1. “Stratford Gazette – exceptional coverage on 9/11 Truth & UW 9/11 Research Group”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/22633
2. “Yet Another Congressman Questions 9/11 – We Are Change Utah talks with Congressman Jason Chafetz”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/22632
3. ” Pro-torture, anti-civilisation
The Independent’s article sanctioning torture is built on logical flaws, grotesque views and a contempt for democracy
The columnist Bruce Anderson runs up the flag for torture in today’s Independent with a column that does no credit to the paper.
Anderson makes much of the ticking bomb dilemma – the idea that it is morally preferable to torture someone who can tell you where and when a dirty bomb might go off rather than allowing thousands of innocent people to be killed. He recalls that before 9/11, he debated the issue in front of some lawyers and argued that the government would not only have a right to use torture: it would have a duty to use it.
…
So Anderson appears to recommends torturing innocent women and children to make a man talk. Perhaps we should probe the hypothesis a bit further because for one thing, it makes the assumption that the authorities know for certain that the suspect has definite knowledge about an imminent attack. How? By intelligence produced from other torture sessions, in which men say anything to stop the pain? And where does the collateral torture stop? Would Anderson torture the suspect’s parents and friends? Perhaps he would round up entire communities of people who are deemed to have some slight knowledge of the ticking bomb, or whose screams might induce the suspect to talk?
…
In the final analysis, I am glad it was published because it exposes Anderson for what he is. He says there is a threat to civilisation. Indeed there is. It comes from people who are prepared to sanction the use of torture.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/feb/15/pro-torture-human-rights
4. “The war on terrorism becomes a war on free speech.”
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/17/list-price
5. No, they are war crimes:
“Civilian deaths are merely political setbacks, say ‘independent’ news media.
Anyone aspiring to write or edit textbooks for the Department of Education should study U.S. news-wire reports. Rarely will you see imperial aggression being so expertly spun into peaceful liberation within the context of U.S. exceptionalism.”
http://www.nolanchart.com/article7379.html
6. “Newt Gingrich said not long ago that it was wrong to treat any and all terrorists as criminals—with no apparent exception for American citizens arrested on American soil. The question, though, is how do we know somebody arrested on American soil is a terrorist, unless the government proves it to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt? Apparently the one crime for which the mere accusation suffices as proof of guilt is terrorism. The Republicans also object to “reading terrorists their Miranda rights,” because it makes it harder to get information out of them—presumably by “harsh interrogation techniques” (aka torture).
I guess we need an exception to Bill of Rights, to wit: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, unless the government accuses him of being a terrorist.”
…
I guess it’s just another illustration of that magical phenomenon by which politics stops at the water’s edge. As Madison said, “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” So I guess “men” become angels at the water’s edge, as well.
Of course, on the unlikely chance that we didn’t have an angel in the Oval Office at a particular time, this loophole might seem to offer some mighty powerful temptations to a mere mortal. If the President wanted to round up political enemies, without all the fuss and bother over that darned old “due process of law,” all he’d have to do is accuse them of terrorism. Come to think of it, I vaguely recall something about a chief executive somewhere actually doing something like that—something about a fire, maybe?
Good thing that, thanks to the miracle of American Exceptionalism, no non-angel is ever in charge of American foreign policy.”
7. “France Moves Closer to Unprecedented Internet Regulation”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,678508,00.html
8. “The Decline of the Israeli Right and the Increasing Desperation of the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Charge
The great divide between liberal Jewish Americans and the Israeli Right has lurked as an issue since the Likud Party first challenged Labor dominance in the late 1970s. It is now coming to a boiling point, even as Israel’s reputation in the world is sinking. As rightwing policies more visibly fail, the Likudniks are flailing around making fools of themselves by smearing critics of those policies as racists. (Anyone who knows how Likud supporters talk among themselves about Arabs and other outsiders can only be amused at their impudent hypocrisy in playing the race card.)
The mess that Mossad’s mercenaries (some of them possibly from the Fateh Palestinian faction also opposed to Hamas) made of a routine political assassination in Dubai of a Hamas agent funneling arms from Iran is a blow against Ithe image of daring, stone-cold competence cultivated by the Israeli security establishment. The killing went smoothly, but it transpires that the assassins had not only stolen the passport identities of British and Irish citizens, but those of several Israeli dual citizens originally from the UK, as well. Mossad thus made potential problems for those passport holders for the rest of their lives, since Interpol will be interested every time the numbers pop up at an airport check-in.
…
You had Leon Wieseltier’s unsubstantiated and shameful attack on Andrew Sullivan, which Sullivan effectively refuted — as did Glenn Greenwald, Matthew Ygglesias, and a number of others. As Greenwald points out, the use of the ‘anti-Semitism’ charge against ordinary every day non-bigotted people who just don’t agree with some policy of Israel or of the American Enterprise Institute risks making the term meaningless and cheapening it, which can hardly be good for the Jews.
Meanwhile, the main strategy of the Israeli and Jewish-American Right to preserve Israeli capacity to continue the colonization and to act belligerently in the region had been the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”
9. “Behind Each Great Historical Phenomenon Lies A Financial Secret”
Thomas Jefferson might have been right when he said:
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/behind-each-great-historical-phenomenon.html
10. “Pentagon Bracing for a Snap Offensive Against Venezuela
he illusion that Venezuela is weak in the military sense is so widespread that Obama’s Administration expects to rout Chavez’s defiant regime in a snap offensive. The corresponding plan is akin to those Germany had at the early phase of World War II – the US will rely on Venezuelan fifth column, Columbian ultra-right paramilitary groups, and its own special forces which are already launching raids in Venezuela’s border regions.
The infrastructure for the aggression is ready. The Pentagon seized every opportunity to set up military bases along the Venezuelan borders. Washington sent a heavily armed expedition corps, an aircraft carrier, and several warships to Haiti using the recent earthquake as a pretext, thus effectively securing another military base in the Caribbean. Experts suppose that the military group now based in Haiti can be used by the Pentagon to prevent Cuba from helping Venezuela in case it comes under the US attack. Chavez and the Castro brothers spoke a number of times about their common military obligations.
Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections in September, 2010 during which the opposition is going to compete with desperation. Chavez already addressed the nation with the statement indicating that loss of control over parliament would be a catastrophe for the Bolivarian regime. In the run-up to the elections, its foreign and domestic foes are resorting to the standard set of instruments including the scenarios of color revolutions and the Honduran coup as well as to calls for military intervention against Venezuela.
The coup in Honduras is by no means bloodless – simply the killing of supporters of the overthrown M. Zelaya are disguised as ordinary street crimes. As for the scale of repressions awaiting Venezuela in the case of a successful coup – they evade imagination.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17689
11. “The Information Super-Sewer
Welcome to the new global serfdom where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate management.
…
Tastes and information on the Internet are determined by the crowd, what Lanier calls the hive mentality. Music, books, journalism, commercials and bits of television shows and movies, along with inane YouTube videos, are thrust onto our screens and into national consciousness because of the statistical analysis of Internet crowd preferences. Lanier says that one of the biggest mistakes he and other computer scientists made when the Internet was developed was allowing contributions to the Internet to go unpaid. He says decisions such as this have now robbed people, especially those who create, of their ability to make a living and ultimately the capacity for dignity. Digital collectivism, he warns, is destroying the dwindling vestiges of authentic creativity and innovation, including journalism, which takes time, investment and self-reflection. And while there are a few sites that do pay for content—Truthdig being one—the vast majority are parasites. The only income left for most of those who create is earned through self-promotion, but as Lanier points out this turns culture into nothing but advertising. It fosters a social ethic in which the capacity for crowd manipulation is more highly valued than truth, beauty or thought.
…
“There are some things crowds can do, such as count the jelly beans in the jar or guess the weight of the ox,” Lanier added. “I acknowledge this phenomenon is real. But I propose that the line between when crowds can think effectively as a crowd and when they can’t is a little different. If you read [James] Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds,” he, as well as other theorists, say that if you want a crowd to be wise the key is to reduce the communication flow between the members so they do not influence each other, so they are truly independent and have separate sample points. It brings up an interesting paradox. The starting point for online crowd enthusiasts is that connection is good and everyone should be connected. But when they talk about what makes a crowd smart they say people should not be talking to each other. They should be isolated. There is a contradiction there. What makes a crowd smart is the type of question you ask. If you ask a group of informed people to choose a single numeric value such as the weight of an ox and they all have some reason to have a theory that is not entirely crazy they will center on the answer. You can get something useful. This phenomenon is what accounts for price fitting in capitalism. This is how markets can function. If you ask them to create anything, if you ask them to do something constructive or synthetic or engage in compound reasoning then they will fail. Then you get something dull or an averaging out. One danger of the crowd is violence, which is when they turn into a mob. The other is dullness or mundaneness, when you design by committee.”
Humans, like many other species, Lanier says, have a cognitive switch that permits us to be individuals or members of a mob. Once we enter the confines of what Lanier calls a clan, even a virtual clan, it possesses dynamics that appeal to the basest instincts within us. Technology evolves but human nature remains constant. The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history because human beings married the newly minted tools of efficient state bureaucracies and industrial slaughter with the dark impulses that have existed since the dawn of the human species.
“You become hypersensitive to the pecking order and to your sense of social status,” Lanier said of these virtual clans. “There is almost always the designated loser in your own group and the designated external enemy. There is the enemy below and the enemy afar. There become two classes of disenfranchised people. You enter into a constant obligation to defend your status which is always being contested. It is time-consuming to become a member of one of these things. I see a lot of designs on line that bring this out. There is a recognizable sequence, whether it is pianos, poodles or jihad; you see people forming into these clans. It is playing with fire. There are plenty of examples of evil in human history that did not involve this effect, such as Jack the Ripper, who worked alone. But most of the really bad examples of human behavior in history involve invoking this clan dynamic. No particular sort of person is immune to it. Geeks are no more immune to it than Germans or Russians or Japanese or Mongolians. It is part of our nature. It can be woken up without any leadership structure or politics. It happens. It is part of us. There is a switch inside of us waiting to be turned. And people can learn to manipulate the switch in others.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17681
12. “What bizarre behavior from the NYT: it publishes an extremist, repellent Op-Ed calling, in essence, for the deaths of more innocent Afghans and accusing the Obama administration of sacrificing the lives of American troops due to excessive concern about civilians, all while providing basically no information about the author and allowing her vaguely to refer to a “defense consulting company” for whom she works while concealing its identity. There’s no way to assess her credentials, her expertise, her employment, her motives, her possible conflicts — nothing. In short, the NYT allows her to spout extremely ugly and inflammatory claims on its Op-Ed page under the cover of alleged expertise, while concealing even the most basic information about her credentials, employment and professional background. What kind of journalistic standards are those?”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
