Woo-hoo...! Gotta love them drones...!

glenn takes on the spin-fortified crap that passes for news on npr (yes, virginia, npr is a government spin-machine right along with all the rest of 'em) and also paints a picture of how military-spawned drone technology is rapidly coming to a neighborhood near you...

NPR’s domestic drone commercial

[...]

Even leaving aside the issue of weaponization (police officials now openly talk about equipping drones with “nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun”), the use of drones for domestic surveillance raises all sorts of extremely serious privacy concerns and other issues of potential abuse. Their ability to hover in the air undetected for long periods of time along with their comparatively cheap cost enables a type of broad, sustained societal surveillance that is now impractical, while equipping them with infra-red or heat-seeking detectors and high-powered cameras can provide extremely invasive imagery. The holes eaten into the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections by the Drug War and the War on Terror means there are few Constitutional limits on how this technology can be used, and there are no real statutory or regulatory restrictions limiting their use. In sum, the potential for abuse is vast, the escalation in surveillance they ensure is substantial, and the effect they have on the culture of personal privacy — having the state employ hovering, high-tech, stealth video cameras that invade homes and other private spaces — is simply creepy.

But listeners of NPR would know about virtually none of that. On its All Things Considered program yesterday, NPR broadcast a five-minute report (audio below) from Brian Naylor that purported to be a news story on the domestic use of drones but was, in fact, much more akin to a commercial for the drone industry.

speaking of commercials, glenn also offers this air force recruiting advert...



chilling, isn't it...?

going back to the subject of npr, i've long since accepted the fact that npr has been consciously and carefully shaped into just another government propaganda outlet... i still listen to it when i'm out and about in my truck because, despite its serious shortcomings, it's preferable to the rest of the mindless stuff that comes over the radio... but i've been known to scream at the top of my lungs while driving down the interstate while listening to the garbage that they're passing off as news... thank god for the internet...

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It makes me crazy that, in all the focus on Greece, nobody mentions Goldman Sachs

just another instance of the banksters dodging accountability (and criminal prosecution) and being enabled to do so by our news media who choose to look the other way...

spiegel reported on this over 18 months ago...

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules.

greg palast gives us a timely reminder...

In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up €2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece.

[...]

Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then. Their game: to conceal a massive budget deficit. Goldman's fake loss was the Greek government's fake gain.

Goldman would get repayment of its “loss” from the government at loan-shark rates.

The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece's right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP.

[...]

In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS's and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a “net short” position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial "products" would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their "net short" scam.

But, instead of cuffing Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed. Blamed and soaked for the cost of it. The "spread" on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece's corrupted debt) has now risen to — get ready for this––$14,000 per family per year.

when i'm at home (wherever that might happen to be at any given time), i virtually never listen to news on the radio or watch it on tv, preferring to get all my news from multiple internet sources... however, when i'm out driving around, i usually listen to npr and have been known to start screaming in the privacy of my truck while listening to multiple stories on greece none of which EVER mentions the goldman connection... what can be said about that kind of omission except that it's a blatant media cover-up...?

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The Family - NPR's Terry Gross on Fresh Air

a disturbing interview with jeff sharlet...

A secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians includes some names that have recently been prominent in the headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts. Writer Jeff Sharlet describes the men's involvement with the Family, and discusses recent developments within the group.

listen here...

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"Incompetent, foolish, dubious in all of its aspects"

this guy must have missed the orientation class on sucking-up...

Ambassador Timothy Carney told NPR radio that the US policy to exclude Iraqis from governing the country in the two years following the invasion was "an enormous foolishness" which contributed to the deterioration of security and lengthened the conflict in the country.

"We don't need to go into detail on that, but I think words such as incompetent, foolish, dubious in all of its aspects are the most charitable way to look at that period," he said.

Carney went to Iraq shortly after the March 2003 invasion to manage the country's industry and minerals ministry, but quit after two months and became an outspoken critic of US occupation policy.

"The major failing of policy and operations in 2003 was the failure to invite Iraqis into our councils. We actually thought we could govern this country," he told NPR.

"It was enormously costly in terms of time, and consequently in terms of our and Iraqi blood and the blood of many of our allies."

"What an enormous foolishness that was."

Carney, recently named by the White House to return to oversee rebuilding of the country, said he was appalled by the deterioration in the security situation since he was first there.

ok, now, here's the quiz... the next thing we will hear about this is...

a) carney will say that his remarks were "misconstrued"
b) tony snow will interpret carney's remarks in a positive and constructive way
c) george bush will be asked about carney's remarks but won't respond
d) when asked for comment, john mccain will blame donald rumsfeld
e) carney will henceforth be prohibited from talking to the media
f) there will be no mention of this in the conservative media and weblogs
g) all of the above

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