U.S. Skater Jeremy Abbott comes out of the quisling closet, gets spanked by gay twitter: 'I hope the bastard falls', 'Too bad Tonya Harding isn't on the team'

Also: How Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony; Sovietsky Sport's racist coverage of 2013 IAAF win of Russian women's 4x400 relay team over U.S. team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'

Jeremy Abbott at the 2009 U.S. Figure Skating
Championships. Photo: Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

Tweets to U.S. Olympic figure skater Jeremy Abbott's twitter account turned from laudatory boosting to angry booing after his remarks to the Denver Post about Russian and IOC threats to athletes considering speaking out about abuse of LGBTs in Russia and draconian new laws targeting them:

"Russia is hosting us," Abbott said. "I'm not going to go into somebody's house and be like, 'Um, the way you decorate is hideous, and you need to completely redo this or I'm never coming back.' It's a little rude, so I don't want to say bad things about a country that's hosting the world, essentially. "Maybe I don't agree with their policies, and maybe I don't agree with some things, but that's for them to sort out. My speaking out just makes me look like an ass."

Below are a few samples posted to Abbott's twitter account in the last 24 hours:

• Jeremy Abbott is an accommodationist douchebag
• @jeremyabbottpcf just may have won the dumbass of the century award
• @jeremyabbottpcf Don't worry about Putin; he's fine. Worry about Russian #LGBT teens
• ...Fucking knob jockey.Wake up ASSHOLE!
• @jeremyabbottpcf  ...I still can't believe that Rosa Parks messed with the bus driver's lovely seating arrangement.
• @jeremyabbottpcf "My speaking out just makes me look like an ass." Well,he's got one thing right.
• Jeremy Abbott mixes human rights & interior decorating, and loses an opportunity to STFU.
• @jeremyabbottpcf the word you need is, "synchophant." Say, "I am a..."
• @jeremyabbottpcf Are you for real? I am going to petition the USOC to have you banned for life for being a homophobic asshole
• people like @jeremyabbottpcf are disgusting. Comparing whats going on in Russia to interior decorating. I hope the bastard falls.
• @jeremyabbottpcf too bad Tanya Harding isn't on the team
• ...Jeremy Abbott, US skater and a fucking idiot...

Nebraska from the air

Because, hey, it is a flyover state, right Hillary?

Lady Gaga, the intellectual Madonna

Buzzfeed, which exhaustively purports to explain the cultural references in Gaga's new video, Applause, notes that she has a degree in comparative literature.
     The post is called Every cultural reference you probably didn't catch in Lady Gaga's new video. We could quibble about Buzzfeed's identification of the silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as simply Dr. Caligari, but we can't quarrel with the omission of the Norma Desmond allusion, which we caught, and therefore was properly left out by the apparently psychic staffers at Buzzfeed.
     Those who don't have a college degree may simply revel in Gaga's raucous, anarchic sense of humor, something lacking in the slew of truly terrific music videos made by Madonna in her prime, because she took/takes herself way too seriously.

Dawson's Creek star disses machismo poseur Vladimir Putin over Russian anti-LGBT laws

By inference, of course. Still...

 
What this is all about. Here is Miller's letter.

New book on rural gays opens with quote from former Nebraska senator and governor Bob Kerrey

The things AKSARBENT discovers by reading the push-content blog list on its own blog!
     We noticed gay literary blog Band of Thebes posted about a new book (left) so we surfed there to see what quote from the publisher's promotion it would spotlight:

"...Johnson argues instead for a queer historicist approach. In so doing, he uncovers a startlingly unruly rural past in which small-town eccentrics, "mannish" farm women, and cross-dressing Civilian Conservation Corps enrolees were often just queer folks so far as their neighbours were concerned. Written with wit and verve, Just Queer Folks upsets a whole host of contemporary commonplaces."

     Band of Thebes went on to note that Publishers Weekly says he [author Colin R. Johnson] "doggedly decodes" passages of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain "that hint at gay sex."
     Here's the pithy, tough-love-for-his-home-state, Kerrey quote (not forward) with which the introduction starts:

Here are a couple excerpts authorized for public viewing by the author:

#DumpCoke — Queer Nation will hold Times Square demonstration against Coke, a 'Marquee Sponsor' of 2014's DADT Olympics in Sochi

Also: How Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony; Sovietsky Sport on 2013 IAAF win of Russian women's 4x400 relay team over U.S. team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'

Queer Nation, disgusted that Coke and other major Olympic sponsors (like Panasonic), along with the International Olympic Committee, did nothing to attempt to dissuade Russia from recent antigay legislation, will hold a demonstration against the soft drink company next Wednesday. From the Facebook page:

"Coke: Don't Sponsor Hate! The Coca Cola Company is sponsoring Russian government hate at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. In June, Russia enacted its anti-gay propaganda law that bans any pro-LGBT statement in public or private and on the Internet. The Russian government has made being out and proud a crime. Coke is a World Partner and a major sponsor of the Games. Join Queer Nation NY and RUSA LGBT. Hashtag: #DumpCoke"

(Via Towleroad)

Is your Windows 8 computer spying on you? German government tells agencies not to use PCs with 'Trusted Platform Module', a spy chip which may be an NSA back door, courtesy of Microsoft

Business Insider says leaked internal documents from the German Federal Office for Information Security warn key entities not to use Windows 8 PCs with TPM 2.0 chips because of possible NSA links. The article says Apple phased out the surveillance chips in 2009 and Linux designers deliberately chose not to comply with the TPM scheme and therefore cannot use the spy technology.

     While TPM allowed users to opt in and out, TPM 2.0 is activated by default when the computer boots up. The user cannot turn it off. Microsoft decides what software can run on the computer, and the user cannot influence it in any way. Windows governs TPM 2.0. And what Microsoft does remotely is not visible to the user. In short, users of Windows 8 with TPM 2.0 surrender control over their machines the moment they turn it on for the first time.
     It would be easy for Microsoft or chip manufacturers to pass the backdoor keys to the NSA and allow it to control those computers. NO, Microsoft would never do that, we protest. Alas, Microsoft, as we have learned from the constant flow of revelations, informs the US government of security holes in its products well before it issues fixes so that government agencies can take advantage of the holes and get what they’re looking for.
     Experts at the BSI, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and the Federal Administration warned unequivocally against using computers with Windows 8 and TPM 2.0. One of the documents from early 2012 lamented, “Due to the loss of full sovereignty over the information technology, the security objectives of ‘confidentiality’ and ‘integrity’ can no longer be guaranteed.”
     Elsewhere, the document warns, “This can have significant consequences on the IT security of the Federal Administration.” And it concludes, “The use of ‘Trusted Computing’ technology in this form ... is unacceptable for the Federal Administration and for operators of critical infrastructure.”

Read more.

     Rüdiger Weis, a professor at the Beuth University of Technology in Berlin, and a cryptographic expert who has dealt with Trusted Computing for years, told Die Zeit in an interview that Microsoft wanted to completely change computing by integrating “a special surveillance chip” in every electronic device. Through that chip and the processes of Windows 8, particularly Secure Boot, “users largely lose control over their own hardware and software.”
     But wouldn’t it contribute to higher levels of security? Certain aspects actually raise the risks, he said. For example, during production, the secret key to that backdoor is generated outside the chip and then transferred to the chip. During this process, copies of all keys can be made. “It’s possible that there are even legal requirements to that effect that cannot be reported.” And so the TPM is “a dream chip of the NSA.”
     Perhaps even more ominously, he added: “The other realistic scenario is that TPM chip manufactures don’t sit within reach of the NSA, but in China....”

Buzzfeed: As the US and British governments gang up on The Guardian, the New York Times agrees to help publish more Snowden leaks on domestic spying

Update: the Guardian's official announcement of the joint effort is here.
Glen Greenwald, who broke the Snowden story, lives in Brazil because his boyfriend is a native.
Here is what Brazilians think of his reporting.

From BuzzFeed's Ben Smith:

     The London-based newspaper has been under intense British government pressure this summer, its editor, Alan Rusbridger, revealed earlier this week.
He quoted a top government official as telling him last month: “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.” Officials then demanded that the paper physically destroy files of which it in fact had other copies in other countries — a surreal demand Rusbridger described as “one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history.”
     The decision to publish the revelations concerning the British intelligence service jointly with the Times may give the Guardian leverage in its battle with the British government, which is trying to prevent the stories’ publication. It may also relate to the stronger protections for free speech and press freedom under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; Britain has no such protections, and its Official Secrets Act is aimed at keeping government secrets secret.
    Sources at both papers declined to discuss the motives beyond the spokeswoman’s reference to the “climate” of pressure.
     The Guardian’s Rusbridger has used the Times’s megaphone before, to spectacular effect: When the British paper’s coverage of the phone hacking scandal at News Corp. appeared to hit a dead end, a collaboration with the the Times revived it, and helped lead to criminal charges against top News Corp. executives.

In case you were curious about what Super Bowl-winning Steelers coach Bill Cowher might look like with eye black mascara, your wait is over

Cut to the chase: his girlfriend made a music video and he likes to keep her happy.

Nebraska football coach punks his entire team

Also: TMZ baits billionaire Warren Buffett again; How Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony; Sovietsky Sport on 2013 IAAF defeat of U.S. 4x400 relay team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'
 

Memo to Omaha Chamber of Commerce: how places which are not Omaha promote tourism by acknowledging their gay visitors

Some years ago, an Omaha visitor called the Chamber of Commerce to try to find out if there were any gay clubs in town. The organization was unable to identify any, even though the downtown Chamber offices are within three blocks of two gay bars, including one of the biggest gay discotheques in the Midwest. In fact the land on which the downtown Chamber of Commerce was built used to be the site of one of Omaha's more popular (for a while) gay clubs, The Hollywood.
     The Chamber lobbied against Omaha's recently-enacted LGBT antibias ordinance, until the organization's younger professionals revolted against Chamber president David Brown's interference.
      During councilman Ben Gray's second, successful attempt to pass the law, Chamber officials reluctantly changed their posititon — to neutrality but not support.





The official U.S. Tourism ad aired in other countries to promote visits to the U.S.A. is also gay-inclusive (at the 1:14 mark below, but don't blink or you'll miss it.) However, even that brief acknowledgement was too much for the serial liars at the Family Research Council, who said this about the ad (starring Roseanne Cash!):

When Congress passed the Travel Promotion Act, people thought it'd be a great chance to highlight American attractions. What they didn't know is that it would highlight same-sex attractions. That's right. The commercial invites people to America-not to see the Grand Canyon, but to celebrate homosexuality.

Tony Perkins, left, of the Family Research Council and Dave
Bydalek, of Nebraska's Family First, which describes itself as
"associated" with the FRC, an SPLA-designated hate group

     Cultural warrior conman Tony Perkins tried to sell the idea that a 1-2 second nod toward the existence of millions of gay people in the USA is an invitation to "celebrate homosexuality" and that it "highlights" same sex attractions?
    Uh, the ad is right here. Watch it and judge for yourself the extent of Tony Perkins' dishonesty.
     Perkins and his Family Research Council right wing pressure organization are the national associates of Nebraska's Family First, headed by Dave Bydalek, who, earlier this year, tried to run a little antigay con of his own — attempting to trick the Nebraska Judiciary Committee with testimony quoting the widely-discredited Regnerus Study.
     Even though Committee Chairman Brad Ashford was obviously unfamiliar with the study, his innate common sense smelled a rat and he didn't buy it. Hit the link in the previous paragraph to see his reaction to Bydalek's snake oil salesmanship.

Nebraska rancher betrayed by state's GOP congressional delegation speaks out about Keystone XL threat to Sandhills' pristine water

Chelsea Manning (nee Bradley Manning) was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for, among other things, passing to Wikileaks documents revealing outrageous secret U.S. government behavior, including the shocking extent of collusion between the Clinton State Department and TransCanada during its attempts to construct a tar sands oil pipeline across the environmentally vulnerable Ogallala Aquifer in the Sandhills region of western Nebraska, resulting in eminent domain condemnation of the land of farmers and ranchers even in the absence of a pipeline permit, which still has not been granted to TransCanada.

---

The emails released today are a smoking gun that show how oil industry lobbying money has corrupted the State Department’s review of Keystone XL. They come out just after it was revealed that the State Department relied on a major TransCanada contractor to conduct its environmental review and public hearings on Keystone XL, and Wikileaks cables showed that other officials at the department gave the company tips on how to get the pipeline approved.

---

Lee Terry: 2331 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-4155 phone
(202)226-5452 fax

Jeff Fortenberry: 1514 Longworth House Office, Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-4806 phone
(202) 225-5686 fax

Adrian Smith: 503 Cannon HOB, Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6435 phone
(202) 225-0207 fax

Deb Fischer: 825 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

TMZ baits Warren Buffett again: I want Warren Buffett in a little outfit too.

Recent reports indicate that Yahoo! websites actually beat Google's sites in traffic recently, for the first time in years. (Maybe Google Russia could contribute more to the parent company's hits if it weren't allegedly blocking gay news sites from its search engine results.)
     In the wake of the Yahoo! news, TMZ did a segment on whether Vogue's feature on CEO Marissa Meyer "objectified" her.
     Apparently the fashion arbiter didn't sufficiently do so, according to one TMZ staffer, who wanted pictures of Meyer in a bikini. But he didn't stop there:

(@42:25) You know what? I want Warren Buffett in a little outfit too. I want Warren Buffett abs... on the beach... chillin'.

     TMZ must be unaware that "Oracle of Omaha" tycoon Buffett isn't at all copasetic with being objectified by dudes.
      The entertainment-news-program-with-an-attitude last ridiculed Buffett by asking him if he was a "rainmaker," which, evidently, is a gentleman's club patron who showers lap dancers with money.
     It also opined that his wife, Astrid Menks, looks like a "drag queen."
     Steve Horn of DeSmogBlog has been Buffett-baiting recently too: Witness his recent post ripping the Berkshire-Hathaway founder and CEO for his "dirty deeds done dirt cheap" stock play in tar sands oil profiteer Suncor.
     Horn reminded his readers that Buffett was fingered by Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson as one of 17 "Climate Killers"

Russian authorities discover their LGBT propaganda law is a world-wide image problem that a $300 million TV propaganda network, Russia Today, can't fix

Also:
How Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony;
Sovietsky Sport on 2013 IAAF win of Russian women's 4x400 relay team over U.S. team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'

Russian LGBT journalist Masha Gessen told All In host Chris Hayes the following on MSNBC last night:

“As long as the pressure is on, it’s not going to make them reconsider those [existing] laws. But it will possibly make them dial back the campaign of hate, and it can prevent the passage of further laws, including the law on removing children from same-sex families.”

Homophobic Russia's enduringly popular gender-bending entertainers

Below: looks like a Russian Boy George underneath that dead yak piled on his head.
Also: Why Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony
 
The Atlantic examines the curious contradiction of 88% of Russia's population approving of draconian antigay legislation, and of only 16% saying LGBTs should be "accepted by society" but of that same population wildly embracing gender-bending pop stars like openly gay Boris Moiseev, a beloved 60-year-old (!) institution (middle video) and Philip Kirkorov (top and bottom videos (top video loops until you click on it to stop it). Kirkorov isn't openly gay, which only means he hasn't come out and actually said the word.

     Stephen Amico, a professor of music and media studies at the University of Amsterdam who is writing a book about homosexuality and Russian pop, said Russians in smaller cities have told him that they like the pizazz of gender-bending acts, which seem to brighten an otherwise dreary provincial existence. Older women in particular seem to love Moiseev for his emphasis on beauty and tenderness -- two aspects that were lacking in Soviet life.
     Amico's personal theory, though, is that Russians simply need an outlet to escape the binary heterosexuality that's been imposed on them. The law says you can't promote gay rights, but you sure as heck can rock out to a indefatigable drag queen.

Video: Louisiana's Texas Brine sinkhole swallows another row of trees

From Mother Jones:

On August 2nd, Louisiana sued Texas Brine, the company that mined the salt cavern that experts have identified as the trigger for the sinkhole. Every few weeks the sinkhole burps—this is really the term the geologists use—and somewhere between 20 and 100 barrels of sweet crude bubble up to the surface.

Video: Assumption Parish emergency response office

Russia Today network tells taxi company carrying guest critical of its Russian LGBT coverage to leave him on the highway en route to Stockholm airport

Josh Vorhees reports in Slate (excerpt below) that journalist James Kirchick, went rogue during taping of a program on Russia Today, and instead of talking about the sentencing of Bradley Manning, he hijacked the segment to take RT to task for ignoring the plight of LGBTs in Russia.
     Zack Ford at ThinkProgress has a list of ways RT contributors have spun Russia's war on LGBTs.

The video largely speaks for itself, but two quick points: 1) Setting the topic of Kirchick's remarks aside for one second, any network control room would have likely made the same decision to cut off a guest once it became clear he was hijacking the segment (others, however, might not have gone as far as to allegedly try to cancel his taxi ride that followed mid-trip to the airport). And, 2) RT hasn't technically ignored Russia's anti-gay law. It's more an issue of how they've chosen to cover it, as the AtlanticWire pointed out earlier today. A small sampling of RT headlines will give you an idea of the pro-Kremlin tilt on display: "Russian Jews outraged after Stephen Fry compared gay propaganda ban to Nazi Germany"; "Russia's 'gay propaganda' law causes outrage abroad but finds support at home"; and "Anti-gay law controversy ‘invented by media’ – Russia’s sports minister."

Bradley Manning gets 35 years in prison for exposing Clinton State Dept. collusion with foreign oil company against U.S. farmers and ranchers, video of U.S. killings of journalists and kids, other revelations

Manning, sentenced to 35 years today by an Army Judge, Col. Denise Lind, will be eligible for parole in about 9 years when he is 33, with credit for time served and more credit for harsh treatment.
     Several years ago, the Pentagon ignored Freedom of Information Act requests to release the video of U.S. soldiers laughing as journalists and children were shot from an Apache helicopter, so Wikileaks and Bradley Manning released the video above.
     Other Wikileaks documents revealing outrageous secret U.S. government behavior are summarized here, not including the shocking extent of collusion between the Clinton State Department and TransCanada during its attempts to construct a tar sands oil pipeline across the environmentally vulnerable Ogallala Aquifer in the sandhills of western Nebraska, resulting in eminent domain condemnation of the land of farmers and ranchers even in the absence of a pipeline permit, which still has not been granted to TransCanada.

---

The emails released today are a smoking gun that show how oil industry lobbying money has corrupted the State Department’s review of Keystone XL. They come out just after it was revealed that the State Department relied on a major TransCanada contractor to conduct its environmental review and public hearings on Keystone XL, and Wikileaks cables showed that other officials at the department gave the company tips on how to get the pipeline approved.

---

In a statement, Ben Wizner director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, wrote:

---

“When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system. A legal system that doesn’t distinguish between leaks to the press in the public interest and treason against the nation will not only produce unjust results, but will deprive the public of critical information that is necessary for democratic accountability.”

---

Sovietsky Sport editor: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'

Also: Why Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony

Stuart Williams of Agence-France Presse revealed a side dish of racism accompanying Russian homophobia in his piece, Anti-gay row may tarnish Russia's sporting glory:

     The depth of anger was shown by a bizarre nationalist eulogy penned Monday by Sovietsky Sport editor Yury Tsybanev about the exploits of the 4x400-metres female quartet who beat the United States for the gold.
     "They were standing on top of the pedestal, our four little blondes, four Russian birch trees, and it was as if the blood of our ancestors boiled in my veins," he said, boasting that our "fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones".
     He said the Russian quartet had "genes picked up from Russia's centuries of historic struggle and upheaval". He added: "Consider this my answer to those 'rights activists' who started pestering and insulting Lena Isinbayeva."
     Interestingly, the respected head of Russia's Athletics Federation Valentin Balakhnichev was among the few Russian officials to criticise Isinbayeva on the issue.

Below: the US 4x400 Women's relay team (Natasha Hastings Jessica Beard Ashley Spencer and Francena McCorory) won the silver medal  at the 2013 IAAF World Championships at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow on August 17, 2013. The U.S. won 25 medals, Russia 17.

Lincoln: Westboro Baptist Church protest of Ke$ha with sarcastic cover of We R Who We R is itself satirized when pop star sends her backup dancers to accompany protest

(Towleroad via Queerty via Jezebel)

Adorable new British Heinz ad

Quote of the day, on watching the watchers

By William Saletan in Slate. Should be required reading for the anchors, managing editor and news consultants on the CBS Evening News:

---

     ...Defenders of the NSA, like defenders of the NYPD, plead that their errors are largely inadvertent or well-intentioned. That’s a fair and important point. But their claims of adequate oversight are self-refuting. When you respond to evidence of infractions by telling us that everything you’re doing is OK and that you already have internal control mechanisms, that doesn’t show us the extent to which those mechanisms are working. It shows the extent to which they’re failing. It tells us you need better independent oversight.
     Spare us the Cheney scare tactics. Appointing a civil liberties advocate to argue before the FISC won’t cripple national security. Nor will full reporting of compliance incidents to the FISC and the intelligence committees. Body cameras on cops won’t ruin policing, either. They’ve helped other police departments, vindicating accused officers and reducing misconduct complaints. When agents of the government are closely watched, compliance is verified, noncompliance is reduced, and citizens become more confident that our rights are being respected. Everybody wins...

---

CBS's Bob Schieffer and former FBI agent John Miller continue their Snowden spook-spin on a lickspittle network

AKSARBENT thinks CBS's coverage of NSA disclosures has been contemptibly and obviously biased (especially its incessant reliance on Washington spook mouthpiece and FBI apologist John Miller). Here's what The Nation thought of Miller's coverage of the various FBI accounts of why it killed Boston Bomber acquaintance Ibragim Todashev in an interrogation room:

     Read the details of that version and you almost have to laugh. One of the cops texted the FBI agent to tell him the suspect was getting agitated? And it was when the FBI guy was reading the text that all the action started? And the “samurai sword” that became a “pole” that became a “broomstick” had now become the metal part of a broom, perhaps to make it sound more like the original “knife.”
     John Miller of CBS, the longtime reporter who later became an FBI hack, recounts the latest here, as usual bending over backwards to accept the official story. You’ll see that like many others he makes no mention of how the agency could claim this was a knife attack for a week before the broomstick appeared. That’s some kind of tough reporting.

     Today, friend-of-the-NSA Bob Schieffer, who made a fool of himself a week ago on the issue of domestic spying, asked puffball questions of John Miller on the CBS Evening News, which they used as a platform to try to con viewers into seeing Glenn Greenwald as some sort of petulant fag intent on exacting revenge on Britain's spy agency, GCHQ, for inconveniencing his Brazilian boyfriend at the airport.

Some journalists were outraged by what happened at Heathrow.
Here's what Rachel Maddow said yesterday:



Here's what the Brazilian government and Amnesty International had to say:

     The government of Brazil issued a statement in which it expressed its "grave concern" over the detention of one of its citizens and the use of anti-terror legislation.
     It said: "This measure is without justification since it involves an individual against whom there are no charges that can legitimate the use of that legislation. The Brazilian government expects that incidents such as the one that happened to the Brazilian citizen today are not repeated."
     Widney Brown, Amnesty International's senior director of international law and policy, said: "It is utterly improbable that David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian national transiting through London, was detained at random, given the role his partner has played in revealing the truth about the unlawful nature of NSA surveillance.
     "David's detention was unlawful and inexcusable. He was detained under a law that violates any principle of fairness and his detention shows how the law can be abused for petty, vindictive reasons.
"There is simply no basis for believing that David Michael Miranda presents any threat whatsoever to the UK government. The only possible intent behind this detention was to harass him and his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for his role in analysing the data released by Edward Snowden."

Arlington Texas swat team conducts 10-hour raid on organic farm; said they were looking for weed, then pointed out code violations, neighbor complaints

Militarized police departments are deploying their SWAT teams so frequently for trivial infractions throughout America that there's now a book on these so-called "Warrior Cops."

American Heart Association sued for certifying salt-laden Campbell's soups as 'heart healthy'

The Associated Press reports a federal lawsuit against the American Heart Association and Campbell's Soup about the AHA's granting of the right to use its "Heart Check" label to Campbell's Soup on soups with 820 milligrams of sodium per can or 410 milligrams per serving (Campbell's so-called "Healthy Request" condensed Chicken Noodle Soup) when the AHA's own website defines "low sodium" as 140 milligrams or less per serving.

The lawsuit states that the AHA's seal of approval misleads people into thinking in that products made by Campbell "possess some cardiovascular benefit not enjoyed by products that have not been certified by the AHA." It states the only difference is that Campbell pays money for the certification.

IOC, whose current president made a mockery of rules about human rights, discrimination, human dignity and press freedoms, prepares to elect a new one

Also: Does perform­ance of U.S. national anthem violate Russia's gay propaganda law?

Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, edited “China’s Great Leap: The Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights.” and has just written a piece published in the New York Times entitled The Olympics’ Leadership Mess 

...Jacques Rogge of Belgium, will be remembered in large part for the glaring contradiction between the I.O.C.’s explicit vision of its lofty role in the world (as outlined in the rules and guidelines of its charter) and the fact that Mr. Rogge has been responsible for two Olympics with extensive human rights violations: the 2008 summer games in Beijing and the 2014 winter games in Sochi, Russia, which start in less than six months.
     To host the Olympics, governments and cities pledge ...to uphold the I.O.C.’s “Fundamental Principles of Olympism”: respect for human dignity and press freedom, and a rejection of “any form of discrimination.” But the I.O.C. under Mr. Rogge has failed to enforce its own rules.

     ...Starting in 2008, Human Rights Watch has documented myriad Russian abuses associated with preparation for the Olympics. These include government harassment and intimidation of activists and journalists, abuses of migrant workers from the former Soviet bloc who are building all the major Olympic venues (including the media center) and forced evictions of some families without compensation. Some migrant workers who tried to complain have been detained.
    Over the past year, Russia has also introduced repressive laws targeting certain nonprofit organizations as “foreign agents.” With raids, threats and intimidation, the crackdown has been the most severe of its kind in the post-Soviet era. Central to this campaign is a new law targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. All these efforts are at odds with the Olympic ideal, as expressed in its charter, of “promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Russian authorities are apparently counting on the I.O.C. to keep quiet again.
     ...There is no reason the new I.O.C. president could not issue a mandate to strictly assess the human rights records of bidding countries and monitor a selected host country’s progress toward improving that record.
     ...To date, only one candidate [running for IOC president], the financier Richard Carrión of Puerto Rico, has forcefully condemned Russia’s discriminatory laws and environment.
     The election is not designed for serious reform.
     Thus whoever is elected cannot be counted on to make the necessary changes himself without pressure from outside... Unless sponsors and franchise-holders like NBC, Coca-Cola, G.E., McDonalds and Visa want to risk being associated with an officially homophobic Olympics, they must find their voices — before the next I.O.C. head is anointed.

At long last Nancy Pelosi discovers an NSA action she finds 'extremely disturbing' — breaking privacy rules 3,000 times

Politico's Tal Kopan reports that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called a report that the National Security Agency broke privacy rules thousands of times “extremely disturbing” on Friday, saying actions must be taken.

“Congress must conduct rigorous oversight to ensure that all incidents of noncompliance are reported to the oversight committees and the FISA court in a timely and comprehensive manner, and that appropriate steps are taken to ensure violations are not repeated,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

     The report was published in The Washington Post yesterday. It said a May 2012 audit of the NSA found nearly 3,000 violations in the previous 12 months.

     Pelosi did not specify what actions should be taken.

People who are destroying America: gay mayor of Vicco, KY, pop. 334

Toyota, Canon and Adidas literally back up Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva as she refers to gay and trans people as a "problem"

ALSO: Does performance of U.S. national anthem violate Russia's gay propaganda law? 
 
(Via AmericaBlog)

International Olympic Committee Executive Board members now acting as Russia's homophobic vassals

Related:
Gay Russian TV anchor immediately sacked after coming out; Does perform­ance of U.S. national anthem violate Russia's gay propaganda law?; Panasonic couldn't care less about plight of gay athletes, it just wants to sell mediocre cameras at Olympics

The previous two Olympics, in London and Vancouver had an LGBT "Pride House," which, despite the IOC's apparently phony declaration that it is "the supreme authority of the Olympic Movement," Russia unilaterally banned last year from the Olympic venue in Sochi. (Judge Svetlana Mordovina, siding with the Russian overnment, preposterously ruled that Pride House would threaten the growth of the Russian population and therefore risk the country’s ‘territorial integrity’.)

Here are a couple of the Olympic Charter declarations now mocked by the IOC's subservience to Russian antigay animus:

• To act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement;
• To oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes

Below are members of the IOC Executive Board. The full committee membership roster is here:

PRESIDENT
Jacques Rogge

VICE-PRESIDENTS
Ser Miang Ng
Thomas Bach
Nawal El Moutawakel
Craig Reedie

MEMBERS
John Coates
Sam Ramsamy
Gunilla Lindberg
Ching-Kuo Wu
René Fasel
Patrick Joseph Hickey
Claudia Bokel
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr
Sergey Bubka
Willi Kaltschmitt Luján

ADMINISTRATION – DIRECTOR GENERAL
Christophe De Kepper