1. “Pipeline-Istan: Everything You Need to Know About Oil, Gas, Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan and Obama
what you’re really talking about is what’s happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It’s there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place.Yep, it all comes down to black gold and “blue gold” (natural gas), hydrocarbon wealth beyond compare, and so it’s time to trek back to that ever-flowing wonderland — Pipelineistan.“
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/139983
2. “Youtube censors US journalist
Radio and internet journalist Alex Jones has been censored by the internet giant Youtube with the removal of the “Alex Jones Channel” from the site, causing revulsion across the United States and Europe, in what is increasingly being seen as another example of a “Big Brother” intervention in the democratic process.
Alex Jones best known for his investigative journalism around the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and his conspiratorial theories describes himself on his website infowars.com as:
“Syndicated radio journalist and documentary filmmaker Alex Jones has been on the front lines of the growing global information war from ground zero to the occult playgrounds of the power-mad elite.”
The “Alex Jones show” on YouTube was attracting around 1 million views a week, and was responsible for the “The Obama Deception” which has clocked 1,897,810 views.
YouTube apparently pulled the “Alex Jones Channel” from its site for a potential legal action from a US newspaper claiming a potential copyright breach over Jones use of its articles on his radio programme.
Increasingly YouTube has been scorned for its move away from its foundation of “free speech video” to being seen as part of the establishment it tried to redefine when it was first established.“
http://www.thelondondailynews.com/youtube-censors-journalist-p-2881.html
3. “Dawn Johnsen’s belief in the rule of law disqualifies her from Senate confirmation
One of the best things Barack Obama has done since being elected President was selecting Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel — the office of Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Stephen Bradbury, torture memos, and theories of presidential omnipotence. Johnsen expressed outrage over the extremism and lawlessness of the Bush administration not (like most political and media elites) in the last few weeks when doing so was easy and irrelevant, but did so loudly and continuously while those crimes were actually taking place. Her arguments were grounded in one simple belief: that the duty of the OLC is to tell the President when his desired policies are unconstitutional or otherwise illegal. But as a vivid reflection of how perverse Washington culture is, those attributes — outrage over high-level government extremism and criminality, and a belief in the rule of law — are apparently disqualifying:
Reid: Johnsen Doesn’t Have Votes for DOJ Post
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To recap the Washington hierarchy of Seriousness: Implementing an illegal spying program aimed at Americans is Serious, as is legalizing a torture regime, endorsing the President’s right to imprison Americans without charges, and obediently carrying out the agenda of groups that stuff your pockets full of cash. But arguing that it is intolerable for the President to break the law in secret and that he must be held accountable when doing so is deeply unSerious, disqualifying from holding high political office, including when Democrats are in control of the Congress (the objections over Johnsen’s involvement in NARAL are quite obviously pure pretext since NARAL’s positions are squarely within the mainstream of abortion views and Johnsen was previously the acting OLC chief under Clinton without any objections; what changed, clearly, are both the tone and substance of her objections to Bush radicalism and lawbreaking).
Dawn Johnsen is probably someone who is actually too good for Washington, or at least too good to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. It’s still possible that her confirmation can be engineered – Christy lists some phone numbers that might be worth calling — but, at this point, at least, it looks doubtful. Examining Johnsen’s apparent inability to get confirmed, and contrasting it with those who are hailed as the Serious centrists in Washington, reveals all anyone really needs to know about our political establishment.
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Few things better illustrate how warped our political discourse is than the media’s claim that advocating investigations and prosecutions for political lawbreakers who commit serious crimes, who torture, who illegally spy on Americans with no warrants, is the province of partisans on the “Hard Left,” even when people who are as far away from that as possible prominently advocate exactly that.“
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
