Tag: TMC Politics

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New york Times Editorial Board: A Deadly Legacy in Iraq

Another chapter has been added to the dismal legacy of America’s involvement in Iraq. An investigation by C.J. Chivers, published in The Times on Wednesday, found that American and American-trained Iraqi troops discovered thousands of abandoned and highly dangerous chemical weapons left over from the rule of Saddam Hussein. These weapons, found from 2004 to 2011, wounded troops from both armies. There are now fears that some could fall into the hands of fighters for the Islamic State, which now controls much of the territory where the weapons were found. [..]

The investigation exposes shocking failings by the Pentagon, among them a callous disregard for the safety and care of American and Iraqi troops and a disturbing pattern of secrecy that can only erode public confidence in government. [..]

One big concern is the facility known as Al Muthanna State Establishment, the former center of Iraq’s chemical warfare program, near Samarra, where there are two bunkers still filled with chemicals and related equipment. The contents should have been disposed of by now under the a treaty called the Convention on Chemical Weapons. But the Pentagon apparently lost interest in the chemical weapons problem, left it to the Iraqis and the Iraqis have failed to do so. This poses an unacceptable risk to civilians and the armies trying to fight a new enemy in Iraq.

Trevor Trimm: James Risen is not going to let the US fear-mongering machine win in secret

The reporter who exposed the NSA before Snowden will go behind bars to protect his source. But he will not let Obama’s Bushian addiction to power take us back to endless war without a fight

For a man who could be forced into jail by the US government, possibly within “a few weeks”, after becoming the only journalist to be subpoenaed by both the Bush and Obama administrations, James Risen sure is busy.

In the past year alone, the New York Times investigative reporter who originally blew the lid on NSA wiretapping has interviewed with Edward Snowden, reported on multiple NSA revelations with Laura Poitras, and uncovered the incredible story of a Blackwater executive who threatened to kill a US state department employee who was investigating corruption – along with the government cover-up that followed. All while keeping mum as The Most Transparent Administration in American HistoryTM attempted to back him into a legal corner for doing his job as a reporter: protecting his sources.

“Maybe the Obama administration, at some point, is going to begin to back off, you would hope,” Risen told me on Monday afternoon. Until then, he’s speaking out upon the release of a new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War, that takes us from the rise of the second Bush administration’s “homeland security-industrial complex” to an Obama administration that, in 2014, is more secret than ever, facing down yet another war in Iraq that could last years.

Up Date: The second Dallas nurse infected with ebola will be transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, GA. The  Infectious Disease Unit is where the first two U.S. Ebola patients, both health missionary workers stationed in Liberia, were treated and released in August.

The Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed that a second health care worker has tested positive for ebola. The hospital, although it claims it is “equipped to care for patients in isolation,” it has become fairly apparent that there is a flaw in its protocols. The hospital has admitted it doesn’t know how the two hospital workers contracted the virus. That’s huge problem that continues to put the staff at great risk.

Dallas nurses have now come forward citing the flawed conditions in Ebola care

Deborah Burger of National Nurses United, who convened a conference call with reporters to relay what she said were concerns of nurses at the hospital, said they were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments and worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for Duncan. [..]

The nurses allege that his lab samples were allowed to travel through the hospital’s pneumatic tubes, possibly risking contaminating of the specimen-delivery system. They also said that hazardous waste was allowed to pile up to the ceiling. [..]

The nurses’ statement said they had to “interact with Mr. Duncan with whatever protective equipment was available,” even as he produced “a lot of contagious fluids.” Duncan’s medical records underscore that concern. They also say nurses treating Duncan were also caring for other patients in the hospital and that, in the face of constantly shifting guidelines, they were allowed to follow whichever ones they chose.

When Ebola was suspected but unconfirmed, a doctor wrote that use of disposable shoe covers should also be considered. At that point, by all protocols, shoe covers should have been mandatory to prevent anyone from tracking contagious body fluids around the hospital. [..]

The CDC said 76 staff members at the hospital could have been exposed to Duncan after his second ER visit. Another 48 people who may have had contact with him before he was isolated are being monitored.

This is unacceptable.

The CDC is now sending a team to oversee isolation procedures, especially the personal protection equipment (PPE) used by the staff, as well as, putting it on and removing it. It is the last part, removing the PPE, that is critical and, the most likely how these two nurses were infected. The PPE should be impervious to fluids. There should be no skin exposed and, as most news reporters have observed, it takes longer to take it off than don it. That’s the hard part and is done carefully, methodically and in multiple stages with decontamination at each stage.

The international medical aid organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, has been in the lead with taking care of ebola patients in Africa and has written the book on safety procedures.

The New York City Department of Health has designated Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan as the center for treatment of the Ebola virus in the city. But if this picture is an example of the PPE the staff will be wearing, they are need to make so improvements and fast.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow examined the challenges for U.S. medical facilities of meeting the exacting protocols for handling Ebola, She pointed out how something as simple as a checklist can help as the rate of Ebola’s spread is forecast to increase rapidly.

In the day of i-pads and tablets, the use of a checklist in donning and removing PPE would help eliminate errors, make it easier to find flaws (human or mechanical) and lessen the possibility of a contagious disease like ebola from spreading to care givers and beyond.  

The NSA, FBI and DOJ are upset with the new Apple and Google encryption apps that they can’t hack. The poor Director of the FBI, James Comey is “concerned” so he plays the “fear card”

“I am a huge believer in the rule of law, but I also believe that no one in this country is beyond the law,” Comey told reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington. “What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.”

Apple said last week that it would no longer be technically feasible to unlock encrypted iPhones and iPads for law enforcement because the devices would no longer allow user passcodes to be bypassed. The move comes as tech companies struggle to manage public concerns in the aftermath of last year’s leak of classified National Security Agency documents about government access to private user data. [..]

“Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data,” the company said. “So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.”

Comey said that while he understood the need for privacy, government access to mobile devices may be needed in extreme circumstances, such as in the event of a terror attack.

“I like and believe very much that we should have to obtain a warrant from an independent judge to be able to take the content of anyone’s closet or their smart phone,” he said. “The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened — even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order — to me does not make any sense.”

Comey said FBI officials have had conversations with both Apple and Google about the marketing of their devices.

“Google is marketing their Android the same way: Buy our phone and law-enforcement, even with legal process, can never get access to it,” he said.

Why anyone would think that the guy who approved torture believes in the rule of law is beyond me. Trevor Timm at The Guardian dissects what Comey said:

Comey began:

  I am a huge believer in the rule of law, but I also believe that no one in this country is beyond the law. … What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.

First of all, despite the FBI director’s implication, what Apple and Google have done is perfectly legal, and they are under no obligation under the “the rule of law” to decrypt users’ data if the company itself cannot access your stuff. From 47 U.S. Code § 1002 (emphasis mine):

   A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government’s ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication.

Comey continued:

   I like and believe very much that we should have to obtain a warrant from an independent judge to be able to take the content of anyone’s closet or their smart phone.

That’s funny, because literally four months ago, the United States government was saying the exact opposite (pdf) before the US supreme court, arguing that, in fact, the feds shouldn’t need to get a warrant to get inside anyone’s smartphone after you’re arrested. In its landmark June ruling in the case, Riley v California, the court disagreed. So it’s great to see that Jim Comey, too, has come around to the common sense conclusion that cops need a warrant to search your cellphone data, but it would’ve been nice for him to express those sentiments when they actually mattered.

Comey doubled down in another statement with the absurd fear that criminals, like child kidnappers would be able to evade the law. On its face that’s insanely ridiculous since law enforcement has numerous ways tools to access your data. The Intercept‘s Micah Lee points out that Apple still has access to plenty of your data to feed to the Feds. He went on how bemoan the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden has caused the need to protect a person’s private information may have gone too far. How so, Mr. Comey? As Timm notes in his article

Congress has not changed surveillance law at all in the the nearly 16 months since Edward Snowden’s disclosures began, mostly because of the vociferous opposition from intelligence agencies and cops. The pendulum is still permanently lodged squarely on law enforcement’s side. If it has swung at all, it’s because of the aforementioned ruling by the supreme court of the United States, along with tech companies implementing more privacy protections unilaterally because US tech companies are losing billions of dollars because of the government’s spying scandals.

A week ago, The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald gave a Ted Talk in Rio de Janeiro on why your privacy matters

Crypto wars redux: why the FBI’s desire to unlock your private life must be resisted

In 1995, the US government tried – and failed – to categorise encryption as a weapon. Today, the same lines are being drawn and the same tactics repeated as the FBI wants to do the same. Here’s why they are wrong, and why they must fail again

Eric Holder, the outgoing US attorney general, has joined the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in calling for the security of all computer systems to be fatally weakened. This isn’t a new project – the idea has been around since the early 1990s, when the NSA classed all strong cryptography as a “munition” and regulated civilian use of it to ensure that they had the keys to unlock any technological countermeasures you put around your data.

In 1995, the Electronic Frontier Foundation won a landmark case establishing that code was a form of protected expression under the First Amendment to the US constitution, and since then, the whole world has enjoyed relatively unfettered access to strong crypto. [..]

The arguments then are the arguments now. Governments invoke the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse (software pirates, organised crime, child pornographers, and terrorists) and say that unless they can decrypt bad guys’ hard drives and listen in on their conversations, law and order is a dead letter.

On the other side, virtually every security and cryptography expert tries patiently to explain that there’s no such thing as “a back door that only the good guys can walk through” (hat tip to Bruce Schneier). Designing a computer that bad guys can’t break into is impossible to reconcile with designing a computer that good guys can break into.

If you give the cops a secret key that opens the locks on your computerised storage and on your conversations, then one day, people who aren’t cops will get hold of that key, too. The same forces that led to bent cops selling out the public’s personal information to Glen Mulcaire and the tabloid press will cause those cops’ successors to sell out access to the world’s computer systems, too, only the numbers of people who are interested in these keys to the (United) Kingdom will be much larger, and they’ll have more money, and they’ll be able to do more damage.

Long live The Republic.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Joan Walsh: Tea Party’s Ebola paranoia: Why GOP’s fear-mongering is just a cynical turnout strategy

Most Americans think the U.S. can handle the disease, but not Tea Party and rural voters. So the GOP whips up fear

There’s good news in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday night: Most Americans believe the government is ready to handle a possible Ebola outbreak, even as a second Dallas health worker has contracted the disease.  But if you want to understand why the GOP is fear-mongering on the issue, you’ve got to analyze the poll results more closely. [..]

The poll had more good news than bad for the forces of calm and reason: 49 percent of Americans thought the CDC is doing a good job, compared to 22 percent who said it wasn’t. Other polls have given us a little more to worry about: Last week’s Rutgers-Eagleton survey of New Jersey voters found that 69 percent were at least somewhat concerned about the disease spreading here – and that people who were paying the most attention to TV actually knew the least about the disease, and were the most frightened.

Lindy West: We need to stop talking about Ebola like it’s just another Dustin Hoffman germ-thriller

Americans are both taking the outbreak too seriously and not seriously enough – some rage about closing borders while the rest are gripped by a gory scenario that’s unlikely to touch us

I must confess: I was initially concerned that I am perhaps not sufficiently qualified to weigh in on our planet’s current Ebola panic, seeing as I am neither a doctor nor a nurse nor a scientist of any kind nor an African fruit bat nor Dustin Hoffman. [..]

And anyway, there is one area in which I am eminently, objectively pedigreed to comment – relative to famous idiots or not – and that is in my capacity as a human being living in a culture where panic is marketed as both disposable entertainment and a way of life. [..]

Somehow, in America at least, we seem to be taking Ebola both too seriously and not seriously enough. Rightwing xenophobes rage about closing the borders and impeaching #OBOLA (heads up, white Americans: if anyone has a track record of deliberately introducing devastating diseases to the North American continent in order to wipe out the population, it’s not half-Kenyan lawyers), while the rest of us titter proprietarily over the gory doom that we know will almost certainly never touch us; meanwhile, we’ve skimped on funding infectious disease research ever since the 90s Ebola scare lost its lurid lustre, and healthcare workers are paying the price. As Wired reported on Monday: “If there were more infection-prevention research, the nurse in Dallas (and probably the one in Spain, who may have contaminated herself doffing her gear) might not have become infected.” Not only that, but Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, says that, if it wasn’t for funding cuts, we would probably have an Ebola vaccine by now.

Poor Hank Greenberg, the ultra wealthy former CEO of American International Group (AIG), has a sad. As the largest shareholder, he thinks that SIG shareholders got a raw deal when the government saved the company with more than $180 billion in cash. He believes the bailout cost shareholders, like himself, tens of billions of dollars. Unlike the banks, the government set down rules for the loan that forced the company to pay back Wall Street firms.

The trial has a cast of characters reminiscent of the congressional bailout hearings with testimony from former chair of the Federal Reserve, former Treasury Secretaries Timothy Geitner and Henry Paulson.

Secrets of the bailout, exposed: Why you should be watching the AIG trial

By David Dayen, Salon

To this day, information on the banks’ heist and how it went down is pathetically scant. That’s about to change now

The AIG bailout trial began in Washington last week. This is a case where one ruthless, reckless corporate CEO, AIG’s former chieftain Hank Greenberg, argues that his company wasn’t treated as well during the bailout as those of other ruthless, reckless corporate CEOs. So there’s no real rooting interest for anyone with at least one foot planted in reality.

But as I wrote recently, regardless of the outcome, this trial should matter to every American. In fact, just in its first week, we’ve learned a lot of new information about how the bailout architects- then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, ex-Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, and former president of the New York Fed Timothy Geithner – conducted themselves amid the chaos of the financial crisis. And it doesn’t reflect well on any of them, with concealed information, bait-and-switches, and favorites played among financial institutions. As these three prepare to take the stand this week in the case, we should be pleased to finally have this debate about the bailout in public. [..]

We all know the adage that history gets written by the winners. In this case, a very rigid narrative of the bailouts took hold, featuring the swashbuckling actions of governmental leaders who made the hard choices necessary to save the financial system. But because of one ornery ex-CEO, we’re getting another draft of that history, one that displays the bailout as chaotic, selective and in many cases one where laws got thrown out the window and raw power ruled.

As the taxpaying public who fronted the money for all this activity, we should get to know the truth. And the next time the country is faced with such a situation, policy-makers should think twice before heading down the same path, mindful that their dirty laundry will eventually get aired.

POSTSCRIPT: Henry Paulson testified Monday in the trial, confirming the disparate treatment of AIG relative to banks like Citigroup, but saying that circumstances warranted it because those banks were more essential to keeping the financial system afloat. He said that the government had to treat AIG harshly to win political support. (Of course, the government didn’t treat AIG that harshly, gifting them a carryover tax benefit worth $35 billion and letting their executives take bonuses in 2009.) Paulson also acknowledged the private bid for AIG from China Investment Corporation, but asserted that they wouldn’t have followed through on the bid without a government guarantee, even though, he admitted, he never talked to the Chinese.

The best is Jon Stewart’s chastizing Breenberg for being a cry baby.

It would be funny, if it weren’t so ridiculously pathetic.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: A Trickle-Down Effect of Citizens United

It’s no secret that candidates for president, governor and Congress have benefited from the torrent of money that has flooded elections since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed unlimited spending by corporations and labor unions that are supposedly independent of a candidate’s campaign.

But while the sums that flow to state and local elections may not be as vast, each dollar has much more influence. And thanks to lax or nonexistent regulation, a race can be dominated by a single spender, with his own policy agenda, essentially working in collaboration with a campaign. That is the conclusion of a report issued Monday (pdf) by the Brennan Center for Justice: “Independent” spending on state and local elections has predictably skyrocketed since Citizens United, and coordination laws in many states are either too vague or weakly enforced. [..]

The report urges a much more aggressive approach to identifying and rooting out coordination at the state and local level. Among other things, it calls for broader definitions of coordination, longer periods before campaign staffers may join outside groups, and stronger enforcement of existing laws.

Connecticut, Minnesota and Vermont have recently taken steps along these lines. More should follow their lead. As long as the Supreme Court and Congress fail to address the distorting influence of money on elections, state and local action is the best remaining defense.

Joseph E. Stiglitz: The Age of Vulnerability

Two new studies show, once again, the magnitude of the inequality problem plaguing the United States. The first, the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual income and poverty report, shows that, despite the economy’s supposed recovery from the Great Recession, ordinary Americans’ incomes continue to stagnate. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, remains below its level a quarter century ago.

It used to be thought that America’s greatest strength was not its military power, but an economic system that was the envy of the world. But why would others seek to emulate an economic model by which a large proportion — even a majority — of the population has seen their income stagnate while incomes at the top have soared? [..]

In the U.S., upward mobility is more myth than reality, whereas downward mobility and vulnerability is a widely shared experience. This is partly because of America’s healthcare system, which still leaves poor Americans in a precarious position, despite President Barack Obama’s reforms.

Those at the bottom are only a short step away from bankruptcy with all that that entails. Illness, divorce, or the loss of a job often is enough to push them over the brink. [..]

The report by the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (which I chaired) emphasized that GDP is not a good measure of how well an economy is performing. The U.S. Census and UNDP reports remind us of the importance of this insight. Too much has already been sacrificed on the altar of GDP fetishism.

Regardless of how fast GDP grows, an economic system that fails to deliver gains for most of its citizens, and in which a rising share of the population faces increasing insecurity, is, in a fundamental sense, a failed economic system. And policies, like austerity, that increase insecurity and lead to lower incomes and standards of living for large proportions of the population are, in a fundamental sense, flawed policies.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: The Big Lie Behind Voter ID Laws

Election Day is three weeks off, and Republican officials and legislators around the country are battling down to the wire to preserve strict and discriminatory new voting laws that could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court – no friend to expansive voting rights – stepped in and blocked one of the worst laws, a Wisconsin statute requiring voters to show a photo ID to cast a ballot. A federal judge had struck it down in April, saying it would disproportionately prevent voting by poorer and minority citizens. Last month, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit allowed it to go into effect, even though thousands of absentee ballots had been sent out under the old rules. [..]

Similar laws have been aggressively pushed in many states by Republican lawmakers who say they are preventing voter fraud, promoting electoral “integrity” and increasing voter turnout. None of that is true. There is virtually no in-person voter fraud; the purpose of these laws is to suppress voting.

Paul Krugman: Revenge of the Unforgiven

How Righteousness Killed the World Economy

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The world economy appears to be stumbling. For a while, things seemed to be looking up, and there was talk about green shoots of recovery. But now growth is stalling, and the specter of deflation looms.

If this story sounds familiar, it should; it has played out repeatedly since 2008. As in previous episodes, the worst news is coming from Europe, but this time there is also a clear slowdown in emerging markets – and there are even warning signs in the United States, despite pretty good job growth at the moment.

Why does this keep happening? After all, the events that brought on the Great Recession – the housing bust, the banking crisis – took place a long time ago. Why can’t we escape their legacy?

The proximate answer lies in a series of policy mistakes: Austerity when economies needed stimulus, paranoia about inflation when the real risk is deflation, and so on. But why do governments keep making these mistakes? In particular, why do they keep making the same mistakes, year after year?

The answer, I’d suggest, is an excess of virtue. Righteousness is killing the world economy.

It always puzzled me why schools continue to teach historical myths as factual. One of the bigger myths that is taught to American school children is about the Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America. In an article at Common Dreams, author and historian William Loren Katz lays bare the real story and it isn’t pretty.

Columbus’s Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria were driven across the Atlantic by the same ill winds that from 1095 to 1272 launched nine Eruopean Crusades to capture Moslem Jerusalem. Defeated and humiliated the invaders suffered staggering human losses, left royal treasuries depleted, and convinced Christian leaders to only pay lip service to another try.

Except for Christopher Columbus. Born Christopher Colon this ambitious Genoese craved adventure, was given to religious mysticism to the point he accepted God’s personal command to free the Holy Land. He also saw God’s hand in cloud formations, splashing waves, and distant stars, and had read a religious book that convinced him the world would end in 150 years. He claimed at sea he once saw three mermaids dancing on waves, and was sure in distant lands he would meet men with tails or heads of dogs. God had chosen him specifically to see Christianity victorious “throughout the universe.” And he would follow His command to convert or destroy Moslems, Jews and other non-believers. Columbus’s earliest sea experiences were as a youth serving on Portuguese slave-trading ships along Africa’s Atlantic coast. He learned men, women and children could be captured and sold for enormous profits. With enough slaves and gold, even a lowly Columbus could finally end the infidel grip on Holy Land. [..]

Columbus’s voyage eastward to seek the riches of Asia has been called the momentous journey in history. To him it was only first step toward his larger goal. After five weeks in the Atlantic, his food supplies running low and lying to grumbling crewmen he was not a man lost at sea, Columbus stumbled on an island in the Bahamas named Guanahani. On the morning of October 12, 1492 with a crew in heavy armor bearing swords and muskets, he left the Santa Maria for the sunny shore and a military and nationalist mission. He planted Spain’s flag in the soil, took “possession of the said island for the king and queen,” and renamed it San Salvador. “With fifty men your Highness would hold them all in subjection and do with them all that you could wish,” he wrote in his Diary. The Admiral was applying the new European “doctrine of discovery” that granted its merchant adventurers the right to claim distant lands and their inhabitants. Papal bulls of the time also divided “discovered” lands between Spain and Portugal, and in 1494 the Vatican specifically drew a line dividing the Americas – and the slave trade – between these seafaring powers.

Columbus and his expedition was also a product of Spain’s painful “final solution.” Since 711 Spain’s Moslem Arab rulers shared their cultural wealth with and practiced toleration of the country’s diverse citizenry. Catholics, Jews and Moslems lived peacefully with neighbors, as Spain became a world center of books and learning.

Then Catholic King Ferdinand of Castille and Queen Isabella marshaled an army to impose Christan rule. Castillian soldiers charged into battle with the cry “Santiago Matamoros” or “Kill the Moors.” By January 1492 Christian soldiers stood poised for victory and an era of ethnic cleansing.

The article goes onto to describe how Columbus and his men were welcomed and responded with treachery. Columbus’ voyages were the opening salvo in what would become a holocaust across the North and South American continents that continued for over 300 years. It is time that we stopped celebrating this slaughter. On Monday, celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, also known as Native American Day and learn the real history of America’s discovery and about the culture of its native people.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey; Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI);  Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser; and Julián Castro, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

The roundtable guests are; Democratic strategist Donna Brazile;, ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC; Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); CBS News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook; CBS News Correspondent Debora Patta; and former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

His panel guests are: Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal; Susan Page, USA Today, David Rohde, Reuters; and David Ignatius, The Washington Post.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests are National Security Advisor Susan Rice; former Secretary of State James Baker; Former Secretary of State/War Criminal Henry Kissinger and who knows who else, not that this isn’t bad enough.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Her panel guests are S.E. Cupp, Newt Gingrich, Neera Tanden and Marc Lamont Hill.

Now you can all sleep in, spend time with family and friends or, if the weather is nice, get some exercise and fresh air.  

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

David Sirota: How Big Brother Can Watch You With Metadata

Why did Bradley Cooper and Jessica Alba fail to record a tip when they paid their cabbies during New York City taxi rides back in 2013? Why was Cooper near a Mediterranean restaurant in Greenwich Village? Why was Alba at a ritzy hotel in Soho?

We don’t know the answers, but we do know exactly when and where the movie stars were going, and we also know there’s no record of them forking over any gratuity. What’s worrisome, say privacy experts, is that we know all of this not from some special government sting operation but from publicly available data about millions of people’s movements throughout New York City.

That information, released in an open records request, validates the concerns of those who argue that while consumers’ digital metadata may seem to be anonymous, it actually isn’t. It takes just one or two other pieces of information to turn seemingly anonymous tranches of metadata into specific information about individuals-and not just those who are famous.

Juan Cole: Rather Than Just Honor Nobelist Malala Yousafzai, We Should Listen to Her

Malala Yousafzai has become the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history, sharing it this year with India’s Kailash Satyarthi, a children’s rights activist. [..]

There is always a danger that in honoring a figure like Malala Yousafzai, the world will drown out her more challenging views.  Martin Luther King, Jr. is now mainly lauded for his “I have a Dream” speech but his socialism, anti-imperialism, and opposition to the Vietnam War is little remembered.  Likewise, Lila Abu-Lughod has warned against the use of Ms. Yousafzai by powerful white men as a symbol whereby they can pose as champions of Muslim women against Muslim men- an argument first made powerfully in a another context by Gayatri Spivak.  The real Malala Yousafzai is harder to deploy for those purposes than is Malala the symbol. [..]

Honoring someone with the bravery and resiliency and ethical intelligence of a Malala Yousafzai is easy.  Taking her more challenging positions seriously and engaging with them is much more difficult.