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Latest Featured Reports | Friday, March 29, 2024
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It's Up to You, New York: 'BradCast' 3/21/24
Trump staring down barrel of both civil and criminal accountability in NY; Also: Biden forgives another $6B in student loans; U.S. seeks 'sustained ceasefire' in Gaza; Scientists baffled by spike in record global heat...
'Green News Report' 3/21/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Biden EPA issues biggest climate regulation in U.S. history; Rio hits 144°F heat index!; Exxon CEO blames YOU for climate change; PLUS: U.N. issues climate change 'red alert'!...
Previous GNRs: 3/19/24 - 3/14/24 - Archives...
'It All Comes Down to Brett and Amy': 'BradCast' 3/20/24
Guest: Slate's Mark Joseph Stern on another stunning week of federal judiciary debacles; Also: Primary results from AZ, FL, IL, KS, OH, CA; Biden EPA's 'biggest climate move yet'...
American 'Bloodbath':
'BradCast' 3/19/24
Trump is promising political violence whether he wins or loses; Also: Navarro goes to prison; Scofflaw MI MAGA attorney arrested; SCOTUS allows TX to override federal law, Constitution; Biden's SOTU success...
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Corporations 'Taking a Bazooka' to NLRB, Hoping to Declare it 'Unconstitutional': 'BradCast' 3/18/24
Guest: Labor journo Steven Greenhouse; Also: Putin's 'election'; Trump can't find $450M...
Sunday 'Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya' Toons
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Schumer Steps Up; Trump Associates Paid Biden 'Bribe' Liar $600k: 'BradCast' 3/14/24
Also: TikTok foolishness; NY hush-money trial delay?; Navarro must go to jail; Trump owes $400k for failed 'Steele Dossier' suit in UK...
'Green News Report' 3/14/24
FL bans heat protections for workers; Methane leaks continue; GOP Project 2025 would ban Paris Agreement; PLUS: CA snowpack is back, but too late for salmon...
After Accountability for Fraud, What's Next for the Corrupt NRA and Gun Safety Reforms?: 'BradCast' 3/13/24
Guest: Brady Center's Kelly Sampson; Also: Biden, Trump clinch; GA judge nixes 6 counts...
How to Media Better and Other Smart Ideas:
'BradCast' 3/12/24
Press quietly resets weeks of misreporting on Biden; Suggestions for NYT; Stephanopoulos v. Mace; Also: Buck quits; RNC 'bloodbath'; WI's MAGA Speaker Recall...
'Green News Report' 3/12/24
Biden touts climate jobs boom at SOTU; Feb. obliterated global temp and ocean heat records; PLUS: Great Barrier Reef hit with yet another 'mass bleaching event'...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Guest: Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock...
By Brad Friedman on 6/8/2015 5:14pm PT  

Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock joins me on today's BradCast to discuss his disturbing new article at The Nation on "How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA: A new cybersecurity elite moves between government and private practice, taking state secrets with them."

It's an issue, as I note during the show, that is particularly troubling giving the history of my family and me being targeted by defense contractors in years past.

Shorrock, author of the book Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, describes the unprecedented privatization of our national security apparatus and how "the public is badly misled by the media" during debates about intelligence policies when "former" intelligence officials are presented to the public as experts without disclosure of their continuing financial ties to the industry.

Plus: As the Republican Party continues to make itself irrelevant, progressive ideas are quickly becoming mainstream ideas and Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are eager to capitalize on it. And, speaking of irrelevance, GOP 2016 candidate Rick Santorum attacks the Pope(!) for daring to speak up about saving humanity by taking action on global warming...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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GUEST: Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel...
By Brad Friedman on 5/14/2015 4:48pm PT  

The new USA Freedom Act has just sailed through the U.S. House and now heads to the Senate, as a replacement for the bulk spying provisions of the USA Patriot Act. National security blogger/muckraker Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel.net joins us on today's BradCast to explain what it all means, whether it will pass, what happens if it doesn't, and whether the new bill will make things better or worse.

Also, way-too-dumb-to-be-President Jeb Bush takes his fifth embarrassing stab at answering a very simple question about Iraq; We finally find a Republican who isn't running for President in 2016; Great news for progressive Democrats in Wisconsin!; And Desi Doyen joins us for our 600th(!) Green News Report!...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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While we post The BradCast here everyday, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

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Guests: TX blogger Perry 'PDiddie' Dorrell; Attorney Ernest A. Canning...
By Brad Friedman on 5/7/2015 4:22pm PT  

It was a very busy BradCast today!

We started with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling finding that the NSA's mass surveillance of US citizens under the Patriot Act is, in fact, illegal; Then, more arrests of top elected officials in NY state (Who's next?);

Next, I was joined by BRAD BLOG's Texas blogger and 'toon curator Perry "PDiddie" Dorrell of Brains & Eggs to discuss the "Ace in the Hole (and on the Bench)" in the ongoing criminal felony trial of former TX Governor and presumptive 2016 GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry. (And for an update on whether he's properly prepared for the imminent "Jade Helm 15" U.S. government takeover of Texas!)

Then BRAD BLOG legal analyst Ernest A. Canning on "the democracy deficit" and how it applies to Bernie Sanders and his run for the 2016 Dem nomination.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for a very busy Green News Report on Oklahoma tornado outbreak, 'oil bomb' trains, the progressive take over of Alberta, Canada's government, and Elon Musk's huge new announcement...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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By Brad Friedman on 5/3/2014 1:30pm PT  

Near the end of his joint press conference at the White House on Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a question was asked about whether "personal trust [has] been rebuilt" between the two otherwise allied countries, following last year's disclosure by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the U.S. had been spying directly on Merkel's personal cell phone.

President Obama included this in his response [emphasis added]:

OBAMA: ...Germany is one of our closest allies and our closest friends, and that's true across the spectrum of issues --- security, intelligence, economic, diplomatic. And Angela Merkel is one of my closest friends on the world stage, and somebody whose partnership I deeply value. And so it has pained me to see the degree to which the Snowden disclosures have created strains in the relationship.

Got that? It was the "Snowden disclosures," apparently, not the actual U.S. policy of spying on her personal calls, that has "created strains in the relationship".

So he's not sorry we spied on her, he's simply "pained" that we got caught.




PLUS: How the enormous open source vulnerability underscores madness of e-voting, Internet Voting...
By Brad Friedman on 4/11/2014 3:03pm PT  

Seriously, dudes?...

The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.

The NSA's decision to keep the bug secret in pursuit of national security interests threatens to renew the rancorous debate over the role of the government's top computer experts.

Heartbleed appears to be one of the biggest glitches in the Internet's history, a flaw in the basic security of as many as two-thirds of the world's websites. Its discovery and the creation of a fix by researchers five days ago prompted consumers to change their passwords, the Canadian government to suspend electronic tax filing and computer companies including Cisco Systems Inc. to Juniper Networks Inc. to provide patches for their systems.

So the NSA knew about this massive security flaw, one of the biggest in the history of the Internet, and rather than warning about the security vulnerability to all Americans, exploited it, instead.

While I can't say I'm particularly surprised by this, I can say, I'm infuriated by it.

If it wasn't before, the NSA has now become a complete joke. What part of "national security" is unclear to the National Security Agency, for chrissakes?!!

* * *

For an additional take on the Heartbleed bug as it pertains to electronic and Internet voting systems (For example, how the fact that this huge flaw in open source software was not discovered for years, underscoring the fact that open source is little more than a panacea when it comes to the foolhardy use of computers in elections, and how this bug should end all talk of Internet Voting forever) please listen to my rant during this week's BradCast, beginning approximately at the :31 minute mark.




By Brad Friedman on 2/7/2014 6:05am PT  

Almost three weeks ago, all three of the major Sunday network news shows --- NBC's Meet the Press, CBS' Face the Nation and ABC's This Week --- allowed very powerful elected officials, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), to come on the air and claim, without evidence, that they'd seen "clues" suggesting former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden was, somehow, a Russian agent.

The officials were required to offer absolutely no evidence for their extraordinary claims on the three major broadcast networks. Snowden was subsequently forced to strongly rebut the scandalous charges, which are apparently straight out of the Nixon/Cold War era playbook.

While that sort of wholly substance-free red-baiting is now perfectly appropriate, seemingly, on network "news" shows, it's similarly remarkable that it seems those very same networks, and most of the others, obsessed with unsubstantiated bullshit claims about Snowden, failed to even note a full-length, detailed, substantive videotaped interview with Snowden on Germany television's ARD almost two weeks ago on January 26th.

Interestingly, on the ARD website, where the exclusive interview was originally posted, a note on the page explains cryptically: "Due to legal reasons the video is only available in Germany." Huh. So it can't be watched there from here in the U.S. Okay. So, here's the full interview as posted at LiveLeak...

Please decide for yourself if he's a "Russian agent", as based on his comments here and the actual public evidence that exists (none) to support the defamatory claims of the very powerful elected members of Congress. The entire interview is interesting and as fascinating as he is.

I'm not sure if it offers a lot of new information, in regard to Snowden's leaks (as he notes several times during the conversation, he's leaving it to the journalists to decide what is newsworthy and what isn't from amongst the documents which he reportedly no longer even has), but there's one section I wanted to underscore, as it's something we've discussed here for many years. Namely, the dangers of privatizing our national security/surveillance state, which he speaks to very directly in the interview...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 1/30/2014 4:08pm PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama's State of the Union goes big for fracking... but Big Green says it's a bridge to nowhere; Big Fossil Fuel has a new mega-astroturf group; Extreme weather paralyzes Atlanta on behalf of Big Business; PLUS: NSA spied on UN climate talks, according to new Snowden docs ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): WV water tests positive for formaldehyde; Shell won't drill offshore in Arctic this year; Shell ordered to pay $11b oil spill fine to Nigeria; Monarch butterflies in steep decline; Climate hawk Rep. Henry Waxman to retire; Great Lakes drying up; New conflicts of interest in Keystone XL environment review; Climate change killing baby penguins; ... PLUS: One Vid to Rule Them All: “If There’s Global Warming, How Come it’s So Cold?” ... and much, MUCH more! ...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




PLUS: Congress members given network air time to 'red-bait' Edward Snowden; Photo ID struck down in PA; MUCH MORE...
By Brad Friedman on 1/23/2014 6:05am PT  

[A version of this article has now been cross-published by Salon...]

A number of unhappy "good government" groups will file a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission next month, in hopes that the courts will force the FEC to enforce the federal campaign finance laws that the FEC is, supposedly, there to enforce.

The organizations are particularly unhappy about Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS "behemoth" outfit, which has raised hundreds of millions over the last several years to elect Republican candidates to office, recently receiving a pass from the FEC, even after the agency's Office of General Counsel found reason to believe Rove's group clearly violated campaign finance laws.

The news about the groups' intention to file suit was offered on the KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast this week by my guest, Craig Holman, the Government Affairs Lobbyist for Public Citizen's Congress Watch. Public Citizen, along with the Campaign Legal Center, Center for Media and Democracy, and Protect Our Elections filed the initial complaint over campaign spending in 2010 by Rove's then new non-profit 501(c)(4) organization. They now plan to sue the FEC for failing to do their job, Holman explained on the show on Wednesday. [Disclosure: Protect Our Elections is a campaign created by VelvetRevolution.us, an organization co-founded by The BRAD BLOG, though we weren't personally involved with either the complaint or the upcoming suit.]

"What's happened with the Federal Election Commission is," Holman explained during my interview [posted in full at the end of this article], Senator "Mitch McConnell [R-KY], back in about 2008, realized that even though he can't get Congress to rescind campaign finance laws --- and he certainly can't sell the public on rescinding campaign finance laws --- he realized that if he were to appoint three Republican Commissioners to the FEC, he could ensure that the campaign finance laws don't get enforced. And that's exactly what has happened." Holman detailed how three-to-three deadlock votes on whether to pursue further action in most of the campaign finance rulings by the three Democratic and three Republican Commissioners on the FEC has increased "nine-fold" since 2008. A deadlock vote effectively ends the matter, even if wrong-doing had been found by the investigative staff, as is the case here.

In the original complaint against Rove's Crossroads GPS, the FEC's Office of General Counsel (OGC) found that the group had spent a majority of its funding on campaigning in 2010. If so, that's a violation of the law, since Rove's group should have filed with the FEC as a political committee, rather than as a 501(c)(4) which is supposed to be a non-electioneering "social welfare" organization. As a political committee, funders would have to be immediately disclosed, but as a (c)(4), the identity of those funding Rove's organization can remain a secret....

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




While some are hopeful, civil libertarians remain dubious...
By Brad Friedman on 1/17/2014 5:36pm PT  

Proving once again that he is neither the radical reformer the Right pretends that he is, and that the non-Right had hoped he would be, President Obama attempted to conservatively thread an impossible needle in his speech today [full transcript] calling for a number of reforms to the government's current, sweeping collection of the private telephone data of Americans who are in no way related to terrorism investigations.

Once again, while ignoring many of the recommendations offered by his own special commission convened to make such recommendations for reform of NSA surveillance and other intelligence gather techniques, Obama is trying to split the baby and, in doing so, appears to be gaining the great admiration of...largely no one.

During a speech at the Dept. of Justice on Friday, he announced what he described as "a series of concrete and substantial reforms that my administration intends to adopt administratively or will seek to codify with Congress." Those reforms are, in fact, a series of limited changes that, almost all honest brokers agree, would never have happened were it not for the historically-important leaks by former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden. The President side-stepped what should have been "thanks" offered to the now federally-charged fugitive forced into political asylum in Russia.

"Given the fact of an open investigation, I'm not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden's actions or his motivations," the President said, before taking a shot at him by referencing the importance of "the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation's secrets" and "the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out." Those disclosures, of course, led to this moment and these reforms, however meager and/or cosmetic they may turn out to be. "Regardless of how we got here though," Obama continued quickly, in hopes of marginalizing the facts of Snowden's contributions to the reality of the moment.

Since he was not given his proper due this afternoon by the President himself, it fell to the Huffington Post's front page splash today to offer exactly that...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By Brad Friedman on 1/3/2014 12:03pm PT  

Still on the road (back full time as of next week), but thought this video from yesterday's The Lead with Jake Tapper on CNN was well worth popping here quickly, if you've yet to see it.

It's a fantastic and very lively debate about Edward Snowden and, perhaps most-interestingly, Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, between journalist Glenn Greenwald and Washington Post op-ed columnist Ruth Marcus. Greenwald describes Marcus here --- much to her apparent consternation --- as an Obama Administration "loyalist" for, among other things, what he sees as a double-standard for her calls for the prosecution of whistleblower Snowden, versus the seeming free pass she's willing to give to Administration officials such as Clapper who has admitted to misleading Congress with false testimony (aka Lying to Them). That would be a felony crime...if anybody bothered to prosecute it.

Greenwald is tenacious (as usual) in forcing Marcus to answer his question about whether Clapper should be prosecuted. For her part, she does a decent job of acquitting herself, sort of, even as the entire conversation --- and the two staked-out positions here --- really do help to illustrate, as Greenwald describes it, how "the D.C. media" and "people in Washington continuously make excuses for those in power when they break the law."

"That's what people in Washington do," he charges. "They would never call on someone like James Clapper, who got caught lying to Congress, which is a felony, to be prosecuted. They only pick on people who embarrass the government and the administration to which they are loyal, like Edward Snowden. It's not about the rule of law."

"People in Washington who are well-connected to the government like she is, do not believe that the law applies to them. They only believe that the law should be used to punish people and imprison people who don't have power in Washington or who expose the wrongdoing of American political officials," Greenwald argues. I'll let you watch to see how Marcus responds.

This one is very much worth watching in full. If you prefer, the complete text transcript is posted here...




Civil libertarians ecstatic; Whistleblower Snowden hails opinion...
By Brad Friedman on 12/16/2013 1:40pm PT  

A federal judge has found the bulk collection of metadata of U.S. phone calls to be "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary" and, therefore, in violation of the Constitution's 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. His opinion was hailed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden who has been asserting that point as the central basis for his having leaked thousands of classified documents in regard to programs run by the federal agency.

Politico's Josh Gerstein, who appears to have been the first to break the news today, reports it this way...

A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.

Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting so-called metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal.

Now, Klayman is, in fact, a Rightwing loon who is separately in the process of, literally, attempting to overthrow the U.S. government. But, as journalist Glenn Greenwald --- the man who has been most intensely reporting on Snowden's leaks --- notes today: "the ACLU has a virtually identical lawsuit against the NSA as the one where the judge today ruled against NSA".

Judge Leon went on to write in his scathing opinion...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Guest: Gary Ruskin of the Center for Corporate Policy
By Brad Friedman on 11/27/2013 8:49pm PT  

Hope you'll grab this one for some Thanksgiving weekend listening!

My guest on this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio was the Center for Corporate Policy's Gary Ruskin, author of the new report, "Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage of Nonprofit Organizations" [PDF]. The report is "spooky" for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I am named in the report, as one of the targets of an extraordinary $12 million espionage plot by the loathsome, rightwing U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

[The scheme involved the U.S. Chamber, their powerful and sleazy law firm Hunton & Williams, LLP and three grifter U.S. defense/intel contractors, HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies. It was meant to use tools developed for the "war on terror" against me, my family and a number of progressive organizations. None of the parties involved have been held accountable to this day. Read more about it here...]

Ruskin's report is chilling and the interview is disturbing. But the second half of the show is (largely) much less troubling! We update a lot of the stories we've been covering of late on The BradCast, most of them with good news updates!

So, curl on up to the holiday radio hearth and give it a listen...and all of my best to you and yours for Thanksgiving! (Or, as we call it around here since Chanukah falls on the same day this year: Thanksalatke!)

Download MP3 or listen online below...




By Ernest A. Canning on 10/29/2013 6:19pm PT  

New revelations and global protests by ordinary citizens and world leaders --- including U.S. allies --- over NSA surveillance, have now settled into an almost daily affair.

In the meantime, during an interview on Democracy Now! this week, journalist Glenn Greenwald offered up an analysis that may help explain what he now describes as an "institutional obsession" with surveillance by the U.S. government.

"If you reveal to populations around the world that their calls are being spied on by the millions, they’ll first wonder, 'Why are my calls of interest to the U.S. government?'," Greenwald observes. "But when it becomes apparent that the United States government is doing this for economic advantage, they start to feel personally implicated, like they’re being actually robbed."

While readers would do well to watch the entirety of the interview (see video below), the analysis offered within by Greenwald is especially poignant because it ties the NSA’s massive surveillance state in many of these foreign countries, not to the prevention of terrorism, but to the seemingly insatiable quest on the part of the U.S.-based, corporate global empire to secure economic advantage...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By Brad Friedman on 9/12/2013 6:05am PT  

It was a content packed BradCast this week on KPFK/Pacifica Radio! Listening will make you smarter and a generally better person in every regard.

First up: We were joined up by Francesco Femia of the Center for Climate and Security to discuss the climate change connection to the civil war in Syria and other regions where national security dangers loom, thanks to the "threat multiplier" that is global warming. Femia is the founding Director of D.C.-based think tank with an advisory board of retired senior military officers and national security experts. Fascinating conversation!

Next up: New documents disclosed by Edward Snowden and reported today by The Guardian reveal the NSA's agreement with Israel to share SigInt (signals intelligence) such as phone and email content without removing private metadata and content of U.S. persons first.

Finally (or close to it): The disaster that is SB 360, the CA law passed last week and headed to the Governor for his signature...or veto. SB 360, as The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively earlier this week, will abolish all federal testing of CA's electronic voting systems and even allow the Sec. of State to approve new e-voting systems for use "in a legally binding election" without ever being tested for state certification at all. It's a terrible bill, and we call on Governor Jerry Brown to veto it. You can (and should) too, right here...

Then Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as usual, though not before updating us on her latest Twitter fight with some jackass at CNBC. Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins.]...




PLUS: EFF's Trevor Timm on FISA Court and the U.S. Secrecy State...
By Brad Friedman on 8/28/2013 8:20pm PT  

What was the one, most important takeaway from today and Saturday's 50th Anniversary commemoration of MLK's "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom"? The one issue that seemed to make it into the remarks of just about everyone who spoke?

That's what we discussed during the first part of today's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast, along with sound clip highlights from some of the most notable speakers. (Hint: If you didn't hear the fiery remarks of Rep. John Lewis --- the youngest speaker at the original 1963 remarks --- on Saturday, you'll now get to hear them in full.)

In the second part of the show, we were joined by Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Freedom of the Press Foundation to discuss the release of the secret FISA Court's 2011 decision finding the government had misled the court multiple times, and collected the emails of tens of thousands of Americans not involved in terrorism in any way; and about the massive secrecy state we discussed in The BRAD BLOG's special investigative report this week.

Also, Desi Doyen joined us as usual with the latest Green News Report, the one with one of my favorite all-time endings! Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...




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