Subcomandante Marcos, the charismatic leader of Mexico's Zapatistas rebels for the past 20 years, has announced he will no longer speak for the group and will no longer exist as Subcomandante Marcos. (The Zapatistas are rebels fighting for the rights of indigenous people in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state.) He will now be known as Subcomandante Galeano.

I've been a longtime fan of Marcos. He is a prolific writer -- 21 books and more than 250 essays and articles. I especially recommend Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings by Subcomandante Marcos.

In a 10 page communique posted on the EZLN website (in Spanish), Marcos says he no longer exists and has never existed -- that his persona is a hologram created by the group to advance its goals, but that the persona of Marcos has now become a distraction. The group is changing, a new generation is coming in, and it was collectively decided to end the persona of Marcos. He also says rumors of his death and illness are untrue, just a false story put out by the group, in an attempt to separate the group from his persona. Vice has posted the audio of his 55 minute announcement, in Spanish. [More...]

It's been raining and hailing here for 3 days now, but it cleared up enough tonight to grill. Here's my latest: A grilled New York Strip steak sandwich topped with sweet peppers stuffed with goat cheese, lettuce and tomato on a La Brea Bakery Telera roll, with a side of grilled asparagus. No pots needed, except to toss the peppers into boiling water for 2 minutes before stuffing and grilling. Chives would have been good to mix in the goat cheese, but I didn't have any.

Anyone else grilling this weekend?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

With 96 percent of polling stations in Colombia reporting, President Juan Manuel Santos has 25.5 percent of the vote to right-wing challenger Oscar Ivan Zuluaga's 29.2%. That means a run-off election will be held next month since neither candidate got 50%.

Zuluaga is a protege of former President Aliviro Uribe. He has opposed the FARC peace talks, and before slightly softening his position in recent days, said he would shut them down.

Santos has been a big promoter of the peace talks. Like Zuluaga, at one time he worked in Uribe's cabinet. Santos and Uribe have since had a falling out, thus, Uribe's support of Zuluaga. [More....]

What I'm reading about this weekend: The Government's stepped up investigations of bitcoin exchange sites, Silk Road 2.0 is Better Than Ever and the Fallen Kingpins of Silk Road.

Sounds like everything else in the drug world. Shut down production, processing labs and transit routes in one country and they pop up in another. Reduce demand for cocaine and demand for designer drugs takes its place. Shut down Silk Road, and others just take their place.

Is it even worth the effort? (Here is the 2013 UNODC World Drug Report.) Why not just legalize drugs, and re-apportion our bloated law enforcement, prison and prosecution budgets to things like education and health care? Instead of funding more local cops and drug task forces, why not help local governments struggling with the cost of sorely needed infrastructure fixes or use it for disaster relief?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Fridays before three day weekends are always busy. I'm not done yet, so here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The House today passed the USA Freedom Act -- after stripping it of several critical reform provisions.

The bill was intended to end the NSA's bulk collection of our phone records. Instead, the bill is ambiguous at best, and at worst, can be viewed as codifying the NSA's authority for bulk record collection. A coalition of tech companies, including FB, Google and Yahoo, warn "the revised version creates an "unacceptable loophole that could enable the bulk collection of internet users' data."

The version that passed the House contains changed definitions, weakens the reforms to Section 702 of FISA, and has no provision for introducing a special advocate in the FISA Court.
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Bumped: Thanks to all of you who have contributed. You've probably already received a thank you email from me. I'm going to keep this near the top until Friday, in case anyone else is interested in contributing. [More....]

Check out the latest from The Intercept (Ryan Devereaux, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras), Data Pirates of the Carribean, on an NSA and DEA program called "SomalGet", which is part of MYSTIC.

NSA and the DEA have been recording every phone call in the Bahamas without the knowledge of the Bahamian government.

[The NSA] appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country’s cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the “full-take audio” of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month.

The program has also been used in Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya.

[W]hile MYSTIC scrapes mobile networks for so-called “metadata” – information that reveals the time, source, and destination of calls – SOMALGET is a cutting-edge tool that enables the NSA to vacuum up and store the actual content of every conversation in an entire country.

Here is a 2012 memo written by an official in the NSA's International Crime & Narcotics division describing the program. [More....]

Some very welcome news: The FBI's longstanding policy against recording interrogations of suspects will change in July.

Here is the May 12, 2014 memo sent to federal prosecutors and DOJ agencies by Deputy AG James Cole explaining the policy change. [More...]

The Government responded to several of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's motions today. In its response to his motion to suppress statements, it reprinted what Jahar has scrawled while hiding inside the boat:

I’m jealous of my brother who ha[s] [re]ceived the reward of jannutul Firdaus (inshallah) before me. I do not mourn because his soul is very much alive. God has a plan for each person. Mine was to hide in this boat and shed some light on our actions. I ask Allah to make me a shahied (iA) to allow me to return to him and be among all the righteous people in the highest levels of heaven. He who Allah guides no one can misguide. A[llah Ak]bar!

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The Rolling Stones are back in action. Their 14 on Fire tour resumes in Oslo, Norway in 5 days. This clip is from the opening night of their Abu Dhabi concert earlier this year. Welcome back, Mick.

There will be no execution in Missouri tonight for Russell Bucklew. (Background here.) The Supreme Court issued this order:[More....]

The Georgia Supreme Court yesterday ruled its state law allowing anonymity for the makers of execution drugs, pharmacists and other personnel involved in executions is constitutional. A lower court had previously declared the law. unconstitutional.

From the opinion:

This case presents the question of whether it is unconstitutional for the State of Georgia to maintain the confidentiality of the names and other identifying information of the persons and entities involved in executions, including those who manufacture the drug or drugs to be used.

We hold that it is not, and we reverse the ruling of the Superior Court of Fulton County in which it granted an interlocutory injunction prohibiting the execution of Warren Lee Hill with a drug from a confidential source in order to consider that question.

As to why it's okay, check out this flippant statement:

“Particularly unpersuasive is Hill’s expert’s testimony that certain contaminants also could have the following effect: ‘Their blood pressure would drop precipitously, and ultimately it’s possible that they could die.'

“Such a side effect obviously would be shockingly undesirable in the practice of medicine, but it is certainly not a worry in an execution.”

Who is Warren Lee Hill? A mentally deficient death row inmate who challenged the law. [More...]