WASHINGTON–The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.
Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
Much of the outrage expressed about the court’s ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of “inverted totalitarianism.”
Inverted totalitarianism represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry,” Wolin writes in “Democracy Incorporated.” Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by “power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions,” Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people’s right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the “persons” agree to a “settlement.” Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not “admitting any wrongdoing.” There is a word for this. It is called corruption.
Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury.
More at the link:Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v.... more
Many have suggested to me that the only reason I’m so passionate over having the Bush Administration charged with war crimes is because I’m a liberal, and therefore, harbor some sort of deep-seated hatred for George Bush. But that’s not true. The fact is, I neither hate George Bush, nor conservatives. I’m a progressive, not an ideologue, so I have no ideological motive to see any adversity brought into his life. My passion stems from the fact that as a progressive, I have a progressive’s lust for justice.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, progressives have but one guiding philosophy, and that philosophy entails the primacy of humanity, justice for ALL, and the search for truth, wherever it may lead, and regardless to whose ox is gore. It’s just happens thar in this case, the ox that must be gored is our own.
It’s not lost on me that many people who claim to be progressives today are actually quite partisan - they’re ideologues, and they view politics from the perspective of a sports fan – our team against theirs. But I want to assure you that’s not the case here. I’m only looking at this situation from the perspective of what is just, and what is just in this case, is for Bush and his cohorts be held strictly accountable for their conduct.
Consider our response to 911, for example. Look at how crazy we went over the murder of three thousand of our citizens. We’ve been fixated on it for close to a decade now. But we’ve never once stopped to consider that if we feel that strongly over the murder of three thousand of our people, how the Iraqis must feel about our killing hundreds of thousands of theirs?
Now take a moment to consider how would we take it if some country came over here and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, then simply said, “You know, now that we think about it, that wasn’t right. But what the hell – what’s done is done. We can’t bring ‘em back, so we need to look forward, not backwards” If one of the people that they killed was your mother, father, sister, or brother, would you be willing to accept that? I don’t think so.
So the mere fact that the U.S. expects the world to simply allow us to casually walk away from that atrocity without any accountability speaks volumes about both our arrogance, and why people want to kill us.
Dick Cheney claims that terrorist want to kill us because they’re jealous of our freedom. That’s complete bullshit. They want to kill us because we won’t mind our own business, and we keep trying to steal their oil.
America has got to learn two things: First, if you keep slapping your neighbor and picking his flowers, eventually he’s going to hit you back. And secondly, if you break into your neighbor’s home and wipe out his family, then you get caught with a pocketful of his valuables, trying to plead self-defense won’t fly. Any court in the world will convict you of being a murderer and a thief.
We’ve never executed one criminal in the history of America whose crimes even approached the seriousness of the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney – and many, against our own troops. The crimes committed by Dick Cheney makes Tookie Williams look like a choirboy. Yet, now we want to simply walk away and expect the world to believe that America stands for justice? I don’t think so.
As long as we continue to think the rest of the world is beneath us, and the lives of others aren’t as valuable as our own, we’ll never be just, we’ll never be safe, and we’ll continue to move farther away from what it means to be Americans:
A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND
It’s scary how easily the American people can be manipulated to the point that they find the death of entire families a hoot; how we can sit in front of the tv set with chilli dogs and fries and cheer on the death of others like we’re watching the Super Bowl.
More at the link:War Crimes
Many have suggested to me that the only reason I’m so passionate... more
In the 92-93 the League and AN were in the forefront of the "Justicialists" who railed against the corruption of the five governing parties, revealed in its full deployment and "normality" by the investigations of Clean Hands. Today, many years later, the PDL, of which AN is a part and the League an ally, has become the "defender of rights" party. In reality, the coalition of Berlusconi was not really Justicialist in 1994. How could it be, given that the leader was already investigated. http://www.inaltreparole.net/en/resistance/pdlleggi301209.htmlIn the 92-93 the League and AN were in the forefront of the "Justicialists"... more
With his dark-blue uniform, earpiece and walkie-talkie, Nochem Perlberger could pass for a police officer as he patrols the leafy streets of London’s Stamford Hill neighbourhood. Like an officer of the law, he responds to emergency calls, visits crime scenes and pursues suspects.
However, he is a member not of the constabulary but of the Stamford Hill Shomrim Rescue Patrol, a group of Orthodox Jewish men who, for the past two years, have been “policing” the streets of their community in Hackney.
Set up nearly two years ago, the group now has 22 patrolling members, a headquarters and even a 24-hour emergency number, staffed by six operators, which residents call to report crime. “Every house and child in the community knows this number off by heart,” said Mr Perlberger, one of the group’s committee members.
In the five months since the Stamford Hill Shomrim hotline was established, they have dealt with more than 2,000 calls including break-ins, thefts and muggings. On average, they identify three to five suspects a week and hand them over to the police.With his dark-blue uniform, earpiece and walkie-talkie, Nochem Perlberger could pass... more
...........really, this is an ENDLESS collection of PULP,.....everything.
You have your pin-up chickeritas, Godzilla,bikers, starlets, spaceships, crime, cults that I am not sure actually exist,.........science that I AM sure DOES NOT,....
.....and it May even be Otaku! (at least a little bit)
Theocracy might be the least of our problems in the future if groups like this start popping up all over the states...Theocracy might be the least of our problems in the future if groups like this start... more
Reports of hate crimes against gays and religious groups increased sharply in 2008, according to FBI data released Monday.
Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased about 2 percent. These same figures show a nearly 11 percent increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and a nearly 9 percent increase in hate crimes based on religion.
The largest category, racially motivated hate crimes, fell less than 1 percent.
Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay civil rights group, called the numbers unacceptable and said they showed the need for the expanded federal hate crimes law signed last month by President Barack Obama.
Among all categories of hate crimes, roughly a third are vandalism or property damage. About 30 percent involve intimidation of some kind, and another 30 percent were physical attacks.
The FBI does not compare year-to-year trends in hate crimes, saying the number of agencies reporting changes too much. In fact, the bureau cautioned that the increase reported Monday might well be due to more agencies tracking such incidents.
Overall, “the 2008 numbers are up slightly — 7,783 incidents and 9,691 victims” were reported last year. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation had the largest increase — nearly 11 percent. Hate crimes based on religion rose 9 percent and the “largest category, racially-motivated hate crimes, fell less than 1 percent.” A breakdown of the 1,706 victims of sexual-orientation hate crimes:
– 57.5 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-male homosexual bias.
– 27.3 percent were victims because of an anti-homosexual bias.
– 11.6 percent were victims because of an anti-female homosexual bias.
– 2.0 percent were victims because of an anti-heterosexual bias.
– 1.6 percent were victims because of an anti-bisexual bias.
The FBI notes that with the recent passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, it will now “begin the process of adding the collection of hate crimes motivated by gender and gender identity and incorporating them into our annual report.”Reports of hate crimes against gays and religious groups increased sharply in 2008,... more
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been 200 years at it. It's superb." - Gore VidalThe Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society
By David DeGraw The Public Record Nov 19th,... more
A grieving soldier faces a "war crimes" trial for punching a Taliban prisoner suspected of killing his closest comrade.
Lance Corporal Lawrence Soni had a "flash of anger" after the fanatic - caught laying a mine - laughed in his face.
Days earlier he had been given the heartbreaking news that Cpl Joseph "Etch" Etchells, had been blown up and killed.
Fellow troops restrained Soni after he landed a hot-headed thump on the insurgent, knocking him out.
The 22-year-old, on his second tour of Afghanistan, was put under investigation and detectives from the Army's Special Investigation Branch are investigating him for a possible "war crime" charge of assaulting a prisoner.
The soldier's shocked father Jaspal, 50, said last night: "All Lawrence ever wanted was to fight for his country.
"He and Joseph were incredibly close. Lawrence lashed out but in his mind this was the man that had killed his friend. The Army have used him as a scapegoat."
If convicted he could spend up to a year in prison and would be thrown out of the Army in disgrace. Last night Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said: "This doesn't sound like a war crime. Considering the huge pressures that troops face in Helmand - getting blown up at any time and seeing their friends blown up - we should be in awe of their restraint."
You have the right as an individual to own a gun and defend yourself.
Prohibition didn't stop liquor use; the drug laws can't stop drug use. Making gun ownership illegal will not stop gun ownership.
The primary victim of these misguided efforts is the honest citizen whose civil rights are trampled as frustrated legislators and police tighten the screws.
Banning guns will make guns more expensive and give organized crime a great opportunity to make profits in a new black market for weapons. Street violence will increase in new turf wars. Criminals will not give up their guns. But, many law abiding citizens will, leaving them defenseless against armed bandits.
Rather than banning guns, the politicians and the police should encourage gun ownership, as well as education and training programs. A responsible, well-armed and trained citizenry is the best protection against domestic crime and the threat of foreign invasion. America's founders knew that. It is still true today.You have the right as an individual to own a gun and defend yourself.
Prohibition... more
A White Professor at the University of Yukub in Los Angeles,CA. was asked what he felt about the true crime stories blog urbanpulp.blogspot.com by one of his students.
The educator became so enraged at the mere thought of the controversial blog that he literally lost it and blurted out. "Isn't that the blog that glamorizes those nigger criminals!!" Students then throw books at the professor and he was escorted safely off campus by school security!!!
To see for yourself what the controversy is head over to http://urbanpulp.blogspot.com/A White Professor at the University of Yukub in Los Angeles,CA. was asked what he felt... more
"LONDON (Reuters) - Leading banks have funded arms manufacturers, whose products include cluster bombs, to the tune of $5 billion in the past two years, despite an international accord to ban such weapons, a study said Thursday.
The report by Profundo consultancy and several NGOs said the banks loaned money to companies whose products include cluster bombs or their components.
It did not say the funds went directly to make cluster bombs. The manufacturers could use the money for any of their production lines.
The top five loan providers were Bank of America, Citigroup , JP Morgan, Barclays and Goldman Sachs, the study said.
The researchers used publicly available information, such as that supplied by stock exchanges and financial databases, to produce their study.
According to the research, the banks have provided financing for diversified manufacturer Textron, aerospace and defense group Alliant Techsystems and defense contractor Lockheed Martin , all based in the United States.
Cluster bombs, which open in mid-air and scatter a multitude of bomblets over a wide area, have killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians, campaigners say.
Nations agreed to outlaw cluster bombs in May 2008. The resulting convention will come into force when 30 countries have ratified it -- 23 have already done so.
Neither the United States nor Britain, where the top five loan providers are based, have yet ratified the treaty.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions includes a ban on assisting anyone to make the bombs.
Bank of America and JP Morgan declined to comment while Citigroup and Goldman Sachs also had no immediate reaction.""LONDON (Reuters) - Leading banks have funded arms manufacturers, whose products... more
Indigenous people from south-east Peru are suing Repsol-YPF and US company Hunt Oil over their plans to explore for oil on their land.
Local indigenous organisation FENAMAD has filed a lawsuit asking for an injunction to be placed on both the companies’ activities. The suit argues that the government did not consult with local people before giving the companies permission to work there, as is required under international law, and oil exploration would violate local peoples’ fundamental human rights to ‘enjoy a balanced environment’.
Hunt and Repsol-YPF own the rights to explore in an area known as ‘Lot 76’, which includes land belonging to the Yine, Matsigenka and Harakmbut tribes. At the heart of the Lot is the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, used by many villages in the region and the source of six rivers that are the only fresh water supply for an estimated ten thousand people.
‘FENAMAD hopes that this legal action will paralyze any activity inside the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, as otherwise the very existence of Madre de Dios’s indigenous peoples would be put at risk,’ said FENAMAD spokesperson Jaime Corisepa.
Watch a film of the meeting with Hunt http://fenamad-indigenas.blogspot.com/ (in Spanish), entitled ‘See how the Peruvian Amazon’s indigenous peoples say ‘NO’ to Hunt Oil company’.Survival International
Indigenous people from south-east Peru are suing Repsol-YPF... more
100 years of congressional efforts to limit corporate spending in elections going down the drain !
This is a pretty depressing saga unfolding right before our eyes and it's another reason why we need cameras in the Supreme Court so we can view the mockery Roberts is making out of the Third Branch of government. They are about to grant corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to attack political candidates right up until an election, which would make destroy the very fabric of our voting structure. Did you know that a corporation is an individual in Scalia's mind? http://thirdbranch.crooksandliars.com/john-amato/roberts-court-about-do-unthinkable
The Supreme Court is returning early from its summer recess to consider a potential watermark case that couldoverturn a century of campaign finance restrictions and clear the way for unregulated spending by corporations on political campaigns. The case, Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission, has grown from a limited question about a political documentary to a broad challenge to the government's right to restrict corporations from spending money to support or oppose political candidates.
Encompassing questions on First Amendment rights, the power of corporations and the influence of money on political elections, it's no wonder the case has created an assortment of strange bedfellows. Conservatives and liberals appear on both sides, either to defend the government's right to restrict corporate political advocacy or, on the other side, to argue that such regulations are a violation of the First Amendment.
To help sort through the complicated background and ramifications of the case, Bill Moyers talks with two prominent lawyers: Trevor Potter, president and general counsel of The Campaign Legal Center, who has submitted a brief to the court in support of the F.E.C.; and Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment attorney, who will be arguing before the court on behalf of Citizens United. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09042009/profile.html
“It’s here that the American dream decided it liked the taste of the vomit it was chocking on. Just rolled over on its back and screamed for more drugs. it didn't die.“ - Warren EllisTHIS IS NO DRILL !
100 years of congressional efforts to limit corporate spending... more
There isn't a single category of journalist. There are two very different kinds of journalists: the real ones and the ones paid by their masters to make propaganda. This second category usurps the name of journalist without having the right to it, does a job in which doen't risk anything and earns a lot and often attracts the hatred and the disgust of citizens against this profession. But in the world there are many true journalists, even in places where it's almost impossible to be one of them.There isn't a single category of journalist. There are two very different kinds... more
NOTE : I KNOW THIS IS EMBARASSING TO THE HILT FOR A NATION THAT PRIDES ITSELF ON BEING HOME OF THE BRAVE & FREE BUT REALITY REARS ITS UGLY HEAD; WHAT CAN I SAY BUT PLEASE RATIONALIZE THE DIGNITY NEEDED TO ACCOMPLISH THIS MISSION BY REMEMBERING THAT GOLDEN RULE WE ARE ALL SUPOSE TO APPLY AS A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF OUR HUMAN NATURE ? YOU KNOW THAT PESKY…”DO UNTO OTHER” STUFF !
Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals.
These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.
The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations - including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards - detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.
Because each of the people on this list should be nonviolently protested everywhere they go (more on that below), I have organized them by location. Please post updates on where they are as comments ;)
CALIFORNIA
1. John Yoo: Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California, with house at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley, (but a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it) counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result. Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone's child. Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and defended by the Washington Post, and again confronted in the classroom.
Additional collaborators:
2. Robert J. Delahunty, Yoo colleague, should be disbarred in NY
3. Patrick F. Philbin, Yoo colleague, Deputy, should be disbarred in D.C. and MA
4. Jay Bybee: federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, headquartered in San Francisco, California (but Bybee based in Las Vegas), counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by helping Yoo draft the memo linked above. He signed not only torture memos but also a memo purporting to legalize illegal and unconstitutional wars. BYBEE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. He works, among other places, at the James R. Browning Courthouse, 95 7th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, - This is a giant marble building in the center of the city represented in Congress by the Speaker of the House.NOTE : I KNOW THIS IS EMBARASSING TO THE HILT FOR A NATION THAT PRIDES ITSELF ON BEING... more
The absolute power was historically the one of the kings before the English, American and French revolutions. The King could do anything and didn't have to answer to anyone, so no one could control what he did, nor oppose him. Today the world is returning back to that time. The only difference is that instead of the Kings now there are groups of political and economic power. Power has a bad and a worse aspect.The absolute power was historically the one of the kings before the English, American... more
Italy is the land of compromise, the country where no one ever follows upright conduct and transparency in anything. Italy is a vast gray area of complicity between institutions, economy and mafias. A morass of conflicts of interest. A labyrinth of power and unofficial powers where many people try to prevent citizens from understanding who did what and why he did so.Italy is the land of compromise, the country where no one ever follows upright conduct... more
