25 May 2014

NOT THE (SUNDAY) MARIETTA TIMES…

0700 by Jeff Hess

What’s going on here

Today’s headlines include:

Since the Marietta Times does not publish a Sunday edition, what was your favorite story this week? What story did the Marietta Times not report or under-report this week?

(For comparison’s sake, I’ve added a link to the The Anchor News to these posts.)

Previously

24 May 2014

BEING WATCHED DOES MAKE US DOCILE…

1819 by Jeff Hess

The fourth chapter of 40 pages deals with why all this matters greatly. Greenwald gives two reasons. He says that having privacy is essential to our growth as individuals because it is what enables us to explore ourselves and our relationships with others freely. The other is that the internet is no longer a niche add-on to our lives but the very heart of the world we live in and where our privacy must be most jealously guarded. He says that a system of ubiquitous surveillance distorts our behavior both subtly and overtly, making us act in ways that we think are acceptable to the observers and this ends up stifling dissent, creativity, and challenges to orthodoxy.

–From Mano Singham’s review of Glenn Greenwald’s No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by way of My Electronic Chapbook

Previously…

24 May 2014

WHY WERE WYDEN AND UDALL SO FEARFUL…?

1600 by Jeff Hess

For two years Democratic senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of New Mexico had been going around the country warning that Americans would be “stunned to learn” of the “secret interpretations of law” the Obama administration was using to vest itself with vast, unknown spying powers. But because these spying activities and “secret interpretations” were classified, the two senators, who were members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had stopped short of disclosing to the public what they found so menacing, despite the legal shield of immunity granted to members of Congress by the Constitution to make such disclosures had they chosen to. p. 28

–Glenn Greenwald from No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by way of My Electronic Chapbook

Previously…

24 May 2014

NOT THE MARIETTA TIMES

0700 by Jeff Hess

TODAY’S MARIETTA TIMES FRONT PAGE

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Road trip
W.P. Snyder staying put for now
36 months for heroin dealing while on parole
Congrats grads! Frontier
Congrats grads! Warren

Top Headlines Poll: Do you prefer to vacation closer to home or do you like to travel farther?

(For comparison’s sake, I’ve added a link to the The Anchor News to these posts.)

What’s going on here

Previously

23 May 2014

ARE WE WILLING TO FIGHT…?

1600 by Jeff Hess

Previously…

23 May 2014

NOT THE MARIETTA TIMES

0700 by Jeff Hess

TODAY’S MARIETTA TIMES FRONT PAGE

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Pre-K proposal
Sheriff’s office may oversee EMA
Dad, daughter in trouble for dumping dog
Drilling worth $1M to county
Granite benches coming

Top Headlines Poll: Have we lost the meaning of Memorial Day?

(For comparison’s sake, I’ve added a link to the The Anchor News to these posts.)

What’s going on here

Previously

23 May 2014

_FGH_N_ST_N… CAN I BUY AN “A” ALEX…?

0000 by Jeff Hess

wikileaks 140519

At 0500 GMT (0000 EDT) Wikileaks posted WikiLeaks statement on the mass recording of Afghan telephone calls by the NSA.

Previously…

22 May 2014

THE GAME IS RIGGED…

1200 by Jeff Hess

22 May 2014

NOT THE MARIETTA TIMES

0700 by Jeff Hess

TODAY’S MARIETTA TIMES FRONT PAGE

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Restored B&B
Man accused of raping friend
Oil, gas lease for city still possible
Dog in trash:
Man gets 11 months in prison for bath salts possession

Top Headlines Poll: How much damage did the recent sold (sic) snap do to your garden or flowers?

(For comparison’s sake, I’ve added a link to the The Anchor News to these posts.)

What’s going on here

Previously

22 May 2014

ON TODAY’S NEW POPULISTS AGENDA…

0622 by Jeff Hess

new populism conference 140522

Full video of the conference…

INVESTMENT, GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY
–Time to Rebuild America: Invest and Grow; REP. KEITH ELLISON (D-Minn.)

–We Aren’t Broke; We’ve Been Robbed: Fair Taxes in a Gilded Age; REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY (D-Ill.)

THE NEW POPULISM
–The Populist Moment; The Emerging Movement; ROBERT BOROSAGE, Co-Director, Campaign for America’s Future

–The Populist Majority: Americans Want An End to Business as Usual; CELINDA LAKE, Pollster, Lake and Associates

TAKING ON INEQUALITY AND CAPITAL
–Full Employment and Growth: Make Workers Scarce and Jobs Plentiful; JARED BERNSTEIN, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

–Balanced Trade: End the Fast Track to Nowhere; THEA LEE, Deputy Chief of Staff and Trade Policy Economist, AFL-CIO

–Curb Wall Street: Too Big to Fail = Too Big To Bail; SEN. SHERROD BROWN (D-Ohio)

–Educate This: Guarantee the Opportunity to Learn; ELAINE WEISS, Coordinator, Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Campaign

THE RULES ARE RIGGED; IT WILL TAKE A MOVEMENT
–Keynote Address; SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.)

RAISE THE ROOF, LIFT THE FLOOR
–Jobs with Justice: Living Wage, Basic Rights: Moving in States and Cities Now; VALERIE ERVIN, Executive Director, The Center for Working Families

–Empower Workers; LARRY COHEN, President, Communications Workers of America

–Crack Down on CEO Plunder; SARAH ANDERSON, GLOBAL ECONOMY PROJECT, Institute for Policy Studies

THE RISING AMERICAN ELECTORATE: A POPULIST FORCE
–Shafted: The Rising American Electorate and Today’s Economy; MAYA ROCKEYMOORE, President, Global Policy Solutions

–Latinos Want Action, Not Retreat; KICA MATOS, Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice, Center for

Community Change and Director, Fair Immigration Reform Movement
–Big Debts, Lousy Jobs, Catastrophic Climate: The Coming Millennial Revolt; SOPHIA ZAMAN, President, U.S. Student Association

DEFEND AND EXPAND SHARED SECURITY
–Fight Back Against the Oligarchs; SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.)

–Not Right and Left: Right and Wrong; REV. WILLIAM BARBER II, President, North Carolina NAACP

The agenda from The New Populism Conference

22 May 2014

REALITY COMMENCES IN 3… 2…

0425 by Jeff Hess

non sequitor 140522I graduated from Ohio University 30 years ago. 1984, George Orwell notwithstanding, was a good year. We weren’t at war, conservatives had not yet wrecked the economy and that Internet thing was still pretty much a geeky kind of toy.

21 May 2014

BAHAMIAN POLITICOS PISSED…

1004 by Jeff Hess

Government officials in the Bahamas want their U.S. counterparts to explain why the National Security Agency has been intercepting and recording every cell phone call taking place on the island nation.

Responding to a report published by The Intercept on Monday, which revealed that the NSA has been targeting the Bahamas’ entire mobile network and storing the audio of every phone call traversing the network for up to 30 days, Bahamian officials told the Nassau Guardian that they had contacted the U.S. and vowed to release a statement regarding the revelations.

In a front-page story published Tuesday, Bahamian Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell told the Guardian that his government had reached out to the U.S. for an explanation. Mitchell said the cabinet was set to meet to discuss the matter and planned to issue a statement on the surveillance. The Bahamian minister of national security told the paper he intended to launch an inquiry into the NSA’s surveillance but did not provide a comment.

From Ryan Devereaux, following up on Monday’s story regarding the archiving of all Bahamian phone calls.

21 May 2014

LAVABIT, LADAR LEVINSON AND LEVIATHAN…

0851 by Jeff Hess

My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company’s network.

My company, Lavabit, provided email services to 410,000 people – including Edward Snowden, according to news reports – and thrived by offering features specifically designed to protect the privacy and security of its customers. I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the US government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they travelled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet.

But that wasn’t enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company’s private encryption keys, and I balked.

Ladar Levison writing for The Guardian

21 May 2014

A TRULY DARK DAY IS WHEN…

0838 by Jeff Hess

We celebrate the victory of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell over his more-wrong-wing opponent Matt Bevin.

21 May 2014

NOT THE MARIETTA TIMES

0700 by Jeff Hess

TODAY’S MARIETTA TIMES FRONT PAGE

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Pool season
Prison time for drunk driving
Man says he stole sister’s medicine
St. Jo’s campus closing in Aug.
Career Center seniors celebrate

Top Headlines Poll: How much do prices influence your coffee buying habits?

(For comparison’s sake, I’ve added a link to the The Anchor News to these posts.)

What’s going on here

Previously

21 May 2014

GOODBYE TO DERF’S THE CITY

0416 by Jeff Hess

goodbye derf 140521

Last Thursday, Derf wrote:

I’m ending my comic strip, The City, after 24 years. Here’s the final strip.

I’m ending the strip So I can concentrate full-time on graphic novels. It’s all good. I’m not slinking away from a failed endeavor as a washed-up has-been. I’m leaving it behind in a blaze of glory, as a newly minted, internationally-best-selling comix creator. The past couple years have been the best of my career. After 30 years of toil as a (at best) cult favorite to suddenly find success? I’m loving every fucking minute of it! I simply no longer have the time, nor, quite frankly, the desire, to devote to The City. Typically, it takes almost two full workdays to write and draw one strip. That’s time better devoted to other projects.

I know some of you will lament this decision, and I thank you.

The Art, however, thankfully goes on.

Bottom line is I’d rather make books and the truth is, I’m a LOT better at graphic novels than I ever was at a comic strip. It’s obviously what I should have been doing all along. To paraphrase Elvis Costello, “I’m an overnight sensation… after 30 years!”

I’m currently working on a new book for Abrams, a continuation of my ongoing Trashed project, which many of you enjoyed here as a free webcomic a few years back. It’s slated for a Fall 2015 release. I’m also publishing The Baron of Prospect Ave., an ongoing webcomic starring Otto of Punk Rock & Trailer Parks. And I have other projects in the works. Stay tuned for details.

While we wait, on Monday, Derf wrote:

Indulge me as I reminisce over a quarter century of work.

January 1989: I quit my full-time job as the art director at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and opened Derfcity Comics, my own cartoon studio. I was sick of mainstream media and drawing bullshit comix for squares. I was in my late 20s and figured it was now of never, so I jumped off the cliff into the unknown. Unsure of which direction to head, I holed up in my studio and experimented with comix in every form I could think of.

I created a single-panel humor cartoon (above) which was sold to the Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine. It was my first breakthrough.

I put together a daily strip, almost four months worth, which was considered, then ultimately rejected, by one of the big syndicates…

20 May 2014

GLENN GREENWALD: JOURNLIST….

1224 by Jeff Hess

So that goes with your concept of adversarial journalism—and the fact that you’re sitting here on your porch in Rio, not having lunch with anybody in D.C. right now, not having lunch with anybody in Manhattan.

And I don’t want to be, either! This is why I’m so optimistic about the future of journalism, based on what the Internet has permitted. I do think it is a huge change that the journalists who have been at the center of what everybody already knows is the biggest story of the year, if not the decade—meaning myself and Laura—didn’t go to journalism school. We didn’t intern at The New York Times or The Washington Post. We didn’t go to work for one of the five or six big media corporations that impose the standard set of orthodoxies about how you write and think. And we didn’t attach ourselves to those institutions. We didn’t make ourselves dependent upon the standard range of sources. And then, once I was in the position where people wanted to hire, basically, my blog, I was able to negotiate full editorial independence. So I’ve been able to forge my career, not only without depending on any of those processes and those people, but staying as far away from them as I can. I have zero incentive to avoid alienating them.

Tell me how First Look and The Intercept are going to be different.

What convinced me that Pierre [Omidyar] wanted to create something completely different [with First Look and The Intercept] was that if he wanted to just replicate The New York Times and The Washington Post, he could have just gone and bought one of those—and he almost did buy The Washington Post and, at the last minute, realized he’d rather take this $250 million and create a completely new structure from scratch, rather than buying this institution, with all of its existing baggage, that probably would be really hard to reform and change.

One thing we’ve instituted is this secure drop [for anonymously passed leaks and tips]. It’s a way of saying: This is the process that we want to not only support but strengthen. We want to give people a mechanism to provide this kind of information. There’s this incredibly vindictive assault on whistle-blowers, because it’s one of the very few avenues left that the government can’t completely control. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t need whistle-blowers who do unauthorized leaks. They would go to Congress; they would inform Congress of wrongdoing; Congress would act. But none of that actually happens. And so that’s why I see this as such an important innovation. And we want to do a lot more in the way of privacy technology like this to enable people who want to come to journalists with important stories to be able to do it in a safe way.

Glenn Greenwald, speaking with GQ

20 May 2014

I AM SIMPLY NOT HOPEFUL…

1157 by Jeff Hess

greenwald gq 140520

He works at the white-hot center of the media universe as the most reliable source for NSA surveillance scoops. He talks to Edward Snowden most days and has full access to the complete archive. And while Glenn Greenwald has spent the past year publishing revelations from arguably the largest cache of breached secrets in American-intelligence history, he promises the biggest bombs are still to come.

Michael Paterniti writing in The Man Who Knows Too Much

–Works at the white-hot center of the media universe, check.

–Most reliable source for NSA surveillance scoops, check.

–Talks to Edward Snowden most days, check.

–Has full access to Snowden’s complete archive, check.

–Spent past year publishing revelations from arguably the largest cache of breached secrets in American-intelligence history, check.

–Promises the biggest bombs are still to come, check.

–Gets beaten out for most popular story in current issue of GQ by: No. 1, What it’s like to be a billionaire’s butler; No. 2, The most unforgettable breasts in movie history; and No. 3, How to win reservations and influence waiters.

[Update at 1233, only 30 minutes later, Glenn is pushed to No. 5 by Channing Tatum (who the feck is Channing Tatum?)…

20 May 2014

THE INFINITE AND UNFATHOMABLE SADNESS…

0808 by Jeff Hess

first dog 140520

20 May 2014

NOT THE MARIETTA TIMES

0700 by Jeff Hess

TODAY’S MARIETTA TIMES FRONT PAGE

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

On the road again
Roundup of Memorial Day holiday events in the area
Ormet to lay off last of workers
WSCC strategy aims to increase state aid
Plea out of fatal wreck

Top Headlines Poll: How many personal checks do you write a month?

(For comparison’s sake, I’ve added a link to the The Anchor News to these posts.)

What’s going on here

Previously

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