David Martin, Executive Vice President, Media Research Center
MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER
5/25/2010
The Free Speech Gestapo are boldly moving forward once again to silence conservative talk radio, and they will say or do whatever it takes to get it done!
A new "community group" -- Citizens for Civility & Accountability in Media (CCAM) is taking aim at Fresno,
California radio station KMJ for having the nerve to carry conservative talk shows on their two stations.
According to CCAM, conservative talk radio is "hate speech" that incites violence. They believe that
conservative radio hosts "(have) been, and can be again, a contributor to actual acts of violence
perpetrated by people urged on to extremism by the kind of programming that monopolizes KMJ's
prime-time broadcast."
Of course there is ZERO evidence for these accusations, but remember who we are dealing with --
liberals who never let facts get in the way of their ideology. (Just look at what's happening in Arizona:
President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have\
made numerous negative public comments about Arizona's new immigration law before even taking the
time to read it!)
This is precisely how the liberal elite and the media operate.
And now, with their radical agenda in danger, they understand that to maintain power, they must silence
opposing points of view!
That's why we are calling on ALL MEMBERS of our Action team to sign our Free Speech Alliance petition
right now by clicking here now!
+ + The Left's Mission is Clear
Michael, CCAM says KMJ has "a responsibility larger than making a profit. They have the civic responsibility -- at the very least -- to not do damage to the society that they are a part of, to promote the idea of truthful information, respectful debate, and lawful dissent."
The folks at CCAM must be big fans of FCC diversity czar Mark Lloyd. Lloyd wrote in 2007 that liberal activists should harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC, which could lead to fines and even the taking away of their broadcast licenses.
It is clear that the Left are on a search and destroy mission to rid America of conservative points of view. And if nothing is done, they will succeed ... one step at a time. Click here now to sign our petition and fight back.
(You'll recall that just last week, we learned that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan believes that "If there is an 'overabundance' of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action - which there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate - then action disfavoring that idea might 'un-skew', rather than skew, public discourse." In other words, it's the government's job to "redistribute speech.")
Michael, make no mistake, the actions of CCAM are just the tip of the iceberg. Liberal media voices, lawmakers, judges, and radical organizations on the Left are all coming after us – intent on attacking and ultimately silencing conservative voices.
Now, organizations like CCAM will insist that their efforts to censor conservatives are good for society and will not alter the content of these stations. But it will have a drastic impact -- and that's exactly what the Left wants ... IF we allow it to happen!
We can't allow them to succeed. Take a moment right now and add your name to our petition of patriots who are taking a First Amendment stand against these Leftist attacks.
We appreciate your continued support of MRC initiatives on the critical issue of Free Speech.
P.S. The marked increase in Leftist assaults against conservatives, the Tea-Party movement, and Christians is not coincidence! The Left and their attack dogs in the liberal media have an agenda, and you and I are all that stand in their way!
We cannot allow them to demonize and silence us. Help the MRC expose and neutralize these stepped up assaults by clicking here and making your best tax-deductible gift right now. With your help, we can expand our efforts and confront EACH of these attacks -- neutralizing them with the truth and ultimately thwarting the Left's plan to muzzle conservatives!
The shadowy global elite is meeting in Sitges – and Charlie Skelton is there, hoping for a new spirit of CamCleggian openness
Sitges Sitges in Catalonia, where a Bilderburg beach party and 'awareness camp' are planned. Photograph: Corbis
Another year, another Bilderberg. The first "participants"
(as the delegates are known) won't be arriving until
Thursday, but already the Hotel Dolce in Sitges is buzzing
with anticipation. This Catalan seaside town hasn't hosted
an event as large and politically sensitive as Bilderberg
since the legendary 2008 Foam Party at the Mr Gay Sitges
awards night.
Last year, Bilderberg was held in Vouliagmeni, on the
coast just south of Athens. The Greek minister of finance
attended, the minister of foreign affairs, and the governor
of the National Bank of Greece. A few months later, Greece
was bankrupt and Athens was in flames. So … good luck,
Madrid!
Police are already stretching their red stripy tape around the
hotel, and zipping up and around the local roads in their
squad cars, sniffing for trouble. I'm really hoping there's
none to find. The Spanish are promising a beach party and an "
awareness camp", with political discussion forums and
meditation zones.
I plan to spend at least part of Friday sitting cross-legged in a campsite, sending beams of white light up the hill and into the hotel. Feel my love, Marcus Agius – Chairman of Barclays and senior non-executive director on the BBC's new executive board. Let it surround you, Queen Sofia of Spain. Don't fight it, president of the World Bank. You can't beat the love.
It would be nicer if the interface between Bilderberg and the world could be softer – if it could turn an open face towards us, rather than the barrel of a machine gun. What I'm hoping is that this year, in the all-new CamCleggian spirit of openness and political transparency, any British elected official who attends the meeting – and I'm talking to you, Kenneth Clarke and George Osborne – will tell us they attended, tell us what they spoke about, and tell us what the next 12 months has in store. I don't think that's too much to ask.
Not that anyone is really asking. I've come along again this year because I had the horrible, nagging thought that no other journalists would.
Not that I'm a proper journalist. Hardly: consider me an interested citizen of the world come to bear witness to a peculiar, important, and unsettling event.
For a long and luxurious weekend at the Dolce Sitges, relishing its "new and creative buffet concepts" (a table with food on it), prime ministers will mingle with European royalty, with various EU commissioners, with representatives from Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, AIB, Deutsche Bank, Chase Manhattan and Royal Dutch Shell.
They'll clink glasses with President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke (he is confirmed for this year). And join the Friday night conga line behind the US treasury secretary (Tim Geithner went last year; he goes a lot). We can reasonably expect the head of the Federal Reserve, the president of the World Bank, the secretary general of Nato … they've all attended in the past and many will attend again. So yes, important it is; to think otherwise is painfully naive (see below for the usual "just a big boys' club" comments …)
The conference hotel may be perched above a golf course, and boast two ping pong tables, but this four-day event isn't about who is better at table tennis, Ken Clarke or David Rockefeller (it's Rockefeller). This is about big business, global financial strategy and the economic future of Europe … if indeed it has one.
And most importantly, this four-day event doesn't start until tomorrow – and continues all the way through the weekend – so if you're a PROPER journalist reading this, or a blogger, or simply a curious citizen of a Europe teetering on the edge, then come along. Please come. I'll buy you a Catalan beer. I recommend the Rosita. It's fruity but ballsy – not unlike the winner of Mr Gay Sitges 2008.
The presence of Spain’s heavyweight political and financial leaders at this year’s Bilderberg conference is not just because the secretive annual confab is taking place just outside Barcelona – it’s because the Bilderberg elitists are panic stricken at the possibility that their embryonic global currency – the euro – could be heading for total collapse.
Highlighting once again how increased exposure of Bilderberg and their motives on behalf of activists over recent years has contributed towards the agenda becoming an open conspiracy, the London Times, perhaps the biggest establishment newspaper in the world alongside the New York Times and the Washington Post, was the first mainstream publication to break the silence on hundreds of global power brokers meeting in secret at the Hotel Dolce resort in Sitges over the next few days, with a report entitled Secretive Bilderberg Club ready for protests.
For the Times to name the most influential figures attending the event and reveal what they will discuss is a far cry from how the corporate media treated Bilderberg in the past, when they were loathe to even acknowledge its existence.
According to the report, David Rockefeller and his colleagues will be graced with the presence of Spanish Prime Minister Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who will give the opening address, as well as Miguel Angel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, and Pedro Solbes, Spain’s former Economy Minister. One of the primary topics of conversation will be “the future of the euro”.
These three men will undoubtedly inform their globalist masters as to whether or not Spain is likely to go the same way as Greece, which if it happens would probably be the death knell for the euro single currency, and in turn a hammer blow to long term plans to implement a global currency, which IMF chief and BIlderberg member Dominique Strauss-Kahn recently told a gathering of elitists in Zurich was one of the prizes the elite wanted to plunder from exploiting the economic crisis.
Spain’s economy is in tatters not only because of the global economic meltdown, but because of the country’s disastrous efforts to implement the “green economy” that is mandated as part of what EU Commission chief and prominent Bilderberger Jose Manuel Barroso called the “post-industrial revolution”.
The impact of this deliberate agenda to lower living standards in the west is being felt most painfully in Spain, where the unemployment rate is around 18 per cent as a result of 2.2 jobs being lost for every “green” job created.
A newly leaked internal document from Spain’s Zapatero administration outlines how Spain’s “green economy initiatives” have been a financial disaster. The report suggests that the real rate of job losses as a result of “green” policies is in actual fact worse than 2.2 jobs lost for every one gained, and that the “green economy” must be abandoned if the country is to save itself from economic ruin.
If Spain goes down then so does the euro, a scenario that petrifies Bilderbergers whose ultimate dream of a one world currency rests in shoring up confidence in the euro, to the point where the European Central Bank now routinely manipulates and intervenes in the forex markets on a weekly basis in an effort to prop up the ailing single currency. Some countries aren’t convinced and are already running for the exit door, with Iran and some Gulf states dumping the euro and buying gold bullion.
In bailing out Greece the European Union broke the terms of its own Maastricht Treaty, and in doing so exposed the fundamental flaw of any overcentralized political or financial power structure – that it is only as strong as its weakest member.
This is why Bilderberg are panicking over the fate of the euro and looking towards Spain’s political leadership for some kind of reassurance that everything is going to be OK. If the euro were to go under, it would expose the inherent weakness of continental monetary unions and all but derail the wider agenda for a one world currency.
As the Guardian’s Charlie Skelton points out, Spain will be hoping that the arrival of Bilderberg doesn’t herald the same fate suffered by the last country to host the globalist summit – in 2009 the elite gathered in Greece and within 12 months the country was bankrupt and its people were rioting on the streets.
Bilderberg’s 2010 conference runs from tomorrow until Sunday. Listen to The Alex Jones Show and keep up to speed with the websites to get the latest breaking news from our sources inside Bilderberg.
Appearing on no less than three major networks Wednesday,
BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles continued to deny the
existence of oil plumes underneath the surface of the Gulf of
Mexico.
Suttles’ comments came despite the fact that government and
university scientists confirmed Tuesday they had found large
plumes of oil, according to The New York Times.
The tests, the first detailed chemical analyses of water from
the deep sea, show that some of the most toxic components of
the oil are not necessarily rising to the surface where they can
evaporate, as would be expected in a shallow oil leak. Instead,
they are drifting through deep water in plumes or layers that
stretch as far as 50 miles from the leaking well…
Scientists outside the government noted that the plumes appeared to be so large that organisms might be bathed in them for extended periods, possibly long enough to kill eggs or embryos. They said this possibility added greater urgency to the effort to figure out exactly how sea life was being affected, work that remains in its infancy six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded.
“There’s yet to be anyone who has found any significant quantities below the surface. Whether that’s just below the surface, or at deep levels,” Suttles told ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas.
“We’re hearing scientists say there are huge plumes below the surface. Are you denying that still?” Vargas asked.
“Well, what I can tell you is, no one yet has found any concentrations that measured below the parts — or higher than parts per million. So I think it may be depending on how you’re defining this. But what I can tell you — and I looked at this data — is that we have not found any significant concentration of oil below the surface,” replied Suttles.
Suttles seems to be echoing comments made by BP CEO Tony Hayward last week.
“The oil is on the surface,” said Hayward. “There aren’t any plumes.”
This video is from ABC’s Good Morning America, broadcast June 9, 2010.
If anything is going to cause more long-term damage to the planet
than the gallons of oil being spewed out by the Deepwater Horizon
drilling disaster, it’s the toxic clouds of posturing cant and alarmist
drivel billowing forth daily from environmentalists. Most especially
from their cheerleader in the White House, Barack Obama.
Barack Obama’s behaviour throughout this oil crisis has been a
disgrace – but not for the reasons given by all those watermelons
who have taxed him with not having done enough to stop the
flow or punish BP. (Yeah, he should have declared war on Britain,
that’s what he should have done! And imprisoned everyone who
works at BP in Gitmo! And then nuked every Big Oil company in the
world just for good measure!)
Rather, his crime has been to pander to the worst excesses of the
environmental left – and cynically to xploit a private Louisianan
tragedy in order to advance his personal eco-socialist agenda.
Until the happy accident (happy for Obama and his chums in the green movement, that is, though not for anyone else) of Deepwater Horizon, the Obama administration’s plans to introduce Cap and Trade were dead in the water. Obama had had enough trouble pushing through his health care reforms. No way was the Senate going to vote for an ill-thought-out, massively expensive scheme – riddled with holes and special concessions to favoured business interests – to tax US business and consumers for the amount of a harmless gas they produced, especially not in the midst of a recession.
But as Obama’s chief hatchet man Rahm Emanuel says: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” And Obama hasn’t done. As well as affording him a chance to indulge, with all the dignity and responsibility of a Mugabe-style dictator, in one of his favourite sports – Brit Bashing – it has given him just the excuse he needed to rail against the fossil-fuel industry which Cap and Trade will supposedly help destroy so that we may all live happily ever after in clean, happy cities powered entirely by the wind and the sun.
The WSJ Online has his measure: (hat tip: Austin Closs)
As with health care, the strategy is to ram the thing through by any means necessary. Amid a revolt against government excess, and a rising liberal panic about November losses, Democrats understand that the political window for their green ambitions is closing. Without any policy concessions to the public mood, they’ve simply decided that they haven’t done enough to convince voters how great their plans are.
Wednesday’s speech was a preview of this new rhetorical campaign: The Gulf crisis will replace the artist formerly known as the climate bill. “The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century,” Mr. Obama said, throwing in some banalities about GOP narrow-mindedness and dependence on foreign oil at no extra charge. BP will play the political foil, like the insurer WellPoint did during the health-care debate.
Hardly any less nauseating and cynical, though, has been the glee with which the tragedy has been salivatingly reported by environmental correspondents. Boy, there’s nothing they like more than a juicy oil spill: all those moving pictures of tarry seabirds (though of course a manatee, if you can find one, would be better); all those political cartoons to be published captioned “the price of oil”; all the column inches to be filled with heart-rending accounts of just how much damage will be done to the “fragile eco-system”.
Can we please get a sense of perspective here? Of course the tragedy is a disaster for all who have been exposed to it. We all feel as sorry for Lousianan shrimpers and beach cafe owners and birdwatchers as we would for the victims of any tragedy – be it terrorism or a horrible train crash. But the idea that there is any bigger ecological moral to be drawn from this is as poisonous as it is stupid. You might as well argue the next time there’s a big motorway pile up: “Right. That’s it. The time has come to ban forever this wheeled death machine we call the motor car!”
We need oil. There is no substitute for it. It tends, increasingly, to be found in remote places where it is harder to drill. Sometimes there will be accidents. This is why oil companies like BP make so much money: it is a function of the risks they take drilling for the stuff and of the intense global demand for this vital resource.
Finally, we need a bit of a perspective. As one of my favourite commenters, the brilliant AN Ditchfield pointed out the other day:
The Obama administration qualifies the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as the worst environmental disaster in history. In this they show a short memory and a dim grasp of arithmetic. In World II five million tons of petroleum were cast into the Atlantic (about 32 million barrels of oil) from tanker ships sunk by Nazi submarines, in a period from 1942 to 1945, and with heavy concentration in the fateful year of 1942. Averaged over 1000 days the loss is equivalent to two to five times the oil now spilled into the Gulf of Mexico – every day – for the duration of the war.
It is now considered crazy to think sodium fluoride is poison even though, you know, it is
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, Jun 11th, 2010
MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann has slammed a Tea Party
Senate candidate who won a key primary victory this week,
intimating that she is crazy because she believes sodium fluoride
, a deadly poison, is poisonous.
In yet another example of an anti-establishment candidate scoring
a decisive victory, Tea Party-backed Nevada Republican Sharron
Angle came from behind to wi n the State primary on Tuesday and
earn the right to challenge incumbent Harry Reid for a place in the
Senate.
In a similar vein to the backlash against Rand Paul following his
Kentucky win last month, Democrats have suggested that Angle's win is a good thing because she will be an easier opponent for Reid come November due to her "extremist" views.
Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent noted that Reid will seek to "use her own words to paint her as, well, a complete whackjob."
Olbermann began the tirade against Angle on Wednesday, during a segment of his show as he announced "Conventional wisdom was that Sue Lowden's come-from-ahead defeat to Tea Partier Sharron Angle would hurt Senator Harry Reid. Turns out Ms. Lowden was the sensible one."
Calling Angle "cartoon-like", Olbermann criticized Angle's affiliation with the Oath Keepers, the military and law enforcement activist group that pledges to uphold state's rights and the U.S. Constitution.
Despite the fact that since 9/11, the U.S. has officially been under a state of emergency, and the vast erosion of civil liberties in the form of legislation such as the Patriot Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and the Military Commissions Act, to name but a few, Olbermann suggested Angle was farcical for having concerns that Martial Law could be used to suspend the Constitution and effectively turn American cities into internment camps:
"Two months ago Ms. Angle said she was a member of the Oath Keepers, a group preparing itself not just for government internment camps, but for the day that somebody issues a 'order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.'" Olbermann sardonically read from his autocue.
Olbermann clearly considers such concerns ludicrous now Obama is in office, but just a few years ago he was decrying the death of Habeas Corpus under president Bush, explaining to his viewers that any American citizen could effectively be arrested and locked away forever without trial. A google search yields articles and videos of Olbermann's well placed concern.
The hope and change America has since experienced has clearly alleviated such worries in Keith's mind, and he now considers the same concerns stupid and laughable.
This is a clear example of how the phony left/right political paradigm works. For eight years Olbermann campaigned against the increasing tyranny Americans were subject to. Despite the fact that none of the freedom stripping legislation enacted under Bush has been repealed by the Obama administration, everything is seemingly fine now the Democrats are back in power.
Olbermann also described as farcical Angle's views that the Income Tax is unconstitutional and her concern that oil should not be nationalized in the wake of the BP disaster.
Olbermann saved his best attempted smear for last, however, chuckling his way through the sentence:
"Ms. Angle also voted against fluoridizing (sic) the water, because she thinks the fluoride might be poison."
Watch the video
What a crazy kook, to think that sodium fluoride, the stuff that comes in bags with a skull and cross bones on, labeled "TOXIC", is a poison!
Note, we are not talking about calcium fluoride - which is naturally occurring and not added to water because it is INSOLUABLE.
How "extremist" it is to believe that a waste by-product of the fertilizer and aluminum industry, a Part II Poison under the UK Poisons Act 1972, is a poison - stupid Sharron Angle. Stupid crazy Sharron Angle - she must be racist for thinking that.
Well, there's no doubt that Angle will be roundly defeated by Reid in November... Oh no wait, she already has an 11-point lead over the Senate Majority Leader. Perhaps the American people are actually aware that poison is not good to drink after all Mr Olbermann.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is fond of saying,
“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity
to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” Well,
the Obama Administration certainly has not let the British
Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig crisis go to waste,
using it as a smokescreen to silently assault and further diminish
American citizens’ personal freedom.
While the nation has its eyes and ears focused on the blame game
ping-pong match between President Obama and BP top brass,
President Obama on Thursday, June 10, quietly announced a
new Executive Order establishing the “National Prevention,
Health Promotion, and Public Health Council.”
You will "change" to my liking!
You will "change" to my liking!
Claiming the “authority vested in me as President by the
Constitution and the laws of the United States of America,”
President Obama has truly gone off the deep end this time
in his most atrocious attempt to date to control every aspect
of Americans’ lives.
According to the Executive Order that details the President’s “National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy,” the Council will be charged with carrying out ” lifestyle behavior modification” among American citizens that do not exhibit “healthy behavior.”
The President’s desired lifestyle behavior modifications detailed in Sec. 6 (c) focus on:
* smoking cessation;
* proper nutrition;
* appropriate exercise;
* mental health;
* behavioral health;
* sedentary behavior (see Sec. 3 [c]);
* substance-use disorder; and
* domestic violence screenings.
Making matters even worse, if that is even possible at this point, President Obama will create an “Advisory Group” composed of experts hand-picked from the public health field and various other areas of expertise “outside the Federal Government.”
Let’s consider who the President has sought advice and mentoring from in the past:
* Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who the Anti-Defamation League calls a “Messenger of Intolerance,” and
* Bill Ayers, leader of the 1960′s domestic terrorist group ”Weatherman” that was “responsible for 30 bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S.”
Now, President Obama is going to seek medical advisors who will be charged with modifying lifestyles and behaviors of those citizens he deems unhealthy? “Paging Dr. Kevorkian! You’re wanted in the White House STAT by President Obama!”
Whether you are a child, a parent, a worker, or retired, the President’s approximately 25-member “Advisory Group” will soon be present in every aspect of Americans’ lives, as the Executive Order prescribes in Sec. 4 (b). Specifically, our new so-called lifestyle behavior modification advisors will be actively carrying out the President’s orders in:
* worksite health promotion;
* community services, including community health centers;
* preventive medicine;
* health coaching;
* public health education;
* geriatrics; and
* rehabilitation medicine.
President Obama’s sweeping plan to enforce “lifestyle behavior modification” is chock full of open-ended target areas, especially when it comes to issues of “mental” and “behavioral” health, “proper nutrition,” “sedentary behavior,” and “appropriate exercise.” The President’s Executive Order is a blatant and forceful attempt to adjust the way Americans young and old think, behave, eat, drink and whatever else free will used to entitle our nation’s citizens to enjoy as prescribed by the Founding Fathers.
If you are feeling stressed-out, sad, confused, hungry, thirsty, bored, or tired, do you honestly trust President Obama and his “Advisory Group” to act in your best interests?
(CNSNews.com) – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on
Thursday to begin the formal process of bringing the Internet under greater
federal control – a move sought by both President Barack Obama and FCC
Chairnman Julius Genachowski--even though federal law calls for an Internet
"unfettered by Federal or State regulation."
This step comes after the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in April rebuked
the FCC in its tempt to enforce a controversial regulatory doctrine called
Net Neutrality, which would allow the government to prevent private Internet
providers from deciding which applications to allow on t heir networks.
The court said that the FCC did not have the authority to prevent Comcast,
specifically, from blocking certain peer-to-peer Web sites.
The FCC is now trying to reclassify the Internet to broaden its authority over
the Web. Currently, the FCC only has “ancillary” authority, meaning it can
regulate Internet access only in the process of regulating another service that
it has direct authority over, such as television or cable.
The 3-2 party-line vote on Thursday at the FCC began the formal process of reclassifying the Internet as a telecommunications service instead of an information service – its current classification. This is necessary because, as an information service, the government has little power to regulate Internet networks.
As a telecommunications service, such as a telephone network, the Internet would fall under a much broader regulatory scope – giving the government the power to enforce universal service requirements, making them pay into a federal universal service fund used to provide communications services to poor areas.
The FCC will now begin the mandatory public comment period, where it will solicit input from private companies and citizens about whether it should reclassify the Internet and, if so, how it should do it.
The Commission has three options for going forward. First, it can decide not to reclassify the Internet at all, continuing to treat it as an information service. Second, the FCC can completely reclassify the Internet as a telecommunications service, granting the Commission broad powers over it. Third, it could seek a middle ground, reclassifying the Internet as a telecom service but exempting Internet providers from most of the regulations associated with other telecommunications services.
This last approach, presented at the hearing as the “third way,” is the preferred avenue of Genachowski, who unveiled the plan in May.
The “third way” approach would still allow the government the authority to heavily regulate the Internet because it would be classified as a telecom service. However, under this approach, the FCC claims it will exercise “forbearance,” a regulatory doctrine whereby the government promises not use its regulatory authority in most cases.
Commissioner Michael Copps, at the FCC, sought to frame the issue in terms of consumer protection, claiming that “consumers find themselves in quite a box” because government, he claimed, had been “all but shorn” of the authority to regulate Internet service.
Copps said he was “worried” about relying purely on the private sector for Internet-based innovation, saying that the problems of such an approach could be seen in the 2008 financial collapse and the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
“We need to reclaim our authority,” Copps said.
Robert McDowell, the commission’s longest-serving Republican member, said the commission should preserve the free Internet of today, adding that more Internet freedom would be in the public interest.
“An open and freedom-enhancing Internet is what we have today,” McDowell said.
McDowell also said that reclassifying the Internet was “unnecessary” and that the FCC should wait for Congress to grant it explicit authority over the Web, saying, “We are not Congress.”
In fact, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which gave the government no explicit authority to regulate Internet service, states: “It is the policy of the United States … to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”
When asked whether the FCC’s plans violated this provision, Genachowski said that the “light touch” nature of his third way approach did not violate the Act’s explicit mandate to “preserve” a free and open market.
“We need to have a [regulatory] framework for broadband access that is a light touch framework,” he said. “That is what we had before – and what everyone assumed was the case – before the Comcast decision. To me, a central purpose of this process is to determine what is a framework that is available to us that restores the status quo.”
It has become clear that Elena Kagan, Obama’s most recent
Supreme Court nominee, is no friend of gun rights, to say
the least. While clerking for Supreme Court justice Thurgood
Marshall in 1987, she wrote the judge that she was “not
sympathetic” to a Second Amendment–based challenge to
the D.C. gun ban. While serving in the Clinton administration,
she wrote a memo that “paved the way for an executive
order banning dozens of semiautomatic weapons,” according
to the L.A. Times.
And National Review has learned that in 1996, Kagan
apparently tied the NRA to the KKK — yes, the KKK —
while debating the Clinton administrat ion’s position on a bill.
The bill in question was the Volunteer Protection Act, which,
when it was passed and signed the following year, protected
some non-profits’ volunteer workers from tort liability in
certain cases. The administration worried that it would
apply to volunteers from unlikable non-profits.
Two documents discovered at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and obtained by National Review suggest that Kagan was involved in these discussions. One does not contain her name, but the handwriting appears to be hers. (You can see an example of Kagan’s handwriting here.) It has the name of administration colleague Fran Allegra at the top, and lists two “Bad guy orgs” that might be covered — the NRA and the KKK.
The second does have Kagan’s name on it; it is a memo from Allegra to Kagan. Allegra reports that he checked the IRS’s “Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170(c)” — the list of tax-exempt organizations, which, he says, are the only organizations the bill would cover — and that neither the NRA nor the KKK was on it. “If you have other names you want me to run down in the Cumulative List, I would be glad to check them out,” he adds, suggesting that Kagan requested the initial check of the NRA and the KKK.
Is Kagan so hostile to gun rights that she would compare the top gun-rights organization in the United States with a viciously racist hate group? It sure looks that way. We look forward to her explanation.
TORONTO — A government changes a law to allow police to
arrest people without probable cause. It does so without any
legislative debate. Then it keeps the change a virtual secret,
until someone is arrested under those new powers.
arrested at G20
Dave Vasey stands outside the Eastern Ave. detention centre
after being arrested and placed in a metal cage under the
new G20 law giving police greater powers. (June 24, 2010)
The Soviet Union circa 1950? Nope. Try Canada, June 2010.
Civil liberties advocates and political activists are up in arms
after it emerged Friday that police in Toronto have been
given special powers to arrest anyone near the site of the
G20 summit if they fail to identify themselves.
What’s more, the government of the province of Ontario, which green-lit the new powers, didn’t tell anyone about it until after someone was arrested under the new powers.
Thirty-one-year-old Dave Vasey was arrested near the G20 perimeter security fence in downtown Toronto Thursday afternoon after refusing to identify himself to a police officer.
“The officer told me, ‘I am going to have to place you under arrest if you don’t show your identification,’ and I replied ‘I’m not comfortable with that,’” Vasey said, as quoted at the Toronto Star.
With Vasey’s arrest, it emerged that Ontario secretly changed its Public Works Protection Act to allow police officers unprecedented powers of arrest. That law allowed police to arrest people if they fail to identify themselves to a police officer when inside a government building or near a “public works” project. It has now been expanded to include the area around the G20 summit, meaning a significant portion of downtown Toronto.
The Toronto Star reports:
The regulation kicked in Monday and will expire June 28, the day after the summit ends. While the new regulation appeared without notice on the province’s e-Laws online database last week, it won’t be officially published in The Ontario Gazette until July 3 — one week after the regulation expires.
According to the new regulation, “guards” appointed under the act can arrest anyone who, in specific areas, comes within five metres of the security zone.
Within those areas, police can demand identification from anyone coming within five metres of the fence perimeter and search them. If they refuse, they face arrest. Anyone convicted under the regulation could also face up to two months in jail or a $500 maximum fine.
Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair, who reportedly requested the arrest powers, denied Friday that it had been done in secret.
“We haven’t changed the rules,” he said, as quoted at the National Post. “We have put up a fence. We have told people very very clearly that we will not be allowing the public access into that area. … Our authority comes primarily comes from common law, but also by the regulation that has been passed by the province of Ontario.”
But the assertion that the change wasn’t secret was immediately challenged by reporters covering the G20 summit.
“Funny,” writes Adam Radwanski at the Globe and Mail, “I asked two different spokespeople for the integrated G20 police unit — at least one of whom was from the Toronto force — about the legal justification for the measures being taken around the perimeter. Neither breathed a word about anything about the Public Works Protection Act, let alone any recent cabinet decisions that affected it.”
“It’s just unbelievable you would have this kind of abuse of power where the cabinet can create this offense without having it debated in the legislature,” Vasey’s lawyer, Howard Morton, told the Star.
Activist groups say that keeping the new police powers a secret means they have been giving G20 protesters inaccurate advice about how to deal with police confrontations. Vasey himself refused to show identification to police because he was following the advice laid out by the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, which is organizing some G20 protest activities.
“This act values public property over the freedom of people and prevents community members from walking freely through the streets without questioning from authorities,” the group said on its Web site Friday. “We will not be made examples of, but rather, we will publicly denounce oppressive activities of the state and highlight the solidarity in our communities.”
they were the target of police violence overnight,
as riots blamed on anarchist groups left four police
cars burning in the financial district and resulted in
the arrests of some 150 people.
“A newspaper photographer was shot with a plastic
bullet in the backside, while another had an officer
point a gun in his face despite identifying himself
as a member of the media,” reported the Canadian
Press news agency. The agency did not say if it was
its own reporters who were targeted.
Previously: Toronto gets ‘secret’ arrest powers ahead of G20 protests
In a remarkable series of Tweets early Sunday morning, journalist Steve Paikin of public broadcaster TV Ontario said he witnessed “police brutality” against a reporter and the arrests of peaceful demonstrators.
“I saw police brutality tonight. It was unnecessary. They asked me to leave the site or they would arrest me. I told them I was doing my job,” he Tweeted.
Report: Toronto police rough up journalists, arrest peaceful protesters at G20 140410banner4
“As I was escorted away from the demonstration, I saw two officers hold a journalist. The journalist identified himself as working for ‘the Guardian.’ He talked too much and pissed the police off. Two officers held him a third punched him in the stomach. Totally unnecessary. The man collapsed. Then the third officer drove his elbow into the man’s back. No cameras recorded the assault. And it was an assault.”
Paikin had been at a demonstration in Toronto’s Esplanade neighborhood, a densely-populated area near the waterfront. He said police moved in on a crowd of peaceful, “middle class” protesters and began arresting them.
“Police on one side screamed at the crowd to leave one way. Then police on the other side said leave the other way. There was no way out,” he Tweeted. “So the police just started arresting people. I stress, this was a peaceful, middle class, diverse crowd. No anarchists. Literally more than 100 officers with guns pointing at the crowd. Rubber bullets and smoke bombs ready to be fired. Rubber bullets fired.”
Paikin, a respected journalist who has hosted national election debates in Canada, said he was “escorted” away by police before he could see how many people were arrested, “but it must have been dozens.”
“I have lived in Toronto for 32 years. Have never seen a day like this. Shame on the vandals and shame on those that ordered peaceful protesters attacked and arrested.”
Earlier in the day, police told media that a small group of “Black bloc” demonstrators broke off from a protest of 10,000 people and began smashing storefront windows along the city’s trendy Queen Street.
The CBC News Network reported that protesters smashed in the windows of an American Apparel outlet, pulled out the mannequins and spread feces on the floor. The storefronts of McDonald’s and Starbucks locations were also damaged, as were numerous bank branches.
Police shut down all public transit in the city center, including subway and streetcar lines. They also shut down a large downtown shopping complex after reports of looting. AFP reported that some 200 people were trapped inside, unable to leave after the mall was put into lockdown.
