Google Teams Up with CIA to Fund “Recorded Future” Startup Monitoring Websites, Blogs & Twitter Accounts

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Democracy Now!
July 30, 2010

Google Teams Up with CIA to Fund “Recorded Future” Startup Monitoring Websites, Blogs & Twitter Accounts

Investors at the CIA and Google are backing a company called “Recorded Future” that monitors tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts in real time in order to find patterns, events and relationships that may predict the future. The news comes amidst Google’s so-called “Wi-Spy” scandal, that refers to revelations that Google’s Street View cars operating in some thirty countries snooped on private WiFi networks over the last three years.

Our Complicity by Dahr Jamail

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by Dahr Jamail
Dahr Jamail Dispatches (see photography by Erika Blumenfeld)
July 29, 2010

We rather be ruined than changed.
We rather die in our dread,
than climb the cross of the moment,
and let our illusions
die.
-W.H. Auden, excerpted from “The Age of Anxiety”

Not long ago we strolled along a beautiful white-sand beach in Orange Beach, Alabama, taking photos of freshly washed ashore black and brown tar balls. We watched little boys playing in the shallow surf, trying to catch minnows, as red oil boom bobbed in the waves just offshore behind them. This is the world we have all created.

Above all of this, an oil-spotting white blimp made slow rumbling passes up and down the beach.

‘Go Ahead, Try and Make Me Pay You’: Wage Theft and S.B. 1070 + Illegal Invasion Or Economic Scapegoat?

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By Danny Postel and Ted Smukler
http://www.inthesetimes.com
July 27, 2010

The Arizona Interfaith Alliance for Worker Justice, a worker center in Phoenix, has seen a “huge spike” in wage theft since SB 1070, Arizona’s draconian immigration law, passed in April. Trina Zelle, the group’s executive director, has seen a “noticeable shift” in the four months since the measure was signed into law.

“Employers are even more brazen in their mistreatment of workers,” Zelle says. “Increasingly, “Go ahead, try and make me pay you” is the response workers hear when they confront their employers over unpaid wages.

[…]

via ‘Go Ahead, Try and Make Me Pay You’: Wage Theft and S.B. 1070 – Working In These Times

Mr. Obama, Why We are not that Impressed By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
July 30, 2010

I decided to listen to President Obama’s speech to the Netroots Convention in Las Vegas. I wasn’t invited, I’m sure that the cheerleaders from Daily Kos were. I’m sure that all the Democratic websites posing as “progressive” websites had invites floating around for their members. Maybe I’m not the kind of person that the Democrats want at the netroots convention. Maybe, just maybe, I’m part of the “looney left” that Bill O’Reilly is always harping about. Maybe I want a little more “change” with my politics and less bragging about bills that sound good at first glance, but after a little scrutiny, they aren’t all they are cracked up to be. I won’t bore you with the details about the “health care” bill or the “financial reform” bill, if you are reading my article, I think just by being on the website you are on; you know what I’m talking about. If you are on this site by accident, well ask around, I’m sure there are all sorts of people that will let you in on what I’m talking about.

LeiLani Dowell: Imperialism at home and abroad: Policy or system of exploitation? + Pete Seeger: Which Side Are You On?

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LeiLani Dowell, WW managing editor, at the Workers World Forum in NYC, July 22, 2010.

Patrick Cockburn on Missing Billions in Iraq and Soaring Cancer & Infant Mortality Rates in Fallujah

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Democracy Now!
July 29, 2010

Patrick Cockburn on Missing Billions in Iraq and Soaring Cancer & Infant Mortality Rates in Fallujah

In Iraq, an official audit by the US Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction found that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $9 billion taken from Iraqi oil revenues between 2004 and 2007 for use in reconstruction. Meanwhile, a new medical study has found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004. We speak with Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. [includes rush transcript]

via Patrick Cockburn on Missing Billions in Iraq and Soaring Cancer & Infant Mortality Rates in Fallujah