No surprise: Obama nominates dronemeister Brennan to CIA, Hagel to Pentagon; Naomi Wolf outs Katy Perry as pro-military propagandist….As expected, Obama nominates John Brennan to return to CIA, maintaining continuity (no change!) while claiming that Brennan has built a legal structure for the illegal targeted killing program and other expansions of presidential power. And he named former Sen. Chuck Hagel to run the Pentagon. The left/right support and opposition for Hagel is interesting, as he walks back his comment about the “Jewish lobby” and pledges total support for Israel.
–PBC recommends the new documentary about Israel’s brutal land grabs in the West Bank, called 5 Broken Cameras. You can find it at Hulu.com, which has a free one week trial.
–excellent story in Sunday NY Times about ex-CIA spook John Kiriakou, who will get 30 months in prison for naming a fellow spook (who he thought was retired) in an email to a reporter, which was never published
–Naomi Wolf has written two excellent columns for the Guardian UK. One is an open letter to Kathryn Bigelow about the lie that torture led to the location of bin Laden, as delivered in the new film, Zero Dark 30; the second is an important expose of Katy Perry’s pop propaganda music video for the song “Part of Me”, which sells the Marines to teen girls.
–the only wiretapping case to survive all the legal hurdles and win a judgment will not be appealed to the Supreme Court. We will have an interview with attorney Jon Eisenberg soon
–Banks settle on foreclosure abuses, banks win
–natural gas production, especially with fracking, is producing alarming levels of methane releases
–Syria’s Assad vows to continue killing
–Israel announces plan to build wall on Syrian border/Golan Heights, which might actually be defensible
–Richard Nixon would’ve been 100 yesterday; we honor the creep who’s campaign committee was called CREEP with a favorite tune, John Records Landecker’s “Make a Date with the Watergate”
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