undercut
All of the efforts of the United States government, all the cajoling, the veiled threats, the high-level envoys from Washington and the 17 personal phone calls by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, failed to forestall the worst political bloodletting in modern Egyptian history. The generals in Cairo felt free to ignore the Americans first on the prisoner release and then on the statement, in a cold-eyed calculation that they would not pay a significant cost — a conclusion bolstered when President Obama responded by canceling a joint military exercise but not $1.5 billion in annual aid.
The violent crackdown has left Mr. Obama in a no-win position: risk a partnership that has been the bedrock of Middle East peace for 35 years, or stand by while longtime allies try to hold on to power by mowing down opponents. From one side, the Israelis, Saudis and other Arab allies have lobbied him to go easy on the generals in the interest of thwarting what they see as the larger and more insidious Islamist threat. From the other, an unusual mix of conservatives and liberals has urged him to stand more forcefully against the sort of autocracy that has been a staple of Egyptian life for decades.
[...]
As Mr. Obama acknowledged in a statement on Thursday, the American response turns not only on humanitarian values but also on national interests. A country consumed by civil strife may no longer function as a stabilizing ally in a volatile region.
[...]
When Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo in the spring, he urged Mr. Morsi to reach out to his opposition. If not, Mr. Kerry warned, Mr. Morsi would set the stage for another uprising, this time against himself. But the implied threat only hardened Mr. Morsi’s resolve not to bend, his aides said.
[...]
But while the Qataris and Emiratis talked about “reconciliation” in front of the Americans, Western diplomats here said they believed the Emiratis were privately urging the Egyptian security forces to crack down.
[...]
The Israelis, whose military had close ties to General Sisi from his former post as head of military intelligence, were supporting the takeover as well. Western diplomats say that General Sisi and his circle appeared to be in heavy communication with Israeli colleagues, and the diplomats believed the Israelis were also undercutting the Western message by reassuring the Egyptians not to worry about American threats to cut off aid.
Action
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
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