i'm gonna do another trainwreck today

[click image]

.

Which means that if yer on the feed and you care, you should periodically poke back in. I think I'm starting a mild crusade against headline readers. I keep realizing people have the wrong impression of a lot of things on the tubes because they read headlines and maybe give a split-second's splat of their eyeprints and then don't seem to know what is going on. This isn't as awful as it might be in a world where even reading every last word leaves one completely confused, but there are some important things still to be missed, like:

Rudolf Elmer, the former banker who handed WikiLeaks details of rich and famous tax evaders, has been found guilty of coercion.

A Zürich court on Wednesday also found him guilty of breaching Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws, publicising private client data, and threatening an employee at his former firm Julius Baer, BUT HE FACES NO JAIL TIME.

Judge Sebastian Aeppli rejected prosecution demands to give Elmer an eight-month prison sentence.

Instead the court sentenced him to a fine of 7,200 Swiss francs ($7,505), suspended for two years.

Elmer was accused of stealing information from clients then trying to extort money from his employers after they fired him.

How many people are out there all chuffed that Elmer has to go to jail for being a hero? A lot. I would've been one of them if I hadn't decided not to simply be bummed but instead to know the details of my bummertude.

.

Trusted Internet ID:

... US Department of Commerce [is] preparing to create an Internet ID for all Americans. White House Cyber security Coordinator Howard Schmidt said that the Department of Commerce is "the absolute perfect spot in the US government" to build an online "identity ecosystem." ...

Thanks to a nearly dead technology known as “history books”, we know that the US government has a long history of misinterpreting the commerce clause and that their many attempts to micromanage most aspects of the economy and centralize economic authority have been well documented. Historically this is a new low for them.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke ... "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

Internet and technology expert hit Lauren Weinstein ... “This entire scheme rests on the ability to link Internet presence/roles with real-world identities. So even if no physical card ever exists, the system as currently understood would very much equate to a national ID card for accessing the Internet.”

... right now it doesn’t look like Americans will have any say in how this Internet ID goes down.

"Sure, you don't have to get a credential. But then again, you don't have to access the Internet either. Just like you don't have to get a driver's license — unless you want to be able to legally drive anywhere."

But, oh, uhm, CERTAINLY they're not talking about a national ID card. Nooooo.

.

Ellsberg dreaming....

Hey, I think it's Poirot's kid....

Just shove 'em through and shoot 'em if they don't like it....

Today in global famine....

Today in climate sophistry....

Today in token populist legislatin'....

The obvious is beating us over the head again....

.

The deputy speaker of Britain's House of Commons has asked lawmakers not to use Twitter while sitting in the chamber. Lindsay Hoyle intervened after Kevin Brennan, a Labour lawmaker, noted midway through a debate on education that two other lawmakers there were tweeting about the debate on Twitter.

Brennan complained the lawmakers should have voiced their arguments in Parliament so other lawmakers could have a chance to rebut them, instead of making comments online.

Hoyle warned Wednesday that lawmakers should not use Twitter to update followers while they sit in the Commons.

.

Today in the audacity of opacity....

Today in the audacity of capitulation....

.

And this, of course, has been the point all along: the WikiLeaks disclosures are significant precisely because they expose government deceit, wrongdoing and brutality, but the damage to innocent people has been deliberately and wildly exaggerated — fabricated — by the very people whose misconduct has been revealed. There is harm from the WikiLeaks documents, but it's to wrongdoers in power, which is why they are so desperate to malign and then destroy the group.

Just as was true in 2003 — when the joint, falsehood-based government/media demonization campaign led 69% of Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein participated in the planning of the 9/11 attacks (the Bush era's most revealing fact about American politics) — this orgy of anti-WikiLeaks propaganda has succeeded, with polls reliably showing the American public largely against the group and even favoring its prosecution (citizens in countries not subjected to this propaganda barrage view the group far more favorably). As has been demonstrated over and over, when the U.S. Government and its media collaborate to propagandize, its efficacy is not in doubt. And as Marcy Wheeler notes, these lies were told not only to distort public opinion and justify prosecuting WikiLeaks for doing nothing more than engaging in journalism, but also to coerce private corporations (MasterCard, Amazon, Visa, Paypal) to cut all services to the group.

The case against WikiLeaks is absolutely this decade's version of the Saddam/WMD campaign. It's complete with frivolous invocations of Terrorism, grave public warnings about National Security negated by concealed information, endlessly repeated falsehoods, a competition among political and media elites to advocate the harshest measures possible, a cowardly Congress that (with a few noble exceptions) acquiesces to it all on a bipartisan basis and is eager to enable it, and a media that not only fails to subject these fictions to critical scrutiny, but does the opposite: it takes the lead in propagating them. One might express bewilderment that most American journalists never learn their lesson about placing their blind faith in government claims, but that assumes — falsely — that their objective is to report truthfully.

—Glenn Greenwald

.

I do so hope the fears of a youth rebellion are well-founded. People are SO squeamish about this stuff, but somehow don't feel squeamish about the PTB culling masses of people at will. It doesn't make SENSE. I know some people try to make sense of it by use of the delusion that one can comport oneself such that the genocide machine will pass one by unharmed. That's too easy to debunk anymore, okay?

Still, I hope all these kids aren't rising up only to get Obama-style hope and change. That's a REAL possibility, and you can BET—their farms, their houses, their yachts, their jets, their gold cards, their Swiss bank accounts, and your life—it's covered already. Capice? Check?

People need to be ON providing real alternatives before that ugliness can be substituted in for the present ugliness. It isn't enough to merely rise up. You have to STAY up until REAL improvement is in place.

.
love, 99
.