Daniel Ellsberg was on CNN last night, commenting on the NSA and Edward Snowden. He asked the question…”Can you charge someone with a crime whom has exposed a crime? What Snowden did was expose a violation of the Constitution. ” (paraphrasing).
“They illegally wiretapped suspected terrorists…but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a terrorist….
Now they’re illegally wiretapping me and there’s no one brave enough to speak up….”
From this poem.
We’re having a discussion on mercury and allergies…and how some folks can be allergic TO mercury, which I believe I am, given the inflammation that I have had–it’s more than the average bear. I decided to look it up and found this page by MELISA medical foundation. I thought I’d pass it along.
Well, if you can’t remember, the NSA might be able to help fill in the memory gap. (hat tip to fatster at FDL.)
This quote from the comments brought a smile to my face in an otherwise somber article:
I’m going to start calling random doctors and other businesses that have nothing to do with me. A little dis-information goes a long way.~~~~~~~~~~
I don’t know everybody is surprised by this–anyone with half a brain could see the continuing violation of Fourth Amendment right to privacy. All in the name of safety. Um-hmmm….there’s no ulterior Nixon-like motive to gain an edge over someone by snooping into their private lives…./snark. I’ve been saying all along that this whole thing smelled of Watergate–only on steroids. Nixon sought the information so he could win at all costs. Fortunately, we had Senator Frank Church to stand up for what was right. Where’s our Church now? Oh, right, drummed out of office by what is now the Tea Party.
commondreams has this up. Be sure to look at all the videos–well worth the time.
The idea is so simple it’s like “duh!”
I have a quibble, though, with Klein saying that it’s up to the Left to “seize the moment”. There are those who are NOT in the Tea Party on the Right who also need and want to find a solution to the crashes around us. I say this because the Left has not been of the same mind — I was shot down on a progressive website when I advocated buying American so we could put people back to work. I knew that Washington wasn’t going to get off its collective duff and do anything about the job loss. (NAFTA being a good example of monumental job loss.)
I just don’t think people have been given the skills or knowledge to feel confident enough to take over a business if the owners want to sell out. I think it may be a case of learned helplessness? Not believing in yourself can be such a huge obstacle that one stops before even getting started.
Perhaps the “teach-ins” of 2013 should be “Business 101: how to own a business without going belly-up nor bankrupting the environment on your way to the bank…”
The Native Americans learned this a loooong time ago–nature was not a second thought. They did not separate their actions from nature.
It’s still so incredibly stupid that business has ignored the laws of nature, as if we could exist without clean water, clean air and chemical free food…
Well…exist is probably a bad word choice…since we are existing right now…perhaps thriving is the better word. All one has to do is look at folks’ skin and see that we are not thriving, but existing. The skin is such a barometer of what’s going on in the insides…not doing too well by that account.
Anyway, Washington isn’t going to help us…most likely profiting off of NAFTA…so, it’s up to us if we want to save ourselves.
I don’t know why this story wasn’t carried by the mainstream media, leaving Hoosiers in the dark about this monster….on second thought, they did. Unfortunately, this was in the Indianapolis market, but even with cable TV, was out of range for their broadcast area.
And if anyone needs a little reminder of why the conservatives love Hillary Clinton….(you’re asking what?? You’ll notice, as I have, that they will alternatively trash her and then say “she’s not so bad…”. ) And why they luvs them some Bill, too. Teflon. Clinton. From the president who brought us NAFTA, gutting the financial industry protections that were put into place after the Great Depression, the misspent Haiti disaster funds….and on….
In keeping up with all the dirty little deeds the Gates Foundation promotes….here is an article on the link between Gates, Monsanto, and Blackwater. Really disturbing.
The article mentions The Nation with Jeremy Scahill—while looking for the Scahill article, I happened upon this with a scathing reply by the authors:
We agree that it will ultimately be up to farmers to decide what is best for them. Our concern continues, however, to be that the choices farmers face is systematically skewed, with some ideas being amplified over others. Any policies that involve redistribution–such as land reform–are off the Gates agenda, despite being a live concern to many African farmers’ movements. This demonstrates our broader point. Despite the foundation’s best efforts to be accountable once the policy has been laid down, the Gates Foundation’s interventions reflect, at heart, the undemocratic vision of a single very powerful and ultimately unaccountable organization.
Sincerely,
RAJ PATEL
ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ
ANNIE SHATTUCK
www.foodfirst.org
Michael Levi was on CSPAN this morning…he was vague in his assertions, but reading between the lines, I saw “fracking toadie”.
He has written a book on energy that they were highlighting on CSPAN. It has the words “battle for America’s future” ….words that are emotional and raise an immediate red flag.
Brookings Institute fellow—another huge red flag.
From the wiki page on it:
Funders
At the end of 2004 the Brookings Institution had assets of $258 million and spent $39.7 million, while its budget has grown to more than $80 million in 2009.[64] Its largest contributors include the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard C. Blum, Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Pew Charitable Trusts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the governments of the United States, Japan, Qatar, the Republic of China, the District of Columbia, and the United Kingdom.
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The Gates Foundation. ExxonMobil. Republic of China. Bank of America. All giving money…for what payback…because these folks play to win and they don’t throw their money after something without expecting something in return.
And why is our government contributing to a think tank??
Here’s another piece I found on the Brookings Institute and their treatment of Diane Ravitch. Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? I don’t know why they are considered liberal?
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And the fact that Levi is a doctor doesn’t necessarily impress me–Mengele and Freud were also doctors who skewed things towards their point of view. It’s especially troubling that his doctorate is in War Studies.
He was advocating “clean energy” another industry catch phrase that actually means “keep on doing what we’ve always been doing, but keeping our dirty business out of the public eye as much as we can…” (as seen by the non-coverage of the Arkansas oil spill.)
He was also stating that fracking should be done, and concern for the environment should be a priority. Sounds good, eh? But then….he states further in the interview that the *only* problem was what to do with the contaminated water once they had extracted the natural gas…um, yeah, he totally ignores that there is a HUGE problem with the chemicals traveling through the earth to people’s wells, contaminating them. My blog on that here. And here. And here.
There was a male caller making outrageous statements about green energy and allowing even more leasing to oil/gas companies…and he was not characterized as emotional…
…but when a woman caller called in and raised the earthquake question and the contamination from the chemicals…whoa…she was *cough* “emotional”. (I can’t remember if that was Levi’s exact wording, but the meaning was the same.) In other words, even though she brought up facts, she was discredited as being emotional. ::don’t worry your pretty little head, darling, we men folk will take care of this important stuff:: Grrrr.
So, my conclusion from the above is the Michael Levi is an energy industry toadie. He’s dirty.
…I’m here….waiting for the crash, so to speak….this is usually the day that I start to feel the effects of the round…
Anyhoo, I’m here.
I thought I’d post the symptoms of mercury poisoning again for the benefit of those who might be new here.
This page is very informative. You can see the dramatic effect of the mercury poisoning on her. In 2010, my face slightly drooped but not quite as dramatically as hers. But I was severely toxic, there is no doubt.
Before I self-diagnosed myself, I was so sick that I was sleeping only four hours per night. My chronic fatigue was so bad that after work, it was all I could do to fix dinner and then crash the rest of the night. It’s hard to admit, but my dishes went unwashed for days because of the exhaustion. I also had hand tremors along with the severe short term memory loss. It was during this period that I forgot my own children’s names! I truly believe that I had Parkinsons’. I was afraid to tell anyone what was going on. It was a terrible, lonely period.
Thank God I was led to the cause of my symptoms. My Guardian Angel kept putting “mercury” in front of me. Like most people, I trusted my dentist to tell me the truth and doctor to be smart enough to diagnose what was wrong. It was hard to go against what I was being told and what my symptoms were telling me.
What a miracle the body truly is that I could be that sick and recover from it. (Or I should say continue to recover from it.)
I have been blessed.
CSPAN featured Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Politico has this up.
A couple of callers commented on Wellinghoff’s demeanor. He seemed to be no-nonsense. He was formerly a consumer energy advocate. It seemed that he was pro-consumer…but I couldn’t shake a bad feeling I had…
…he mentioned fracking as a viable practice for extracting natural gas at least two or three times during the short interview…and my heart began to sink…
He barely mentioned off grid and solar power, although when he did mention it, it was in a positive light. What I would like to see is federal support for off grid classes in communities. Let people create their own power for their needs, instead of huge coal plants and monstrous pipelines that spill oil (something else he said he was for.)
I hope that I’m wrong, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s going towards the fracking industry. He kept repeating that it could be done in an environmentally sound way. Bullshit.
A woman caller had the same sentiment as me when she revealed that she is suffering from breast cancer due to methane gas released from fracking. She said that he was feeding people a line and that her own governor was selling her state out from under the people. (Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the state.)
Wellinghoff would not back down and repeated that fracking could be done in an environmentally friendly way. <sigh> So…another former consumer advocate has been bought off…
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Speaking of pipelines….
Why am I hearing about this after the fact? Where was public radio BEFORE this took place?
And the Save the Dunes group apparently knew about it but, hey, as long as Enbridge *cough* promises to not spill any of its nasty ole’ oil into our rivers, lakes, and streams, hey, it’s okay with them….because, you know, Enbridge has such a stellar history of concern for the environment and the people and animals that inhabit it. /very snarky, indeed.
From the article:
“IDEM, through its certification, is allowing Enbridge to disregard alternate pipeline routes and other opportunities to reduce and eliminate water quality impacts, in likely violation of the Clean Water Act,” said Kim Ferraro, staff attorney at the Hoosier Environmental Council.
Both Michigan and Illinois have laws governing interstate pipeline routing, requiring companies to assess environmental and community risks, but currently Indiana does not.
Good Grief….my head is about to explode…
I missed this from Glenn Greenwald. It’s more in-depth on the specifics…and what it means to investigative journalists. In essence, it is criminalizing the act of journalism.
From the article:
Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ – that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for “soliciting” the disclosure of classified information – is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself.
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Our democracy depends on being able to inform the citizens of their government’s actions, so that they can make informed decisions towards that government. As Greenwald points out—the media was silent with Julian Assange…and only now are they starting to squawk now that AP has been caught up in the assault on the freedom of speech and the press…
Eagle 
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