Dr. C: The Unpleasant Exclusivity in Our Educational System
Wolraich: The Grim Possibility Of War With Iran
Heat Win Game Six, Disappointing Nation of Heat-Haters
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Hits of the Day
In the News
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Egypt tourism minister protests over Islamist governor
Reuters, June 19, 2013
CAIRO - Egypt's tourism minister tendered his resignation on Tuesday over President Mohamed Mursi's decision to appoint as governor of Luxor a member of a hardline Islamist group blamed for slaughtering 58 tourists there in 1997.
Prime Minister Hisham Kandil did not accept the resignation of Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou, who remains in the post for now. However, the move pointed to a split in government over an appointment that one critic called "the last nail in the coffin" of the tourism industry.
Mursi appointed Adel Mohamed al-Khayat, a member of al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, as Luxor governor this week, a move seen as a sign of a deepening political alliance between the once-armed group and the...
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Protests Expand in Brazil, Fueled by Video of Police...
By Robert Mackey, The Lede @ nytimes.com, June 18, 2013
Includes lots of images and videos.
Last Updated, 6:57 p.m. As my colleague Simon Romero reports from São Paulo, more than 200,000 Brazilians filled the streets in cities across the country on Monday to protest the high cost of living and lavish spending on soccer stadiums ahead of next year’s World Cup, in demonstrations that have intensified as images of police brutality against peaceful protesters spread on...
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Comey Don't Play That
How Obama's pick to lead the FBI tried to put the brakes on the NSA's surveillance dragnet.
By Marc Ambinder, Foreign Policy, June 18, 2013
[....] Comey, who is said to be President Obama's choice to be the next director of the FBI, has never publicly disclosed exactly what he refused to sanction when he was briefly acting attorney general during Ashcroft's hospital stay, but people briefed on the program who have spoken to Comey say it was the legal rationale giving the NSA quick access to un-sifted telecom and service provider-collected metadata that "drove him bonkers," not the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. There was just no way, Comey thought, to justify an effort that simply...
Read the article at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/17/comey_dont_play_that -
US to join direct peace talks in Qatar with Taliban over...
'Peace and reconciliation' milestone comes after US drops request for formal rejection of al-Qaida as precondition to talks
By Dan Roberts in Washington and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul, guardian.co.uk, 18 June 2013
[....] White House officials say they believe the Taliban delegation at the talks represents the movement's leadership, and includes more radical groups such as the Haqqani network. Officials said the US would have a direct role in the talks starting starting this week in Doha, but the substantive negotiations over the future of Afghanistan would then be led by the Afghan government.
"The core of this process is not going to be US-Taliban talks – we can help the process – but the core is going...
Read the article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/18/us-peace-talks-taliban-afghanistan
Latest Comments
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in When Google and Amazon...Michael Maiello
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in Kanye West, Michael...PeraclesPlease
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in If Ed Snowden is a Hero,...PeraclesPlease
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in When Google and Amazon...Michael Wolraich
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in When Google and Amazon...Michael Wolraich
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in If Ed Snowden is a Hero,...PeraclesPlease
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in Kanye West, Michael...artappraiser
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in If Ed Snowden is a Hero,...Peter (not verified)
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in If Ed Snowden is a Hero,...rmrd0000
Snowden is reporting that the NSA,a spy organization is actually spying. Snowden notes that the NSA is spying on China and considers it an act of war. The spying on foreign countries is legal. We are led to believe that foreign countries are spying on us and taking data from government and...
Yes there is plenty of corruption to be exposed and i think the coming revelations will show that fact.
Your calling whistle blowers thieves is telling, it shows your animus to transparency and freedom from government intrusion, Kill The Messenger.
I know many people want to...
This article and the comments are spot on! I live in an affluent Chicago suburb. Graduates of the local (and excellent) public high school vie with one another to get into the most prestigious schools. The parents understand that going to a college with the "right kind of people...
Prosperity preachers believe that everything is OK if you truly believe everything is OK. Bounty comes to the true believer.
How many preachers really say that everything is okay? Evangelical Christians seem to feel that there is serious sinning going on.
SpongeBob Snowden
I agree with this as well, I just don't see an either/or choice. We make the laws. We could, if we wanted, prevent PRISM and we could prevent Facebook from even putting you in a situation where it tracks all of your Amazon purchases. We could prevent cell phone suppliers...
Thanks for posting this
Off topic. The question is whether the MLK who kept Bayard Rustin in the shadows support releasing secret documents? Rustin had Communist/ Socialist ties and at the time of the March on Washington didn't want Rustin as a "distraction". In addition Rustin was Gay,...
That is insulting to the Beatles. This is more like the sort of progressively stranger work that Michael Jackson did after Thriller. Even if they've produced a child, Kanye really seems about as interested in Kim Kardashian as MJ was in his spouses.
Ron Paul sees Obama launching a cruise missile in Hong Kong to get Snowden. Rand Paul sees Obama launching a drone attack at a San Francisco Starbucks. I see a DOJ getting ready to extradite Snowden and bring him to trial.
I mention MLK because he was addressing a real threat, not a theoretical threat. Rosa Parks was physically assaulted by police. Bull Connor used dogs and water hoses. Hoover used recording devices. Nixon burglarized Democratic HQ. Do we have evidence that citizens are being listened to? Do...
Well not sure why hip hop's different from anything else, listened to a lot of Public Enemy & Tackhead & Digital Underground & NWA & LL Cool J & Salt'nPepa & Jungle Brothers & Prodigy and what not. Check out Dub Syndicate/Lee Scratch Perry's...
Comes to mind, though, that Kim Kardashian is no Yoko Ono.
Yeah, MLK was a law 'n order kind of guy - would have never condoned breaking the law, like resisting local transportation statutes, or marching to Selma without a permit (a week before a judge ruled in their favor), or supporting an illegal garbage strike in Memphis, or get arrested through...
Really, can't understand what the complaint is about.
One sentence that really helped me understand:
Those who want to call this his ...
"Everything being done seems to be legal." Oh for fuck's sakes, shoving Rosa Parks to the back of the bus was legal too, at least until they fought it through the courts after her act of civil disobedience and ensuing massive transportation strikes.
The Bush administration participated in warrant less wiretaps. The Obama DOJ reported abuses of monitoring to FISA in 2009. I see large differences between the two. MLK was dealing with an actual threat. Snowden seems to be focusing on a theoretical threat. Everything being done seems...
Ah pain ... the revenge
of the forces of darkness
which seek to kill hope.
What may irritate
one man, another may find
excruciating.
Chronic pain can kill
aspirations and desire;
in their place, you...
It's no secret that MLK was being watched by the FBI. He knew it then. But you'll never convince me that MLK would have been okay with someone like Snowden stealing government secrets. Show me something in his speeches and writings that would cause you to believe Martin...
According to Julian Bond the FBI's surveillance of the Civil a rights movement was taken as a given and was often the source of jokes. Hoover spent time trying to suppress Civil Rights. NSA watched Occupy Wall Street rather than the Tsarnaev's. The question becomes whether the...
He is not in a healthy state of mind. Alot of people in our society aren't. He needs to realize that and come back after he's himself again.
I think it would be a great signal to people in our society that you can take control of your own mental health.
Just a reminder of...
I don't see the connection either for the same reasons.
You are right that is pretty sick. That is going after a very narrow group of listeners. The hip hop that gets played here by my grandson is pretty up beat.
Well Sara Palin got her old job back at Fox. So maybe she will get back into the swing of nuttery, and give everyone some laughs. I can't even get into the NSA debate right now. It is like I am suffering GOP fatigue. We are having a special election today in my...
I'm not sure - we may come from very different musical worlds. I assumed hip-hop wouldn't be big with this crowd - I post on it because of encouragement from the people here. ...
Will check it out, but Bowie's Low nor The Cure's The Top/Pornography nor early Joy Division nor Tuxedo Moon were terribly sane. You have me curious - I'd gotten bored with these guys - maybe Kanye's finally making music I can relate to. Post-patrum depression?
Uh, Mahatma Gandhi left the mother of his 4 children to live with a gay German body builder. He was a bastard to his family, as his letters attest....
I don't find Ron Paul to be in the public interest, but again I doubt that he would make it through a GOP primary system.
Don't be silly. Of course I don't trust Snowden. I don't trust any politician either. I don't even trust you. I don't know Snowden. I don't know you. He's just some stranger in the news. You're just some stranger I dialog with occasionally here. I only trust...
Why do you like Daniel Ellsberg? He did everything you're against.
He was just an analyst with a top secret clearance who released details of military decision making in violation of his terms of employment. That hurt our security in running the war - maybe it led to our eventual...
Well, he's bringing up an interesting point - defending our privacy but asserting the US has the right to spy on Chinese or Swedish high school students is quite perverse.
The lazy superior Americans have now accepted that we as the world's policeman can snoop on everyone but...
Snowden supplied IP addresses that he considered inappropriate targets to the Chines press. Snowden says he had high level security access. Was he aware of the level of cyber-attacks of China on the US? Are the reports of Chinese cyber-attacks fiction created by US intelligence? If the...
Mmm, I don't know about that. Playwright Sam Shephard was once described as "the thinking woman's beefcake" and I think Snowden has a little of that going on.
http://asecretshop.blogspot.com/...
I can't imagine why people so often put words in the month of dead people when there's no credible evidence to back it up. I think they're just projecting their own feelings onto people they respect. I can't imagine why they think it bolsters their argument.
As for MLK and...
And that Erin Brockovich, she pulled down a perfectly good company that gave people jobs.
And those guys who reported on Enron broke an oath to protect company information.
Question: did you vote for this government to spy on you and everyone you know? I didn't, and I thought...
I was not feelin
So very good the last days
I was in much pain
What tools are there for
Me to use so that I do
Not really implode?
Pain is different
Pain is of mortality
Numbness is just death
Okay,...
I think we knew that last part, OK, but thanks for clarifying. lol.
We will differ here, too. I do think MLK and Gandhi were heroes. They were men of great courage and commitment who understood the workings of passive resistance in order to make positive, permanent...
Is Snowden a hero or villain, I hate that discussion. The media and many people want to paint in black and white and I just don't live in that world. I think generally Snowden has done a good thing and I respect him for it. But as I considered whether to call him a hero I realized I don'...
Whats next? Imbed a small chip in all newborns, since births are usually a public record. If the child never does anything wrong, ever in their lives; they shouldn't fear the painless intrusion, the Nation could be convinced; it's their public and civic duty to have the chip...
I suspect he's had a difficult time winning over hearts and minds his entire life.
Mr. Snowden looks to be a walking illustration of why the Fifth Amendment's right to remain silent is so important. I'm being sarcastic, and I'm doing so because the guy has now...
The bottom line is the House of Representatives allocates the NSA money. Our Representatives in Congress are responsible for how that money is spent.
Instead of getting in front of determining how the program is run and demanding accountability for it, they endlessly investigate...
The other outcome, of course, is that we end up with a regional version of the old Mutally-Assured-Destruction scenario.
Iran has a bomb, but can't use it to attack Israel without inviting nuclear retaliation. Israel has a bomb, but can't attack Iran without inviting nuclear...
This does happen in certain high-stakes professions, at least. Law schools can't license you to practice law; you get your degree and then take the state bar exam. Medical schools can't give you a medical license. And your accounting degree couldn't make you a CPA. You had to pass...
You are correct. We need to keep the pull out the weeds and keep the roses.
The underlying problem is not simply President specific, although I do worry less about Obama than I did Bush. Bush acted without warrants. I am sure that President elects are briefed on dangers and...
The accountant in me would really like to see a separation of roles between educating and credentialing. Universities could still award certifications for course completion aka degrees or diplomas but then have another organization test or measure the knowledge and skills acquired against...
"They sometimes forget that not everybody embraces the Fortune 500/law firm approach to what confers prestige and what doesn't....
I think that's pretty unfair. You're assuming there's wholesale wrong-doing just waiting to be exposed by patriotic thieves with a mission. I think the fairer take on this is...
Sometimes it is easy to slip into thinking a particular type of prestige is universal rather than particular. The advantages conferred to someone from this or that university are not available in all settings with all social and economic subgroups. In fact, saying you're from...
Forgive me if you've already seen these...your post seems to be in useful dialog with a few others I've read recently--perhaps more peripherally than directly.
Here's ...
Then I quibble with your lack of quibbling! Ha!
I agree, the shift in the makeup of our country's elite is interesting, both because it shines a light on how our current ruling class operates and reproduces itself and because the shift happened within living memory, so that there are...
What troubles me is that so few of the one million plus top security people in our spying apparatus have actually exposed wrongdoing. We may need to hire the old E Germans to monitor our growing spy pool.
I do understand the terror that some feel when an individual breaks the trust of his...
You need to listen to the album. It is not the work of a sane man.
The contractor my husband worked for is a civilian non-profit. Sometimes they're chosen because there aren't enough government groups with their particular expertise, so they have to go outside. They aren't all Blackwaters or Halliburtons.
No worries. Thanks.
Ocean-kat, I'd be proud to be a great mind along with you!
Ocean-kat, I'd be proud to be a great mind along with you!
And yet people keep waging them
I quibble with your pretense of quibbling. You're not quibbling, you're clarifying. Moreover, your clarifications reveal that we're in agreement and frankly have nothing more to quibble about.
PS To clarify, my previous PS was not a quibble but an observation that in no way...
I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't been following the very important news on the HuffingtonPost recently. I thought we all agreed after the Taylor Swift debacle that Kayne West was the devil. I guess he must have had a born again experience.
Really? I thought I was the first. I was about to say great minds think alike but I've been told I have a weird sense of humor and I don't want to tar you with that.
It is especially crazy that data on citizens is parceled out to private companies.
There are actually more than 4 million people with security clearances but the key is "different levels". Most clearances are "need to know" clearances, where the people with them only know what they need to know in order to do their jobs on a single project. Most...
Sorry about that.
Doc, would you be so kind as to complete the last part of the third paragraph of your comment? (...some schools DO manage to...?) It looks to have been cut off.
Thank you.
It is hard to argue that something is secret if possible 1 million people have security clearances at different levels.
Actually, I made the Jesus comparison. See above.
If you really were a news junkie like you have been known to claim, you'd know that currently Kanye West is the son of god and Don Draper is the son of the devil....
He is saying it's a mess and basically that that distinction is not clear. And it sounds like the examples he chose are to be illustrations of that, they are not about policy preferences. This is not about ideology, he's not making policy prescriptions. Almost the opposite, he is...
You have a point. This discussion of whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor is far too narrow. The real question is if he's the son of god or the devil.
P.S. Granted, he clearly personally supports more transparency as a solution, you can see that in his statements of support for Manning and Wikileaks. But anyone can take his main complaints and use them in support of strong tightening of who has security clearances for what, i.e., no more...
Was he an IT guy who accessed info or the person who chose targets?
Thanks, Mike. Let me quibble with all of your quibbles.
First, I did not mean to reduce prestige to selectivity alone, except for brevity in a longish blog post. Faculty prestige is also a major component of university prestige, but I would add that faculty's prestige has little to do...
I can't think of an example of a country that hasn't sorted people with its higher level schooling in a way that puts them in a certain class.
In the past, lots of Europen countries with more socialistic systems were sorting people by test at a relatively early age which would...
I said that I don't trust Snowden to be the arbiter of what a valid target might be
To be fair to him, I just read the Guardian chat, and I believe he's basically saying the exact same thing, that we shouldn't be allowing people like him to decide what a valid target...
*NOT* end of story. Who stuck around St. Petersburg when he saw it was time for a change? Killed the Czars and his Ministers, while Anastasia screamed in vain?
There are other roles to be played, other followings to be had, presciently, the Falcon and the Snowden?
I said that I don't trust Snowden to be the arbiter of what a valid target might be. Are the universities or businesses doing military work? I suspect the Chinese and other countries are targeting the US in a similar manner.
I think that when Presidents are elected an informed in...
Did saying that segregation or slavery should not exist make them go away? I think it took some fairly dramatic changes. In the same way, simply saying that people ought not to think of Stanford students as "better" than UC Santa Cruz students and Santa Cruz students as "better...
Sorry not to have explained the acroynym, Ramona.
As for prestige: I used the example of a few top schools as shorthand, but I don't mean to imply that only the top handful of schools are the prestigious ones. The sorting-and-labeling system goes all the way through the class system,...
He explains more @ 11:55 am, about the problem with the filters:
...They talked about the access problem in the Guardian chat today. Sounds to me like he is claiming that the system was set up lousy as to security of privacy rights and therefore 1) is invaded without good authority all the time "by accident" and 2) when "warrants" are...
Wow, zing. Snowden is no MLK. Hey, you know who else stuck around and got killed? Jesus! Jesus didn't run to China. He was crucified. Snowden is no Jesus Christ. Yup, I made that very important comparison between Jesus Christ and Snowden and Snowden is not the son of god.
...Churchill got thrown out despite success from WWII. Bush Sr was voted out 1 1/2 years after the successful Gulf War I. Levi Eshkol had to share power with Begin over the 6 day war, Golda Meier had to resign because of perceived lack of preparation for the Yom Kippur war, and the war in Lebanon...
I think you got it pegged, though make that "definitely vodka"
Snowden also noted that business, universities, etc. we're not legitimate military targets. He noted that these targets were off limits since we were not at war with China. I wonder where the attacks on US businesses from China fits into the not at war scenario. We do need a discussion...
There is another aspect some prestigious colleges online programs: sponsors - with their money and their goals in mind. I snipped the following from a fairly conservative website:
Question: What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?
Answer:...
Snowden is answering questions live online right now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-...
Is it "mandatory" fury, though? Are they just annoyed because they didn't succeed in avoiding surveillance that they knew was going to be there anyway?
That's the downside to it: Intelligence officers who leak information will probably always have a hard time convincing a potential employer they're trustworthy. It would take a lot of convincing. . .
Ah. . . Thanks, TMac. I'll go back and read Doc's piece again with that in mind.
This news is not being received with jolly good cheer: