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Teacher Tells Student He Can Be Arrested For Criticizing President Obama
A North Rowan High School teacher tells a student he can be arrested for speaking ill of President Barack Obama,
The student tells his teacher that Obama admitted to bullying a girl in school. The teacher goes on the defensive.
“Stop, no, because there is no comparison,” she says. Romney, she says, is “running for president. Obama is the president.”
When the student says they’re both “just men,” the teacher continues to argue that Romney, as a candidate for president, is not to be afforded the same respect as the president.
The teacher tells the class Obama is “due the respect that every other president is due.”
“Listen, let me tell you something, you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom,” she says.
The student replies that he’ll say what he wants.
“Not about him you won’t,” the teacher says.
Later in the conversation, the teacher tells the class it’s criminal to slander a president.
“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?” she says of former President Bush. “Do you realize you are not supposed to slander the president?”
The student responds by saying being arrested for talking badly about the president would violate the right to free speech.
“You would have to say some pretty f’d up crap about him to be arrested,” he says. “They cannot take away your right to have your opinion. ... They can’t take that away unless you threaten the president.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjpWaESn_9g&feature=youtube_gdata_playerA North Rowan High School teacher tells a student he can be arrested for speaking ill... more-
- maasanova
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- 8 days ago
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- 48 comments
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Why didn't Obama mention TAPI pipeline completion in 2014 in his speech?
From 2011: KABUL: Afghan lawmakers on Saturday approved the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas agreement, Afghan television ToloNews reported.
The Afghan parliament’s International Liaison Commission said the agreement will act as a boost for the Afghan economy and the gas flow would help to strengthen relations between the countries involved in the project.
About 7,000 personnel will be assigned to ensure security to the project in Afghanistan, said Muhammad Anwar Akbari, a member of the commission.
Afghanistan will receive 1.2 billion cubic metres of natural gas once the project is completed.
Akbari said that this would rise to over five billion cubic metres within five years.
The cost of the project is estimated at around $7.8 billion, said Akbari. Construction work, with the help of an American firm, will begin by 2012 and is expected to be completed by 2014, he added.
More at the linkFrom 2011: KABUL: Afghan lawmakers on Saturday approved the... more-
- JanforGore
- added this
- 28 days ago
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- 9 comments
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Why We Must Re-Elect Obama!
Obama 2012! Yes Yes We Can!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qhopFYj_BXQObama 2012! Yes Yes We Can!... more-
- LT4456
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- 8 days ago
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Kuala Lumpur war tribunal finds Bush, Cheney, six others guilty of war crimes
KUALA LUMPUR, 11 May 2012 (mathaba)
"The five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered a guilty verdict against former United States President George W. Bush and his associates at the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal hearing that had started on Monday, May 7th.
On the charge of Crime of Torture and War Crimes, the tribunal finds the accused persons former U.S. President George W. Bush and his associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of Defence, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General guilty as charged and convicted as war criminals for Torture and Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment of the Complainant War Crime Victims."KUALA LUMPUR, 11 May 2012 (mathaba) "The five-panel tribunal unanimously... more-
- ClassicalGas
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- 13 days ago
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- 16 comments
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George W. Bush Endorses Mitt Romney for President
Former President George W. Bush endorsed Mitt Romney on Tuesday, reports ABC News.
"I'm for Mitt Romney," he said to ABC News as an elevator closed on him following a speech in Washington, D.C.
Bush joins his father, mother and brother in endorsing the former Massachusetts governor.
"I haven't met with President George W. Bush. We speak from time to time," said Romney in March when asked about a possible endorsement.
The Associated Press also noted that the 43rd president could end up being a liability:
While largely unspoken, both sides acknowledge that Republicans would be best served by not reminding voters of the Bush legacy of gaping budget deficits, two wars and record low approval ratings. His eight-year presidency has merited no more than a fleeting reference from Romney and his rivals in debates, campaign stops and interviews.
Andrea Mitchell asked Romney adviser Kevin Madden about the endorsement Tuesday on MSNBC. "Sure! We've always said that we were happy to have George W. Bush," he responded.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/george-w-bush-im-for-mitt-romney_n_1518203.htmlFormer President George W. Bush endorsed Mitt Romney on Tuesday, reports ABC News.... more-
- jeffissleeping
- added this
- 14 days ago
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- 3 comments
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Super Frat: Support the Props
The White House's intern questions his boss's motives.-
- TonyDiGerolamo
- added this
- 26 days ago
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Its the Bush economic plan, just updated
So why do they think Bush's economic plan is a winner? -
Obama certifies Colombia labor plan clearing trade pact
President Barack Obama certified Colombia’s labor protection efforts, allowing both sides to put the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement into effect May 15.
“We’re moving ahead with our landmark trade agreement,” Obama said at a news conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos as they wrapped up the Summit of Americas in the resort city of Cartagena.
Obama called the trade deal a “win” for both nations. In the U.S., it will create “thousands” of jobs, he said, and Colombia will get more access to the U.S. market, its largest.
There are strong protections in the accord for labor and the environment, “commitments that we are going to fulfill,” Obama said. The president also said the agreement will help achieve his goal of doubling U.S. exports by 2014.
The agreement would end Colombian duties immediately on more than 80 percent of U.S. exports, open services markets and strengthen intellectual property rights, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in an e-mailed statement.
“This landmark agreement opens the door to new business opportunities, economic growth and job creation in the U.S. and Colombia,” said Thomas J. Donohue, the chamber’s president and chief executive officer, who took part in a first-ever CEOs’ Summit of the Americas.
Expanded Exports
The trade deal, approved by the U.S. Congress in October, will add as much as $1.1 billion to U.S. exports when it takes full effect, according to estimates from the U.S. International Trade Commission.
The U.S. exported $14.3 billion in goods to Colombia last year and imported $23.1 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Caterpillar Inc. and General Electric Co. (GE) (GE) are among the biggest supporters of the trade deal.
Obama’s certification of Colombian worker protections puts him at odds with the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation, which Democrat Obama is counting on for support in his re- election campaign against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
“We regret that the administration has placed commercial interests above the interests of workers and their trade unions,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in an e-mailed statement.
Labor Criticism
The Obama administration “signaled with today’s decision that a little improvement is good enough,” Trumka said. “If a little improvement were good enough, women might still be fighting for the right to vote and our workplaces would be filled with children.”
The U.S. labor federation had sought to have the trade deal delayed until Colombia took what the AFL-CIO called “sustained, meaningful and measurable action to change the culture of violence.”
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said that under the labor certification, Colombia has established a new labor ministry, is giving workers the right to organize, and promises to prosecute past cases of violence against union organizations and provide protections for them.
The U.S. will offer Colombia “technical assistance” as it implements the labor protection rules, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said on the conference call.
Work in Progress
“This is a work in progress” but “we are moving on the right track,” Solis said. “Taken together, these actions represent fundamental change and historic progress for the lives and livelihoods of workers in Colombia,” the Obama administration said in a separate e-mailed statement.
Colombia’s Congress passed bills to implement a free-trade accord on April 10, days before the Summit of the Americas began.
The free-trade agreement, first reached under President George W. Bush more than five years ago, stalled in Congress amid opposition from House Democrats and unions. Obama worked to broaden support by securing stronger labor commitments from Colombia.
Colombia agreed to completion a “labor action plan,” a side agreement signed in April 2011 between the U.S. and Colombia, before the accord could be implemented.
Obama’s approval hinged on Colombia taking further steps to protect workers’ rights and making progress on reducing the killing of union workers by terrorists.
Unionist Deaths
A Washington-based human-rights group called Obama’s decision a mistake. About 30 unionists were killed in Colombia last year, the Washington Office on Latin America said in an e- mailed statement, citing the National Labor School, which tracks such statistics. Four have been killed this year, and other trade union movements have reported additional murders, the group said.
About 3,000 unionists have been killed since 1986, according to the National Labor School, a human rights group.
“President Obama lost a historic opportunity to improve labor rights in Colombia, at a time when many Colombian labor rights activists are getting harassed and killed,” said Gimena Sanchez, the group’s Colombia associate.President Barack Obama certified Colombia’s labor protection efforts, allowing... more-
- JanforGore
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- 1 month ago
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- 7 comments
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88 Million (That’s 1 in 3 Americans) Are Invisible to Government Employment Statistics
With recovery in full swing and unemployment dropping to an Obama administration near record low of 8.2%, the US economy seems to be bouncing back stronger than ever.
Unless, of course, you look at the numbers no one in mainstream media, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, or the administration is talking about. As many of our readers already know, the official unemployment rates released monthly by the BLS (U-3, U-6) fail to account for one very key figure – those individuals who are no longer in the labor force.
The number of those folks – the ones that don’t matter anymore because counting them would hinder the President’s reelection bid – is absolutely staggering for what is supposed to be the engine of the global economy and the world’s only super power:
Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 11%.
Over the past several years people have dropped out of the labor force at an astounding, almost unbelievable rate, holding the unemployment rate artificially low. Some of this was due to major revisions last month on account of the 2010 census finally factored in. However, most of it is simply economic weakness.
…
In the last year, the civilian population rose by 3,604,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 1,315,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,289,000.
The Civilian Labor Force fell by 164,000.
Those “Not in Labor Force” increased by 310,000. If you are not in the labor force, you are not counted as unemployed.
Those “Not in Labor Force” is at a new record high of 87,897,000.
Source: Townhall Finance
With some 248 million people over the age of of 15, nearly one in three Americans in this country are not working.
While the participation rate includes people like those in retirement and stay-at-home moms (because they definitely haven’t worked a day in their lives, as was recently noted by democrat strategist Hilary Rosen) who have no intention of joining the traditional labor force, the last four years have seen an unprecedented drop in the rate of labor force participation as well as unemployment overall. Charlie McGrath of Wide Awake News explains:
The government… pretending everything is getting better because we spent trillions of dollars bailing out firms we now call too-big-to-fail. But the fact of the matter is, in order to get this kind of 8.3% fictitious fantasy number they had to lower the participation rate.
In the last four years we’ve lost 10 million people out of the participation rate. Just to give you an idea of how many people that is, it would take the city of Dallas, Salt Lake, San Diego, Spokane, Roanoke and Cincinnati… the people living in those city limits. If you double that number that gives you the number of people that have left the participation rate that are no longer in the working pool.
Yet, that isn’t stopping the mainstream media from reporting that things are getting better. We’ve spent this nation into absolute financial servitude.
…
Understand that when you turn on the mainstream media you are being fed propaganda.
The Obama administration is pulling out all the stops.
If the real story came out – that the true unemployment rate in this country (those out of work plus those who the government deems as no longer participating) is almost triple that of the official BLS U-3 rate of 8.2% – confidence in the financial markets and the government’s ability to mitigate the crisis would be lost almost immediately. So, too, would Obama’s hope for another four years of fundamentally changing America.
But just because the President and his media conglomerates are preaching of recovery doesn’t mean that everyone believes it. A large portion of Americans, especially those millions of people without jobs, are not going to be swayed by the mainstream propaganda.
They are living in a modern day depression right here and now, and they, too, will be headed to the polls in November. And, as Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, recently pointed out to RT, they don’t care about anything else except for their personal economic and financial circumstances:
RT: What are the dynamics in terms of opinion polls as far as the economy goes, among the American people, the way it was four years ago and the way it is now?
JC: We were going just fine in 2007, first part of 2008, then we crashed down. Now it’s coming back a little bit.
RT: Enough to win President Obama the next election?
JC: I don’t think quite yet… According to the Gallup poll, if we vote tonight, Romney will beat him… They are not voting for Romney – they just vote against the president.
RT: What are the main reasons not to vote for the president?
JC: Strictly unemployment. Just one reason. Foreign policy plays no role at all right now. If something really big happens… that will only make a little bit of a difference. Americans don’t want to hear about foreign policy. They should, but they don’t. Gallup shows real unemployment is close to 20 per cent in America. Not 8.5 but 20 per cent. 30 million people are out of work. 60 per cent of them told Gallup they have no hope of getting a job. That is 18 million.
RT: Do Americans blame the president for that?
JC: There are two questions here. Do I think they should? No. Do they? Yes.
President Obama most certainly inherited this crisis from his predecessor(s), but he’s taken no steps to change anything for the better.
The hope many had that life would improve under policies designed to redistribute wealth to the masses by taking from those with the ability and giving to those with the need is rapidly diminishing.
The trillions of dollars backed by human collateral that has been thrown at the crisis has done nothing to fix the underlying issues that caused it in the first place. All of the problems we faced in 2007/2008 are still here, and they are only going to get worse.
If you think 88 million not participating and 20%+ unemployment is bad, give it another four years.
Right now the safety nets are in place to help most of those who can’t find work – at least for 99 weeks until they are no longer counted as unemployed. But those safety nets, including medical care and food assistance, can only take so much before they snap.
That moment is rapidly approaching.
http://www.freedominfonetwork.org/profiles/blogs/88-million-that-s-one-in-three-americans-are-invisible-to-governmWith recovery in full swing and unemployment dropping to an Obama administration near... more -
Dr. Sabrosky: The Truth Behind 9/11 Will Annihilate Israel
Press TV just now picking up on a two-year old interview with Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College.
***
A US Marine Corps veteran and author asserts that Israel masterminded the 9/11 attacks, saying if Americans were informed of this, they would exterminate the Zionist regime.
“I have had long conversations over the past two weeks with contacts at the Army War College, at the Headquarters Marine Corps, and I have made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period,” Alan Sabrosky, writer and consultant specializing in national and international security affairs, said in a clip appearing on the public video-sharing website You Tube.
Sabrosky said his colleagues who are still serving in uniform initially react with incredulity to his assertions but upon his explanations regarding the controlled demolition of the buildings their disbelief gives way to rage.
“First is disbelief, and what I show them immediately afterwards is an interview with a Danish demolitions expert named Danny Jowenko, and it shows the third building at the World Trade Center going down - WTC7.”
“The thing that's necessary is to tell people: three buildings went down; the third was not hit by a plane, it was wired for controlled demolition, therefore, all of them were wired for controlled demolition.
Sabrosky said if the Americans were apprised of the truth behind the attacks, they would not hesitate to eliminate Israel without any consideration for the costs involved.
“If Americans ever know that Israel did this, they are going to scrub them off the earth,” he said.
In his September 22, 2011 address to the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for an independent international probe into the 9/11 incident, saying the attacks provided the US with a convenient excuse to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The Zionists are playing this as truly an all-or-nothing exercise, because if they lose this one, if the American people ever realize what happened, they're done,” Sabrosky concluded.Press TV just now picking up on a two-year old interview with Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D,... more-
- maasanova
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- 1 month ago
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- 2 comments
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Man Whose WMD Lies Led To 100,000 Deaths Confesses All
A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.
He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him "we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie", he simply replies: "Yes."
more at link....
The real "curveball" was 9/11. Once you cowards look at the evidence and grow a pair, maybe you'll be man enough to speak the truth.A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a... more-
- rodstradamus
- added this
- 1 month ago
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- 9 comments
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ENOUGH Wingnut Guff About Gasoline Prices!
Really. 'Nuff.-
- mfb1949
- added this
- 1 month ago
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- 0 comments
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The Antiwar Comic: It Ain’t Easy Being Antiwar
Being antiwar is surprisingly dangerous.-
- TonyDiGerolamo
- added this
- 2 months ago
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- 0 comments
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Ironies in American justice and political cheerleading
(1) A reader reminded me of this yesterday and it’s really quite something: in July, 2009, NBC‘s Chuck Todd went on Morning Joe to defend President Obama’s decision to shield all Bush officials from prosecution for torture, arguing that because Bush got his lawyers to say he could torture, it was legal. I interviewed/debated Todd a couple of days later about those views, but before I did, I wrote a reply to the argument he made on television. When doing so, I tried to think of the most extreme tyrannical and lawless power possible which a President could hypothetically assert, in order to reveal the invalidity of Todd’s reasoning, and this is what I wrote:
I’d like to ask Chuck Todd: if Bush had John Yoo write a memo opining that it was perfectly legal for Bush to deploy hit squads within the U.S. to assassinate American citizens without any due process, would it be wrong to investigate and prosecute that, too, on the ground that everyone had permission slips from a DOJ lawyer and that’s just what lawyers do?
The current President has, of course, obtained his own DOJ permission slip to assassinate American citizens without due process. Since that permission slip is too secret for us to see, we do not know whether the authorized assassination power is confined to foreign soil or extends to the U.S., although once one embraces the Bush-Cheney-Yoo theory that the entire world is a “battlefield,” there is no coherent way to limit those asserted powers to foreign soil. In any event, the real point here is that our government has become so radical and warped that it outstrips one’s ability to create absurd hypothetical powers to test the validity of a principle: before you blink your eyes, you find that your hypothetical has become reality.
(2) Yesterday, the Obama administration — which, in the past six months alone, has killed three American citizens in Yemen: Anwar Awlaki, Samir Khan, and Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman — smashed the limits of all known irony charts: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y-WWBQMfql4/T2hh-Ay_wRI/AAAAAAAAA28/MXByXzLb0Ko/s1600/yemen.png
The only civilized way to kill Americans in Yemen is through the use of drones. Or, put another way: killing Americans in Yemen: that’s our job — not the job of you Terrorists!
(3) After Bradley Manning was arrested on charges that he leaked documents to WikiLeaks, he was held in intense solitary confinement for ten months until political pressure finally forced his transfer to more humane conditions in Fort Leavenworth; the top U.N. torture official last week concluded that Manning’s treatment during those 10 months was “cruel and inhumane.” By stark contrast, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales — the prime suspect in the slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians — is already at Fort Leavenworth and is receiving this treatment:
Bales arrived at Fort Leavenworth last Friday and is being held in an isolated cell. He is “already being integrated into the normal pretrial confinement routine,” prison spokeswoman Rebecca Steed said.
The routine includes recreation, meals and cleaning the area where he is living. Steed said once his meetings with his attorneys are complete later in the week, Bales will resume the normal integration process.
An ABC News article back when Manning was transferred to Fort Leavenworth included these details:
The 150 inmates at the facility — including eight who are awaiting trial — are allowed three hours of recreation a day, she said, and three meals a day in a dining area.
That likely means that there will be some substantial interaction between Bales and Manning. Think about that: if you expose to the world previously unknown evidence of widespread wanton killing of civilians (as Manning allegedly did), then you will end up in the same place as someone who actually engages in the mass wanton killing of civilians (as Bales allegedly did), except that the one who committed atrocities will receive better treatment than the one who exposed them. That’s a nice reflection of our government’s value system (similar to the way that high government officials who commit egregious crimes are immunized, while those who expose them are aggressively prosecuted). If the chat logs are to be believed, Manning decided to leak those documents because they revealed heinous war crimes that he could no longer in good conscience allow to be concealed, and he will now find himself next to a soldier who is accused of committing heinous war crimes.
(4) I have an Op-Ed in The Guardian on the quick removal of Bales from Afghanistan and the resulting exclusion of Afghans from the investigation into what happened. Today, The New York Times explains the serious difficulties this could pose to Bales’ prosecution:
Continued at:
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/20/ironies_in_american_justice_and_political_cheerleading/singleton/Excerpt/(1) A reader reminded me of this yesterday and it’s really quite something: in... more-
- JRBarilla
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- 2 months ago
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The Fictional Basis of the War on Terror
Dr. Graeme MacQueen discusses the 9-11 attacks and anthrax mailings in his
presentation "The Fictional Basis of the War On Terror".
Harvard University,
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies
May 22 2010
....
Truth Hurts...Veritas B!tches!Dr. Graeme MacQueen discusses the 9-11 attacks and anthrax mailings in his... more-
- rodstradamus
- added this
- 3 months ago
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- 0 comments
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NSA whistle-blower: Obama “worse than Bush”
Thomas Drake, the whistle-blower whom the Obama administration tried and failed to prosecute for leaking information about waste, fraud and abuse at the National Security Agency, now works at an Apple store in Maryland. In an interview with Salon, Drake laughed about the time he confronted Attorney General Eric Holder at his store while Holder perused the gadgetry on display with his security detail around him. When Drake started asking Holder questions about his case, America’s chief law enforcement officer turned and fled the store.
But the humor drained away quickly from Drake’s thin and tired face as he recounted his ordeal since 2010 when federal prosecutors charged him with violating the Espionage Act for retaining classified information they believed he would pass on to then Baltimore Sun reporter Siobhan Gorman. While Drake never disclosed classified information, he did pass on unclassified information to Gorman revealing that the NSA had wasted billions of taxpayers’ dollars on Trailblazer, a contractor-heavy intelligence software program that failed to find terrorist threats in the tsunami of digital data the agency was sucking up globally — and sometimes unconstitutionally. While Trailblazer burned through cash, in the process enriching many NSA employees turned contractors, Drake found that another software program named ThinThread had already met the core requirements of a federal acquisition regulation that governed the proposed system at a sliver of the cost, all while protecting American civil liberties at the code level. The NSA leadership, however, had already bet their careers on Trailblazer. So Drake blew the whistle, first to Congress, then to the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office, and finally, and fatefully, to Gorman.
Last June, the government’s case collapsed. On the eve of trial, all 10 counts were dropped. In a Kafkaesque turn of events, Drake actually helped the government find a misdemeanor to charge him with — exceeding authorized use of an NSA computer — so federal prosecutors could save face. Once facing 35 years behind bars, Drake pled guilty to the misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to one year of probation and 240 hours of community service, what he sardonically calls “his penance.”
But his legal battles haven’t ended. Currently, Drake, along with the four other whistle-blowers he worked with to expose NSA waste, fraud and abuse, are fighting to get their property back that the FBI confiscated during its criminal investigations. Once a registered Republican and now a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” Drake describes the NSA as a rogue agency that operates in a black box that the public cannot penetrate.
Drake, along with his attorney Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, sat down for a three-hour interview with Salon. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.
Matthew Harwood: What happens at a place like the NSA when they don’t trust you anymore?
I blew the whistle literally on Trailblazer during that 2003-2005 time frame. That led to a whole series of what I will call the retaliation, reprisal and retribution by a thousand cuts, bureaucratic and administrative, where they slowly take you away from your primary responsibilities. They isolate you so you increasingly have less and less of a role to play, even though I was a senior executive in the government.
It’s like Milton out of “Office Space.” You’re put in the basement in a cubicle away from everyone.
You talk about Milton in the basement with his stapler. That’s effectively what happened. You are uninvited from certain kinds of meetings. You end up having certain key functions reassigned to even your own staff members or informed that the funding that you had been receiving, well, you know we don’t need to do that anymore.
In your opinion, is it in the hope that you resign?
Yeah, part of it is the isolation. A bureaucracy can really create this artificial desert, but the desert is real. And in essence, what happens is that they’re taking away the meaning and purpose for who you are when at work. Given that work for so many people is their identity, it attempts to fragment your identity. If you fragment that identity enough, then the hope is you’ll just pack up and take your bag somewhere else. And good riddance. I remember when they realized that I was a threat. The white blood cells were kicking in big time.
It sounds like some dystopian corporate environment but in an absurd, petty way.
You talk about the dark side of Dilbert; they were literally manufacturing incidents that never occurred. That’s the level at which they excel. The distrust within this dystopia of each other: people come into work looking to make someone else’s life bad and they’re deriving great pleasure from the psychological pain they’re inflicting bureaucratically on one another. What does that tell you?
Did you lose your pension?
I was within five-and-a-half years of retirement based on a combination of my military and government time, both CIA and NSA. That’s not there. I have what’s called a thrift savings plan, but I had to take half of that money out. You talk about the price you pay. Most people don’t know it’s significant. I spent close to $100,000 on attorney fees plus expenses. I have literally given up hundreds of thousands of dollars and a government pension that would have been worth close to a million dollars.
Would you still blow the whistle if you knew what you know now?
Yes. There are a few things I would have done differently, though. I would not have spoken to the FBI. I knew that in speaking with them that something could be used against me. I was read my Miranda rights, but I waved them to cooperate, but to report crimes: misdemeanors, illegalities, management malfeasance, program fraud, waste and abuse. I would have immediately had an attorney, but that’s in hindsight.
Another regret: I would have gone public before indictment. Remember, once they indict you’re already in a severely negative place. But the last place I would have shared any information with is WikiLeaks, and yet it is a viable internationally based alternative for getting the truth out. This is partly why [Bradley] Manning is in the hot water because he’s not going through, allegedly, an American citizen; he’s going somewhere else. And it’s not the enemy, let’s get that straight right off the bat, but he’s going to an organization that’s non-U.S.-based, non-U.S. citizen.
And I never would have gone to NSA as a senior executive. I would have stayed a contractor. I would have just made money. But, see, it’s easy to say that. And there are no regrets because I have to live with the integrity of who I am. I recognize that it’s a very lonely space as a whistle-blower, how incredibly isolating it is. And how you keep what you know because of the risks that are involved, recognizing you’re in a much bigger system. You end up keeping the truth from those who you think you could share it with...
Continued at: http://www.salon.com/2012/03/07/nsa_whistle_blower_obama_worse_than_bush/Thomas Drake, the whistle-blower whom the Obama administration tried and failed to... more-
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The Jeb Scenario...
Russ Baker joins Thom Hartmann. Just when you thought it couldn't happen again...Could another Bush be moving into the White House? What happens if Romney and Santorum keep splitting delegates like this - and Ron Paul keeps taking his share too - and no one in the race ends up with the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination?Russ Baker joins Thom Hartmann. Just when you thought it couldn't happen... more-
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Inverted Totalitarianism and the Corporate State
Stricken with a terminal disease, the decline of traditional society is unavoidable. For decades, the political institutions that fostered a Republic based upon individual liberty and responsibility fade into fond memory. Defenders of all that made America a shining example of human freedom are attacked and ridiculed for holding onto a moral and ethical system that is based upon the dignity of every individual. Most will blame the failure of this decay on the politicians that willfully pander to the masses with the next generation of social welfare programs. While defining a politician as a scoundrel, deserving damnation, seems obvious; the underlying source of the decay that eats away the culture comes from various directions.
The trends toward despotism are visible for all to see. Most prefer their blinded vision because accepting the lethal condition might require some proactive response. The idea that a single dictator will seize power and rule as a tyranny seems foreign to many plebeians. Yet, the daily news that flows from the corporate mass media build upon the absence of real reporting and fundamental truth that ignores, denies and substitutes meaningless stories for earth shattering events.
Therefore, the significance of the concept, inverted totalitarianism, as defined by Sheldon S. Wolin deserves examination.
“It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.”
Watch the Sheldon Wolin You Tube interview for a summary of his viewpoint.
For an in-depth study of Mr. Wolin’s ideas, review Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. He asks the following questions:
“Does a demos have a future in the age of globalization, instant communication networks, and fluid borders? Is the notion of “a” demos as asingle, compact body with a “will” and an identity that persists overtime at all possible or even a coherent notion in the age of the political bloggers? Is there time for a more authentic politics, more reflective of the pluralistic character of reality?”
He defines democracy as,
“Democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circumstances of others and one’s self.”
The power influence of the transnational corporation dampens any idealistic notion that democracy is coming from the voices of the people. Momentous influence comes through the propagandist media message. The corporate economy dictates the parameters of the public debate. Trivia replaces the profound. Spending drives a lust for meaningless ingestion of poisonous consumption. The shaping of the popular culture is meant not just to dumb down the public but also to confer a normalcy for accepting the mundane. Rejecting the historic dialogue of the nature of man and the role of a just government is replaced with a diet of manufactured “dependency rights” and “entitlements”.
From Fugitive Democracy: Sheldon Wolin and contemplating the local, the following quote offers an insight on the nature of political apathy that relegates one to accept a mad culture which is devoid from reality.
“In the emerging political economy, Wolin discerns an “anti-political” movement that coordinates the corporation and the state in a drive toward Superpower—that is, “an expansive system of power that accepts no limits other than those it chooses to impose on itself” (p. xvi). As this ‘postmodern’ political economy tends toward Superpower, those in positions of authority demand a new form of citizen: the imperial citizen. Sheldon Wolin reminds us of American president George W. Bush during the tense moments after September 11th, 2001, who exhorted the people to show their citizenship through consumption: “unite, spend, and fly” (590). This pastoral concern by the president emblemizes the postmodern power of the political economy as it reconstitutes “civic culture” as a flattened plane detached from the dynamic structures of Superpower’s soveriegn handle of world affairs. The best thing citizens can do is prove their patriotism by submitting to the authority of the established powers without a word of protest or difference (thus the encouragement to “unite”). Rather than spending unnecessary time and energy worrying about the changing shape of common life—of the networks that bind us to near and distant neighbors—the postmodern citizen faces the multiplicity of demands and choices available at the local Starbucks as she scrolls through the latest bids on ebay while listening to music on her iPod as she waits for the latest iTunes song to upload on her iBook. With so much to do, why worry ourselves with what our representatives are paid to do? This is the imperial citizen according to Superpower—a free-floating, apolitical subject, moved by the television pulse from the security of home to the perpetual satisfaction of shopping malls. “Superpower needs an imperial citizen,” writes Wolin, “one who accepts the necessarily remote relationship between the concerns of the citizen and those of the power-holders, who welcomes being relieved of participatory obligations, and who is fervently patriotic.” (565).”
The imperial citizen is truly a fool. The imperium that surrounds the disengaged participant in the latest escalation of self-imposed slavery, is the ultimate result of the corporate/state.
Progressive author and pundit, Chris Hedges adds his vantage point in the video, Inverted Totalitarianism: Brand Obama and the Corporate State.
Hedges’ talent for ripping apart the corporate state in all its horror is well established. However, his clarion voice goes unheard in the corridors of real power. The economy dictates the marketplace that is available for sale. The advertisement is the message that is acceptable to believe. And the limits upon one’s ability to think and act rationally is controlled by the inverted totalitarianism that is of our own making.
Blaming external forces for all the ills of circumstances begs the issue. As long as passive individuals...
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/28/inverted-totalitarianism-and-the-corporate-state/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=inverted-totalitarianism-and-the-corporate-state&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterStricken with a terminal disease, the decline of traditional society is unavoidable.... more-
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For War-Minded Fiscal Conservatives
Love the Economics dislike the foreign policy? Oxymoron my friend
by Ryan Dawson
See Also:
(Rys2Sense) – No Change I told you so (this was from 2008)
Called it on Obama. If you didn’t listen to me last time please listen this time and Vote Ron Paul. Replace McBama with Obamney and it’s the same story.Love the Economics dislike the foreign policy? Oxymoron my friend by Ryan Dawson... more-
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Obama and Whistleblowers -- Not so different from Bush
The Campaign Against Whistleblowers in Washington
How telling the truth could leave you unemployed, bankrupt, and even jailed.
—By Peter Van Buren
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.
Kiriakou's plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don't go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.
Punish the Whistleblowers
The Obama administration has already charged more people—six—under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. (Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history.)
Kiriakou, in particular, is accused of giving information about the CIA's torture programs to reporters two years ago. Like the other five whistleblowers, he has been charged under the draconian World War I-era Espionage Act.
That Act has a sordid history, having once been used against the government's political opponents. Targets included labor leaders and radicals like Eugene V. Debs, Bill Haywood, Philip Randolph, Victor Berger, John Reed, Max Eastman, and Emma Goldman. Debs, a union leader and socialist candidate for the presidency, was, in fact, sentenced to 10 years in jail for a speech attacking the Espionage Act itself. The Nixon administration infamously (and unsuccessfully) invoked the Act to bar the New York Times from continuing to publish the classified Pentagon Papers.
Yet, extreme as use of the Espionage Act against government insiders and whistleblowers may be, it's only one part of the Obama administration's attempt to sideline, if not always put away, those it wants to silence. Increasingly, federal agencies or departments intent on punishing a whistleblower are also resorting to extra-legal means. They are, for instance, manipulating personnel rules that cannot be easily challenged and do not require the production of evidence. And sometimes, they are moving beyond traditional notions of "punishment" and simply seeking to destroy the lives of those who dissent.
The well-reported case of Thomas Drake is an example. As an employee, Drake revealed to the press that the National Security Agency (NSA) spent $1.2 billion on a contract for a data collection program called Trailblazer when the work could have been done in-house for $3 million. The NSA's response? Drake's home was raided at gunpoint and the agency forced him out of his job.
"The government convinced themselves I was a bad guy, an enemy of the state, and went after me with everything they had seeking to destroy my life, my livelihood, and my person—the politics of personal destruction, while also engaging in abject, cutthroat character assassination, and complete fabrication and frame up," Drake told Antiwar.com. "Marriages are strained, and spouses' professional lives suffer as much as their personal lives. Too often, whistleblowers end up broken, blacklisted, and bankrupted," said the attorney who represents Drake.
In Kiriakou's case, the CIA found an excuse to fire his wife, also employed by the Agency, while she was on maternity leave. Whistleblower Bradley Manning, accused of leaking Army and State Department documents to the website WikiLeaks, spent more than a year in the worst of punitive conditions in a US Marine prison and was denied the chance even to appear in court to defend himself until almost two years after his arrest. Former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Morris Davis lost his career as a researcher at the Library of Congress for writing a critical op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and a letter to the editor at the Washington Post on double standards at the infamous prison, as did Robert MacClean for blowing the whistle on the Transportation Security Administration.
Four employees of the Air Force Mortuary in Dover, Delaware, attempted to address shortcomings at the facility, which handles the remains of all American service members who die overseas. Retaliation against them included firings, the placing of employees on indefinite administrative leave, and the imposition of five-day suspensions. The story repeats itself in the context of whistleblowers now suing the Food and Drug Administration for electronically spying on them when they tried to alert Congress about misconduct at the agency. We are waiting to see the Army's reaction to whistleblower Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who documented publicly this week that senior leaders of the Department of Defense intentionally and consistently misled the American people and Congress on the conduct and progress of the Afghan War.
And this remains the most partial of lists, when it comes to recent examples of non-judicial government retaliation against whistleblowers.
Government bureaucrats know that this sort of slow-drip intimidation keeps people in line. It may, in the end, be less about disciplining a troublemaker than offering visible warning to other employees. They are meant to see what's happening and say, "Not me, not my mortgage, not my family!"—and remain silent. Of course, creative, thoughtful people also see this and simply avoid government service.
In this way, such a system can become a self-fulfilling mechanism in which ever more of the "right kind" of people chose government service, while future "troublemakers" self-select out—a system in which the punishment of leakers becomes the pre-censorship of potential leakers. At the moment, in fact, the Obama administration might as well translate the famed aphorism "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent" into Latin and carve it into the stone walls of the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, or the main office of the State Department at Foggy Bottom where I still fight to keep my job.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/campaign-against-whistleblowers-washington-john-kiriakou-espionageThe Campaign Against Whistleblowers in Washington How telling the truth could leave... more-
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