Julian Assange has been unfairly criticized for failing to curate his disclosures.

Julian Assange has been unfairly criticized for failing to curate his disclosures. Truthdig responds:

"Here’s a question few are asking: Would Assange, who set out to perform the honorable service of exposing government corruption, behave as he does today if he, a single individual with limited resources, had not been relentlessly pursued into the corner of a single room for 5½ years by people atop the most powerful state in civilized history? And can he, under burden of stress and loss of staff, associations and resources, be expected to fulfill the ethical obligations he once honored and still perform the service of making essential, willfully concealed information public?

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Glenn Greenwald on publishing hacks: The more powerful a person is, the less privacy they have.

Glenn Greenwald set forth 5 principles in this article on The Intercept. The article includes a video discussion with Chris Hayes. One of the principles is this:

Last night, I was on Chris Hayes’s show (video below) discussing the Podesta email leak and made this point, and some people reacted as though this were some bizarre, exotic claim — rather than what it is: the fundamental principle of journalism as well the basis of numerous laws. Of course it’s the case that the more power someone has, the less privacy they have, and every media outlet, literally every day, operates on that principle, as do multiple sectors of law. That there are different standards of privacy for different people based on their power and position is axiomatic. That’s why laws like FOIA requiring disclosure (including of emails) apply only to public officials but not to private citizens: It embraces the proposition that those who wield public power submit to greater transparency than private citizens do. This same principle is why people cheered when the NYT published Trump’s tax return even though they’d be horrified if the NYT published the tax return of ordinary citizens — because people like Trump who wield or seek great political power sacrifice some degree of privacy.
Here are the five principles Greenwald sets forth: 1. A source’s motives are irrelevant in deciding whether to publish 2. Journalists constantly publish material that is stolen or illegally obtained. 3. The more public power someone has, the less privacy they are entitled to claim 4. Whether something is “shocking” or “earth-shattering” is an irrelevant standard 5. All journalists are arbiters of privacy and gatekeepers of information

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Waters of March – Video

I love this tune and this video. The male singer is "Tom Jobim," who is also the composer of that beautiful celebratory tune and many other classic bossa nova tunes, more often known in the U.S. as Antonio Carlos Jobim. I had never before heard him sing until I saw this video. The female singer, Elis Regina, melts me with her charm and voice. This must have been a tough tune and they seemed delighted to get this one in the can so beautifully intact. My girlfriend insists that there is no way to sing this song well without dancing while one is singing it. I agree.

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Matt Taibbi comments on the phenomenon of Trump

Matt Taibbi writes at Rolling Stone:

Shackled! Only in America can a man martyr himself on a cross of pussy. There's an old Slavic saying about corruption: One thief sits atop another thief, using a third thief for a whip. The campaign trail is similarly a stack of deceptions, with each implicit lie of the horse race driving the next. Lie No. 1 is that there are only two political ideas in the world, Republican and Democrat. Lie No. 2 is that the parties are violent ideological opposites, and that during campaign season we can only speak about the areas where they differ (abortion, guns, etc.) and never the areas where there's typically consensus (defense spending, surveillance, torture, trade, and so on). Lie No. 3, a corollary to No. 2, is that all problems are the fault of one party or the other, and never both. Assuming you watch the right channels, everything is always someone else's fault. Lie No. 4, the reason America in campaign seasons looks like a place where everyone has great teeth and $1,000 haircuts, is that elections are about political personalities, not voters. [More . . . ]

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