1. Written by a veteran:
“Rubicon, watershed, national suicide, false flag, treason, mass murder…..these are just words, words we hear every day. They get thrown around so much they mean nothing at all. We know a few things without having to prove the magic of Building 7 at the World Trade Center simply disappearing for no reason at all or the endless mechaniations of billions of dollars in profits, from the WTC leases to the stock manipulation to the “slight of hand” used to collapse the world economic system with only middle class and poor having any real losses. Rigged. The whole thing was a game. If you have another explanation, please let me know. ”
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/01/21/dont-just-stand-there-arrest-somebody/
2. Malyasia’s leader:
“Mahathir: 9/11 was staged
There is strong evidence that the Sept 11 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 could have been ‘staged’ as an excuse to mount attacks on the Muslim world, said Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
‘I am not sure now that Muslim terrorists carried out these attacks. There is evidence that the attacks were staged.
‘If they can make Avatar, they can make anything,’ the former prime minister told a press conference here yesterday after delivering his speech at the General Conference for the Support of Al-Quds to aid the Palestinians.
He said killing innocent people to provide an excuse for war was not new to the US.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/22428
3. Good:
“Pakistani Army Snubs US: No New Offensives for 6-12 Months
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/21/pakistani-army-snubs-us-no-new-offensives-for-6-12-months/
4. “The Myth of Muslim Conquest ”
http://counterpunch.org/haenni01132010.html
5. “Murder and Cover-Up
The Guantánamo Suicides
My friends who served in the military speak of the pride with they performed what they viewed as their duty. This duty included the obligation to act with honor, including, above all, following the Geneva Conventions when handling detainees and prisoners of war. My friends tell sadly of the despair they felt in seeing this obligation shredded during the Bush administration as word came down that they should do “whatever it takes.” Some of them resigned in disgust. Others resisted what they viewed as moral decay from within.
A new story by attorney Scott Horton at Harpers reveals yet another very disturbing episode of dishonor. Horton reveals strong credible evidence that three alleged “suicides” at Guantanamo in June 2006 were really homicides. ”
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz01192010.html
6. I guess we should root for a weak dollar:
“Britain says weak pound hits anti-terrorism spending”
7. That’s a laugh:
” US security chief: Airport scanners not intrusive”
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/01/21/us-security-chief-airport-scanners-not-intrusive-2/
8. Good:
“Thriving Military Recruitment Program Blocked ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/22recruit.html?hpw
9. “Is the Supreme Court Decision so Important in a Web 2.0 World?
Can Corporations Compete in ‘Pull’ Media World Anyway?
But there is a real question about the influence of commercials even in traditional television. At most, some experts estimate that only 19% of traditional advertising shows a return on investment. The conclusion is that great numbers of insecure corporations are wasting billions on those ads. Lots of wealthy people have entered politics and spent a great deal of their own money on commercials, and lost. That large numbers of voters are going to be swayed by infomercials flies in the face of what we know about how few people actually buy those fancy Japanese knife sets advertised at 3 am.
And then there is the question of the future of the commercial. Nowadays, 90% of viewers who can TiVo or DVR television shows do so, and more than half then skip through the commercials. Knowledge of this practice is increasingly taken into account in the ratings. NBC’s Heroes increased its ratings by 22% when delayed viewing was taken into account. I share Businessweek’s skepticism that 46% of TiVo viewers are watching the commercials, and my suspicion is that younger more media savvy viewers are less likely to be so passive. The future of the television model of local broadcast affiliates of big networks, with the whole thing driven by commercials, is in real question. As it is, ‘push’ media like television is becoming a thing of the past.
In Web 3.0 consumers will likely download content via the internet at will. Media is becoming pull media– individuals pull down what they want when they want it. Television may have to go to an iTunes model of charging per episode. In a pull-media world, for advertisers of any sort, whether pushing products or candidates, to get their message out and control it will become more and more difficult. Pull-media allows a fracturing of viewership (or participation– many consumers will be playing games rather than watching passively). The fact is that viewership for the 4 networks has already plummeted, and the advertising rates that companies now pay them to air commercials are unrealistically high, and appear to be a function of habit. What else could you do? There are hundreds of channels, then you add in the video blogs, the online gaming, and the blogs. Even if a network only pulls in a household share of 9 for the evening rather than the household share of 65 that that Gunsmoke used to on CBS, at least you’ve got that many households in one place, which is rarer and rarer. One of the few things Rupert Murdoch is right about is that there is not enough advertising to spread throughout the internet so as to support any particular newspapers or magazines.”
10. ”
I am staggered. There are 10,000 ‘NGOs’ (Non-Governmental Organizations) in Haiti, one for every 900 inhabitants and each one of them has no doubt at least one Westerner working within, yet aside from the Cuban health workers, it seems they could do nothing until the gringos arrived with their Blackhawks and nuclear-tipped aircraft carrier and of course, the 82nd Airborne, paying yet another ‘visit’ to this benighted and super-exploited land to ’secure’ the place for the locust storm of aid to come (too late for too many).
Now I’ve never been a fan of ‘NGOs’ not only because my own experience with them has been less than edifying but because they are the direct result of ‘benign neglect’ on the part of the state. In other words they initially appeared to fill a void left when states washed their hands of the mess they’d left behind or they just ditched their responsibilities.
But unlike governments who are, in theory anyway, answerable to their electorate, ‘NGOs’ are answerable to no one. They are not elected, they are not representative. In their way they are more like neo-colonial ‘stand-ins’ for the former colonizers, at least at the ‘social services’ end of things. Well, it seems many of the 10,000 have been tested and found wanting.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17143
11. “France and the History of Haiti”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17130
12. “Oil in Haiti – Economic Reasons for the UN/US Occupation”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17149
13. “Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges
If there’s one thing we’ve seen repeatedly all year long, it’s that many Democrats simply do not believe in the axiom best expressed by The New York Times‘ Bob Herbert when he said that “Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention.” As Herbert wrote: “policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.” That precept should be too self-evident to require expression and yet is widely rejected. Hence, exactly that which very recently was condemned as “a dungeon, a gulag, a tropical purgatory, and a black-hole embarrassment” is now magically transformed into a beacon of sober pragmatism from a man — a Constitutional Scholar — solemnly devoted to restoring America’s Standing and Values.”
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? 
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