PayPal freezes account of Bradley Manning legal defense fund

Since when is it against the law to help anyone--ANYONE--afford their legal bills? Well, PayPal has decided that it has an "internal policy" that justifies shutting down the account of a group that is attempting to help Bradley Manning pay his legal bills. This shutdown is despicable. With this logic, we should also shut down all public defender offices and thus require all poor people accused of crimes to fend for themselves. If you would like to write to PayPal to express your opinion on this matter, follow this link provided by Firedoglake. Here's FDL's suggested template:

According to the Bradley Manning Support Network, PayPal has frozen the account of the group that supports Pfc. Bradley Manning's legal defense. Citizens around the world have donated to the Bradley Manning Support Network to fund the legal defense of Pfc. Manning. This grassroots activism is now hindered because of a political policy decision by PayPal to block these funds. The Bradley Manning Support Network has not been accused of any impropriety. Your company has essentially admitted that there is no legal reason to shut down account access, and that it is simply an internal policy decision. Additionally, the organization has complied with every reasonable demand from PayPal to restore access to its account - short of the extraordinary and unnecessary step of providing PayPal direct access to its checking account. PayPal should drop its unreasonable demands of the Bradley Manning Support Network and restore access to the group's PayPal account.

Continue ReadingPayPal freezes account of Bradley Manning legal defense fund

Onion: Embarrassed GOP has been confusing Eisenhower for Reagan

The Onion reports:

At a press conference Monday, visibly embarrassed leaders of the Republican National Committee acknowledged that their nonstop, effusive praise of Ronald Reagan has been wholly unintentional, admitting they somehow managed to confuse him with Dwight D. Eisenhower for years . . . "When I heard about Eisenhower's presidential accomplishments—holding down the national debt, keeping inflation in check, and fighting for balanced budgets—it hit me that we'd clearly gotten their names mixed up at some point," Priebus told reporters. "I couldn't believe we'd been associating terms like 'visionary,' 'principled,' and 'bold' with President Reagan. That wasn't him at all—that was Ike."
In other news reported by The Onion, "NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God."

Continue ReadingOnion: Embarrassed GOP has been confusing Eisenhower for Reagan

Faltering Fourth Estate

Glenn Greenwald has once again gathered evidence that American citizens are intentionally being kept in the dark, even by our "news" media:

Yesterday, as I noted earlier, The Guardian reported that Davis -- despite Obama's description of him as "our diplomat in Pakistan" -- actually works for the CIA, and further noted that Pakistani officials believe he worked with Blackwater. When reporting that, The Guardian noted that many American media outlets had learned of this fact but deliberately concealed it -- because the U.S. Government told them to: "A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration."

. . .

In other words, the NYT knew about Davis' work for the CIA (and Blackwater) but concealed it because the U.S. Government told it to. Now that The Guardian and other foreign papers reported it, the U.S. Government gave permission to the NYT to report this, so now that they have government license, they do so -- only after it's already been reported by other newspapers which don't take orders from the U.S. Government.

. . .

[T]here is simply no justification -- none -- for a newspaper to allow government officials to run around misleading the public, and to print those misleading statements, all while concealing information (at the Government's request) which reveal those claims to be factually dubious.
The question that has echoed in my ear for the past 10 years (or more) is, "What else don't we know?"

Continue ReadingFaltering Fourth Estate

More on war and peace

From the website of Dennis Kucinich:

Unbelievable. First they want to redistrict me to get me out of Congress. Now the GOP led Congress voted last week to eliminate all funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) - one of the few programs in the budget dedicated to conflict prevention and non-violence - while they added another $158 billion in the same budget for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The two wars will consume $42.7 million - the entire budget for the USIP - in 142 minutes. It's a one-two punch to our efforts to promote peaceful conflict resolution over war.
And now a few facts from Harper's Index (March 2011):
Estimated percentage change since 2000 in the U.S. defense budget, not including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: +80% Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning: 29 Estimated spending by Afghans on bribes last year: $2,500,000,000 Portion of the country's GDP to which this figure is equivalent: 1/4

Continue ReadingMore on war and peace

Matt Taibbi asks: “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”

At DemocracyNow, Matt Taibbi discusses why, on Wall Street, Nobody goes to jail."

Every single former investigator or current investigator that I talked to said the same thing: Madoff went to jail because the wrong people suffered. You know, it was famous actors. It was, you know, the glitterati in New York. If these were teachers and firemen and all the usual suspects—you know, look at the—we have a million people in foreclosure in this country right now, and a lot of them are there because of predatory lending and because of this fraud scheme, but there are no criminal prosecutions. I think that’s the reality now, is that we don’t see anybody being criminally targeted unless their victims were powerful people themselves. We have two-and-a-half million people in jail this country, you know, more than a million who are in jail for nonviolent crimes. And yet, we couldn’t find a single person on Wall Street to do even a day in jail for losing 40 percent of the world’s wealth in a criminal fraud scheme? And that tells you that we have—this goes beyond the cliché that rich people have better lawyers and they have an advantage. This is a step beyond that. This is a situation where the system is completely corrupted, and it’s true regulatory capture. The SEC and the Justice Department are essentially subsidiaries of Wall Street.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi asks: “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”