Big Dan's Big News Oct 16, 2008

McCain's Brand New Stump Speech. John McCain unveils his fiery new stump speech, but we've heard it before. Play this very loud, McCain comes in stereo!!!



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No outsider has spent more time tracking the labyrinthine ways of the National Security Agency than James Bamford. But even he gets lost in the maze. Despite countless articles and three books on the U.S. government's super-secret, signals-intelligence service — the latest of which, The Shadow Factory, is out today — Bamford tells Danger Room that he was caught off guard by revelations that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans. He remains confused about how the country's telecommunications firms were co-opted into the warrantless spying project. And he's still only guessing, he admits, at the breadth and depth of those domestic surveillance efforts. In this exclusive interview, Bamford talks about how hard it is, after all these years, to fit together the pieces at the NSA's "Puzzle Palace" headquarters.

WIRED: Top NSA Scribe Takes Us Inside The Shadow Factory

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, let’s talk about Adrienne Kinne’s allegations, spying on Americans and international aid workers in Iraq. What’s wrong with this?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, there’s a lot of things wrong with it. First of all, they’re wasting their time, when they should be spying on or trying to intercept communications to and from terrorists. That was one of the complaints that Adrienne had and also Murfee Faulk had, that they didn’t join the military to listen to Americans doing pillow talk, because a lot of this was intimate conversations between Americans and their spouses back in the United States. They’ve been separated a long time, and you can imagine what a lot of those conversations dealt with. They were very personal matters dealing with finance, affection, and so forth. So they felt that they were morally wrong by eavesdropping on these people and then just wasting government money and wasting their time by listening to things that had nothing to do with the war on terrorism.

James Bamford: “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America”



ABC Lying About NSA

COMVERSE & KOBI ALEXANDER:

Kobi Alexander is the founder of the Israeli high-tech company Comverse and is wanted by the FBI for alleged financial wrongdoings. After fleeing the law in the US, Alexander was recently found and arrested in the African country of Namibia and has posted bail. He is awaiting extradition.

The U.S. government will send a request to Namibia next week for the extradition of Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the former Comverse Technology Inc. chief executive officer wanted for securities fraud.

Alexander, 54, was freed Oct. 3 by a Namibian judge on $1.34 million bail.

The U.S. wants Alexander to face charges related to stock-option backdating, including conspiracy, securities fraud, making false filings to U.S. regulators and money laundering.

SO WHAT DID KOBI HAVE TO DO WITH WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING?

WHAT DID KOBI HAVE TO DO WITH 9/11?

ASK FOX NEWS:

FOX News: Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.? Part 1

Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students at DEA Facilities

The role of the corporate media should not be under estimated in our current economic crisis. There are a multitude of laws that have been broken in the past 8 years concerning military industrial collusion with the corporate media. The bushes are starting to burn. If the corporate media does not want to be swept up in the coming inferno, they should do their duty to the American public and educate them about how our current economic evolved. To accomplish that the public must be told the truth about current financial crisis is related to the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1990’s. Educating the public about the myths of the war on terror would be a great place to start.

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Take the short quiz to see whose views are closest to yours. My son, who's in college, took this test and most closely aligned to Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader, with Obama coming a close 3rd, and "the Maverick" off the charts in the shitter.



GlassBooth.org

Here's Cynthia McKinney, btw... Both the Democratic & Republican parties draw up secret contracts with the corporate debate sponsors, shutting out 3rd parties from the debates. Democracy NOW! "simulates" McKinney & Nader being at the debate. I will have up the whole "simulated" debate tomorrow, between Obama, McCain, Nader, & McKinney. The debate the corporations and their 2 parties don't want you to hear. Here's a portion of what they don't want you to hear:



Check at this link right now and see if you are registered to vote!!! We checked the 4 of us, me, my wife, our son, and our daughter, and found out our daughter, who voted in the last election, was inexplicably "unregistered." We contacted the Luzerne County Elections Bureau and had her reactivated. Good thing we checked at the link below!!!

CanIVote.org

Barack Obama 87.3% (219,958 votes)
John McCain 12.7% (32,108 votes)

IfTheWorldCouldVote.com

What If God Loses the Election?

ACORN

Hmmmm....Republicans are trying to stop a group that registers mostly black, minority, and college student voters....hmmmmmm..... On this show, the ACORN rep is black and the Republican woman in the debate is white.....hmmmmmmm.......the election didn't even take place yet, nobody voted yet! But "dead voters" and "Mickey Mouse" voted! Somehow! Hmmmmmm.....

With Election Day approaching, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), finds itself in the cross hairs. Over the past year and a half, ACORN has helped 1.3 million mostly young, mostly poor people register to vote. Then, last week, ACORN was thrust into the national spotlight when the McCain campaign accused it of engaging in fraudulent voter registration on a massive scale. We host a debate between ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis and Cleta Mitchell, a Republican attorney specializing in election law.

McCain Campaign Accuses Community Organizing Mainstay ACORN of Fraud in Successful Mass Voter Registration Drive

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...more news the corporate-controlled media isn't telling you, uncovered by Big Dan and friends...

WA Republican Rossi's economic advisor: WA’s 300,000 minimum wage workers are “Dumber than a post”; Republicans want to slash WA minimum wage by $1.50, just like Ronald Reagan wanted (unsuccessfully) to slash the minimum wage in the 80's.

In defiance of the facts, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin claims that the Oct. 10 investigative report on “Troopergate” cleared her of both legal and ethical wrongdoing, but the fallout from the case continues to expand with lawsuits now likely against the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Palin's New 'Troopergate' Troubles

As the American people pick through the wreckage left by the Bush administration, many may wonder how the most powerful nation on earth got so far off track. An illustrative case study is the bogus story of Al Gore’s “Chinagate” scandal.

How America Fell

Editor’s Note: This year, the U.S. news media cheered the opening of the $450 million Newseum in Washington, a self-congratulatory celebration of American journalism.

However, rather than giving themselves that expensive pat on the back, the major U.S. media organizations might have done something to show remorse for their complicity in the Bush administration’s propaganda that justified the invasion of Iraq.

As freelance journalist Peter Dyer notes, prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunals deemed such journalistic support for war crimes to be a capital offense:

October 16 is an anniversary that should hold considerable interest for American journalists who have written in support of ”Operation Iraqi Freedom” – the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

US Journalists & War-Crime Guilt

BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani for the first round of bidding for new contracts.

Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40 per cent of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves. It is the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion that the contracts have been released.

The sale is likely to spark debate over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was part of a "war for oil" that has now delivered strategic Iraqi reserves into the hands of western multinationals.

War for Oil: Iraqi Government in Biggest Ever Sale of Oil Assets

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The Beatles - Hey Bulldog

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