1. What smug, evil, stupid men we have in Congress:
“9 GOP Senators: US Faces Terrorist Attack If Holder Probes Bush’s Torture Program
The latest correspondence came on Wednesday, in a letter to the attorney general that said an investigation into the CIA’s interrogation practices, no matter how limited in scope, would jeopardize the “security for all Americans, “chill future intelligence activities,” and could “leave us more vulnerable to attack.”
The senators resorted to fear-mongering, invoking the terrorist attacks on 9/11 to try and dissuade Holder
“We are deeply concerned by recent news reports that you are ‘poised to appoint a special prosecutor’ to investigate CIA officials who interrogated al Qaeda terrorists. Such an investigation could have a number of serious consequences, not just for the honorable members of the intelligence community, but also for the security of all Americans,” the letter says.
The letter was sent to Holder by Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was also signed by Senators Richard Burr, R-N.C., Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Tom Coburn, R-Okla., John Cornyn, R-Texas, Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
…
If part of Obama’s foreign policy initiative is to elevate the status of the United States in the eyes of the rest of the world, it’s about time we start walking the walk, seek justice (no matter whom an investigation may implicate), and stop acting so duplicitous (i.e. claiming we believe in unalienable human rights while behaving like a global oppressor).”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/20924
2. “Held In A Psychiatric Ward & Called “Delusional” For Saying 9/11 Was An Inside Job
If she was committed involuntarily only for bringing up this complaint, only for speaking up, then both judge and the doctor should be indicted.
This is a classic soviet stalinist gulag suppression of the dissent, of the truth, of the free speech and democracy.
She “was threatened”. It might be interesting to know by whom….”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/20919
3. “Vanishing Liberties
The National Security Agency can monitor every phone call made in the United States and quite likely every e-mail. European security agencies have the same capabilities and have gone far down the road of legitimizing state intrusion into private activities, limiting free speech and free association. In Britain, most cities and highways are now monitored by CCTV cameras and the police have begun to use aerial drones to observe and record demonstrations of groups considered to be extreme including the right wing British National Party. New legislation in Germany will require all internet users to be licensed with a backtracking feature that will enable the government to determine where any internet transmission originated. The new regulations will require all users to have a tamper proof internet ID and will be enforced by special police. All telecommunications data, to include both internet and telephone, is already retained by the German service providers for six months, a law that has been in effect since 2008. The government can obtain the stored information by court order. It is particularly interesting to note what German politicians and officials said in support of the new legislation. One commented that it is necessary to stop the internet from becoming a “lawless chaos room.” Another described the internet as a “source of criminality, terrorism, and much similar filth.” Yet another said “What is illegal offline is also illegal online.”
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/08/19/vanishing-liberties/
4. “Top Sweden newspaper says IDF kills Palestinians for their organs”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108384.html
5. “Fear, Intimidation & Media Disinformation: U.K Government is Planning Mass Graves in Case of H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic
“The grim revelation will see the mass burial sites dug in advance to cope with any potential crisis.
…
Within weeks of a full-blown pandemic emerging, the number of burials could more than double. Inner city areas “may experience a shortage of grave space”, the report stated.
Freight containers and “inflatable” storage units may be needed to provide extra mortuary space. But it stated that “refrigerated vehicles and trailers should not be used”.
Other contingency plans being suggested were the need for cemeteries and crematoriums to work seven days a week and to hire extra staff to cope with demand.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14845
6. “Fringe leftist losers: wrong even when they’re right
That little progression of thought explains much about our political and media culture. Marcy Wheeler dissects and eviscerates Ambinder’s remarkable reaction to the Ridge revelation (Ambinder has now retracted some (though not all) of his more irresponsible assertions). But Ambinder’s comments reveal a couple of other points worth highlighting.
Just as is still commonly said about opponents of the Iraq War (even though they were right, they were still wrong and unSerious because their motives were bad), Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics “because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence.” As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they’re still Shrill, unSerious Losers who ever decent person and “journalist” scorns.
Ambinder’s belief that there is nothing other than blind “Bush hatred” that could have justified such a belief — and his accompanying self-defense that journalists like him had no way of knowing any of this — is patently false. Here is a 2006 Time column by Josh Marshall that details the ample empirical evidence suggesting that “that the Bush Administration orchestrates its terror alerts and arrests to goose the GOP’s poll numbers.” And here is an exhaustive and lengthy (17 minutes) segment from Keith Olbermann early last year that “weaves from each revelation of an intelligence failure or a Democratic political victory to an almost immediate orange alert or ‘new threat’ from al Qaeda.” Olbermann’s conclusion after examining all the evidence: ”what we were told about terror, and not told, for security reasons, has overlapped considerably with what we were told about terror, and not told, for political reasons” (Olbermann had been raising the same suspicion for many years).
The reason journalists such as Ambinder saw no such evidence wasn’t because it didn’t exist. It existed in abundance; you had to suffer from some form of moral, intellectual or emotional blindness not to see it. It’s because they didn’t want to see it; because — as Ambinder said — they trusted the Bush administration as good and decent people who might err but would never do anything truly dishonest. It’s because only loser Leftist ideologues distrusted Bush officials and the overriding goal of establishment journalists is to prove that they are not like them, that they’re much more Serious and responsible and thus would never attribute bad motives to government leaders such as those who ran the Bush administration.
That’s the same reason most establishment journalists instinctively oppose investigations of Bush officials: the people who rule over their Washington court may make mistakes, but they never do anything dishonest or criminal. They certainly don’t blatantly lie. These journalists are the anti-I.F. Stones. And that’s why political leaders know they can get away with blatant lying and lawbreaking. Why is that, Marc Ambinder? Because “most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit.
…
But that is how our political culture works. Throughout the Bush years, those who said patnetly true things were continuously dismissed as fringe, conspiracy-driven leftist-losers: those who questioned whether Saddam really had WMDs; those who argued that the invasion of Iraq would lead to long-term military bases in that country; those who worried that warrantless eavesdropping and Patriot Act powers would lead to abuses; those who opposed the war in Afghanistan on the ground that it would be unwinnable, etc. etc.
Having been proven right about all of those things hasn’t changed perceptions any at all. As Ambinder’s comments today reflect, the paramount unchangeable Beltway Truth is that those who distrust government claims are unSerious Fringe Leftist Losers. Even when they turn out to be right, they’re still that. And no matter how many times journalists like Ambinder are proven wrong in “giv[ing] the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit,” they still continue to do it and believe it is the right and responsible thing to do.
Powerful political leaders are, as Jay Rosen often puts it, the ruling priests in the journalists’ church of Savviness. Trusting the politically powerful is the establishment religion and carrying forth their message is the prime function of establishment journalists (note how Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter, just two months ago, argued that the ”public option” was crucial but then, like so many liberal pundits eager to maintain and build close relations with the White House, got dutifully on board with the White House message, by completely and shamelessly changing course the minute the White House did).
Distrusting the statements and actions of government leaders was once the central value of our political system and of basic journalism. But now, especially in the eyes of establishment journalists, it is the hallmark of the unSerious, fringe, leftist loser, no matter how many times it is proven right.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
