1/ Everyone knows the name Julian Assange, and some of you may remember he is a prisoner in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London taking refuge from the bogus rape charges he is facing in Sweden. This is what the mainstream media is telling you, but what is more significant is the way the US government has freaked out over the leakage of the Wikileaks documents, and what they are doing about it. It's the start of the cyberstate........
An excellent story from Chris Hedges.......
LONDON—A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world’s best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June. British police in black Kevlar vests are perched night and day on the steps leading up to the building, and others wait in the lobby directly in front of the embassy door. An officer stands on the corner of a side street facing the iconic department store Harrods, half a block away on Brompton Road. Another officer peers out the window of a neighboring building a few feet from Assange’s bedroom at the back of the embassy. Police sit round-the-clock in a communications van topped with an array of antennas that presumably captures all electronic forms of communication from Assange’s ground-floor suite.
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), or Scotland Yard, said the estimated cost of surrounding the Ecuadorean Embassy from June 19, 2012, when Assange entered the building, until Jan. 31, 2013, is the equivalent of $4.5 million.
Britain has rejected an Ecuadorean request that Assange be granted safe passage to an airport. He is in limbo. It is, he said, like living in a “space station.”
“The status quo, for them, is a loss,” Assange said of the U.S.-led campaign against him as we sat in his small workroom, cluttered with cables and computer equipment. He had a full head of gray hair and gray stubble on his face and was wearing a traditional white embroidered Ecuadorean shirt. “The Pentagon threatened WikiLeaks and me personally, threatened us before the whole world, demanded that we destroy everything we had published, demanded we cease ‘soliciting’ new information from U.S. government whistle-blowers, demanded, in other words, the total annihilation of a publisher. It stated that if we did not self-destruct in this way that we would be ‘compelled’ to do so.”
And in case you think the above article is exaggerating, read this from Thursday's Times......
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.
While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.
2/ A slow but captivating 7 minute video of an oriental lady with superhuman powers of concentration and balance......this really grabbed me.....
3/ A thoughtful article about the role of the US as the worlds superpower, and how the signs are there that America may go the way of all of the other empires throughout history, crumbling under it's own weight.....
It stretched from the Caspian to the Baltic Sea, from the middle of Europe to the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, from Siberia to Central Asia. Its nuclear arsenal held 45,000 warheads, and its military had five million troops under arms. There had been nothing like it in Eurasia since the Mongols conquered China, took parts of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau, and rode into the Middle East, looting Baghdad. Yet when the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, by far the poorer, weaker imperial power disappeared.
And then there was one. There had never been such a moment: a single nation astride the globe without a competitor in sight. There wasn’t even a name for such a state (or state of mind). “Superpower” had already been used when there were two of them. “Hyperpower” was tried briefly but didn’t stick. “Sole superpower” stood in for a while but didn’t satisfy. “Great Power,” once the zenith of appellations, was by then a lesser phrase, left over from the centuries when various European nations and Japan were expanding their empires. Some started speaking about a “unipolar” world in which all roads led... well, to Washington.
To this day, we’ve never quite taken in that moment when Soviet imperial rot unexpectedly -- above all, to Washington -- became imperial crash-and-burn. Left standing, the Cold War's victor seemed, then, like an empire of everything under the sun. It was as if humanity had always been traveling toward this spot. It seemed like the end of the line.
The Last Empire?
After the rise and fall of the Assyrians and the Romans, the Persians, the Chinese, the Mongols, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the English, the Germans, and the Japanese, some process seemed over. The United States was dominant in a previously unimaginable way -- except in Hollywood films where villains cackled about their evil plans to dominate the world.
As a start, the U.S. was an empire of global capital.
4/ Coming May 31st is a new Will Smith movie, "After Earth", directed by M Night Shyamalan.....hope it's good, and not like the Tom Cruise effort "Oblivion", which got very bad reviews.....
Anyway a pretty good trailer.....
OK OK I like sci-fi movies, and there's the Star Trek movie coming soon, but this looks interesting - "Gravity", with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, directed by Alfonso Cuaron will be out in October.....
"Gravity" trailer: lost in space.
Alfonso Cuaron's last film was the 2006 film "Children Of Men." Seven years later, the director has returned with a project even more ambitious than that cult masterpiece of dystopian fiction: "Gravity," a two-hander set in space with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in starring roles. To quote Clooney's astronaut in the brand-new "Gravity" trailer: "Beautiful, don't you think?"
5/ A very entertaining Rachel Maddow, with a look at rightwingworld obsessions and fantasies. We haven't had too many anti-Republican stories recently, but I include this because Rachel is having fun.....these people are crazy......
She also has Frank Rich for the commentary in the last segment......it's 19 minutes, and great TV......
6/ The Rachel piece mentions Benghazi and the Fox attempts to gin up outrage, but Jon Stewart takes Fox News apart with glee.....a wonderful five minutes.....
The pundits at Fox News can't understand why the media isn't outraged over the Obama administration's cover up of Benghazi. Wait, let's correct that: they can't understand why people aren't prematurely outraged IF there was a cover up.
That was the thrust of Jon Stewart's segment on the right's march to impeachment on Wednesday. Every few months, a new smoking gun is promised, and every few months the gun refuses to deliver. But it would seem Fox News would like everyone to be outraged nonetheless (especially if someone was required to run a background check before selling that non-smoking gun).
7/ Jimmy Kimmel has some good skits, and this one features interviews with people to get their reactions to President Obama's decision to appoint Judge Judy to the Supreme Court. Three minutes of apalling ignorance, but look at how confident they all are.....yeeesh....
8/ Did you watch "60 Minutes" last week? You may have seen this segment titled "Counterinsurgency Cops", but all is not as it seems. The oligarchs have taken over 60 Minutes, and you were watching basic propaganda......
This is why.......
This Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media’s ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.
Who, What, When, Where …
The most important editorial decision may not be how to cover a story, but which stories will be covered at all. But once a story is assigned, however that happens, the journalist’s responsibility is to inform readers – or the audience – of its meaning and context.
60 Minutes failed both tests.
And here is the 12 minute clip "Counterinsurgency Cops".......
9/ Excellent column from Charles Blow, spelling out how badly we are failing our young. This generation in their 20's are facing major issues, and he spells out six reasons why these hopefuls are facing a very uncertain future.....here are three below.....
I’m scheduled to deliver the commencement address Friday at my alma mater, Grambling State University in Louisiana, so I’ve been giving quite a bit of thought to the America into which these students are graduating.
I must admit that finding hopeful, encouraging things to say has been exceedingly difficult, in part because the landscape at the moment — particularly for young adults — is so bleak.
Here are some of the facts that I’m up against rhetorically and that these students will be up against more literally.
1. Being a college graduate is becoming less exceptional. As the Pew Research Center pointed outin November, “Record shares of young adults are completing high school, going to college and finishing college.” College graduation rates are growing even more in other countries. And Anya Kamenetz noted in The Atlantic magazine in December, “During the past three decades, the United States has slipped from first among nations to 10th in the percentage of people holding a college degree, even as the job market has eroded for Americans without one.”
2. Graduates are emerging with staggering amounts of debt and entering a still-sluggish job market. This is causing them to delay major life decisions, like marriage or buying a home or even moving out of their parents’ home.
A Pew report from February 2012 found that:
“Since 2010, the share of young adults ages 18 to 24 currently employed (54 percent) has been its lowest since the government began collecting these data in 1948. And the gap in employment between the young and all working-age adults — roughly 15 percentage points — is the widest in recorded history. In addition, young adults employed full time have experienced a greater drop in weekly earnings (down 6 percent) than any other age group over the past four years.”
3. Emerging markets, like China and India, have become major competitors for exportable jobs.
10/ A wonderfully casual magician, Piff the Magic Dragon, on the Penn and Teller TV show.........you need to listen carefully, lots of subtle jokes.....
Very amusing.......four minutes.......
11/ The Dow hit 15000 this week, and is staying up there. Woop woop. So why isn't this good economic news touching the middle class? There's a disconnect between corporate profits and our everyday lives, and this story from the Times tries to make sense of it......
IT’S a ho-hum economy, at best. Four years after the end of the Great Recession, gross domestic product appears to be growing at a lackluster pace, labor productivity is lagging and, despite a slight improvement last month, the unemployment rate is still a painfully high 7.5 percent.
Yet in the financial markets, it’s a much happier world. An epic rally in stocks has been roaring ahead, with the Dow Jones industrial average on Friday briefly surpassing 15,000 for the first time.
Thanks to the intervention of the Federal Reserve, the bond market remains improbably strong, too. The benchmark 10-year Treasury rate fell as low as 1.612 percent last week, driving prices, which move in the opposite direction, to stratospheric levels. That helped Apple sell $17 billion of bonds at yields once reserved for the sovereign debt of only the safest governments.
In short, it’s been a giddy time to be an investor. But while the financial markets are soaring, the real economy appears to be mired in an endless slog. That discrepancy raises a troubling question: How long can financial portfolios continue to swell if wages, employment and corporate revenue remain constrained?
Unfortunately, there is no clear answer.
“The beauty of economics is that we are still arguing about the causes of the start and the end of the Great Depression,” said James W. Paulsen, the chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. “We’ll be debating these questions for the rest of our lives.”
12/ Katy Perry's new video "Wide Awake" is worth another look.....
1/ It's a really good song.......
2/ She really is stunningly beautiful, but seems nice as well.......definitely the most beautiful witch you'll ever see....
3/ In HD this is a surreal, vibrant, subversive and ultimately triumphant video......
4/ Filmed on a huge budget, this is what money and CGI can do........if you have the connection watch it in 1080p......
Most impressive.......
13/ The motto for Carnival Cruise Lines recently has been "if you didn't have bad luck, you'd have no luck at all".....
This video is from "Inside Edition", and is a five minute story of a drunk young woman falling off the Carnival Destiny into the ocean at night - the Destiny turned around and picked her up. You say good job Carnival?
She's suing because the ship wasn't fast enough, and the ship's doctor tending her injuries wasn't good enough.......and her story ends up on TV.......
14/ "The Great Gatsby" is out this weekend, and we have conflicting opinions from the critics.....so if you fancy it - go see it......we report, you decide.....
Here is a positive review from the Times......
The best way to enjoy Baz Luhrmann’s big and noisy new version of “The Great Gatsby” — and despite what you may have heard, it is an eminently enjoyable movie — is to put aside whatever literary agenda you are tempted to bring with you. I grant that this is not so easily done. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s slender, charming third novel has accumulated a heavier burden of cultural significance than it can easily bear. Short and accessible enough to be consumed in a sitting (as in “Gatz,” Elevator Repair Service’s full-text staged reading), the book has become, in the 88 years since its publication, a schoolroom staple and a pop-cultural totem. It shapes our increasingly fuzzy image of the jazz age and fuels endless term papers on the American dream and related topic
And here is a less charitable review in Rolling Stone......
May 9, 2013
Shush. Listen. That's F. Scott Fitzgerald turning in his grave. Fitzgerald's 1925 The Great Gatsby, a Jazz Age tale of sex, lies and conspicuous consumption, is a great American novel, maybe the greatest. But the tale of dirt-poor Jay Gatsby reinventing himself to win the woman he loves has defied five attempts at filming. Try staying awake during the 1974 version with Robert Redford. Enter Aussie director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) to make the sixth time the charm. He brought visionary zest to Shakespeare in 1996's Romeo + Juliet. So why not cast his screen Romeo, Leonardo DiCaprio, as Gatsby? Add DiCaprio's pal Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, Gatsby's friend and the narrator of the story, and the stellar Carey Mulligan as Daisy, Gatsby's fantasy made flesh in lush gowns and jewels. Luhrmann digitally re-created New York in Australia (for tax purposes), shot in 3D (God knows why) and brought in Jay-Z to amp up the soundtrack (nothing like hip-hop to add relevance to a retro classic). Shush. Listen. That's blind ambition being gutted by flawed execution.
http://www.rollingstone.com/
The trailer is very cool......
Todays video - Dino and Luigi visit an Army base and speak to the Colonel.......Monty Python at it's most surreal......
Todays vertically challenged person joke
Two dwarves go into a bar, where they pick up two ' working girls ' and take them to their separate hotel rooms for an hour of pleasure.
The first dwarf, however, is unable to get an erection. His depression is made worse by the fact that, from the next room, he hears his friend shouting out cries of, "Here I come again! ONE, TWO, THREE .... UGH! " " Here I come again! ONE, TWO, THREE.... UGH!" "Here I come again! ONE, TWO, THREE ... UGH!" This goes on for the whole hour.
Later back at the bar, the second dwarf asks the first, " How did it go? "
The first mutters, "It was embarrassing. I just couldn't get an erection. "
The second dwarf shook his head. " You think that's embarrassing? I couldn't get on the bed"!
Todays Trooper joke
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