[Alex Jones]
Political News, Radio, Ideas, Videos and EventsImage of the day: Remember, Remember, the 11th of September
2007-05-12
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Putin Is Said to Compare U.S. Policies to Third Reich
2007-05-10
NY Times | May 10, 2007
ANDREW E. KRAMER
President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to obliquely compare the foreign policy of the United States to the Third Reich in a speech on Wednesday commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The comments were the latest in a series of sharply worded Russian criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States - on Iraq, missile defense, NATO expansion and, more broadly, United States unilateralism in foreign affairs.
Many Russians say the sharper edge reflects a frustration that Russia's views, in particular opposition to NATO expansion, have been ignored in the West. Outside of Russia, however, many detected in the new tone a return to cold-war-style antagonism, emboldened by petroleum wealth.
Mr. Putin's analogy was a small part of a larger speech, otherwise unambiguously congratulating Russian veterans of World War II, known here as the Great Patriotic War. Mr. Putin spoke from a podium in front of Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square before troops mustered for a military parade.
Mr. Putin called Victory Day a holiday of "huge moral importance and unifying power" for Russia, and went on to enumerate the lessons of that conflict for the world today.
"We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime," Mr. Putin said.
"Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing," he said. "They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world."
The Kremlin press service declined to clarify the statement, saying Mr. Putin's spokesman was unavailable because of the holiday.
Sergei A. Markov, director of the Institute of Political Studies, who works closely with the Kremlin, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Putin was referring to the United States and NATO. Mr. Markov said the comments should be interpreted in the context of a wider, philosophical discussion of the lessons of World War II. The speech also praised the role of the allies of the Soviet Union in defeating Germany.
"He intended to talk about the United States, but not only," Mr. Markov said in reference to the sentence mentioning the Third Reich. "The speech said that the Second World War teaches lessons that can be applied in today's world."
The United States, Mr. Putin has maintained, is seeking to establish a unipolar world to replace the bipolar balance of power of the cold war era.
In a speech in Munich on Feb. 10, he characterized the United States as "One single center of power: One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign."
The victory in World War II, achieved at the cost of roughly 27 million Soviet citizens, still echoes loudly in the politics of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Russia's relations with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
In his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Putin criticized Estonia, also indirectly, for recently relocating a monument to the Red Army in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, along with the remains of unknown soldiers buried there. Mr. Putin warned that such changes to war memorials was "sowing discord and new distrust between states and people." The remarks were a nod to the protests in Russia and Estonia after the re of the Bronze Soldier memorial from the city center to a military cemetery.
In his Victory Day speech last May, Mr. Putin brushed on similar themes of the lessons of the war. Then, he spoke of the need to stem "racial enmity, extremism and xenophobia" in a possible reference to rising ethnic tensions inside Russia.
Victory Day has evolved into the principal political holiday in Russia, replacing the Soviet-era Nov. 7 celebration, Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution. That holiday was canceled under Mr. Putin and replaced with the Day of Accord, observing a 1612 uprising against Poland, celebrated on Nov. 4.
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Bruce Willis Says JFK Killers Still In Power
2007-05-07
Actor tells Vanity Fair he's skeptical of lone shooter theoryPrison Planet | May 7, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson
In a new magazine interview, Bruce Willis spills the beans on his skepticism that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of JFK, and suggests that the some of the same criminals who killed Kennedy are still in power today.
"They still haven't caught the guy that killed [President] Kennedy," Willis told Vanity Fair's June issue, according to the New York Post .
"I'll get killed for saying this, but I'm pretty sure those guys are still in power, in some form. The entire government of the United States was co-opted," adds the Die Hard star.
So from where did Willis, a former die-hard champion of Neo-Con policy, receive his sudden wake-up call?
As we reported last year , Hollywood director Richard Linklater said he had handed out 9/11 truth DVDs on the set of Fast Food Nation , including Alex Jones' Terror Storm and Martial Law documentaries, and that they completely changed Willis' political paradigm.
"He said it put him in such a head space that he will be quiet on issues of national policy," Linklater told the Alex Jones Show.
Is Willis' comment that the people who killed Kennedy are still in power a reference to the fact that George H.W. Bush was photographed at the scene in Dealy Plaza?
Either way, it's refreshing to see that Willis, who was vehemently pro-war and pro-Bush in the months after 9/11, has seen the light and realized that patriotism is about love of one's country, not worship of government.
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Congressman Ron Paul's Record
2007-05-05
Brief Overview of Congressman Paul's Record* He has never voted to raise taxes.
* He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
* He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
* He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
* He has never taken a government-paid junket.
* He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
* He voted against the Patriot Act.
* He voted against regulating the Internet.
* He voted against the Iraq war.
* He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
* He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
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Political Image of The Day
2007-05-05
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Ron Paul Sticks It To The Federal Reserve
2007-05-05
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My Political Opinion On Obama
2007-05-05
Lets start with the facts I don't like about Obama.
Besides these two facts I think Barack Obama is a great guy, but what this tells me is he may be the Newt Gingrich type that wants to ban words, I wouldn't give up my first amendment right to freely express myself on my blog would you? Not only once does he ignore the constitution but twice, we do have the right to bear arms under our 2nd amendment right the second most important right our forefathers gave us. Our forefathers would be disgusted with Barack's views on gun control.
For those two reason's Barack Obama is my second chose, my vote is going to a real Republican candidate that vows to reinstate the Constitution and repeal the immoral, unconstitutional laws the Bush Regime has installed for us. My vote for the Presidential Candidate of 2008 will go to Ron Paul, a real American man, and a real Republican that actually believes in fiscal policy, improving the economy, and building a better stronger U.S.
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Secret Service: Obama placed under protection
2007-05-05
(CNN) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a U.S senator from Illinois, has been placed under the protection of the Secret Service, the agency said Thursday.
The government is not aware of any specific, credible threat against Obama, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the decision. But the campaign has received hate mail and calls and other "threatening materials" in the past and during his campaign, the source said.
Three Obama campaign officials who discussed the issue on condition of anonymity also said there was no specific threat against the candidate. They said the request stemmed from what one called the "cumulative effect" of a heavier campaign schedule, larger crowds and "just the growing perception internally" it was time to take additional security precautions that are best suited for the Secret Service.
The Secret Service said in a written statement that DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, "after consultation with the congressional advisory committee, authorized the United States Secret Service to protect presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama.
"As a matter of procedure, we will not release any details of the deliberations of assessments that led to protection being initiated," the statement said. (Posted 4:48 p.m.)
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Son Of JFK Conspirator Drops New Bombshell Revelations
2007-05-03
Costner was set to make documentary on Hunt's confession, before Miami mafia stepped in, E. Howard believed government had sabotaged his wife's plane
Prison Planet | May 3, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson
As the explosive revelation of E. Howard Hunt's deathbed confession, in which the former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator admits that he was part of a CIA conspiracy to assassinate JFK, continues to rage across the Internet, the establishment media remains almost mute on what is undoubtedly one of the biggest stories of the decade.
Saint John Hunt, E. Howard Hunt's oldest son, joined Alex Jones yesterday to drop new bombshells about his father's story. Click here to listen.
Hunt was first made aware of what his father knew about the events of November 22nd 1963 when he came into receipt of hand-written memos that outlined the birth of the plot to kill JFK in Miami where it was discussed that a coup needed to take place in order to topple Kennedy and save the CIA from being splintered into a thousand pieces, as JFK had promised.
Saint John then opened his mailbox one January morning in 2004 to discover an unlabeled cassette tape on which his father details the identity of the individuals that were involved in the actual assassination of JFK.
E. Howard Hunt names numerous individuals with both direct and indirect CIA connections as having played a role in the assassination of Kennedy, while describing himself as a "bench warmer" in the plot. Saint John Hunt agreed that the use of this term indicates that Hunt was willing to play a larger role in the murder conspiracy had he been required, but was primarily used in an oversight role.
Hunt alleges on the tape that then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the planning of the assassination and in the cover-up, stating that LBJ, "Had an almost maniacal urge to become president, he regarded JFK as an obstacle to achieving that."
 Saint John Hunt. |
In the Alex Jones Show interview, Hunt reveals how Kevin Costner, star of the JFK movie, had shared a mutual friend with E. Howard Hunt and had subsequently visited Hunt in Miami in the interests of producing a documentary film based on Hunt's knowledge of the plot.
"Kevin Costner flies down and is introduced to my father by this mutual friend and Kevin just blurted out, 'so who killed JFK'? My father's jaw dropped and he turned around and looked at his wife and said, 'what did he say'?"
"So the whole thing just kind of blew up in its face and that was the end of that," said Hunt.
Hunt said that Costner had become "somewhat of a conspiracy enthusiast" after having made the JFK movie and was very interested in starting a project based on E. Howard Hunt's revelations.
"What my father devised was a code and a key to give Mr. Costner the relevant information without naming the names," said Hunt, "He listed out a chain of command and a timeline series of events and things that took place along with the most important players in the plot."
Costner considered the information to be "dynamite stuff," but elements of the "Miami mafia" derailed the project and the documentary never got off the ground.
Saint John Hunt also revealed for the first time that E. Howard Hunt thought that the Chicago plane crash that killed his wife in 1972 was not an accident. Investigators discovered at least $10,000 dollars in Dorothy Hunt's luggage, money that Saint John Hunt alleges was Nixon campaign funds used to payoff the families of the Watergate burglars to keep them quiet about the involvement of the Nixon White House in the Watergate break-in and cover-up.
"Later on in his life at one of these bedside confessions....tears started welling up in his eyes and he said, 'you know Saint I was so deeply concerned that what they did to your mother they could have done to you children' and that caused the hair on my neck to stand up - that was the first disclosure from my father that he thought there was something else going on besides sheer pilot error," said Hunt.
Eyewitnesses reported that the plane exploded above treetop level before it had even hit the runway.
Hunt said that "at least 20-25 FBI members," as well as numerous DIA agents were at the scene of the crash within minutes before rescue personnel had even arrived, and that this fact was attested to in a letter sent by the head of the Chicago FBI to investigator Sherman Skolnick.
Hunt cited numerous coincidences surrounding the aftermath of the crash, including Nixon's appointment of his henchman, Egil Krough, to the National Transportation Safety Board which investigates plane crashes, the very day after the incident.
When asked about the photos of the "three tramps" that were arrested on the scene of the JFK murder but were later ordered released, Hunt agreed that they likely showed his father and the two other key conspirators.
"As my father's son, every time I look at that comparison photo between the tramps and my father - it looks like my father to me," said Hunt.
Hunt also said that he was reasonably confident that one of the other tramps was CIA operative Frank Sturgis, who his father had also named as a key member of the murder plot.
Hunt said that his father was not one of the shooters but was more of a manager of the plot on a command level, but was later "hung out to dry" by the CIA and the government.
Asked why Hunt became a willing conspirator in the plot to murder JFK, Hunt responded,"Within intelligence circles, he felt that it was an imperative situation that President Kennedy not be allowed to serve in that office for any longer because there was a lot of crucial things coming down, there was the Vietnam war, there was also the anger and the threats Kennedy had made to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces."
Hunt also said that his father eventually desired to become the director of the CIA and Kennedy was a direct obstacle to that goal.
Hunt concluded by agreeing that his father's legacy was that of a patriotic American who was manipulated and twisted by people like LBJ and Nixon, later to be deserted and have his family torn apart by these same criminals.
E. Howard Hunt finally redeemed himself shortly before his death by blowing the whistle on the JFK murder plot, but now there is a fresh attempt to bury this information on behalf of the compromised and cowardly establishment media, who have afforded this bombshell story almost no attention at all while lavishly devoting coverage to the mindlessness of Britney Spears' comeback and radio host Don Imus' off-hand comments.
Once again the responsibility lies with alternative media and the Internet to make sure E. Howard Hunt's story is heard.
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Honeybee die-off threatens food supply
2007-05-03
AP | May 03, 2007
SETH BORENSTEIN
BELTSVILLE, Md. - Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.
Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.
"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.
While not all scientists foresee a food crisis, noting that large-scale bee die-offs have happened before, this one seems particularly baffling and alarming.
U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies - or about five times the normal winter losses - because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.
Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite.
Even before this disorder struck, America's honeybees were in trouble. Their numbers were steadily shrinking, because their genes do not equip them to fight poisons and disease very well, and because their gregarious nature exposes them to ailments that afflict thousands of their close cousins.
"Quite frankly, the question is whether the bees can weather this perfect storm," Hackett said. "Do they have the resilience to bounce back? We'll know probably by the end of the summer."
Experts from Brazil and Europe have joined in the detective work at USDA's bee lab in suburban Washington. In recent weeks, Hackett briefed Vice President Cheney's office on the problem. Congress has held hearings on the matter.
"This crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement.
A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to our food supply.
Of the 17,000 species of bees that scientists know about, "honeybees are, for many reasons, the pollinator of choice for most North American crops," a National Academy of Sciences study said last year. They pollinate many types of plants, repeatedly visit the same plant, and recruit other honeybees to visit, too.
Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature's "workhorse - and we took it for granted."
"We've hung our own future on a thread," Wilson, author of the book "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth," told The Associated Press on Monday.
Beginning this past fall, beekeepers would open up their hives and find no workers, just newborn bees and the queen. Unlike past bee die-offs, where dead bees would be found near the hive, this time they just disappeared. The die-off takes just one to three weeks.
USDA's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them.
The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.
A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.
The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.
However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.
Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.
First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America's honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the United States shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.
Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.
What the genome mapping revealed was "that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins," Berenbaum said.
University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk has surveyed more than 500 beekeepers and found that 38 percent of them had losses of 75 percent or more. A few weeks back, Bromenshenk was visiting California beekeepers and saw a hive that was thriving. Two days later, it had completely collapsed.
Yet Bromenshenk said, "I'm not ready to panic yet." He said he doesn't think a food crisis is looming.
Even though experts this year gave what's happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.
Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.
"The problem is that everyone wants a simple answer," Pettis said. "And it may not be a simple answer."
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Iraq war price tag will soon top $500 billion
2007-05-03
"The bitter fight over the latest Iraq spending bill has all but obscured a sobering fact: The war will soon cost more than $500 billion. That's about ten times more than the Bush administration anticipated before the war started four years ago, and no one can predict how high the tab will go."1 Comments | Link to This | Back to top
Reid To Bush: You’re Either With Us Or You’re Against Us
2007-05-03
Via Democrats.Senate.Gov :
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement on the floor today.
Mr. President, last Thursday a bipartisan majority of the Senate passed H.R. 1591, the Fiscal Year 2007 Emergency Supplemental Funding conference report.
This bill will be sent to the President's desk tomorrow. I strongly encourage him to set aside his veto threats and sign this bill.
Our conference report honors and provides for our courageous men and women in uniform.
It addresses the emergencies Americans face at home while the war in Iraq rages.
And it makes our country more secure by charting a new course in Iraq so that we can return our focus to the global challenges that lie ahead.
This is a good and responsible bill. It will begin the long process of leading us out of a war that has cost us so many American lives and so much treasure.
It not only represents the will of Congress - but also the will of the American people who call for a new course - and the expertise of military experts who tell us this war can only be won politically, not militarily. Read more...
George Bush wants to subvert the will of the American people and it cannot stand. The Iraq Accountability Bill will be on his desk tomorrow and if he, as he claims, supports the troops and the citizens of the United States he should sign it.
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Hours after 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld allegedly said, 'My interest is to hit Saddam'
2007-05-03
According to NBC's chief Pentagon correspondent, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that his "interest is to hit Saddam Hussein" just hours after the attacks on September 11, 2001, "even though all indications pointed at al-Qaida as the guilty party," a Rhode Island newspaper reports.
At the annual Business Expo at the Rhode Island Convention Center Tuesday, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski "advanced a theme garnering attention since former CIA director George J. Tenet made his public revelations last week," writes Tom Mooney for the Providence Journal.
"Some things are right on the mark, when he says the Bush administration appeared predisposed to attack Iraq," Miklaszewski says of Tenet's book At the Center of the Storm.
The NBC correspondent's "information" comes from "off the record" notes given to him from an unidentified person who was "in the White House situation room in the hours after the attacks."
"However, the notes describe, Miklaszewski said, then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld vowing to avenge the terrorist attacks by voicing frustration that attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 and the attack on the Cole, in 2000, had gone unavenged," Mooney writes. "Reading from his notes, Miklaszewski quoted Rumsfeld as saying five hours after the terrorist attacks: 'My interest is to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time we go after al-Qaida.'"
Excerpts from article:
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"We ought not to look only" at Osama bin Laden, Rumsfeld allegedly said before holding a conference call with President Bush. During the conversation, "Rumsfeld says not to focus solely on al-Qaida, consider all those range of options. And the president's response was yes."
Said Miklaszewski: "So there is no question that Tenet got the time wrong [with meeting Perle in the White House] but there is no question in my mind, and with subsequent conversations I had with officials in the Pentagon, that the Bush administration had their sights set on attacking Saddam Hussein and Iraq long before there was even an effort to gather any evidence ... that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attack. And all the evidence says quite the opposite."
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Impeach Cheney? What's at stake if we don't?
2007-05-03
by Alan Kobrin Page 1 of 1 page(s)  |   |
One thing everyone has to agree that this Administration certainly gets right: our national honor is at stake.
Our ability to to create and implement successful strategic policies that address urgent issues such as institutionalized violence and terror, nuclear proliferation, and global climate change is on the line. We are at risk of losing respect and goodwill. Much of this will be determined by how our nation deals with the difficult and dangerous situation in Iraq.
We will see the worst of this fallout, however, not because of seeking a rapid end to US troop involvement in Iraq. U.S. prestige, honor and credibility will be damaged for the foreseeable future if we do not hold accountable those people who used every artifice, true or not, legal or not, to get our nation into an unnecessary and illegal conflict no one wanted except a small circle of ideologues with illusions of grandeur and little concern for the lives of others.
At the center of this ideological operation sits Dick Cheney whose disdain for public participation in governance goes back decades when he and Donald Rumsfeld tried to deep-six the Freedom of Information Act during the Ford Administration. As he himself admits, he feels it is time to "work in the shadows." His taste for an authoritarian "imperial presidency" that scuttles any real balance of powers dates from Nixon's days.
When it is one day revealed through the use of that very Freedom of Information Act, it is likely we will see that he personally gathered such responsible and democratic stalwarts as Enron's Ken Lay to lay out, in secret, what he euphemistically called a national energy policy--otherwise known as the War on Iraq.
Enough evidence already exists that at least some of those closed-door "energy policy sessions" had to do with maps of Iraqi oil fields and the doling out of oil concessions to various companies. Nice turn of American Ingenuity to resolve our problems without having to leave the lucrative hydrocarbon business behind. It just happened to involve someone else's oil. No problem for Mr. Cheney.
Getting into the White House has its perks. Like moving with real soldiers around on a map, or writing no-bid contracts to friends.
Did we remind everyone yet of Cheney's Halliburton background? Well, these things mentioned here alone should be enough to question not only Dick Cheney's dedication to and passion for democracy, but also his, shall we say, cool and neutral examination of the circumstances in the Middle East that might require urgent military action because of perceived threats from the Saddam Hussein regime. I would say minimally that his judgment on the question at hand might have been clouded.
There is every reason to believe he was never straight forward with the American people about a real justification for war with Iraq. All announced threats were unproven innuendoes, pushed hard by the White House in spite of contrary information coming from onsite inspectors and our best intelligence. The climate of fear which resulted from 911 was steadily nourished by this Administration to get support for their planned invasion of Iraq. Rational thinking, any thorough investigation and openness were tossed into the trash heap.
Our nation's security, contrary to Cheney's assertions, has never been so compromised, as it is now, whether by creation of new enemies through preemptive use of force, the use of torture, the stretching thin of our military including the use of our National Guard abroad, or by the obscenely expensive and morally outrageous privatization of vital military services.
Yes, this nation faces a crisis of credibility and honor.
We will further erode an already badly battered image abroad, lose allies, escalate military confrontations, recruit anti-American forces, create a global distrust and distaste for American-styled "democracy", and deal a terrible blow to the rule of law both here and abroad if we do NOT impeach Mr. Cheney for all that he has done to seriously and deeply damage this nation, its people and its Constitution because of his own hubris and narrow exploitative view of human life.
It is therefore in the highest interest of this nation to go forward with the articles of impeachment brought about by Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
Impeach? Yes, of course. Anything less would make this Congress and the American people complicit in all that has gone on to damage the national fabric and our place in the world.
Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Show Congress your support for the impeachment of Dick Cheney (H.R. 333).
Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers
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STUDY: Bill O’Reilly Uses Derogatory Names ‘More Than Once Every Seven Seconds’
2007-05-03
A new study by Indiana University media researchers finds that Fox News host Bill O'Reilly calls "a
person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night." The study documented six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" editorials "using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I." Researchers found that O'Reilly "was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes - such as ‘villians' or downright ‘evil' - to people and groups.
Some findings from the study:
- Fear was used in more than half (52.4 percent) of the commentaries, and O'Reilly almost never offered a resolution to the threat. For example, in a commentary on "left-wing" media unfairly criticizing Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, O'Reilly considered this an example of America "slowly losing freedom and core values," and added, "So what can be done? Unfortunately, not much."
- The researchers identified 22 groups of people that O'Reilly referenced in his commentaries, and while all 22 were described by O'Reilly as bad at some point, the people and groups most frequently labeled bad were the political left - Americans as a group and the media (except those media considered by O'Reilly to be on the right).
- Left-leaning media (21.6 percent) made up the largest portion of bad people/groups, and media without a clear political leaning was the second largest (12.2 percent). When it came to evil people and groups, illegal aliens (26.8 percent) and terrorists (21.4 percent) were the largest groups.
The techniques used by Indiana University researchers to study O'Reilly were also "used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini." The researchers note, "O'Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin."
UPDATE: O'Reilly, 2/27/06: "I don't do personal attacks here."
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Spying on Americans
2007-05-03
For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.
Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle - over which there can be no negotiation or compromise - that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally.
To heighten the false urgency, the Bush administration will present this issue, as it has before, as a choice between catching terrorists before they act or blinding the intelligence agencies. But the administration has never offered evidence that the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, hampered intelligence gathering after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush simply said the law did not apply to him.
The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, said yesterday that the evidence of what is wrong with FISA was too secret to share with all Americans. That's an all-too-familiar dodge. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is familiar with the president's spying program, has said that it could have been conducted legally. She even offered some sensible changes for FISA, but the administration and the Republican majority in the last Congress buried her bill.
Mr. Bush's motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.
According to the administration, the bill contains "long overdue" FISA modifications to account for changes in technology. The only example it offered was that an e-mail sent from one foreign country to another that happened to go through a computer in the United States might otherwise be missed. But Senator Feinstein had already included this fix in the bill Mr. Bush rejected.
Moreover, FISA has been updated dozens of times in the last 29 years. In 2000, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency then, said it "does not require amendment to accommodate new communications technologies." And since 9/11, FISA has had six major amendments.
The measure would not update FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens' e-mail and phone calls. The Center for National Security Studies said it might even be read to permit video surveillance without a warrant.
This is a dishonest measure, dishonestly presented, and Congress should reject it. Before making any new laws, Congress has to get to the truth about Mr. Bush's spying program. (When asked at a Senate hearing yesterday if Mr. Bush still claims to have the power to ignore FISA when he thinks it is necessary, Mr. McConnell refused to answer.)
With clear answers - rather than fearmongering and stonewalling - there can finally be a real debate about amending FISA. It's not clear whether that can happen under this president. Mr. Bush long ago lost all credibility in the area where this law lies: at the fulcrum of the balance between national security and civil liberties.
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US and EU agree 'single market'
2007-05-03
The United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership at a summit in Washington.
The pact is designed to boost trade and investment by harmonising regulatory standards, laying the basis for a US-EU single market.
The two sides also signed an Open Skies deal, designed to reduce fares and boost traffic on transatlantic flights.
But little of substance was agreed on climate change.
However, EU leaders were pleased the US acknowledged human activity was a major cause.
Richest regions
Economics rather than the environment or politics was the focus of the summit, says the BBC's Europe correspondent, Jonny Dymond, from Washington.
The two sides agreed to set up an "economic council" to push ahead with regulatory convergence in nearly 40 areas, including intellectual property, financial services, business takeovers and the motor industry.
The aim is to increase trade and lower costs.
Some reports suggest that incompatible regulations in the world's two richest regions add 10% to the cost of developing and producing new cars.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said last month that if the US and EU could set business norms today, they would "secure the markets of tomorrow".
She has made repairing damaged relations with the US a top priority, since she came to office 18 months ago.
Emission cuts
The Europeans said they were pleased that the US now officially acknowledges that climate change is happening and that human activity is a major cause of it.
"We agree there's a threat, there's a very serious global threat," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
"We agree that there is a need to reduce emissions. We agree that we should work together."
But behind the scenes, says our Europe correspondent, officials were saying that not much had changed.
Ms Merkel will try to nudge the US towards a global approach to climate change before a G8 summit Germany is chairing in six weeks' time, says our correspondent.
But the US has consistently rejected the European approach of imposing national limits on greenhouse gas emissions, saying they would harm the international economy.
Visa hope
The Open Skies agreement will take effect on 30 March 2008 and will allow EU carriers to fly to anywhere in the US and vice versa.
The deal promises to lower airfares and widen choice for passengers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The EU hopes to go further and create an "Open Aviation Area" between the two sides "in which investment can flow freely and in which European and US airlines can provide air services without any restriction," said a EU statement.
The EU is also hoping that the US will agree to withdraw its visa requirement for travellers from a number of EU states.
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Bernanke backs globalization
2007-05-03
Aaron Siegel / Investment News | May 1, 2007
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke sang the praises of globalization today, noting that benefits resulting from protecting American workers from foreign competition would be outweighed by the benefits of free trade.
Mr. Bernanke spoke at the Montana Economic Development Summit 2007 in Butte.
"Restricting trade by imposing tariffs, quotas, or other barriers is exactly the wrong thing to do," he said in prepared remarks.
"Such solutions might temporarily slow job loss in affected industries, but the benefits would be outweighed, typically many times over, by the costs, which would include higher prices for consumers and increased costs for U.S. firms."
Mr. Bernanke said that trade has little net impact on the number of jobs that are available in the U.S. and firms that emphasize exports are among the most dynamic and productive companies in the country.
"Relative to firms that produce strictly for the domestic market, exporters tend to be more technologically sophisticated and to create better jobs," he said.
He noted that exporters pay higher wages and add jobs more rapidly than non-exporters, adding that a significant portion of U.S. international trade is conducted by multinational firms.
"The broad benefits of trade and the associated economic change may come at a cost to some individuals, firms, and communities," he said. "We need to continue to find ways to minimize the pain of dis without standing in the way of economic growth and change."
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Vatican calls verbal attack on Pope "terrorism"
2007-05-03
Robin Pomeroy / Reuters | May 2, 2007
ROME - The Vatican's official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of "terrorism" for criticizing the Pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence.
In an unusually strongly worded editorial, L'Osservatore Romano said a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, which is sponsored by Italy's labor unions, had launched "vile attacks" on Pope Benedict in front of an "excitable crowd".
"This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church," it said. "It's terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man."
At the concert, held every year in front of the Saint John in Lateran basilica -- Rome's cathedral where Pope Benedict sits as bishop -- one of the presenters, Andrea Rivera, spoke out against the Pontiff's stand on a number of issues.
"The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved," he said.
He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralyzed with muscular dystrophy. He died in December after a doctor agreed to unplug his respirator.
"I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby but that wasn't the case for (Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet or (Spanish dictator Francisco) Franco," he said between musical acts at the open-air concert.
The latest salvo between the Vatican and its critics in Italy comes a few days after the head of Italy's bishops' conference, Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, received a bullet in the post after making comments that his critics say compared homosexuality with incest and pedophilia.
The Osservatore said Rivera's monologue came amid growing anti-clericalism in Italy which included graffiti and Internet messages supporting the Red Brigades, the Marxist group involved in political violence particularly in the 1970s.
"Some people have even twisted (Bagnasco's words) to start an insidious 'war', a new season of tension, which is inspiring those who are looking for motives to return to taking up arms," the newspaper said.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a devout Catholic who is backing legislation to give legal rights to unmarried couples, including homosexuals -- a bill opposed by the Church -- called for calm.
"We have to have calm and good sense," he told reporters. "Unfortunately the rhetoric has continuously been getting harsher over recent months. This country doesn't need it."0 Comments | Link to This | Back to top
Senators wary of domestic spying proposal
2007-05-03
AP | May 02, 2007
Michael J. Sniffen
Citing FBI abuses and the attorney general's troubles, senators peppered top justice and intelligence officials Tuesday with skeptical questions about their proposal to revise the rules for spying on Americans.
Senate Intelligence Committee members said the Bush administration must provide more information about its earlier domestic spying before it can hope to gain additional powers for the future.
"Is the administration's proposal necessary, or does it take a step further down a path that we will regret as a nation?" asked Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-V.Wa., as he convened a rare public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee he chairs.
For two hours, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein and their lawyers tried to parry increasingly dubious and hostile questions. They deferred many answers to a committee session closed to the public.
With little apparent success, they portrayed the administration bill as merely an adjustment to technological changes wrought by cell phones, e-mail and the Internet since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted in the 1970s. Under current rules, McConnell said, "We're actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting."
But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., responded, "We look through the lens of the past to judge how much we can trust you." Like other senators, he said that trust was undermined by recent disclosure that the FBI had abused so-called National Security Letters to obtain information about Americans.
Whitehouse added another factor. "The attorney general has thoroughly and utterly lost my confidence," he said in reference to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' shifting explanations for the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys.
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There Should Be A 'Digg Riot' Everyday
2007-05-02
Hardcore issues censored daily but users raise hell over a trivial storyInfowars.net | May 2, 2007
Steve Watson
Users of the popular social network news site Digg are "rioting" over a decision by the site's owners to censor a story and reportedly ban a user for posting the HD-DVD AACS Processing Key number, which would allow someone to crack the copy protection on an HD-DVD.
The story that revealed the code got over 15,000 diggs in one day but was pulled from the site overnight sparking some pointed articles discussing the censorship.
These legitimate and well thought out stories were then also ruthlessly deleted and their submitters unquestioningly banned. More stories were then submitted discussing Digg censorship. Those stories suffered the same fate.
When it quickly became obvious that the Digg staff had got themselves in too deep and were engaging in mass censorship of any article discussing either the original HD-DVD code story or the follow up articles on Digg censorship in general, a virtual 'riot' started.
An onslaught on submissions concerning the subject from an angry crowd within the Digg community has proven too much for the site's owners to handle. Earlier today the front four pages of Digg consisted entirely of stories displaying the code number or criticizing Digg for its actions. Click for enlargement.
Seemingly the censorship has also started to spread from Digg to Wikipedia which has started locking down pages related to HD DVD. It is already too late though as the code number has gone viral on other social network sites such as You Tube and Reddit.
The point to make here however is why does it take something as trivial as this for censorship to be noticed?
Digg, along with many other social networking sites censors everyday. Infowars and Prisonplanet stories regularly get hundreds, even thousands, of diggs but almost never appear on the front pages of Digg.com.
Our most hard hitting reports are usually instantly buried, sometimes only a matter of minutes after they have been submitted.
Last March a bug in Digg's spy tool gave one smart Digger the ability to peer into the inner workings of the community. David LeMieux found a way to highlight which users were burying stories on Digg, and why.
A cursory search through David LeMieux' hacked list of Digg buries reveals that many stories relating to 9/11 have been buried by the same group.
Reports have regularly resurfaced that suggest Digg may be suffering abuse at the hands of a group of users that are burying Digg stories they find ideologically unappealing.
Rumours have been flying around the internet for months that these so called "bury brigades" could be more than just a group of geeky self appointed censors and that it may actually be Digg themselves, or even agencies of the government, that are censoring stories and preventing the information from going viral on the net.
Digg's bury system has been accused of being totally undemocratic because it allows a few users to prevent the many from reading articles and making their own mind up on the material.
This system is clearly flawed, many Infowars and Prisonplanet reports have gone on to receive thousands of diggs and hundreds of comments AFTER they have been buried. All this has been of little use because once a story is buried it cannot be brought back and thus cannot hit the front page of digg.com and be seen by millions of readers who do not normally visit Prisonplanet and Infowars.
The same is true of many other alternative news sites.
The DVD Digg 'riot' proves that users CAN take over and successfully overcome censorship of information should there be enough of them. The sad thing is that more people consider being able to copy Meet The Fockers more important than exposing how a criminal US government was complicit in the most deadly attack upon the country in history.
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One week to stop REAL ID and save America from the surveillance state!
2007-05-01
Speak Out Against REAL ID
Stop REAL ID! Submit comments to the Dept. of Homeland Security by May 8th!
- A broad coalition of organizations across the United States is urging the public to submit comments rejecting the illegal national identification system created under the Department of Homeland Security's REAL ID program.
- Five states and several members of Congress have rejected the scheme, which creates a massive national ID system without adequate security or privacy safeguards, which makes it more difficult and costly for people to get licenses, and which makes it easier for identity thieves to access the personal data of 245 million license and cardholders nationwide.
- To take action and submit comments against this fundamentally flawed national ID system, click here! Comments are due by 5pm EST on May 8, 2007.
Contents
[1] Take Action! [2] Background [3] Resources [4] Campaign Coalition
To take action and make your voice heard, submit comments against the fundamentally flawed national identification scheme. The draft regulations to implement the REAL ID Act are open for comment until 5:00 PM EST on May 8, 2007. The comments can be submitted in one of three ways:
- Online through the Federal Rulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov/ (search for "DHS-2006-0030-0001" and follow the instructions for submitting comments);
- Fax to 1-866-466-5370. Your fax must state that you are submitting comments in response to Notice of Proposed Rulemaking DHS-2006-0030.
- Postal Mail sent to Department of Homeland Security; Attn: NAC 1-12037; Washington, D.C. 20538. Your letter must state that you are submitting comments in response to Notice of Proposed Rulemaking DHS-2006-0030.
Click here for sample comments you can print, sign and send in.
Portals for submitting comments:
American Civil Liberties Union
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Privacy Activism
Organizations have launched a nationwide campaign to engage the public in the debate over what would be the first national identification document. These transpartisan, nonpartisan, privacy, consumer, civil liberty, civil rights, and immigrant organizations have joined in this unique public education project because the REAL ID proposal put forth by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would harm our lives in a multitude of ways every day. The proposed regulations set requirements that states must follow to have their state issued identification documents accepted for federal purposes, like getting on an airplane or entering a government building, including courthouses.
The power of the Department of Homeland Security, along with other federal government agencies, to reach into the everyday lives of people living in this country will be unprecedented.
This is the same federal agency that had responsibility for helping people following hurricane Katrina, and proved itself not to be ready for the challenge. Creating a national identification system is a huge, complex project and there no agency in the Federal government that has proven that it could manage a project of this magnitude.
What we do know: You will make more than one trip to the motor vehicle office to apply for your REAL ID national identification card; the government has estimated that the scheme will cost taxpayers $21 billion; REAL ID requires documentation that most people will have difficulty finding; and the cost of driver's licenses and state ID cards will skyrocket. We do know that the federal government is considering expanding the REAL ID card to everyday use.
Click for more background...
Maybe you could avoid getting on a plane or going into a government building, but you cannot avoid all of the ways licenses and ID cards are used. A national identification system would be disastrous. It would affect every aspect of your life-- being able to operate a motor vehicle, cash a check, get a job, register to vote, purchase a home, rent an apartment, get a hunting or fishing license, or enroll in school.
The new requirements dictate state collection of personal data and documents without setting adequate security standards for the card, state motor vehicle facilities, or state motor vehicle databases. The government will create a national identification database by linking the databases of all 50 states and the data of 245 million state license and identification cardholders. REAL ID also increases the risk of counterfeiting and identity theft by creating one unifying ID card (with one design) to forge and one database full of sensitive personal information, with many entry points across the nation, to attack. DHS also divert funds needed for other state homeland security projects, such as equipment for rescue and first responder personnel by regulating that 20% of a state's Homeland Security Grant Program money can be spent on REAL ID implementation.
License and ID card applicants will need to submit certified birth certificate, immigration and citizenship documents, and a variety of other sensitive data in order to get a REAL ID card.
Another problem not addressed by the REAL ID law is the obligation of states receiving queries about source documents: birth certificates, court records, and adoption papers to respond in a timely and accurate way. This is a tremendous burden for states to undertake and presents an additional hidden cost of the REAL ID that has not yet been considered.
The Department of Homeland Security has the sole power to determine what is and is not acceptable because the law that created the REAL ID was never debated or allowed a public hearing to create checks on the agency's power.
The national identification scheme created by REAL ID is a disaster waiting to happen. We urge you to take action and submit comments against the fundamentally flawed national identification scheme.
- DHS: Real ID Proposed Guidelines: Questions and Answers
- American Civil Liberties Union
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Electronic Privacy Information Center
- Liberty Coalition
- Privacy Activism
- Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
- American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations
- American Library Association
- American Policy
- American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
- Carol Khawly, Director of Legal Advocacy at ADC, states that "as a community, we fear that the REAL ID card will be used by different government agencies as well as private parties to profile individuals who look foreign or who have a foreign name."
- Association of American Physicians & Surgeons
- Bill of Rights Defense Committee
- Center for Digital Democracy
- Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights
- Citizen Outreach Project
- Citizens Against Government Waste
- "REAL ID raises the specter of George Orwell's 1984 the government controlling a central database of personal information, which could be used to monitor the comings and going of American citizens," said CAGW President Tom Schatz.
- Common Cause
- Computing Professionals for Social Responsibility
- Consumer Action
- DownsizeDC.org
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Electronic Privacy Information Center
- "Make no mistake, this is a national identification system that will affect your everyday life," said Melissa Ngo, Director of EPIC's Identification and Surveillance Project. "Critics of the REAL ID scheme are called anti-security, but it is not anti-security to reject a national identification system that will harm our national security and make it easier for criminals to pretend to be law-abiding Americans."
- Fairfax County Privacy Council
- Give Me Back My Rights Coalition
- Government Accountability Project
- Gun Owners of America
- Immigrant Workers Union
- Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
- Liberty Coalition
- National Center for Transgender Equality
- National Council of Jewish Women
- National Council of La Raza
- National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
- National Immigration Law Center
- OpenCarry.org
- Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
- Patient Privacy Rights Foundation
- People for the American Way
- Privacy Activism
- "The breadth and diversity of the opposition is a real testimony to how harmful Real ID is to so many different communities," said Deborah Pierce, Executive Director of PrivacyActivism.org and one of the founders of the Stop Real ID Now! activism campaign. "By getting people and groups who are usually excluded from the debate involved at the grassroots level, we can stop Real ID."
- "The Real ID Act of 2005 turns our state driver's licenses into a national ID card, costs over $20 billion dollars, infringes privacy, and imposes major burdens on taxpayers, anybody renewing a driver's license, seniors, immigrants, transgender people, and state governments - while doing nothing to protect against terrorism," said privacy activist Jon Pincus, one of the founders of the Stop Real ID Now! activism campaign. "This commenting process is a great chance for the American people to tell DHS and Congress the Real ID Act is a bad law that needs to be repealed."
- Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
- Privacy Times
- Republican Liberty Caucus
- Rutherford Institute, The
- The Arc of the United States United Cerebral Palsy
- The Multiracial Activist
- US Bill of Rights Foundation
- Virginia Citizens Defense League
- Virginia Gun Owners Coalition
- World Privacy Forum
More Groups Join Anti-National ID Campaign:
- Asian American Justice Center
- Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
- Center for Democracy & Technology
- Citizens' Council on Health Care
- PrivacyRightsNow.com
- Young Democrats of America
If you are interested in joining the Privacy Coalition or signing the Privacy Pledge, please e-mail to coalition@privacy.org.
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