By Tom Beyerlein and Valerie Lough, Staff Writers Updated 8:50 AM Monday,
April 5, 2010
ST. PARIS — If the United States government collapses, Michael Craft and his
Unorganized Militia of Champaign County are ready.
“One day, if we have a complete collapse ... if one day we are no longer a constitutional form of government, we’re going to need people who are willing to defend the neighbors in the community and your family,” Craft said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center last month placed Craft’s militia and 12 other Ohio groups on the same list of militias as the Michigan-based Hutaree, nine members of which were arrested last weekend on charges they plotted to kill police, then set off bombs at the funeral, as part of an uprising against the government.
Craft said his militia, founded in 2000, is “defensive, not offensive,” and doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with the Hutaree, an apocalyptic Christian group with Ohio members whose Web site includes the slogan, “Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.”
“Now it’s going to be an upward battle to convince people that we’re not that way,” he said. “We support law enforcement, we’re not out to overthrow anybody.”
Extremist “patriot groups” and armed militias have grown exponentially since the November 2008 election of President Obama, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many of them have extreme anti-government doctrines, engage in unfounded conspiracy theories and believe a “new world order” of totalitarian world government is looming.
“Over the last several years, we have seen this explosive growth of organizations on the radical right,” said center spokesman Booth Gunter. Militia groups have grown from 42 in 2008 to 127 in 2009, the center reported last month.
Law enforcement officials in Dayton, Lebanon and Springfield said no local militias are under investigation. Along with Craft’s militia, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the statewide Ohio Militia, the Southwestern Ohio Defense Force of Lebanon and the Constitutional Militia of Clark County as patriot groups.
A message on the Constitutional Militia of Clark County’s Web site states that the pages have been intentionally left blank, but anyone wishing to contact them should send an e-mail. However, a message sent to the e-mail address by a reporter bounced back.
Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly said he isn’t aware of any active militias in the area.
“That’s not to say that they’re not here, because many of them are running covert operations and don’t want to be found,” he said.
The Hutaree militia put a link to the Web site of the Ohio Militia on its own site. The link leads to a domain name that’s not in service.
Kenneth Goldsmith of Zanesville, who heads the Ohio Defense Force which includes a Lebanon “battalion,” said the Ohio Militia is probably the remnants of an extremist group that has been operating in the state for years. A man identifying himself as the Ohio Militia’s leader last April issued a YouTube video, since removed from the site, calling for an armed million-man march on Washington.
Goldsmith said the Ohio Defense Force has no connections with militant militias. He said his group, which has about 200 members statewide, chose the name “defense force” to avoid the stigma associated with the militant groups.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said militias began springing up in the early 1990s as a reaction to the election of President Bill Clinton and the deadly standoffs between federal agents and the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, and the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, in 1993. Michigan became a militant hotbed, but the Midwest generally, including Ohio and Indiana, has been home to many militias, Gunter said.
“After Oklahoma City, that whole movement started dying off,” he said, referring to the April 19, 1995, federal building bombing masterminded by anti-government zealot Timothy McVeigh, who was executed in 2001.
Militia membership has surged since Obama’s election, Gunter said. “Obama is president. The economic problems have played a big role. Also (contributing), we think, are the changing demographics of the country. There’s a feeling white people are losing control.”
These days, he said, militias and patriot groups can organize more easily with technological developments like the Internet. “We have a lot of mainstream figures in the media and politics who are willing to promote their conspiracy theories,” Gunter said. “People think, ‘Maybe I should be concerned that Obamacare is going to kill my grandma.’”
Craft said his militia has seen some increase in membership since Obama’s election. Of the growth of such groups nationally, he said, “maybe it could be the political climate. Generally, people who are in a militia tend to be Libertarian or conservative. When you have a federal administration that is Democrat or liberal, they’re going to be a little more nervous.”
Gunter said it’s militia groups that make him nervous. He said officials of the Southern Poverty Law Center support everyone’s right to free speech, but “you worry about people coming unhinged and taking some kind of action like the Hutarees.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2264 or tbeyerlein@DaytonDailyNews.com.
13 Ohio groups on the same list of militias as the Michigan-based Hutaree
A smoke and mirrors Economy, a rigged market means you will lose, capital
controls now in place, market manipulation is public policy, stock market o
verpriced by manipulations, no monetary tightening without a collapse, pre
dictions of gains and losses in job markets.
We have an economy run on smoke and mirrors, based on the manipulation of markets. That was accomplished via the executive order signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 in the aftermath of the stock market collapse of October 19, 1987, known as the “President’s Working Group on Financial markets.” This order intended to be implemented during emergencies has been used to manipulate markets worldwide 24/7. We experienced an example of this misuse of power when the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from 6,500 to 10,900 over this past year. This rise was aided by TARP and a host of other programs that injected trillions of dollars into the economy, which, of course, the American citizen is responsible for. The result is we do not have free investment markets. A secret group led by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department runs them. The SEC and the CFTC play their parts as government agencies to make sure the public doesn’t know what is going on. Another recent example is the CFTC testimony of Andrew Maguire, who informed the CFTC the date on which the market in silver was going to be manipulated by JPMorgan Chase. The manipulation occurred as outlined by Maguire and the CFTC did nothing to stop it. Thus, we have heavily manipulated markets that are part of control planning by our government in order to shape economic policy. If you happen to be on the right side of the trade it is fine. That is in this case if you are long the market. The other side of the trade is you lose as your government suppressed the gold and silver markets. You lose in a rigged market. This is the new American way. Seeing 72% of NYSE trades are black box created Wall Street wins and you lose. Better yet you just were allowed to bailout Wall Street and banking. Such a deal brought to you by the masters of the universe members of the Illuminist Skull & Bones.
Elitists believe that everything you have belongs to them because they created it are managing your financial life. A good example of that was on March 18th our President passed the most recent stimulus act, the $17.5 billion Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act HR 2487, which is now not only known as HIRE, but the Capital Controls Act as well. It requires foreign banks to withhold 30% of all outgoing capital flows to the Treasury and to disclose the full details of non-exempt account holders to the IRS. That is because the elitists allowed you to make that money and so they demand their 30% cut. If this demand is illegal in a foreign destination then the US government demands that the account be closed. The bottom line is if a foreign financial institution operates in the US or has a subsidiary in the US, they have to comply. That means the law is easy to get around, but the very fact that government has implemented Capital Controls is ominous.
Who do they think they are? Is there no privacy left? We also understand that those who have offices in the US must reveal all information in a foreign account in a foreign country and if that information is not forthcoming the US government demands the account be closed. Many banks will leave the US and that is understandable. Very few Americans have foreign accounts, thus this is just more harassment, and an attempt to further control the lives of Americans. As the world turns its something new monthly from government. We are averaging ten emails a day because of this and medical legislation from people who are very serious about leaving the country.
It is perfectly timed to feed into the current campaign by the government and
Corporate media to demonize the patriot movement and portray militias around
the country as domestic terrorists — MSNBC’s “The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions
of an American Terrorist” will run on April 19.
The real McVeigh story conflicts with the official mythology of violent patriot and
militia groups.
“In the documentary, viewers will be able to hear McVeigh’s confession for the first
time in his own words — the planning and carrying out of the attack,” reports KTUL
in Oklahoma.
On March 31, Aitan Goelman, a member of the Department of Justice team that helped win convictions against McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma case, said that the great risk of America’s growing militia movement is not necessarily in the militias themselves, but rather their capacity to spark rogue actors like Mr. McVeigh, according to the Christain Science Monitor.
“On the edges” of political discourse today, Goelman told the newspaper, “you have rhetoric that carries over to extreme factions.”
Goelman made his comment two days after the FBI raided the Hutaree group in Michigan and several days before the Guardians of the free Republics sent letters to state governors around the country suggesting they resign.
“Anytime you have group-think and this churning of ridiculous ideas back and forth, eventually you’ll get someone like McVeigh who’s going to say ‘I’m going to take the mantle of leadership and fire the shot heard around the world and start the second American revolution,’” said Goelman.
The FBI said last week that while they considered the Guardians of the free Republics non-violent — the group is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. — they believe other groups or individuals will use the call for state government officials to step down as a pretext to engage in violence.
“A federal intelligence note is warning police that an anti-government group’s call to remove dozens of sitting governors may encourage others to act out violently,” the Associated Press reported on April 2. “Investigators do not see threats of violence in the group’s message, but fear the broad call for removing top state officials could inspire others to act out violently.”
“Neither McVeigh nor Mr. Nichols were members of any specific organization, but they were known to associate with hate groups and militias,” notes the Christian Science Monitor. Aitan Goelman suggests rhetoric by militia groups has the ability to “spark rogue actors like Mr. McVeigh.”
Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue revealed in 2007 that McVeigh was handled by the FBI. Trentadue learned of the government’s connection to McVeigh during a lawsuit filed to release documents in the murder of his brother while in government custody. In the process of the lawsuit, Trentadue was given access to McVeigh’s alleged co-conspirator, Terry Nichols.
“Trentadue was able to discover that, according to Nichols, Attorney General’s Ashcroft’s office gagged Nichols from speaking to the media after it became apparent that McVeigh’s accomplices and government ties to the bombing were in danger of leaking,” Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones wrote on February 23, 2007.
“During the process of his lawsuit, Trentadue was able to receive documents with names blacked out that show the FBI’s OKC bombing informants were conducting armed robberies with Timothy McVeigh in order to fund the construction of the fertilizer bomb used in the attack on the federal building. One of the informants was actually an explosives instructor who taught McVeigh how to make the bomb, according to Trentadue.
In addition, McVeigh told Nichols he was recruited for undercover missions while serving in the military, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
18 months before the OK City bombing, McVeigh was captured on videotape at Camp Grafton, North Dakota, a military base specializing in demolitions training. The official FBI timeline on McVeigh claims he had no military affiliations at the time.
The Trentadue documents also show that McVeigh called Elohim City two days before the bombing asking for help. Four months before the bombing an FBI informant told his superiors of the attack plan and said that the Alfred P. Murrah building had been scouted.
Elohim City allegedly had ties to The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of the Lord, a paramilitary survivalist group that operated an Identity settlement near the Arkansas-Missouri border.
In addition to the FBI, the Southern Poverty Law Center was active at Elohim City. The McCurtain Daily Gazette reported on a declassified memo sent to the OKBOMB investigation task force and a select group of FBI offices eight months after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
“One of the revelations was the involvement of civil-rights attorney Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center in an informant operation,” WorldNetDaily reported on January 6, 2004. “According to the memo, the SPLC was involved in monitoring subjects for the FBI believed to be linked to now-executed bomber Timothy McVeigh, the neo-Nazi compound at Elohim City and the mysterious German national Andreas Carl Strassmeir.”
According to research conducted by Nicole Nichols, Strassmeir was a member of the German military and according to sources the principal militia trainer at Elohim City. Strassmeir, writes Nichols, “first came to the United States because he claimed that he had hoped to work in the operations section of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.” He later claimed the OK City bombing “was a government ‘op’ that went wrong” and the ATF “had something going with McVeigh.”
“References to an informant working for the SPLC at Elohim City on the eve of the Oklahoma City bombing raises serious questions as to what the SPLC might know about McVeigh’s activities during the final hours before the fuse was lit in Oklahoma City – but which the SPLC has failed to disclose publicly.”
“If I told you what we were doing there, I would have to kill you,” Dees replied when asked by the media about the SPLC’s involvement.
The FBI, SPLC, and the ATF have their fingerprints all over the OK City bombing. However, when MSNBC runs its documentary later this month you will hear nothing about the real story behind the event because it conflicts with the official mythology of violent patriot and militia groups.
Instead you will hear McVeigh’s “confession” claiming he acted alone.
Considering the fact McVeigh’s doctor while awaiting his death sentence was none other than Dr. Louis Jolyn West, it will be difficult to believe the planned televised confession. “The preeminent don of the CIA’s psychological warfare program [MK Ultra] was Dr. Louis Jolyn West,” writes David Hoffman, author of The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror.
West was also the psychiatrist who examined Jack Ruby, the assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald, and Sirhan Sirhan, the “controlled hypo-patsy” who allegedly killed Robert F. Kennedy.
April 19 is not only the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. It is also the anniversary of the Waco massacre. During the latter half of the month, as Alex Jones has warned, we may witness a false flag attack that will be blamed specifically on the militias and generally on groups and individuals organized in opposition to the government.
The Hutaree raid — revealed to be an FBI spawned patsy operation — and more recently the outlandish accusations against the Guardians of the free Republics are being used as propaganda operations with the full complicity of the corporate media to set the stage for a coming false flag operation designed to take down the patriot movem
CNN has some advice for any former students now saddled with excess debt – carry out a decade of social work or join the ranks of the government’s civilian service corps.
CNN business news correspondent Stephanie Elam put on the hard sell for government service to viewers of Newsroom.
“This is really about helping those people out, getting them ready as far as the choice for best course of study for the financial future,” Elam told viewers.
“So you may consider the possibility of enlisting in public service. Demand is really high right now for government jobs …and any remaining debt on federal student loans will be forgiven after you work full-time in public service for ten years.” Elam continued.
“But to get this benefit, you need to take out your loan from a federal lender as opposed to a private one like Sallie Mae,” she continued, apparently auditioning for the role of Obama’s public service czar.
CNN Touts Civilian Service Corps As Way Of Shedding Student Debt
CNN’s national public service broadcast continued as Elam then touted AmeriCorps and the Peace Corp service:
“They’re not going to forgive your loan, but if you do have service that you provide to AmeriCorps, you will enjoy loan forbearance, and what that really means is you won’t be have to make any payments while you’re serving, and AmeriCorps volunteers are also eligible for an education reward for $5,350,” the anchor said.
Elam then added “…four full years of Peace Corps service will equal a 70 percent cancellation of an existing Perkins loan.”
Watch the video:
Essentially, if you join up with the government’s civilian service army, you get some of your indentured debt stripped away. However, if you choose to work in the private sector, where real jobs and wealth are created, you get no cushty kick backs and the debt remains. What a way to stimulate the ailing economy.
We have previously highlighted the eagerness that the Obama Administration has displayed in pushing for a comprehensive system of national service.
Last year, in an effort to enhance the role of public service, Democrats introduced The ACTION Act, aimed at increasing awards for AmeriCorps volunteers and reestablishing the Corporation’s connection with federal agencies.
The message is clear – serve the federal government and you will be rewarded, serve the U.S. economy and you will not.
Glenn Beck has done more than any other person to amplify and mainstream the movement's hateful and foreboding anti-government message.
April 7, 2010 |
Reading last week's disturbing news accounts about the Midwestern arrest of nine alleged members of a Christian militia known as the Hutaree, a group whose members were reportedly planning to kill cops in order to spark a wider, armed revolt against the U.S. government, I noticed this nugget [emphasis added]:
FBI agents moved quickly against Hutaree because its members were planning an attack sometime in April, prosecutors said.
My hunch is the self-described "warriors" of the Hutaree probably circled April 19 on their calendars for any cop-killing fantasy they might have planned to pull off. Why April 19? That was the day, 17 years ago, when the FBI staged its final failed assault on cult leader David Koresh's heavily armed compound in Waco, Texas. It was on April 19, 1993, following a 51-day siege, that Koresh's fanatical followers, rather than surrendering to authorities, staged mass suicides (and, in some cases, executions) as the compound burned to the ground.
Precisely two years later, on April 19, 1995, right-wing zealot Timothy McVeigh commemorated the Waco inferno by declaring war on the federal government and blowing up his rented Ryder truck outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. McVeigh's act of far-right radical terrorism sheared the north side off the Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more. ("I reached the decision to go on the offensive -- to put a check on government abuse of power," McVeigh later wrote.)
April 19 remains an almost mythical date among dedicated government haters. It's a date that lives in infamy as proof of the dark consequences of when a tyrannical government (run by Democrats) turns on its own.
So yeah, as the Hutaree gun nuts allegedly plotted in the woods of Michigan on the best way to kill cops, pieced together their seditious plans to wage war on the U.S. government, and planned their upcoming confrontation with the Antichrist, I'm guessing the landmark militia day of April 19 loomed large.
For anyone who thought the dark, Waco-fueled chapter of domestic extremism in this country was behind us, the Hutaree arrests were a jarring reminder that, with the election of another Democratic president, the violent militia message is back.
And it's stronger than ever.
Not only have the number of radical-right extremist groups exploded in the wake of President Obama's election (more than 500 today, as compared to just 200 during the 1990s), but these militia members now have a proud sponsor in the person of Fox News' Glenn Beck, who has done more than any other person to amplify and mainstream the movement's hateful and foreboding anti-government message. Beck continues to give a voice, and national platform, to the same deranged, hard-core militia haters and self-style "patriots" who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco.
A design flaw causes a GM truck to burst into flames, yet the feds have done nothing about it.
April 7, 2010 |
Brian Taft joined the C/K death list in November 2007. As he pulled
out of a parking lot near midnight in Clifton Township, Pennsylvania,
his pickup was broadsided by an SUV. Taft suffered broken ribs, but
that's not what killed him, an autopsy found. Instead, it was the fireball
that engulfed both vehicles when Taft's gas tank ruptured and the
pickup exploded. Burned on 99 percent of his body, Taft left a wife
and two young children. (The other driver survived.)
Taft, 36, was behind the wheel of a 1986 GM pickup, one of more than
9 million in the popular C/K line sold in the 1970s and '80s. For marketing
reasons, the trucks had an unusual design feature. GM wanted to offer
40 gallons of fuel capacity, but there was no place to mount a tank that big. So it offered twin 20 gallon tanks, each nearly 5 feet long, two explosive containers hanging like saddle bags outside the truck's protective frame. Even after decades, that choice still resonates in the courts, in the lives of bereaved families and in the disfiguring scars of survivors.
Hundreds have been killed in fiery crashes of the side-saddle pickups, and many others suffered disfiguring burns. A review by FairWarning found that at least 100 people have perished by fire since federal authorities dropped an investigation that could have led to the trucks' recall.
Sixteen years ago, a probe (pdf) by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, found the risk of burning to death in side-impact crashes was much higher (pdf) in the GM trucks than in rival full-size pickups. But under intense pressure from GM and its congressional allies, transportation officials blinked, announcing a settlement in December 1994 that left millions of the trucks on the road. In exchange, GM agreed to pay $51.4 million for safety programs—things like buying child car seats for poor families—that transportation officials said would save many lives.
By that time, more than 600 people had burned to death in C/K post-collision fires. And the agreement did nothing about the remaining side-saddle pickups, described by consumer advocates and victims' lawyers as the most dangerous vehicles, from a fire risk standpoint, ever produced.
GM officials have consistently defended the trucks, saying they have a fine overall safety record and met fuel-system safety standards when they were produced. "The safety of the trucks was established a number of years ago after extensive investigations and reviews," said GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson. "We don't have anything new to add." Over the years, GM has settled hundreds of lawsuits and claims by fire victims or their families, paying out well in excess of $500 million.
Robert Lawrence of Turner, Oregon, settled his case following a fiery crash in 2005 that nearly killed him and his fianceé. Both suffered extensive burns and other injuries when a car ran a stop sign and hit the side-saddle truck in which they were riding, rupturing the fuel tank and triggering a massive fire. Five years later, Lawrence's voice still wobbles with emotion when he talks about it. GM "knew that people were getting killed," but "they were selling these trucks like hotcakes, so rather than stop and fix it they continued to sell them," Lawrence said.
"Yet they make all these advertisements on TV—'The Heartbeat of America' and 'We care about your family,' and all that stuff," said Lawrence, 46. "It just freaks me out."
IRS Says Health Care Coverage Fines Not Punitive, But Admits Govt Can Keep Refunds If Fines Not Paid
Thursday, April 08, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
IRS income tax forms.(AP file photo)
(CNSNews.com) – IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said on Monday
that the health care bill signed into law last month by President Barack
Obama is not “punitive,” but that the agency could withhold tax refunds
if it determines a taxpayer does not have mandatory health care
coverage and should pay a fine, as stipulated in the law.
The new health care law mandates that every American have health
insurance, either on their own or through their employer. If a person
refuses to buy health insurance, he can be penalized financially by the federal government.
“I think there’s a couple of important points that I would make, though, about our role in health reform,” Shulman said during a question-and-answer session following a speech at the National Press Club on Monday. “One is that these are not the kinds of things – check the box whether you’re here or not -- that we send agents out. These are things where you get a letter from us.”
“Second is, Congress was very careful to make sure there was nothing too punitive in this bill,” Shulman said. “And so, we do not have authority – first of all, there’s no criminal sanctions for not paying this and there’s no ability to levy bank accounts, do seizures or some of the other tools.”
“So our role is going to be straight-forward,” Shulman said.
In this April 5, 2010 file photo, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman gestures while speaking at the National Press Club in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
When asked by someone in the audience how the Internal Revenue Service would make sure people are complying with the health insurance mandate without sanctions, Shulman said his agency had the means to collect fines, which could range from several hundred for an individual to as much as 2.5 percent of household income, according to a GOP analysis based on a Mar. 18 Congressional Budget Office report on the cost of the health care law.
“People will get letters from us,” Shulman said. “We can actually do collections if need be; people can get offsets of their tax returns in future years.
“So there are a variety of ways for us to focus on things like fraud, things like abuse and we’re going to run a balanced program,” Shulman said.
Shulman said Americans have a high compliance rate when it comes to paying taxes.
“The vast majority of Americans have a healthy respect for the law and want to be compliant with their tax obligations and whatever else the law holds,” Shulman said.
As CNSNews.com reported, under the new law, every individual and most businesses are required to report to the IRS, on their tax returns, whether they have purchased or provided the required level of coverage and disclose to the IRS which months, if any, in which they failed to do so.
Using this information, the IRS would then determine whether an employer or individual falls under the individual health insurance mandate, which contains exceptions for religious conscience, hardship, incarcerated persons, and members of Indian tribes.
If either an individual or a business has failed to comply with this mandate for any month out of the year, they are required to pay a separate tax to the IRS. For individuals this is a maximum of $750 per person (up to $2,250 per household) and $750 per uncovered employee for businesses.
Because these penalties would each apply on a monthly basis, individuals and employers would have to pay 1/12th of the maximum penalties for each month they failed to comply with the mandates.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Taliban released a video Wednesday of a man
identified as an American soldier captured in Afghanistan last June,
showing him pleading for his freedom and to be returned home.
In the video, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl says he wants to return to his family
in Idaho and that the war in Afghanistan is not worth the number of lives
that have been lost or wasted in prison. It is the first he has been seen
since the Taliban released a video of him on Christmas.
The seven-minute video of Bergdahl shows him sporting a beard and
doing a few push-ups to demonstrate he's in good physical condition. There was no way to verify when the footage was taken or if he is still alive.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an Army spokesman, said he could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the video.
"Our thoughts, prayers, and support remain with the Bergdahl family during this difficult time," Garver said.
Bergdahl disappeared June 30 while based in eastern Afghanistan and is the only known American serviceman in captivity. The Taliban claimed his capture in a video released in mid-July that showed the young soldier appearing downcast and frightened.
In the sometimes choppy video issued Wednesday, Bergdahl talks about his love for his family, his friends, motorcycles and sailing.
"I'm a prisoner. I want to go home," he says in the video, which was made available by Washington-based Site Intelligence Group, which monitors militant Web sites. "This war isn't worth the waste of human life that has cost both Afghanistan and the U.S. It's not worth the amount of lives that have been wasted in prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, all those places where we are keeping prisoners."
At times speaking haltingly, as if holding back emotions, Bergdahl - clad in what appeared to be an Army shirt and fatigues - clasped his hands together and pleaded: "The pain in my heart to see my family again doesn't get any smaller. Release me. Please, I'm begging you, bring me home."
He added that he is strong and is "given the freedom to exercise" and to be a human being, even though he is a prisoner.
Lt. Col. Tim Marsano of the Idaho National Guard said Wednesday that Bergdahl's family was not aware of the new video. But he said the community of Hailey has reminders all over town of Bergdahl's capture, including signs wishing for his safe return and yellow ribbons.
"The community has definitely not forgotten Bowe Bergdahl, and the family continues to appreciate the support," said Marsano. "It's been a difficult nine months. With the support of family, friends and community members, they are doing as well as anyone could expect in this kind of situation."
U.S. officials have said that there were indications as recently as late January that Bergdahl was still alive.
At the end of the video, a speaker, reportedly Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, demands the release of a limited number of prisoners in exchange for the American.
Military officials had notice prior to the first video of Bergdahl released by the Taliban last summer, giving them time to alert his family before its public release. It was unclear Wednesday whether military officials knew this new video was coming.
Bergdahl, who was serving with a unit based in Fort Richardson, Alaska, was 23 when he vanished just five months after arriving in Afghanistan. He was serving at a base in Paktika province near the border with Pakistan in an area known to be a Taliban stronghold.
Associated Press writer Todd Dvorak in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
How phony is Barack Obama? PBS Washington Week host Gwen
Ifill reviewed New Yorker editor David Remnick's new Obama book
The Bridge in the Washington Post Outlook section Sunday, and she
kept finding Obama is a Slick Barry, a "shape shifter." Obama even
admitted to rhetoric what should be obvious -- how he changes "
dialects" depending on the audience he's talking to:
Obama cops to this. "The fact that I conjugate my verbs and speak
in a typical Midwestern newscaster's voice -- there's no doubt that
this helps ease communication between myself and white audiences,
" he tells Remnick.
"And there's no doubt that when I'm with a black audience I slip into a slightly different dialect. But the point is, I don't feel the need to speak a certain way in front of a black audience. There's a level of self-consciousness about these issues the previous generation had to negotiate that I don't feel I have to."
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When he reads this, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was excoriated after being quoted in another campaign book saying essentially the same thing, will no doubt regret his tortured apology.
Obama -- the offspring of a white mother and an African father -- learned what Remnick calls "shape-shifting" when he arrived in Chicago. Reared in Hawaii and Indonesia, he "had never encountered a place where race was so determinative," one old Chicago friend observes.
Ifill relayed that this wasn't contained to talking -- but even to walking!
Bobby Rush, the congressman and former Black Panther, is apparently still disdainful of the young Harvard Law School transplant who had the nerve to challenge him in 2000 (Obama lost, badly, in part because black voters were suspicious of his racial bona fides).
In one of the book's most remarkable passages, Rush mocks the president during an interview in his congressional office, getting out of his chair to make fun of Obama's distinctive, rolling stride. The smooth strut, Rush suggests, was something Obama appropriated from the street to appear more at home around black people. "Lemme tell you, I never noticed that he walked like that back then!"
Those who lost to Obama also complain that the newcomer got an easy ride from the news media. "We didn't understand why his politically calculating chameleon nature was never discussed," an aide to Clinton says. "We were said to be the chameleons, but he changed his life depending on who he was talking to." [Italics hers.]
That's pretty amazing coming from the Clintons, who prided themselves on their shape-shifting. What this proves though, is that the media's own political favoritism is crucial in determining which shape-shifter is going to prevail in the Democratic primaries. Ifill then noted the Republican take on the Obama-intoxicated media:
Mark Salter, John McCain's campaign adviser, co-author and alter ego, is more blunt: Obama won because his race played into reporters' romantic notions about the arc of civil rights history. "The truth is, all that will be remembered of the campaign is that America's original sin was finally expunged," he says. The McCain forces, Remnick concludes, saw Obama as absurdly fortunate.
There may be something to that. Obama was elected to the Senate only after not one but two credible contenders had contentious divorce papers unsealed. He was elected president because Clinton's campaign was chaotic, but also because Americans were anxious to change course from a deeply unpopular Republican president.
If Ifill wanted to offer full disclsure about media infatuation, she should have noted part of the "absurdly fortunate" pattern of emerging divorce records of Obama's opponents came from reporters and lawyers from the Chicago Tribune.
Ifill also noted that the alleged guardians of factual accuracy in our media took a complete holiday when it came to Obama's first memoir: he is "one who has largely been allowed to romanticize his own story."
Remnick efficiently strips some of the gloss off the version Obama offered in his best-selling 1995 memoir "Dreams From My Father," charitably and accurately describing that effort as "a mixture of verifiable fact, recollection, recreation, invention and artful shaping."
Obama, Remnick points out, ended each section with climactic, somewhat overwrought descriptions of himself in tears -- as he sees his father in a dream, discovers his spiritual roots in church, visits his father's grave. I totally bought all of this the first time I read "Dreams." I don't know that I would today -- in part because I am a professional skeptic when it comes to the people I cover, and in part because it's difficult to conceive of cool cucumber Obama being that overcome by emotion.
If Ifill really believes she is a "professional skeptic when it comes to the people I cover," why wasn't this awareness of Obama's fabricated memoirs in her own coverage of Obama while he was running for presidenta's Fans Notice He's a Phony In How He Writes, Talks, and Even Walks
Photo of Tim Graham.
By Tim Graham (Bio | Archive)
Mon, 04/05/2010 - 07:30 ET
How phony is Barack Obama? PBS Washington Week host Gwen Ifill reviewed New Yorker editor David Remnick's new Obama book The Bridge in the Washington Post Outlook section Sunday, and she kept finding Obama is a Slick Barry, a "shape shifter." Obama even admitted to rhetoric what should be obvious -- how he changes "dialects" depending on the audience he's talking to:
Obama cops to this. "The fact that I conjugate my verbs and speak in a typical Midwestern newscaster's voice -- there's no doubt that this helps ease communication between myself and white audiences," he tells Remnick.
"And there's no doubt that when I'm with a black audience I slip into a slightly different dialect. But the point is, I don't feel the need to speak a certain way in front of a black audience. There's a level of self-consciousness about these issues the previous generation had to negotiate that I don't feel I have to."
When he reads this, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was excoriated after being quoted in another campaign book saying essentially the same thing, will no doubt regret his tortured apology.
Obama -- the offspring of a white mother and an African father -- learned what Remnick calls "shape-shifting" when he arrived in Chicago. Reared in Hawaii and Indonesia, he "had never encountered a place where race was so determinative," one old Chicago friend observes.
Bobby Rush, the congressman and former Black Panther, is apparently still disdainful of the young Harvard Law School transplant who had the nerve to challenge him in 2000 (Obama lost, badly, in part because black voters were suspicious of his racial bona fides).
In one of the book's most remarkable passages, Rush mocks the president during an interview in his congressional office, getting out of his chair to make fun of Obama's distinctive, rolling stride. The smooth strut, Rush suggests, was something Obama appropriated from the street to appear more at home around black people. "Lemme tell you, I never noticed that he walked like that back then!"
Those who lost to Obama also complain that the newcomer got an easy ride from the news media. "We didn't understand why his politically calculating chameleon nature was never discussed," an aide to Clinton says. "We were said to be the chameleons, but he changed his life depending on who he was talking to." [Italics hers.]
That's pretty amazing coming from the Clintons, who prided themselves on their shape-shifting. What this proves though, is that the media's own political favoritism is crucial in determining which shape-shifter is going to prevail in the Democratic primaries. Ifill then noted the Republican take on the Obama-intoxicated media:
Mark Salter, John McCain's campaign adviser, co-author and alter ego, is more blunt: Obama won because his race played into reporters' romantic notions about the arc of civil rights history. "The truth is, all that will be remembered of the campaign is that America's original sin was finally expunged," he says. The McCain forces, Remnick concludes, saw Obama as absurdly fortunate.
There may be something to that. Obama was elected to the Senate only after not one but two credible contenders had contentious divorce papers unsealed. He was elected president because Clinton's campaign was chaotic, but also because Americans were anxious to change course from a deeply unpopular Republican president.
If Ifill wanted to offer full disclsure about media infatuation, she should have noted part of the "absurdly fortunate" pattern of emerging divorce records of Obama's opponents came from reporters and lawyers from the Chicago Tribune.
Ifill also noted that the alleged guardians of factual accuracy in our media took a complete holiday when it came to Obama's first memoir: he is "one who has largely been allowed to romanticize his own story."
Remnick efficiently strips some of the gloss off the version Obama offered in his best-selling 1995 memoir "Dreams From My Father," charitably and accurately describing that effort as "a mixture of verifiable fact, recollection, recreation, invention and artful shaping."
Obama, Remnick points out, ended each section with climactic, somewhat overwrought descriptions of himself in tears -- as he sees his father in a dream, discovers his spiritual roots in church, visits his father's grave. I totally bought all of this the first time I read "Dreams." I don't know that I would today -- in part because I am a professional skeptic when it comes to the people I cover, and in part because it's difficult to conceive of cool cucumber Obama being that overcome by emotion.
If Ifill really believes she is a "professional skeptic when it comes to the people I cover," why wasn't this awareness of Obama's fabricated memoirs in her own coverage of Obama while he was running for president
Tucker: Elite will get together in Sitges, Spain from June 3-6 to push agenda for world economic governance; Hotel Dolce Sitges likely location
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Bilderberg Group
will meet this year in
Spain and continue to
advance their agenda
for world economic
governance while
agreeing to prolong
the global financial
recession for another
year, according to
Bilderberg sleuth
Jim Tucker, who
has discovered
through his routinely
accurate inside sources that the conference will take place from June 3-6.
Bilderberg sleuths were correct in predicting that this year’s meeting would take place in western Europe, but were wrong in pinpointing the UK as the likeliest location. The 2010 conference will take place in a coastal resort called Sitges, which is about 20 miles from Barcelona.
Bilderberg have now been absent from the UK for the longest time in their history. Even if Bilderberg chooses the UK as their 2011 destination, 13 years will have passed since their 1998 conference in Scotland, the longest gap between UK conferences since the group’s founding in 1954. As we highlighted yesterday, Bilderberg’s decision to avoid the UK is undoubtedly related to increased awareness of the group and the expectation that they would receive unwanted press attention as well as sizeable demonstrations if they held the meeting in the British Isles.
Bilderberg last met in Spain in 1989 when they held their annual conference on the Spanish island of La Toja.
This year’s confab will be similarly secluded, with Bilderberg’s increasing army of police and private security guards on hand to create a lock down of the entire resort.
Bilderberg will have a wide choice of hotels from which to host their secretive get-together, meaning the precise location of the conference will be harder than ever to pin down. The area is known for having a plethora of high standard hotels and is a popular tourist resort.
The most likely candidate however would appear to be the Hotel Dolce Sitges (pictured top), a 5 star luxury resort adjacent to a prestigious golf club. Forming the consensus which sets the agenda for global policy behind closed doors can be stressful, which is why Bilderbergers like to interrupt their scheming with the odd round of golf.
“Business facilities include 11 meeting rooms, 25 breakout rooms, 2 boardrooms, and a spacious amphitheatre accommodating up to 60 guests. All of the venues are equipped with the latest audiovisual technologies and ideal for holding congresses, cocktails, weddings and any other kind of event for up to 550 guests,” states the promotional text for the hotel, suggesting it would be ideal for the Bilderbergers.
Bilderberg To Prolong Global Financial Recession For Another Year 090410top2
The Hotel Dolce Sitges has no rooms available from June 2 to June 6, strongly indicating that this is when the resort will be locked down for the arrival of Bilderberg elitists.
The resort appears to be suitably secluded and away from the crowded tourist areas, making it perfect for Bilderberg’s needs. In addition, attempting to book a room from June 3-6 via the hotel’s website reveals that no rooms are available from June 2 to June 6, strongly indicating that this is when the resort will be locked down for Bilderberg.
However, Bilderberg has been known to leak false information about where the group is staying, so we cannot confirm the exact location until Jim Tucker or Daniel Estulin pinpoint the precise location via their inside sources, who have proven to be habitually accurate.
Bilderberg To Prolong Global Financial Recession For Another Year sitges
State of the art conference facilities and 5 star luxury suggest the Hotel Dolce Sitges may be the preferred location for this year’s Bilderberg meeting.
This year’s confab will focus around prolonging the global financial recession and creating more economic woe in order to provide the pretext for more regulation in pursuit of world economic governance, according to Jim Tucker’s sources.
“Bilderberg hopes to keep the global recession going for at least a year, according to an international financial consultant who deals personally with many of them. This is because, among several reasons, Bilderberg still hopes to create a global “treasury department” under the United Nations. Bilderberg first undertook this mission at its meeting last spring in Greece, but the effort was blocked by nationalists in Europe and the United States. “Nationalists” (a dirty word in Bilderberg) objected to surrendering sovereignty to the UN,” writes Tucker.
Tucker’s source highlighted a recent speech by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he called for a “new global monetary order.” As we have highlighted, such rhetoric has been abundant over the past year, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and EU President Herman Van Rompuy repeatedly echoing similar ideas.
As Bilderberg investigator Daniel Estulin revealed during last year’s Bilderberg meeting in Greece, elitists were planning to paint a false picture of economic recovery in order to sucker investors into ploughing their money back into the stock market, which is exactly what has happened with the Dow soaring back to just below the 11,000 level.
Estulin correctly predicted the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown as a result of what his sources inside Bilderberg told him the elite were planning based on what was said at their 2006 meeting in Canada and the 2007 conference in Turkey.
“Bilderberg’s ultimate goal remains unchanged,” writes Tucker. “Turn the UN into a world government with “nation-states” becoming merely geographic references. The European Union is to become a single political entity, followed by the “American Union” and, finally, the “Asian-Pacific Union.” The “American Union” is to include the entire Western Hemisphere, including Cuba and other offshore islands.”
There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today.
The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever.
However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes.
This emergency conference, called by the UN’s bureaucrats because they were terrified that Cancun this December might fail as spectacularly as Copenhagen did last year, is a much quieter affair than Copenhagen. Not only has the air of triumphalism gone, after the scandals of Climategate, Himalayagate, Amazongate and so forth, but the belief that “global warming” is a global crisis has largely gone too.
There are a few true-believers left among the national delegates, but more of them than before are open to discussion of the previously-forbidden question – what if the climate extr Bonn or bust – The UN’s last, desperate bid for unelected world government
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
SPPI Blog
April 10, 2010
There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today.
The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever.
However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes.
This emergency conference, called by the UN’s bureaucrats because they were terrified that Cancun this December might fail as spectacularly as Copenhagen did last year, is a much quieter affair than Copenhagen. Not only has the air of triumphalism gone, after the scandals of Climategate, Himalayagate, Amazongate and so forth, but the belief that “global warming” is a global crisis has largely gone too.
There are a few true-believers left among the national delegates, but more of them than before are open to discussion of the previously-forbidden question – what if the climate extremists have made the whole thing up?
Bonn or bust – The UN’s last, desperate bid for unelected world government 110310banner1
The Chinese Xinhua News Agency, for instance, came up to the table manned by the environmental campaigners of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which takes a hard-boiled, cynical view of the notion that a tiny increase in the atmospheric concentration of a trace gas is likely to cause a thousand international disasters.
The reporters were genuinely interested to hear that there is another side to the story. Huan Gongdi, the Agency’s senior correspondent in Germany, asked me what I thought of the Copenhagen accord (a waste of time), what was happening in Bonn (a desperate attempt to ram through a binding Treaty that can be put in front of the US Senate before the mid-term elections make Senate acceptance of any such treaty unthinkable), and whether or not there was a climate crisis anyway (there isn’t).
I explained to Mr. Huan that even if the UN had not exaggerated the warming effect of CO2 many times over there was still nothing we could do about the supposed “crisis”, because we were emitting so little of the stuff in the first place.
For the record, I did the sum in front of him. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 today is about 388 parts per million by volume. However, we are adding just 2 ppmv a year to the air. So the warming we cause each year, even if one believes the UN’s wild exaggerations of CO2’s warming effect, is just 4.7 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration from 388 to 390 ppmv.
Thus, 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.043 Fahrenheit degrees – less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree of “global warming” every year. That is all. Putting it another way, it would take almost a quarter of a century with no carbon-emitting activity at all – not a single train, plane, automobile, or fossil-fueled power station – to forestall just 1 Fahrenheit degree of “global warming”.
That is why no Treaty based on controlling the amount of carbon dioxide the world emits can possibly work. And that is why there is no hurry anyway. The only reason for the UN’s sense of urgency – a panic no longer felt by the majority of the delegates here – is that the bureaucrats know the game is up. Opinion polls throughout the free world show that no one now believes a word of the climate extremists’ nonsense any more. If they can’t get a binding treaty this year, they won’t get one at all, and they know it.
I shall be reporting frequently from the conference as events unfold. Check back often at www.sppiblog.org.have made the whole thing up?
Bonn or bust – The UN’s last, desperate bid for unelected world government 110310banner1
The Chinese Xinhua News Agency, for instance, came up to the table manned by the environmental campaigners of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which takes a hard-boiled, cynical view of the notion that a tiny increase in the atmospheric concentration of a trace gas is likely to cause a thousand international disasters.
The reporters were genuinely interested to hear that there is another side to the story. Huan Gongdi, the Agency’s senior correspondent in Germany, asked me what I thought of the Copenhagen accord (a waste of time), what was happening in Bonn (a desperate attempt to ram through a binding Treaty that can be put in front of the US Senate before the mid-term elections make Senate acceptance of any such treaty unthinkable), and whether or not there was a climate crisis anyway (there isn’t).
I explained to Mr. Huan that even if the UN had not exaggerated the warming effect of CO2 many times over there was still nothing we could do about the supposed “crisis”, because we were emitting so little of the stuff in the first place.
For the record, I did the sum in front of him. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 today is about 388 parts per million by volume. However, we are adding just 2 ppmv a year to the air. So the warming we cause each year, even if one believes the UN’s wild exaggerations of CO2’s warming effect, is just 4.7 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration from 388 to 390 ppmv.
Thus, 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.043 Fahrenheit degrees – less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree of “global warming” every year. That is all. Putting it another way, it would take almost a quarter of a century with no carbon-emitting activity at all – not a single train, plane, automobile, or fossil-fueled power station – to forestall just 1 Fahrenheit degree of “global warming”.
That is why no Treaty based on controlling the amount of carbon dioxide the world emits can possibly work. And that is why there is no hurry anyway. The only reason for the UN’s sense of urgency – a panic no longer felt by the majority of the delegates here – is that the bureaucrats know the game is up. Opinion polls throughout the free world show that no one now believes a word of the climate extremists’ nonsense any more. If they can’t get a binding treaty this year, they won’t get one at all, and they know it.
I shall be reporting frequently from the conference as events unfold. Check back often at www.sppiblog.org.
Says bill partially written by music industry is on a par with communist Chinese censorship
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Leading UK ISP Says It Will Defy Governments Net Censorship
Bill 090410DEB3 Related Reading: Death Of The Internet:
Unprecedented Censorship Bill Passes in UK
A leading internet service provider in the UK has declared
that it will refuse to follow government orders to restrict, slow
down or cut off its customers’ internet access under rules set
out in Lord Mandelson’s (pictured) Digital Economy Bill.
The provider, TalkTalk, which has over 4 million internet users,
has declared the legislation “draconian” and says it will not
cooperate with its provisions.
Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s director of strategy and regulation
has said the company will repel any instructions to disconnect
customers unless instructed to by the courts.
“If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.” Heaney wrote on the company blog.
Heaney also makes it clear that TalkTalk will not turn over details of its customers’ online activities to the government.
“Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it,” Heaney asserted.
Under the legislation, the government will impose a duty on ISPs to effectively spy on all their customers by keeping records of the websites they have visited and the material they have downloaded. The bill states that ISPs who refuse to cooperate could be fined £250,000.
Heaney described the provisions in the legislation as a pretext to communist China style internet censorship:
“…many draconian proposals remain such as the responsibility on customers to protect their home networks from hacking at a collection cost of hundreds of millions of pounds a year, the presumption that they are guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent, and, as in China, the potential for legitimate search engines and websites to be blocked.” he urged.
Heaney added that TalkTalk will “continue to battle against these oppressive proposals”, pointing out that the Digital Economy Bill measures will require secondary legislation before they can be implemented and made law.
The TalkTalk director also highlighted the fact that the bill was passed under considerable influence from the record and film industries and that only five per cent of MPs even bothered to turn up to debate the bill in Parliament.
“This is made all the more appalling by the ability of big music and film companies to influence government and the absence of any proper debate or scrutiny by MPs – only 5% of MPs turned up for the brief debate yesterday and the other important parliamentary stages will be bypassed in the wash-up process,” Heaney concluded.
Leading UK ISP Says It Will Defy Governments Net Censorship Bill 110310banner1
The bill was universally lauded by the music industry, after it was rushed through the legislative procedure via the “wash up” process. No wonder, given the fact that a key amendment of the bill was drafted by the BPI, which represents UK major record labels.
Leading UK ISP Says It Will Defy Governments Net Censorship Bill 090410DEB During the process, it was revealed that Stephen Timms, the minister for Digital Britain, was under the impression that “IP address” referred to “intellectual property”, rather than internet protocol, highlighting just how outmoded and ignorant of their actions ministers are on this issue.
The Digital Economy Bill became the Digital Economy Act overnight, as it was given Royal Assent and formerly passed into law.
The majority of the Act’s provisions will come into effect in two months, with some effective immediately. As previously indicated, the online infringement of copyright provisions of the Act will require secondary legislation before they can be implemented.
The British law firm Eversheds commented:
“We can expect opposition to intensify as the clampdown on copyright infringement begins in earnest and consumers find themselves accused of breaking the law. Meanwhile some commentators have already pointed out that technology savvy infringers can – and will – take steps to circumvent detection, leaving open the question, who is the government really targeting?”
Mass protests against the Act will continue with online campaign site 38 Degrees, working in conjunction with digital liberties watchdog The Open Rights Group.
Jim Killock, executive director of ORG called the passage of the bill “an utter disgrace”, adding “This is an attack on everyone’s right to communicate, work and gain an education. Politicians have shown themselves to be incompetent and completely out of touch with an entire generation’s values. There are thousands of activists working with ORG planning to show up at hustings, demand answers from candidates, and who are willing to punish those who voted for this at the ballot box.”
TalkTalk has its own campaign against the Digital Economy Act at www.dontdisconnect.us
The Digital Economy Bill has a number of clauses that, if taken to their logical extremes, could see some pretty horrible outcomes. It's completed its whistle-stop tour of the legislative process, sprinting from Commons to Lords with barely a pause for breath before getting the nod from Her Maj. MPs decided to get the bill into law first and worry about the details later.
Until Ofcom hammers out the mechanics of the processes outlined in the bill, it's impossible to say how we'll be affected. We take a look at some of the worst-case scenarios.
Watch copyrighted content
No shizzle, Sherlock. Accessing copyrighted movies and music is illegal already, but with just a minimal amount of know-how it's easier than falling off a slippery log in the rainy season. The bill aims to make it more difficult to access copyrighted content, by blocking Web sites built around sharing such material. From the other side, the bill creates sanctions that can be applied to you, the user, should you be caught with your fingers in the copyright cookie jar.
Download from us
Download.com is part of the big happy CNET family. Among the available software are peer-to-peer file-sharing tools. The bill specifically states that Web sites such as Download.com can be blocked if they're providing tools that infringe copyright.
Use Napster
In the same clause, the bill targets sites that have infringed copyright in the past. That theoretically includes sites such as Napster, which have cleaned up their act since their early days under the Jolly Roger of copyright piracy. This may overturn the recently set legal precedent in which a high court judge ruled against a blanket ban of Usenet-indexing Web site Newzbin.
Use WikiLeaks
But most worrying is that the same clause also specifically allows for blocking sites deemed 'likely to' infringe copyright. We don't yet know how the government will divine whether a site is 'likely to' do anything, unless Ofcom is going to start employing soothsayers. There's also a clause relating to national security, which could see legal restrictions on material 'they' don't want us to see. This may even extend to gagging sites that currently do a bang-up job of making a mockery of 'super-injunctions'.
Mash and mod
File-sharing services host thriving communities transforming copyrighted content in mash-ups and mods. These could be targeted.
Use free open Wi-Fi
The bill distinguishes between subscribers -- you -- and Internet service providers (ISPs). Some networks could be considered to be both, however. If a network is a subscriber -- the actual Wi-Fi is provided by someone else, such as BT Openzone in Starbucks -- then it faces liability for the actions of users. If it's an ISP, it faces bureaucracy, cost and legal obligations to hand over information about users. Either way, the bill will make anyone running or thinking of running open Wi-Fi think twice.
The bill specifically exempts libraries and universities, but not small businesses or local co-operatives. At worst, we could see the end of public Wi-Fi because nobody wants the risk or the headache. At best, we'll have the hassle of registering our details every time we want to log on in public.
Watch YouTube
YouTube wouldn't be what it is today without a critical mass of copyrighted material. Liberal Democrat peer Lord Clement-Jones told our sister site ZDNet that YouTube is unlikely to be affected as Google is jolly decent about taking down copyrighted material when asked nicely. Yet YouTube -- and most video sites -- are stuffed to the gills with copyrighted material. The bill makes provision to nuke them all.
Change ISPs
French law prevents suspended users from switching to another ISP, and Ofcom is expected to come up with a similar provision. It's unclear who will be in charge of this blacklist -- a copyright offender register, if you will. How long will suspended users be kept on the list? Will it lapse after a set period of time, like a police caution? Will you be able to see your record, like a credit record? Either way, ISPs may find themselves forced to check each new user, which could make the process of signing up to a new ISP even more of a chore than it already is.
Google stuff
Google searches torrents and is therefore, by government logic, a file-sharing tool. Will Google be banned? Rupert Murdoch probably hopes so: he already accuses Google News of stealing News International content. There will probably be a bunch of test cases to establish the legal boundaries of the bill, and we'd bet our favourite trousers Murdoch will be all over that like Tiger Woods on a cocktail waitress.
This is all speculation until the mechanics are worked out over the next year. Let us know your best -- and worst -- case scenarios in the comments. Oh, and remember: there's an election coming.
From time to time I restate the reason I present stories showing those employed by government aren't automatically better trained or more trustworthy than the rest of us:
The purpose of this feature has never been to bash cops. The only reason I do this is to amass a credible body of evidence to present when those who would deny our right to keep and bear arms use the argument that only government enforcers are professional and trained enough to do so safely and responsibly. And it's also used to illustrate when those of official status, rank or privilege, both in law enforcement and in some other government position, get special breaks not available to we commoners, particularly (but not exclusively) when they're involved in gun-related incidents.
That the antis don't like having such incidents pointed out is evident by their characterizing doing so as "denigrat[ing] law enforcement." That's fine—let 'em get their knickers bunched. As long as they keep pushing the lie that those with badges are the only ones we can trust with guns, I'll keep countering it.
And I'll also continue to acknowledge when those in positions of authority promote the truth, as has happened in Texas and Ohio.
From NPR:
You farmers, I'm telling you right now, arm yourselves. As they say the old story is, it's better to be tried by 12 than carried by six. Damn it, I don't want to see six people carrying you.
- Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West
And from WKYC:
Ashtabula County Common Pleas Judge Alfred Mackey was asked what residents should do to protect themselves and their families with the severe cutback in law enforcement.
"Arm themselves," the judge said. "Be very careful, be vigilant, get in touch with your neighbors, because we're going to have to look after each other."
Despite past controversies, Obama still eager to prove fealty to his global elite bosses by bowing to Communist leader Hu Jintao
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
You would have thought that after the backlash he received last time, Obama’s advisors would have him well drilled on the proper Presidential way in which to meet foreign dignitaries, but Obama must be so eager to prove his fealty to his global elite masters that he broke tradition yet again in appearing to bow to Chinese Communist leader Hu Jintao.
Granted, China basically owns America in that they hold around 900 billion dollars worth of U.S. Treasuries and balance the fate of the ailing U.S. dollar entirely in their own hands, but surely Obama didn’t have to make it look so obvious who his bosses are?
“Considering how much money we owe China, this might actually become a necessary custom for all US presidents,” jokes Another Black Conservative.
“You’re getting better – at least it is not at the slave level any longer,” scoffs another blogger. “BUT – SIR – YOU are the President of the United States of America – and at the very least the EQUAL of President Hu Jintao! Please stop this ridiculous show of humbleness in the face of a greater power – you sir ARE NOT his servant, you are NOT one of his underlings – and you are certainly NOT the head of a country that is of secondary importance to China. No need to be the cock of the walk – but – show some pride in yourself and your country!”
And before the apologists out there again claim “big deal, Obama is just showing respect,” just take a look at the history.
Despite the fact that Obama was widely criticized for bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in April 2009, an incident the White House ludicrously tried to deny even though it was plain as day on video, he again prostrated himself before royalty by awkwardly lurching forward at a near 90 degree angle to show his fealty to the Japanese Emperor and his wife at the Imperial Palace six months later.
At the time of the controversy, top Japanese media outlets like Kyodo refused to show the images out of embarrassment. Video footage of the entire exchange showed Obama profusely bowing like a house servant no less than seven times in the space of under 30 seconds.
“Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first year English teacher trying to impress with Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese customs,” wrote a source quoted by ABC News’ Jake Tapper.
Tapper’s source highlighted the fact that it wasn’t just right-wingers in America who were unhappy about Obama’s body language.
“The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.”
Why is this important? On every single occasion, Obama has gone out of his way to display inferiority and fealty to foreign royalty and political leaders. Not only is this considered a violation of state department protocol, which decrees that presidents bow to no one, it also goes against the grain of historical American opposition to Kings and Emperors.
“Obama means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs and tyrants. He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege, royal bloodlines and one-party rule,” points out the Power Line blog.
Obama is communicating a strong message when he engages in this type of behavior. He is essentially re-affirming the fact that he does not serve the American people, and is displaying his loyal obedience to the global elite. For America’s first black president to present himself as a lowly house servant would when he meets foreign dignitaries is also a damning indictment of what he truly represents – not an icon of the final confirmation of black people throwing off the chains of slavery, but merely a front man put in place to pacify the masses while all along firmly taking his orders from the generationally inbred and virulently racist global elite.
No finer example was there of this than when Obama and his wife met the Queen and her notoriously racist husband, Prince Philip, earlier this year. Obama was seen groveling and hastily following barked out orders from Philip, the same man who trained in the Hitler Youth, attended funerals with top Nazis, and sympathized with Hitler’s attitudes towards Jews in the 1930’s.
Philip also helped start the World Wildlife Fund with former Nazi SS Officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who is closely affiliated with the founders of the Bilderberg international power group.
Philip has repeatedly expressed his desire to return to earth as a deadly virus in order to wipe out 80% of the population, the majority of whom would most likely be the numerous races of people he has consistently offended with racist jokes over the decades.
As we have painstakingly documented in both The Obama Deception and Fall Of The Republic, Obama, billed as the people’s President, is in fact the ultimate puppet of the global elite. He is the black face of the new world order – carefully groomed and installed as president to neutralize the left and provide justification to demonize conservative opposition to his policies as racism.
Obama’s behavior in front of foreign royalty only confirms what we already knew – that he too is a subject of the real power structure that controls the world, and he is at their service to carry the ball for their agenda until such a time when his usefulness has been outlived.
Reckless, anarchic and strident, the American right is living in a parallel world where fear and rage drive out the facts.
April 13, 2010 |
In the classic teen movie Animal House there comes a moment when the
ne'er-do-well students of the Delta fraternity finally realise their pranks
have gone too far. Faced with expulsion from university, the most violent,
antisocial drunkard of the group, Bluto Blutarsky (John Belushi), gives
one last rousing, rambling speech to his crestfallen comrades. "Nothing i
s over until we decide it is," he yells. "Was it over when the Germans
bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!"
The other students look on confused. Bluto leads a charge but nobody follows. However, they soon fall in line after the fraternity's leader, the far more respectable, presentable, all-round-cad, Otter (Tim Matheson), backs Bluto's call to arms against the university authorities. "Bluto's right," he says. "Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards … I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."
The Republican party, in particular, and American conservatism in general, have taken to operating in a similar manner to the Delta fraternity – increasingly reckless, anarchic and strident. Faced with defeat they respond with desperation. Only where the Deltas were motivated by ribaldry, conservatives are driven by rage.
On the one hand there are the Blutos – characterised by their contempt for even the most basic facts. Their assertions are often not only verifiably false but patently ridiculous. The very people who claim that Obama is a Muslim were the ones who fumed about his relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his pastor in Chicago. Muslims don't have pastors. Last year the Investor's Business Daily claimed that if the renowned scientist Stephen Hawking were British he would be dead: Hawking is British and alive.
These falsehoods are not limited to the fringes. A recent Harris poll reveals that a majority of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim and a socialist who "wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government". A Daily Kos poll in January showed that about two-thirds of Republicans either believe or are not sure that Obama is "a racist who hates white people", and more than half believe or are not sure that he was not born in the US and that he wants the terrorists to win.
So long as these people breathe the ever more fetid air of their own ecosystem – oxygen provided by Fox News – then these contradictions are of little concern or consequence to them. Cognitive dissonance is not the exception but the rule. But there is menace in this madness. A few weeks ago, shortly before the passing of the healthcare vote, conservative blogger Solomon Forell tweeted: "We'll surely get over a bullet 2 Barack Obama's head!" He added: "The Next American with a Clear Shot should drop Obama like a bad habit. 4get Blacks or his claim to be Black. Turn on Barack Obama." Last week a man was detained for issuing death threats to Democratic senator Patty Murray. Speaking in Phoenix on a Tea Party tour, Joe the Plumber, recently spelt out his plan for dealing with illegal immigration: "Put a fence in and start shooting."
So much for the Blutos. Far from reining them in, the Republican leadership increasingly reflects their excesses. Absent any legislative agenda or coherent ideological approach, they have spent the last two years crafting "a really futile and stupid gesture … on somebody's part" that Otter would be proud of. Small government is a legitimate philosophical and political position. But in the hands of people who voted to bloat the deficit and unleash a huge state-grab of civil liberties, it is shorn of credibility. It isn't government they don't like; it's Democrats in government.
"Crash the Tea Party" threatens to try and discredit the Tax Day demonstrations
by infiltrating with racist and offensive signs. Turn the tables on them: get pictures
of the signs and the people holding them, and we'll expose them here on PJM.
April 13, 2010 - by Charlie Martin
[Updated: PJTV will be making the "Expose the Party Crashers" movement a major
focus of our Tax Day coverage. Along with that, we have a new email address:
tpcrashers@pjtv.com. See at the end of the article for more information.]
On Tax Day, April 15, tea party activists plan to demonstrate all over the country.
Pajamas Media and PJTV, of course, plan to cover this nationwide (and don’t forget,
we’re still looking for citizen journalists for PJTV).
Apparently, the tea parties are beginning to worry the left. Having failed to convince people the tea parties are extreme, racist, and violent, they’ve decided to take matters into their own hands. If the tea party activists won’t cooperate by being racist and extreme, those behind the “Crash The Tea Party” website have another idea: go to the tea parties and provide their own racist, violent (or simply stupid and misspelled) signs, and disrupt the demonstrations.
We know from previous experience that as soon as anyone puts up a racially charged sign or suggests anything but peaceful non-violent protest, there will be immediate calls for everyone to the right of Karl Marx to immediately disavow the people involved. (It appears that sometimes the calls to disavow the actions actually precede the event, in fact.)
Of course, whatever the source, racially charged language, threats or actual violence are unacceptable, whether it’s some misguided soul working independently or a false-flag demonstrator trying to manufacture an incident.
So let’s work together to beat them at their own game. If you see anyone with an offensive sign, take a picture of it and forward it to us at Pajamas Media. Mail it to our tips address (story@pajamasmedia.com new address: tpcrashers@pjtv.com) and we’ll publish it, along with an explicit statement that this doesn’t reflect the real tea party spirit. Try to get the person’s face, so they can be properly shamed.
Of course, if they’re leftists flying under a false racist flag, they will also have their faces and signs published. They’ll also be derided, just as if they’re real racists. If their friends happen to see them, along with their sign, any conclusions they draw will be their own.
UPDATE:
As you’ve seen at the top of this piece, PJTV is now making the “Expose the Party Crashers” movement a major focus. As well as calling on Tea Partiers to send us photos of any racial or offensive signs (tpcrashers@pjtv.com remember), we will be covering them in our live TV coverage all day on the 15th. We’ll keep you updated on the details.
In the mean time, here is some guidance in bullet points to make it easy to remember:
Things to do:
* DO get photos or video of any offensive signs or behavior — racist signs, signs connecting O’s administration to Nazis, anti-Semitic signs, signs calling for violence — and send them to tpcrashers@pjtv.com.
* DO inform them calmly and civilly that the signs and behavior are unwelcome.
* DO get pictures including the faces of people holding and standing with the offensive signs, and context.
* DO have “Infiltrator” and “Brought to you by…” signs as described in the comments, and stay close to the offensive signs so it’s hard for the legacy media to single them out.
* DO capture video of people shouting offensive words or slogans. Loudly — but calmly and civilly — challenge them for the misbehavior, and get that on video, so it’s clear it was denounced at the time.
* DO assume people with their faces covered, especially with a balaclava or ski mask, are not your friend.
* DO report any harassment or assaults to the police, and capture that report on video as well, if possible. (I learned this at the Democratic Convention in 2008: after Michelle Malkin was mobbed and I was assaulted, I reported it to the police, who said, “Shall I call an ambulance?” I eventually got an apology from the Denver PD, but it would have been a much bigger thing for them had we had video. And don’t forget, Alex Jones really is a consummate ass.)
* DO KEEP YOUR COOL. Keep calm. Be nice. These people are agents provocateurs, and the worst thing you can do to them is not be provoked.
Things not to do:
* DO NOT confront offensive protesters any more strongly than to tell them they’re unwelcome.
* DO NOT make any attempt to force people to leave, or do anything they don’t want to do.
* DO NOT make any concerted attempt to figure out if someone is a “real” Tea Partier or a plant. If they’re being offensive, get their pictures, send them in. No one with a racist sign is a friend of the Tea Party movement, no matter how much they say they are on the Tea Party’s side.
