Kerry's transcript and Declassfied information

If you missed Kerry's statement on Syria, here is the transcript.

If you're looking for the declassified information Kerry's speaking of, here it is (linked from Business Insider). You can also download it if you like.

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Stop SOPA

SOPA is back. Sign this while you're at it.

First of all, it's an attack on secondary liability. A site that is posting embeds of content hosted elsewhere shouldn't be held criminally liable for that content -- especially when that content may change over time and they have no direct control over it. If the original content is infringing, go after whoever uploaded/hosted the original content. Not the sites that merely have an embed. Furthermore, because the lines between reproducing, distributing and public performance can get blurry at times, it's very likely that any increased criminality for public performance will be stretched and abused to cover things that people think should be perfectly legal. As Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain explained in detail last year, the streaming provisions could clearly apply to something as simple as posting videos of yourself performing a cover of a popular song you don't have a license to... If you "transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work" for the purpose of having it performed or displayed at a place open to the public, you may be involved in a public performance. It's not hard to see how that might be used to include people posting videos on YouTube.

And, really, this whole idea is misguided. It comes from the entertainment industry's ridiculous belief that if they just keep playing Whac-a-mole with whomever they've decided is the "enemy" this week, it will eventually bring back old business models. Sites that embed streams from elsewhere aren't the enemy. Trying their operators into felons is fraught with all sorts of dangerous unintended consequences.

—TechDirt

Collateral Murder — Bradley Manning — Human Rights

Collateral Murder

Pfc. Bradley Manning leaked this July 2007 footage to Wikileaks. It was revealed to the public on April 5, 2010.

The footage shows an Apache helicopter opening fire on civilians, mistaking them for insurgents. When a civilian minivan arrives to transport the wounded, the helicopter opens fire on it as well. Two children were inside. When the soldiers realized that children were in the van, one said dismissively, "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle." The children miraculously survived.


Two Reuters journalists were killed during the engagement. When Reuters asked to see the footage, the U.S. government flat-out lied and said it could not be found. Pfc. Manning knew this was a lie because he was watching the footage.

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions requires that the wounded be collected and cared for. Article 17 of the First Protocol states that the civilian population "shall be permitted, even on their own initiative, to collect and care for the wounded." That article also says, "No one shall be harmed … for such humanitarian acts."

This footage clearly shows the United States military deliberately firing on civilian rescuers, constituting a war crime.

Pfc. Bradley Manning never killed anyone. He never tortured anyone. He never revealed troops movements or names that put any person's life in danger. He will spend half his life in a cell for saying what is true.


Restore the United States' human rights record and grant clemency to Pvt. Bradley Manning. Sign this We the People petition put forth by Amnesty International.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus calls Obama "the king of golf and vacations"

RNC Chairman @reince calls Obama "the king of golf and vacations"
— Peter Hamby (@PeterHambyCNN) August 14, 2013

You would think after the endless vacations that George W. Bush took as president that Republicans would not make a big deal about Obama’s vacations.

You would be wrong.

At this point in his presidency, George W. Bush had taken 367 vacation days, whereas Obama has only taken 92. That’s according to PolitiFact, who is drawing on the official numbers from CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller. Now of course George W. Bush did meet with people on his vacation sometimes at his ranch, but it’s not like Obama has is unreachable and not being briefed every day either. But 367 to 92.

367 to 92.

Today Obama began another vacation, while Congress is off for 5 weeks, he’s taking an 8 day vacation.

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Decolonization is not the same as Occupation

Referring to members of indigenous communities as occupants, in order to discredit them when they choose to build blockades that stop e.g. mining companies from colonising their ancestral lands is not only factually wrong, but it feeds into a long history of dismissing and silencing the legitimate complaints of indigenous peoples in order to justify the ongoing theft of their lands.

—SelchieProductions

Undocumented Immigrants

Here are the links used in the image, in order, if you wanna check my sources:

• http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/garcia-illegal-immigrants
• http://www.boston.com/news/nation/gallery/240108_citizenship_quiz/
• http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/immigrationnaturalizatio/a/About-The-Test-For-Us-Citizenship.htm

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