Le Café Politique De Camus De Café

How Did Robin Hood End Up Stealing From The Poor And Giving To The Rich: The Inside Story Of Wall Street And Washington In Bed Screwing All Of Us.

2012-01-29T13:42:00.000-08:00

How Did Robin Hood End Up Stealing From The Poor And Giving To The Rich: The Inside Story Of Wall Street And Washington In Bed Screwing All Of Us .

Preview: Corporate Greed and Power from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

John Reed on Big Banks' Power and Influence from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Moyers & Company Show 103: How power and influence helped big banks rewrite the rules of our economy. from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Byron Dorgan on Making Banks Play by the Rules from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Moyers & Company Show 102: On Crony Capitalism from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson on Winner Take All Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/user9013478

http://billmoyers.com/

The Rise Of American Fascism In Review.

2012-01-22T13:07:00.000-08:00

It is a given that our political leaders believe that we the people are ignorant, stupid, easily manipulated malleable puppets who have been vaccinated with a heavy dose of fear and apathy, successfully indoctrinated to accept that: revolution cannot never happen in America, corporate supremacy is inevitable and that our political theater, bitching, whining and complaining is easily ignored as self-indulgent expressions of displeasure, displeasure that will give way to our dutifully marching to the polls to re-elect or elect our most popular Congressional Criminals…and if you take a real close look at the dynamics of this nation; it is easy to conclude that they are right, that we have not the will or the courage to seize and take back this nation and hold accountable those who squandered any hope of the land evolving into “The American Dream”, those who savaged our economy to the extent that a new one must be built for us to emerge from this “Great Managed Depression”, a new economy that the corporate world sees as putting us back in our proper places in revisiting of apre-1930s world.

"If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death."

The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to significant changes, so they are introduced gradually. This same technique of gradual change is what has occurred to the American people, and we are too busy and ignorant to realize it. Fascism, through their techniques of change, has slowly been overtaking us, and most of the population doesn't recognize it - or don't want to know.

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Through policies of social indoctrination, by propaganda in education and the media, and regulation of the production of educational and media materials, we have been led to believe that our country is superior in every way. Little did we know that our home school and public education system has been designed to glorify our country by informing students of its superior historical and political importance in the world. It has attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the Fascist movement, and has taught students to not question the decisions of the government. Fascism tends to be anti- intellectual, which is why we can't tell the water in the pot is getting hot.

THE RISE OF FASCISM IN AMERICA: It will all seem so normal.

Fascism in America won’t come with jackboots, book burnings, mass rallies, and fevered harangues, nor will it come with black helicopters or tanks on the street. It won’t come like a storm—but as a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: Everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality will have taken its place. But it will all seem “normal”.

All the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns—plenty of bread and circuses. It will all seem “normal”.

But “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small and privileged group who rule for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons. But it will all seem ““normal””.

The change in America is taking place as I write, and Sinclair Lewis prophetically said” “That when Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” And when it happens, somehow; it will all seem “normal”.

To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among the elite, and a degree of debate will be permitted; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized—usually by “the people” themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by a thoroughly impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, left ignorant of current events by a corporate media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control. It will all seem “normal”.

The rulers will act in secret, for reasons of “national security,” and the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, state murder of “enemies” selected by the leader, undeclared wars, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new “security structures” targeted at the populace. In time, this will be seen as ““normal”,” as the chill of autumn feels “normal” when summer is gone. It will all seem “normal”.

Fascism is a political ideology and mass movement that seeks to place thenation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community.[1] Many different characteristics are attributed to fascism by different scholars, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism,statism, collectivism [2], anti-liberalism, and anti-communism. There are numerous debates between scholars regarding the nature of fascism, and the kinds of political movements and governments that may be called fascist. For further elaboration, please see definitions of fascism andfascism and ideology.

The term fascism was first used by Benito Mussolini, and it comes from theItalian word fascio, which means "union" or "league", and from the Latinword fasces (fascis, in singular), which means rods bundled around an axe. The fasces was an ancient Roman symbol of the authority ofmagistrates, and the symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is very difficult to break.

Since the end of World War II, there has been considerable stigma associated with fascism, and few political groups in the past 60 years have dared to openly identify themselves as fascist. Unlike other ideologies, fascism never generated a large body of dogma or political theory, and, most importantly, there have been no significant political texts written from a fascist point of view since 1945. Thus, nearly all works on the topic of fascist ideology have been written by non-fascist and anti-fascist authors, and it is often difficult to determine the fascist position on many important issues. The word "fascist" is often used pejoratively, a label used by people of all political views to draw criticism upon an opposing viewpoint. This has spilled over into debates concerning the ideological nature of fascism, with adherents of some ideologies trying to draw parallels between fascism and their own ideological opponents.

Many diverse regimes have identified themselves as fascist, and many regimes have been labelled as fascist even though they did not self-identify as such. Historians, political scientists, and other scholars have engaged in long and furious debates concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets. Since the 1990s, there has been a growing move toward some rough consensus reflected in the work of Stanley Payne, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin, and Robert O. Paxton.

Mussolini defined fascism as being a right-wing collectivistic ideology in opposition to socialism, liberalism, democracy and individualism. He wrote in The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism:

Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the 19th century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State. (a version of the text is here).

Since Mussolini, however, there have been many conflicting definitions of the term "fascism." Former Columbia University Professor Robert O. Paxton has written that:

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."[4]

Paxton further defines fascism's essence as:

1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions;

2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits;

3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts;

4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint;

5. fear of foreign `contamination."[5]

Fascism is associated by many scholars with one or more of the following characteristics: a very high degree of nationalism, economic corporatism, a powerful, dictatorial leader who portrays the nation, state or collective as superior to the individuals or groups composing it.

Stanley Payne's Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980) uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector;fascist symbolism; anti-liberalism; anti-communism; anti-conservatism.[6]Semiotician Umberto Eco also attempts to identify characteristics of fascism in his popular essay Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt.[7] More recently, an emphasis has been placed upon the aspect of populist fascist rhetoric that argues for a "re-birth" of a conflatednation and ethnic people.[8]

Most scholars hold that fascism as a social movement employs elements from the political left, but many conclude that fascism eventually allies with the political right, especially after attaining state power. For example, Nazism began as a socio-political movement that promoted a radical form of National Socialism, but altered its character once Adolf Hitler was handed state power in Germany. Some scholars and political commentators argue that fascism is a form of socialist dictatorship similar to that in Soviet Union.[9]

The evolution of Fascism in a Democracy is the most insidious of political transitions, assembling many components from divergent intellectual, pop culture sources and fringe organizations that have fanatic devotees. Even in the face of warning, the words of the courier most often go without heed, and in fact, are frequently attacked as the ranting of lunatic alarmists; the evolutionary/transitional process, both by design of the usurpers and the climate of gradual acceptance isolates the messenger until it is too late. Everything seems rational; everything seems “normal”. Just look inside the following and tell me: Is this your idea of “normal”? From such sources is the stew being.

Neo-Fascism
Neo-Nazism
Neo-fascism and religion
Christian Identity
Creativity Movement
Ku Klux Klan
National Alliance
Nouvelle Droite
American Nazi Party
Alain de Benoist
William Luther Pierce
George Lincoln Rockwell
International Third Position
National anarchism
National Bolshevism

And the Top Neocon Think Tanks

Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
Established in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, PNAC's goal is "to promote American global leadership." Creating a blueprint for the US' current role in the world, PNAC's original Statement of Principles called for the US to return to a "Reaganite foreign policy of military strength and moral clarity."

American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Founded in 1943, this influential Washington think tank is known as the headquarters of neoconservative thought. In a crucial speech in the leadup to the war in Iraq, US President George W. Bush said this to an audience at AEI: "You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds."

Jewish Intitute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
Based in Washington, JINSA "communicates with the national security establishment and the general public to explain the role Israel can and does play in bolstering American interests, as well as the link between American defense policy and the security of Israel." Some of the strongest supporters of Israel's right-wing Likud Party in the already pro-Israel neoconservative circles are on JINSA's board of advisers.

Center for Security Policy (CSP)
CSP's 2001 annual report boasts of its influence saying it "isn't just a 'think tank' – it's an agile, durable, and highly effective 'main battle tank' in the war of ideas on national security." Securing neoconservatives' influence at the nexus of military policymakers and weapons manufacturers, CSP's mission is "to promote world peace through American strength."

The Hudson Institute

The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies

Ethics and Public Policy Center

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Further Sources For Investigation

In his original article, "Fascism Anyone?", Laurence Britt (interview) compared the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet and identified 14 characteristics common to those fascist regimes. This page is a collection of news articles dating from the start of the Bush presidency divided into topics relating to each of the 14 points of fascism. Further analysis of American Fascism done by the POAC can be read here.

1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

September 11 Freedom Walk—

New Majority Leader: Iraq War “May Be The Greatest Gift That We Give” Our Grandchildren

Headstones of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are inscribed with the Pentagons war-marketing slogans

White House and the RNC are going to make a habit of using uniformed military personnel as props at Republican political rallies, despite the fact that it is a plain violation of military regulations banning politicization of the armed forces.

"You must glorify war in order to get the public to accept the fact that your going to send their sons and daughters to die." The inside story of the cozy relationship between big box office American war movies and the Pentagon

More...

2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

We are now a torturing police state: Bush signing into law that will get rid of habeas corpus, allow hearsay evidence, and allow the President to determine what is allowable torture.

Bush Offers Himself Amnesty for Human Rights Crimes

Bush threatens to veto $442b defense bill if Congress investigates detainee abuses.

Guantanamo Judge: “I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the words ‘international law’ again. We are not concerned with international law.”

Rumsfeld to approve new guidelines that will formalize the administration's policy of imprisoning without the protections of the Geneva Conventions and enable the Pentagon to legally hold "ghost detainees,"

US 'preparing to detain terror suspects for life without trial'

U.S. oks evidence gained through torture

July 1, 2003: U.S. Suspends Military Aid to Nearly 50 Countries: because they have supported the International Criminal Court and failed to exempt Americans from possible prosecution.

US has at least 9000 prisoners in secret detention
More...

3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Congressman: Muslims 'enemy amongst us'

SB 24, Ohio law to muzzle "liberals"

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum has joined a conservative Washington think tank, where he will found and direct a program called "America's Enemies."

Sean Hannity creates weekly "Enemy of the State" segment on his new program

Fox radio hosts suggests putting liberal commentators and activists in concentration camps.

World history textbook used by seventh-graders at Scottsdale’s Mohave Middle School was pulled from classrooms mid-semester amid growing right criticism of the book’s unbiased portrayal of Islam

Rallies planned against 'Islamofacism': Event to 'unify all Americans behind common goal'

More...

4.) Supremacy of the Military: Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

If you haven't seen the Oreo flash animation yet, see it here (It puts things in perspective!)

Bush’s Domestic Program Hit List (What Priorities are important?)

Bush slashes domestic programs, boosts defense. Arlen Spector calls it "scandalous"

Funding for job training, rural health care, low-income schools and help for people lacking health insurance would face big cuts under a bill passed Friday by the House

Pentagon to spend 75 billion for three new brigades

Three cable channels now feed news, information and entertainment about the armed services into millions of living rooms 24 hours a day, seven days a week: The Military Channel, the Military History Channel and the Pentagon Channel.

More...

5.) Rampant Sexism: The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

It's legal again, to fire gov't workers for being gay

Bush calls for Constitutional ban on same-sex marriages

Bush refuses to sign U.N proposal on women's "sexual" rights

W. David Hager chairman of the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee does not prescribe contraceptives for single women, does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert IUDs.

The State Department has awarded an explicitly anti-feminist U.S. group part of a US$10 million grant to train Iraqi women in political participation and democracy.

More...

6.) Controlled Mass Media: Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game

Report shows U.S. government has been engaged in illegal propaganda aimed at its own citizens and the story gets only 41 mentions in the media

Free Press details recent governmental propaganda efforts, from faux-correspondent Jeff Gannon to paid-off pundit Armstrong Williams, and from the demise of FOIA to video news releases passed off as news.

also... See a Whitehouse fake news release here (opens realplayer)

US seizes webservers from independent media sites-

Bush's war on information: US editors forbidden to publish certain foreign writers-

More...

7.) Obsession with National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses

Bush Aides ADMIT 'stoking fear' for political gain:

Bush adviser said the president hopes to change the dynamics of the race. The strategy is aimed at stoking public fears about terrorism, raising new concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate, aides said.-

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level. –

GOP Ad These are the stakes-

Keith Olbermann: "The Nexus of Politics and Terror."-

Cheney warns that if Kerry is elected, the USA will suffer a "devastating attack" –

GOP convention in a nutshell (quicktime) –

Rove: GOP to Use Terror As Campaign Issue in 2006

More...

8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

Jerry Falwell cleared of charges that he broke federal election law by urging followers to vote for Bush

NC congressman proposes law making it ok to preach politics from the pulpit

Texas Governor Mobilizes Evangelicals

Family research council: Justice Sunday

Thou shalt be like Bush:
What makes this recently established, right-wing Christian college unique are the increasingly close - critics say alarmingly close - links it has with the Bush administration and the Republican establishment.

Park Service Continues to Push Creationist Theory at Grand Canyon and other nat'l parks

More...

9.) Corporate Power is Protected: The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

The K Street Project is a project by the Republican party to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal GOP lobbyists with access to influential officials. It was launched in 1995, by Republican strategist Grover Norquist and House majority leader Tom DeLay.

American Conservative Magazine: One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag... and a U.S. official was given $7 million in cash in the waning days of the CPA and told to spend it “before the Iraqis take over.”

There are 6 Congressional Committees investigating the Oil-for-Food (UN) scandal, yet not a single Republican Committee Chairman will call a hearing to investigate the whereabouts of 9 billion dollars missing in Iraq

Bush money network rooted in Florida, Texas: Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, the federal government has awarded more than $3 billion in contracts to the President's elite 2004 Texas fund-raisers, their businesses, and lobbying clients

More...

10.) Labor Power is Suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

Labor Department warns unions against using their money politically

President Bush Attacks Organized Labor: Bush attacked organized labor Saturday, issuing orders effectively reducing how much money unions can spend for political activities and opening up government contracts to non-union bidding.

March 2001: President Bush signed his name to four executive orders on organized labor last month, including one that cuts the money unions will have for political campaign spending.

Congress and the Department of Labor are trying to change the rules on overtime pay, eliminating the 40 hour work week, taking eligibility for overtime pay away from millions of workers, and replacing time and a half pay with comp days.

More...

11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

The A to Z guide to political interference in science

Bush's new economic plan cuts funding for arts, education

Artists from all over the world are being refused entry to the US on security grounds.

A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes

Freedom of Repression: New ruling will allow censorship of campus publications

More...

12.) Obsession with Crime and Punishment: Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations

The 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006

The United States has now become the world leader in its rate of incarceration, locking up its citizens at 5-8 times the rate of other industrialized nations.

American Gestapo is here: "There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'"

America: secret jails, secret courts, secret arrests, and now secret laws

Snitch-or-Go-to-Jail bill will make pretty much anything short of reporting on everyone you see for doing just about anything a jailable offense. With minimum sentences, up to and including life without parole.

The problem with Gonzales is that he has been deeply involved in developing some of the most sweeping claims of near-dictatorial presidential power in our nation's history, allowing him to imprison and even (at least in theory) torture anyone in the world, at any time

Police officers don't have to give a reason at the time they arrest someone, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a ruling that shields officers from false-arrest lawsuits.

More...

13.) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Bush Cronyism: Foxes Guarding the henhouse

Who's been indicted, named as a co-conspirator or convicted? The Grand Ole Docket tracks trial dates, court appearances and sentencing hearings for players in the current array of national political scandals.

Making Sense of the Abramoff Scandal

In preparation for upcoming Congressional hearings, Bush Administration firing federal attorneys and appointing ringers without Senate confirmation via the patriot act.

If Bush's pick is confirmed, that will mean the five top appointees at Justice have zero prosecutorial experience among them.

Iran-Contra Felons Get Good Jobs from Bush

Big Iraq Reconstruction Contracts Went To Big Donors

Bush Wars -- Crooks Get Contracts : The main companies that were awarded billions of dollars worth of contracts in Iraq have paid more than $300 million in fines since 2000, to resolve allegations of fraud, bid rigging, delivery of faulty military equipment, and environmental damage.

US Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) lost track of $9 billion

"Contracting in the aftermath of the hurricanes has been marked by waste, corruption and cronyism"

More...

14. Fraudulent Elections: Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

A couple of election workers have been convicted of rigging a recount in Ohio following the 2004 election

Rolling Stone does some investigative and rather exhaustive digging into public documents and says we’re almost guaranteed the 2004 election results were massively rigged

Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings

Conyers hearing in which Clinton Curtis testifies that he was hired to create hackable voting machines (.wmv)

The Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

The Conyers Report (.pdf)

No explanation for the machines in Mahoning County that recorded Kerry votes for Bush, the improper purging in Cuyahoga County, the lock down in Warren County, the 99% voter turnout in Miami County, the machine tampering in Hocking County

Less access than Kazakhstan. Fewer fail-safes than Venezuela. Not as simple Republic of Georgia. The 2004 Elections according to international observers.

This picture is what stopped the ballot recounts in Florida shortly after it seemed that legitimate President Gore had a lead. The "citizens" started what was later called "the preppy riot". Screaming, yelling, pounding on the walls, these "outraged citizens" intimidated the polling officials to halt the court mandated recount. A closer look reveals who they really were. They were bussed and flown in at Republican law makers expense. Some even flew in on Tom Delay's private plane.

If Mussolini defines fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power" what does that make the K Street project?

Related Articles:

"Now and Then"- Part 1 A 3 part series by W David Jenkins III on the similarities between America now and Germany post Reichstag fire-

"Now and Then"- Part II: The Propaganda Machine-

Now and Then- Part IIIHitler's Playbook: Bush and the Abuse of Power-

It may sound crazy to some, but the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism.-

Is America Becoming Fascist?-

Eternal Fascism:

Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt-

The Danger of American Fascism:With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.-

Sheila Samples: Freedom To Fascism -- A Bumpy Ride: Republicans don't seem to realize that they are no longer individual members of a coherent "party," but are merely part of a mean-spirited and dangerous movement that is threatening to sweep away democracy as we know it.-

Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism-

The Brownshirting of America:
Bush’s supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration’s own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.

Fascism then. Fascism now? When people think of fascism, they imagine Rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.

What is Fascism? Some General Ideological Features

Hello. You are now living in a fascist empire

Neo-fascism in America : Too many people believe fascism is only about goose-stepping, jack-booted Nazis. Too many people believe that American democracy is so strong that fascists could never take control of America. If you are sympathetic to those views, I invite you to consider the possibility that you are mistaken.

It is in times of fascism rising that armies of ignorance are once more resuscitated from the bowels of a society bordering on the edge of mass psychosis. The America at the dawn of the twenty-first century is no exception...

Republican Party Brown Shirts: "The Wide-Awakes": The organization was known for virulent anti-Catholicism, secretive rituals, and a military-style organization complete with "officers" and units.

Harper's Magazine: We Now Live in a Fascist State

They Saw It Coming: The 19th-Century Libertarian Critique of Fascism

Victims of Creeping Fascism: We are witnessing nothing less astonishing than the demise of the American experiment. 12-20

The ten phases of a Bush scandal. 12-22

America is headed for a soft dictatorship by the end of Bush’s second term.

The Rise of Fascism in America; A Little Repeat Reminder and Review

Fascism in America won’t come with jackboots, book burnings, mass rallies, and fevered harangues, nor will it come with black helicopters or tanks on the street.

It won’t come like a storm—but as a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: Everything is the same, but everything has changed.

Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality will have taken its place. All the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns—plenty of bread and circuses.

But “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small and privileged group who rule for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.

The change in America is taking place as I write, and Sinclair Lewis prophetically said” “That when Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

The rulers will act in secret, for reasons of “national security,” and the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name.

Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, state murder of “enemies” selected by the leader, undeclared wars, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new “security structures” targeted at the populace.

In time, this will be seen as ““normal”,” as the chill of autumn feels “normal” when summer is gone. It will all seem “normal”.

Since the 1970’s, American businesses have grown larger and more monopolistic, helped along by deregulation, the repeal of anti-trust laws, and a steady transformation from manufacturing to capital management (dare I say, “capital manipulation”?).

As Paul Bigioni puts it in his excellent essay entitled “The Real Threat of Fascism”: “If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence of Big Business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way which recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions.”

Bigioni continues by emphasizing that “Antitrust laws do not just protect the marketplace, they protect democracy.” It is well to remember that conditions like these led to fascism in both Germany and Italy in the 1930’s, and Bigioni points out that the transformation toward fascism occurred in both countries while they were still liberal democracies.

In America, since at least 1971, the rich have gotten much, much richer and the poor have become poorer and far more numerous, largely because our government now sees its primary function as serving the interests of Big Business and its Big Money.

As of 2003, according to a Congressional Budget Office report, the top one percent of households in America accounted for 57.5% of America’s wealth, up from 38.7% only twelve years earlier. And this does not take into account the last three years of the Bush tax-cuts. In the U.S. today, there are 374 billionaires, approximately 25,000 deca-millionaires ($10,000,000-$999,000,000) and 2.5 million millionaires; and this does not even take into account the wealth of corporations!

Under such conditions, competition is minimized or thwarted, and capital is exalted over labor, the consummation of Marx’s contention that “Capital is dead labor.”

In every industry, huge monopolistic cartels dominate the playing field, following the spate of mergers and acquisitions throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. To cite just two examples: (1) Four media giants (AOL-Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, and Rupert Murdoch’s NewsGroup) control everything we read, view, listen to, see at movie houses, and do at entertainment parks. Just four conglomerates, which have oh so much in common with one another, produce (for profit) every newspaper, magazine, major internet site, movie, cd, dvd, television program, and so on.

The pressure to stay within fairly narrow bounds of covering and the fear of losing one’s job should one “think outside the box” is detailed succinctly in Danny Schechter’s March 27, 2006 column the title of which is taken from a line Edward R. Morrow utters in the movie “Good Night and Good Luck”: “The Fear is in the Room: Inside our Unbrave Media World”; Robert Fisk’s March 19 column, “The Farcical End of the American Dream”; and Bill Gallagher’s March 28th column, “There is No ‘Good News’ in Iraq."

To note one other example: if Wal-Mart were a country it would have the 19th largest economy in the world!

Do not be hoodwinked by labels here: there was nothing “socialist” about Hitler’s National Socialist Party, despite his clever employment of terms such as “volk” (the people or the folks), “heimat” (homeland), or the solidarity sounding “ein land” (one country)! Likewise, there is no genuinely human freedom in the free market, despite the intoxicating rhetoric of the neo-liberals. Bigioni quotes Thurman Arnold, the head of the Anti-trust section of the Justice Department in 1939:

“Germany, of course, has developed within 15 years from an industrial autocracy into a dictatorship. Most people are under the impression that the power of Hitler was the result of his demagogic blandishments and appeals to the mob. . . Actually, Hitler holds his power through the final and inevitable development of the uncontrolled tendency to combine in restraint of trade.” And in another address, Arnold told the American Bar Association that “Germany presents the logical end of the process of cartelization.”

And, of course, every cartel needs a strong leader, a commander-in-chief with an iron fist, And Arnold says that Hitler filled that role, but that if it had not been Hitler, it would have been someone else. (Americans today might draw an analogy: if it were not George W. Bush, the first M.B.A. President, who would serve as the front-man for Big Business, it would be someone else.)

Bigioni writes, “Compulsory slave labor was the crowning achievement of Nazi labor relations.” By analogy, Employment-at-Will, the outsourcing of manufacturing and even service jobs, and the rejection of a living wage, is the crowning achievement of American labor relations. (See, for example, Harold Meyerson’s article, “Three Ideas to Radically Reorder Economy” (Providence Journal, March 24, 2006) and Princeton University Professor Alan Blinder’s article in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs.

The disappearance of union jobs, outsourcing and downsizing has been the crowning achievement of American business relations over the past 30 years or so. The other factors contributing to what Bigioni calls “the fascist trajectory” includes low taxes, various forms of corporate welfare, the decimation of small businesses, and the ability of corporations to discharge obligations to employees, to the environment, and to the country as a whole.

In short, the United States is suffocating from the deleterious effects of Big Money interests in virtually every arena, from public political processes to the privatization of much of what belongs to all of us. Corporate advertising secures the pernicious effects. From time to time, one hears a call for public financing of elections, for truth in advertising, and for more regulation and oversight of lobbying activities, but on the whole, Americans seem glib about the way things are, supposing that this is the only way they can be.

The status quo breeds resignation in the citizenry, and this resignation, too, is in large part an effect of Big Business and its Big Money. It keeps ordinary folks and their common sense away from the political arena, which might otherwise force a change in the way things are done. Big Money does everything it can to sour people on political participation, so that the little guys who just don’t know what’s best for themselves or the country will leave matters of governance to the professional ruling class.

To formalize this relatively recent reality, it would seem necessary to reword our Constitution to reflect those entities called “corporations,” which have now been deemed “persons” and whose capital is now regarded as a form of “speech.” (See, for example, Jeffrey Kaplan, “Uncivil Liberties: ACLU Defense of ‘Money=Speech’ Precedent Undermines Democracy.”) The United States has become a country “of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation.”

Public financing of elections and campaign expenditure limits are shouted down as communism or socialism, in a manner very similar to Big Money’s cries of “class warfare” when the population at large objects to additional giveaways to the richest few Americans. Big Money (representing a small, elite class) does everything in its power to prevent the American people from awakening to the fact that what it is seeing really is class warfare: warfare that is being waged from the top down, against the poor and what we used to call the “middle class,” which are now subsidizing Big Money interests that control the political agenda and its legislative processes.

The influence of Big Money on U.S. elections cannot be underestimated. (See, for example, Greg Palast’s “Jim Crow in Cyberspace” in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the work on election fraud by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, and the recent articles by Warren Stewart “Do You Know How Your Vote Will be Counted?” and Fred Grimm “Election Official Hammered for Telling the Truth”. The problem with the role of money in a supposedly democratic country is not restricted to the many and all-too regular scandals—such as the Abramoff affair or the conviction of Randy “Duke” Cunningham—nor is the problem restricted to the corruption that has ensnared elected officials and exposed lobbyists as little more than bribes makers and bagmen.

(See Geov Parrish, “That Old-Fashioned Corruption,” and Katrina vanden Heuvel’s, “Annals of Outrage I, II, and III) It is, rather, that money, as John McCain famously said, “is the mother’s milk of politics” (at least in the U.S. political system.) The need to raise money at every level, from city to state to federal offices, pollutes and perverts the democratic process.

The corruption is bipartisan; at present, the Republican Party enjoys greater favor with the corporate paymasters than does the Democratic Party, but both parties are “on the take”. It does little to assuage one’s concern for democracy that one party gets 55-60% of the paymasters’ money and the other only 40-45%. In a country that prides itself on being democratic, private money peddles its influence across the political spectrum.

To cite one illustrative example, Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, an energy industry watchdog, reports that Big Oil and Gas doled out $55 million to various campaigns for legislative and executive seats since 2001. And why not, ExxonMobil alone made a profit of $36.1 billion in 2005, the most profit ever recorded by a U.S. corporation in a year, and a rate of return on investment of 46-59%. And what did these donations buy the industry? Among other things, when the executives of the top five oil and gas companies were called before Congress to testify about possible price-gouging and the prospect of a windfall profits tax, the five company representatives were not required to testify under oath!

Big Money and the future of Democracy in America

I suspect that everything just recounted is entirely by design: not by the design of our framers, but by the design of Big Money interests. The role of money ensures that only the wealthy and well-connected have any chance of influencing the political process or holding elected office at a significant level.

In the 2004 election campaign, 549 people each raised $100,000 for Bush’s re-election, and John Kerry, too, relied on big donors on his side of the political equation. Thus, it was not by sheer coincidence that, in the 2000 presidential campaign, voters were given a choice between a Yale graduate, whose father had been President and whose grandfather was a Senator, and a Harvard graduate, whose father was a Senator.

And in the 2004 presidential contest, the choice was even more narrow, between a multi-millionaire Yale “Skull and Bones” man and a billionaire Yale “Skull and Bones” man. Nepotism, like corruption, discourages most good Americans from participating in elections, to say nothing of running for office!

If in 1968, I had hung a poster on my bedroom wall that read: “Wanna Be President of the United States? First Find $25 Million”! Today, that wouldn’t buy a Senate seat or even a New York City Mayor’s job.

We should be either shocking or disgusting to realize that John Corzine spent $63 million for a New Jersey Senate seat, and Michael Bloomberg spent $70 million to become the mayor of New York City. With rumblings that he is considering a run for the Presidency we need not worry about being hounded for contributions by Mr. Bloomberg. He can foot the bill himself, and should he run you can rest assured that he won’t have to; there will be freely volunteered contributions to curry later favors.

Corporations give money to both parties in staggering amounts, and what they do not give directly to their favorites, they spend on advertising to shape the public mind. The result is a net loss both for the public good and for democracy. It costs the corporations only a small fraction in contributions for what they gain through their wheel-greasing.

Do you wonder how much the oil and natural gas lobby paid to secure that $9 billion in windfall profits that they stand to gain from the Bush administration’s plan for “royalty relief”. And that million dollar donation by the UAE to the Bush library in Crawford was surely just a down-payment on the ports deal they hoped to get!

It seems quaint nowadays to reflect back on the corporate culture of the 1960’s. John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the following description in his1967 book, The New Industrial State, as quoted by Paul Krugman in his excellent October 20, 2002 New York Times Magazine article, “For Richer”:

“Management does not go out ruthlessly to reward itself---a sound management is expected to exercise restraint. . . With the power of decision goes opportunity for making money . . . Were everyone to seek to do so . . . the corporation would be a chaos of competitive avarice. But these are not the sort of thing that a good company man does; a remarkably effective code bans such behavior. Group decision-making insures, moreover, that almost everyone’s actions and even thoughts are known to others. This acts to enforce the code and, more than incidentally, a high standard of personal honesty as well.”

Does anyone believe that such a self-policing culture exists today? If the corporate scandals of the 1990’s taught us anything, it is that corporations no longer even aim to stay in business, a goal that used to temper their penchant for excess and bridge-burning. The cases of Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, Global Crossing, and many more perpetrators, should have made abundantly clear that there is no limit to corporate excess or insatiable greed, and, in the absence of federal and international regulations, it is usually the stockholders and the public at large who end up underwriting the thefts, cleaning up the pollution, and dealing with the displaced workforce.

Most of this is not new. In fact, the seeds of corporate rule over America were sown by the 1971 ”Powell Memorandum.” And we need only think back to the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980’s, to recall another half a trillion dollar boondoggle that taxpayers had to underwrite.

There have been plenty of books written about such scandals (see, for example, William S. Greider, Who Will Tell the People?, Arianna Huffington, Pigs at the Trough, Jim Hightower, Thieves in High Places, and David K. Johnston, Perfectly Legal, for starters.) Yet despite the recurrent malfeasance, little has been done to curb corporate excesses and outright frauds.

What is more, trans-national corporations need have no allegiance to the United States of America. They have offices in many countries and on many continents, and most of them have already shipped their profits offshore to avoid the patriotic duty of paying their fair share of U.S. taxes.

Remembering President Eisenhower’s Warning

Several commentators have recently reminded us of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s January 17, 1961 farewell address, warning of the threat posed by the “military-industrial complex”. Usually omitted from discussions of President Eisenhower’s warning is the less well-known fact that, until the final version of the speech, Eisenhower used the phrase, “military-industrial-congressional complex”. He is said to have deleted the reference to Congress from his final version to avoid offending legislators.

But President Eisenhower regularly referred to “the triangle” and even to “the iron triangle” consisting of the military, the industries that profit from war, and the Congress, which is charged with declaring war, appropriating funding for wars (and everything else the federal government spends money on), and for exercising oversight functions of various kinds.

According to University of Washington Emeritus Professor of engineering, public affairs, and social management, Edward Ward Wenk, Jr.: “These three cornered fellowships coupled hungry defense contractors, ambitious military officers whose promotions rested on husbanding new defense systems, and members of Congress eager to steer new funds and job opportunities to their district.”

Eisenhower might have added “educational institutions” to the list, since universities conducted research for the Manhattan Project and institutions, such as UC Berkeley, which managed the Los Alamos laboratory (which produced the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) from its inception until last year, when the University put Los Alamos on the auction block and Bechtel secured the management contract.

President Eisenhower’s speechwriter—whom Professor Wenk revealed to be Malcolm Moos—recalled that Eisenhower feared a “pathological influence of the military-industrial coalition beyond a healthy arm’s-length relationship, especially if the national psyche was prodded artificially by fear. A future chief executive might exploit political energies of the coalition to further a narrow and dangerous agenda” (Italics mine).

Professor Wenk, who served in the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and who was the first incumbent in the post of science advisor to Congress during the Eisenhower administration, draws this conclusion in his March 17 article, “Ike’s Warning Reverberates Today” by saying: “I see coalitions increasingly entrenched. Failed weapons systems are seldom canceled. Auditing is cursory for moving and feeding troops; malperformance is accepted in the fog of war, and penalties for fraud uncollected. . .” “Influence of coalitions also has grown with the cost of political campaigns. Members spend half their time raising funds, rather than forging policy. . . In the absence of strong vigilance, their concern about a corporate state hatched by stealth might yet happen.”

Indeed, it has already taken place, repeatedly!

It appears glaringly obvious these days that Congress has failed miserably in its oversight, appropriation, and war-declaration functions. This lack of oversight is apparent not only with respect to the Administration’s reckless adventure in Iraq, but also with regard to the passage of the Patriot Act (and its renewal), the muted response against policies condoning torture, the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the practice of “extraordinary rendition”, the warrantless wiretapping on American citizens, and the insuring of free and fair elections with verifiable ballot-counting.

What we have now is a military-industrial-Congressional complex indeed…a real foundation for Fascist formulation!

I nonetheless, really believe that “most” public officials begin their careers with a desire to serve the people and to make America better. I do not believe that members of Congress, or members of state legislatures, for that matter, run for office merely to enrich themselves. No, I think that most of them begin their political careers as genuine and sincere people. But the systemic role of money, as I have said, pollutes and perverts processes and people.

It is a bit like boiling a frog. If you drop the frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out of the kettle; but if you drop the frog in lukewarm water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will neither jump out of the kettle nor croak anymore. And that is just what happens to far too many of our public servants and to the citizenry as a whole.

It is ironic that Big Business tries to insure that government stays on the sidelines and pursues laissez faire policies, until Big Business needs the government (usually aided by the U.S. military) to make some country or region “safe” for its business interests.

From making Cuba safe for the United Fruit Company, to securing access to Persian Gulf oil and South Asian gas, Big Business is always ready to have the government protecting its interests. One notes again and again, however, that such security is paid for by taxpayers, while the profits go straight into the corporate coffers.

But beware, Big Business; for as Bigioni warns: “Just as monopoly is the ruin of the free market, fascism is the ultimate degradation of liberal capitalism.” It’s sort of like be careful of what you wish for…

But then again the drift downward will be in a comfortable proper patriotic, flag wrapped, Christian, Family Values fog will all seem so “normal”…except, sooner of later the fog lifts and reality become clear. Its sort of like mowing the lawn on a hot summer day and having one or two too many beers. You lay down on the sofa for a few minutes with a fan blowing on you to cool down, and sleep comes quickly, a sleep broken by the rudeness of your neighbor ringing your door bell to report you left you mower running and it is now at rest against the side of his house….

Or you’ve had a good party with friends and your pitchers of Martinis were good and gone, and you awake to find yourself on that sofa again, and as you stumble in the Martini haze through the darkened house, you discover the bedroom door locked. You don’t know what you did, but you know you are in trouble, and at that moment you don’t know what you are going to have to do.

The arrival of Fascism is like that, seductive, intoxicating, and comfortable because your leaders have assured you that they are strong enough and have the answers to keep you safe and happy, and then comes the political hang over that can last for generations!

I on the other hand have no question as to where I stand, for the following words are, and will be, my refuge and resort when everyone has failed and the Fascist Flag Flies; I will be on the other side ready to begin anew the fight to regain what we all once knew before we succumbed to the intoxication, woke up in a fog pondering: “What do we do now, or as was written on the original book jacket of Sinclair Lewis’s, “ It Can’t Happen Here: “What will happen when Dictatorship comes to America?”

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

Posted by Ed. Dickau

It Is Time That Americans Occupy Everything And Shatter The Political System That Exists In This Land.

2012-01-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

It Is Time That Americans Occupy Everything And Shatter The Political System That Exists In This Land.

"If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death."

The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to significant changes, so they are introduced gradually. This same technique of gradual change is what has occurred to the American people, and we are too busy and ignorant to realize it. Fascism, through their techniques of change, has slowly been overtaking us, and most of the population doesn't recognize it - or don't want to know.

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Through policies of social indoctrination, by propaganda in education and the media, and regulation of the production of educational and media materials, we have been led to believe that our country is superior in every way. Little did we know that our home school and public education system has been designed to glorify our country by informing students of its superior historical and political importance in the world. It has attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the Fascist movement, and has taught students to not question the decisions of the government. Fascism tends to be anti-intellectual, which is why we can't tell the water in the pot is getting hot.

U.N. Asked To Probe U.S. Efforts To Squelch Spain Torture Probe

By Rachel Roubein | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Two legal rights groups on Thursday asked the United Nations to investigate allegations that Spanish and U.S. officials collaborated to quash criminal probes into whether the Bush administration authorized illegal killings and torture of terrorism suspects.

The request, made to the U.N.'s special rapporteur for judicial independence, accused the United States of interfering with Spain's justice system in three different criminal cases. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights asked that the U.N. demand that both governments refrain from meddling in court cases.

"When arguably the leading human rights country in the world is engaged in torture and then gives impunity to those torturers, it sends a pretty bad message," said Michael Ratner, the Center for Constitutional Rights' president emeritus.

Ratner said the groups were turning to the U.N. because "it's very hard to hold the U.S. accountable in any forum in the world."

A spokesman for the U.S. State Department declined to comment, referring questions to the Justice Department, which did not respond to requests for comment.

The complaint calls for the U.N. to investigate how three cases were handled: the first involved the alleged torture of detainees at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the second, the Bush's administration's authorization of harsh interrogation techniques; and the third, the 2003 death of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso Permuy in Baghdad.

The two groups based their complaint on diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010 that recount high-ranking U.S. diplomats pressuring Spanish officials to stop the investigations.

In one, U.S. Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre recounts his efforts to prevent criminal charges in the death of Couso, who was killed during the U.S. capture of Baghdad on April 8, 2003, when a U.S. tank opened fire on the Palestine Hotel, where journalists were staying.

"While we are careful to show our respect for the tragic death of Couso and for the independence of the Spanish judicial system, behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear," Aguirre wrote.

On Friday, a Spanish judge reopened the case of the four former Guantanamo captives who allege they were tortured and subjected to humiliation at the detention camp. The judge ruled that he had jurisdiction in the case because the United States was not conducting an independent probe of the allegations.

"We're very excited about these cases in Spain," Ratner said. "It's only happening because neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration is willing to do anything to investigate the torture at Guantanamo."

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Center for Constitutional Rights

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Spanish Judge reopens Guantanamo torture probe

WikiLeaks: How U.S. tried to stop Spain's torture probe

Report: French Judge Wants To Probe Guantánamo Torture Claims

17 Jan 2012 A French judge is seeking U.S. permission to visit the prison camps at Guantánamo Bay to investigate claims by former French inmates that they were tortured, the Associated Press reported from Paris on Tuesday. The AP reported that it saw a formal international request from investigating judge Sophie Clement to U.S. authorities to see the prison. Clement also seeks copies of all documents relating to the arrest and transfer of three Frenchmen who were held at Guantánamo. The men told the judge during questioning in France that they were subject to violence including torture and rape during their detention.

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Occupy Wall Street looms over wins vs. SOPA bill, oil pipeline and Wisconsin ...

New York Daily News

Three amazing victories in one day, for young Internet activists and civil libertarians, for environmentalists, and for union members. Yes, the Occupy Wall Street camps are all gone now, but the populist fire they kindled still burns bright in the ...
See all stories on this topic »-New York Daily News

Occupy Wall Street Protestors Ask Judge to Dismiss Arrests
WNYC (blog)
By Arun Venugopal Attorneys representing Occupy Wall Street protesters asked a federal judge to dismiss the mass arrests of 700 demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge, in early October. The protesters' lawsuit, brought against the city, argues that the ...
See all stories on this topic »

Occupy the Courts gives up legal fight to protest at Manhattan Federal Court
New York Daily News
By Robert Gearty / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS While an Occupy Wall Street splinter group gave up its battle to get a protest permit, there was no ruling in a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the arrests of 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters on the ...
See all stories on this topic »-New York Daily News

The Occupy Movement is Mutating
YouTube
Ben Manski, Democracy Advocate & Ben Zucker, participant-Occupy DC tenter join Thom Hartmann. The "Occupy" movement is mutating - it's no longer just parks and tents. The Occupy Wall Streetmovement - the granddaddy of them all - turned 4-months old ...
See all stories on this topic »

Raw Video: Occupy Protesters Confront Congress
The Associated Press
Protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement are meeting outside the Capitol for what participants hope will become the largest gathering of Occupy activists from around the country. (Jan. 17)
See all stories on this topic »

With Congress Occupied, the Supreme Court is Next
DCist.com
Only days after a few hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters from around the country converged on Washington for a day of haphazard demonstrations in and around Congress, tomorrow they'll be doing it all again -- but this time they're targeting the ...
See all stories on this topic »-DCist.com

Obama Raises At Least $3 Million In Manhattan
NY1
President Barack Obama dipped into New York Thursday evening for four fundraisers geared toward his re-election, but despite heavy support, some Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrators showed up to protest the events. NY1's Josh Robin filed the following ...
See all stories on this topic »-NY1

Judge Deciding Legality of Arrests of OWS Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
DNAinfo
MANHATTAN FEDERAL COURT — A federal court judge will decide whether 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were legally arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge after hearing arguments Thursday that the mass of demonstrators was trapped and then put in cuffs ...
See all stories on this topic »

Occupy D.C. camps divided, don't want to be united
Washington Times
Both camps were established in early October, about a month after the Occupy Wall Street movement took root in a Lower Manhattan park in New York City. Days after the first tents were pitched at McPherson Square on Oct. 6, the “October 2001/Stop the ...
See all stories on this topic »

San Francisco Occupy Wall Street West Action Scheduled For Jan. 20
Jobmouse
San Francisco, CA – Occupy Wall Street West has planned dozens of protests scheduled to take place Friday in the Financial District. Those with the movement, say it will be the largest protest in the San Francisco Financial District in 9 years. ...See all stories on this topic »

FOR & Occupy launch protest at Bechtel headquarters
Fellowship of Reconciliation (blog)
PEACE ACTIVISTS AND WAR VETS JOIN OCCUPY WALL STREET WEST TO HIGHLIGHT ROLE OF BECHTEL GROUP IN WAR, WASTE, CORRUPTION. SAN FRANCISCO (January 19, 2012): On Friday, January 20, 2012, peace activists will join the daylong nonviolent mass occupation of ...See all stories on this topic »

Gerald Celente: Occupy movement is just starting
YouTube
The Occupy Wall Street movement has been more than vocal with their dissatisfaction with the job Congress has been doing and Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute, joins us to discuss an array of topics and gives us some of his ...See all stories on this topic »

'Occupy' Darling Bolts to Oust Scott Brown
FrontPage Magazine
She allied herself with the 99 percent against the one percent by claiming to serve as an inspiration for Occupy Wall Street. “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” she said of OWS. “I support what they do. ...See all stories on this topic »

Judge rejects Occupy protest organizers
Albany Times Union
... a lawsuit by Occupy the Courts that sought to force the government to issue a permit to let about 200 people demonstrate in front of a lower Manhattan courthouse that has hosted several major terrorism trials and the sentencing of Wall Street ...See all stories on this topic »

Right-Wing Band 'Madison Rising' Plays For Occupy Congress
Huffington Post
The music has the sort of anthemic country/rock sound that could be appropriate in a beer commercial. The lyrics have a message that is, by and large, decidedly anti-Occupy. One song is a tribute to the Second Amendment -- "Right to Bear" -- another, ...See all stories on this topic »

Ecology and the Pathology of Capitalism

by Charles Sullivan / January 18th, 2012

Contrary to everything we have been taught, there is no actual United States of America.

The U.S. is an occupied territory that could more accurately be described as the Corporate States of America.

If the geopolitical states are united, the people are not. We are a nation divided by ideology and by social and economic class.

The U.S. is not a democracy, and it never was.

The systems of power do not allow the voice of working people to be heard or their collective will to be acted upon.

Despite the subterfuge of freedom and democracy, the rights of corporations have consistently superseded the sovereign rights of the individual and those of the community. Labor history and a litany of environmental catastrophes bear this out. For instance, everywhere one looks government agencies “ostensibly created to protect the public welfare” are allowing hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus shale, even when it poisons municipal drinking water and causes incalculable harm to the environment.

Our diverse forests are commodified, measured in board feet to be clear-cut and off-shored at prodigious bargain rates, like a liquidation sale. World class biodiversity is yielding to desertification and monoculture. Money changes hands. The few are getting rich at the expense of the many. The world and the people who live in it are treated like products to be exploited.

We are told that nothing is sacred, save for the dollar and markets.

Nevertheless, it is an inescapable fact that no human being, including corporate CEOs and members of Congress, can live without potable water or breathable air. We are literally sacrificing the Earth’s life support systems and mortgaging the future, while attempting to satiate the greed of a few grotesquely wealthy individuals. Through lifelong indoctrination, Americans are persuaded that self-interested greed is in their best interest.

The rich and powerful have decreed that corporate profits “the Holy Grail of American capitalism” are more precious than life itself. The remorseless people in power are without conscience. History confirms that sociopaths do not hesitate to take what they want from their unsuspecting victims by any and all means.

But surely, even among Friedmanites, it must be allowed that some things cannot be commodified or bought and sold. For instance, clean air and potable water are the birthright of every living organism. These are necessities that belong to the commons; they cannot ethically be privately owned. In contrast to this assertion, two edicts of modern capitalism are private ownership and the commodification of workers and nature.

Capitalism, and the market fundamentalism that is associated with it, has stripped bare the Earth’s biodiversity and substituted a world of commodities in its stead. What we see and think we know is not real. It is the product of marketing and perception managers — a hologram.

There is growing conflict between capitalism and the planet’s ecology, its essential life support systems. A fierce struggle between capital and democracy is in progress. The booted foot of capitalism is pressing upon the throat of democracy. We inhabit a dying world and are inheriting dying freedoms. Corporate greed and over-population is the culprit. Conflict is everywhere.

Virtually all of the social upheaval, inequality, and environmental problems of today in some way ensue from capitalism, including overpopulation and armed aggression. Capitalism requires continuous economic expansion and a burgeoning market for consumers. This is simply not possible on a finite planet.

These tensions are manifested no more clearly than throughout the coal belt and mountains of West Virginia, where I make my home. Here, mountains are cleared of forests before being blown to smithereens in order to cheaply extract coal to enrich Massey Energy Corporation. The process, known as mountaintop removal, has poisoned streams, altered their courses, and changed the contours of the land and its hydrology. It has devastated both human and biological communities while filling the coffers of the timber and coal industries.

Conventional underground mining has claimed the lives of thousands of coal miners trying to scratch out a modest living from the Earth. At times, it has led to armed conflict between miners and the Pinkertons hired by the mining companies in places like Matewan and Blair Mountain.

In West Virginia, King Coal and the gas and oil industry run the state’s legislature. The government is effectively owned by corporate lobbyists. As a result, it is futile to make legal and moral appeals to government for redress of our grievances. If we limit ourselves to the tools that our oppressors provide us, the entire region will become a sacrifice zone. Working people and the poor make the sacrifices; billionaires and industry carry off the profit. We are left to deal with the aftermath.

The illusion of democracy “including voting in the absence of meaningful choice” is a poor substitute for direct action and anarchy. Democracy cannot flourish in the sterile soil that capitalism leaves in its wake. Either we have democracy or we have capitalism, or we create something entirely different. Radically opposing ideas cannot be reconciled.

Modern humans inhabit a human-engineered world of absurdities and contradictions. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s assertions, corporations are not people, and money is not speech. Every sentient human being knows this. However, the law says otherwise. We must deny the corporate state that victory by refusing to capitulate.

The struggle for community rights, egalitarianism, and social, economic, and environmental justice must occur outside of the system that creates inequality and fosters wanton destruction of the commons. Countless species of plants and animals that provide essential ecological services are being eliminated to create space for strip malls, gated communities, gambling casinos and golf courses. As a result, ecological and economic catastrophe loom. We are facing global famine in an anthropocentric over-heated world.

Globally, wealthy multinational corporations are gorging themselves on the biological and mineral wealth of the commons. What could be more absurd or unethical?

The brainchild of Adam Smith, capitalism, which replaced feudalism during the French Revolution, is founded upon demonstrably false premises, many of which were unknown in Smith’s time. Nevertheless, classically trained economists assert that capitalism is a primal force of nature rather than the defective human construct that it is. Modern capitalism has produced pathological symptoms and endorsed an ethos that is antithetical to life and to liberty. It is killing the world and foreclosing evolutionary possibilities.

Indeed, ethical considerations aside, and speaking purely from a biological perspective, one may emphatically state that modern capitalism is an aggressive cancer that is devouring its host. But most of us are in denial.

People like me are asked not to utter the “C” word in public spaces. It might offend the well-intentioned believers. Whenever this occurs I am reminded of Thoreau, who uttered, “Any truth is better than make believe.” . One has an ethical obligation to state what one knows succinctly and clearly.

It is not in dispute that the ideology of constant expansion on a finite planet is contradicted by inviolable ecological dictums — among them, carrying capacity, ecological overshoot, and die-off. But classical economists act as if these laws do not apply, or they are mysteriously overridden by the irrational exuberance of capitalism.

In reality, every political economy is underlain by ecology and by living, evolving, biological systems. Ecology is the only economy that really matters.

By possessing even a modest degree of ecological literacy, one can make some revealing predictions with mathematical certainty. For example, the continuation of capitalism as the primary political economy can have one of two possible outcomes: the virtual destruction of the biosphere, meaning the death of the host organism, or the abolition of the capitalist system.

What would a post-capitalism world look like and how might it work?

Global capitalism, with its dependence on the availability of cheap fossil fuels and petrochemicals for food production, must give way to small-scale local economies and organic agriculture. Food must be locally grown and, as far as possible, other necessities locally produced. The age of cheap fossil fuels is ending. Industrialized man must bravely confront his addictions and embrace sobriety or he will self-destruct.

It is said that nature bats last. Humans do best when they emulate natural systems that have evolved over eons of time.

A moneyless economy based upon need must supplant the current profit-driven system of exploitation. Accordingly, goods and services may then be exchanged without the conduit of markets. These exchanges would be of equal value and thus inherently fair.

The classic business models will be replaced by worker-owned and worker-operated cooperatives. In this arrangement, workers – not a board of directors – make all of the business decisions. They share the risks and benefits and distribute the surpluses of production, while significantly reducing the work day and the work week. A portion of the surpluses of production is allocated to the betterment of the community and to the protection of the commons.

New economic models must be predicated upon ecological principles or they will fail. Existing alternatives to capitalism, such as Spain’s Mondragon Worker Cooperative, must be critically analyzed and evaluated as a model that could, with modifications, be implemented elsewhere.

There is no better teacher than evolution and natural selection. History confirms that the most revolutionary ideas are occasionally the oldest. For instance, anthropological studies indicate that early Homo sapiens evolved by implementing egalitarian principles into their tribal clans. People and the cultures they create must either evolve or perish.

The egalitarian societies of the future will look radically different from the capitalism of today. Political campaigns and elections will recede into history and quickly forgotten. Evolved societies do not need leaders or elected officials.

Every member of an egalitarian community is a leader. Power flows in a circular form rather than a linear, top-down hierarchy. It is derived directly from the people. There will be no social or economic stratification. No one shall have privileges or rights that are denied to others. Every member of the community must be equally empowered and equally valued. All people will have equal access to opportunity.

Health care and higher education, like pure water and clean air, will be regarded as a right of birth and provided without cost.

Direct action will replace voting in political elections. Rather than consent to be governed, sovereign people can create the world they want to live in. In communities where people are empowered and where they have an equal stake, they will want to participate. Everyone brings something to the table. Everyone contributes and all of society benefits.

Communities will become as interconnected and interdependent as ecological systems. But each will remain autonomous within the larger matrix of nature. States and nations as we know them may eventually recede into history and disappear.

Rather than the callous competition and exploitation nurtured by capitalism, communities can be organized around the principle of cooperation and social need. As in healthy ecosystems, the welfare of the individual is dependent upon the well-being of the community — and vice versa. No one will be left behind. All of us shall rise together.

All living organisms share a common origin and a common destiny. Ecology and economy must merge into an integrated natural system suited to long-term survival in a world already ravaged by industrialized man. Ecological and social healing must be part of the process of building sustainable communities.

The transition from capitalism to cooperation will be neither smooth nor easy. There will be many false starts. At first, there will be fierce resistance to revolutionary change. People cling to the familiar and the comfortable, to what they know, even when the dominant paradigm and popular culture does them harm.

The first tentative steps of a journey are often the most difficult. There are no clear blueprints to follow. There will be trepidation and uncertainty. But we must commit to beginning. The alternative is oblivion. But if we embark on the voyage the survival of the species, and a new age of enlightenment will be possible.

Have Israel’s “Inner Circles” Discussed Assassinating President Obama?

by Alan Hart / January 21st, 2012

One man who apparently thinks the answer is “Yes” is Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times. (By the time this article of mine is posted will he be the former owner and publisher?)

In his weekly newspaper Adler listed three options for Israel “to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons”. (Never mind that, unlike Israel, Iran does not possess nuclear weapons and that the latest assessment of Israel’s intelligence community – an usually honest assessment – is that Iran has not yet taken a decision to go nuclear for weapons).

Option 1 according to what Adler wrote “is to launch a pre-emptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Option 2 “is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Option 3 “is to give the go-ahead for US-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

To make sure his readers got the message, Adler added this:

“Yes, you read ‘three correctly’. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If you have thought of this Tom-Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”

Adler has since apologized for what he wrote. “I very much regret it,” he told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

That was not enough to prevent an avalanche of American Jewish condemnation of him and his article.

The American Jewish Committee in Atlanta declared that his proposals were “shocking beyond belief.” Dov Wilker, director of AJC Atlanta said: “While we acknowledge Mr. Adler’s apology, we are flabbergasted that he could ever say such a thing in the first place. How could he even conceive of such a twisted idea? He surely owes immediate apologies to President Obama, as well as to the State of Israel and his readership, the Atlanta Jewish community.”

But the biggest blast of condemnation came from Abe Foxman who, as National Director of the so-called Anti-Defamation League, leads the Zionist campaign to smear all who criticise Israel as anti-Semites. He said:

There is absolutely no excuse, no justification, no rationalization for this kind of rhetoric. It doesn’t even belong in fiction. These are irresponsible and extremist words. It is outrageous and beyond the pale. An apology cannot possibly repair the damage. Irresponsible rhetoric metastasizes into more dangerous rhetoric. The ideas expressed in Mr. Adler’s column reflect some of the extremist rhetoric that unfortunately exists – even in some segments of our community – that maliciously labels President Obama as an ‘enemy of the Jewish people.’ Mr. Adler’s lack of judgment as a publisher, editor and columnist raises serious questions as to whether he’s fit to run a newspaper.

I have two thoughts to offer Mr. Foxman.

The first is that what is happening in America on the Republican side of the fence has about it the smell of what happened in Israel in the countdown to the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a Zionist fanatic. What do I mean?

There is today general agreement, even in Israel I think, that Rabin’s assassin was driven at least in part by an atmosphere of hatred for Rabin that was created by his political enemies led by Netanyahu. With the exception of Ron Paul, the Republicans who want to be president are creating an atmosphere of contempt for, if not hatred of, Obama on the grounds that he is “too hard on Israel (what a joke!) and not tough enough with its enemies.” By obvious implication the Obama of Republican campaign rhetoric is, or could be, a threat to Israel’s existence.

The second thought I have to offer Mr. Foxman is this. The answer to Wilker’s question of how Adler “could conceive such a twisted idea” is simple. He is brainwashed by Zionist propaganda.

As for my headline question, the answer is another question.

Who knows?

http://www.nationofchange.org/kucinich-announces-game-changing-constitutional-amendment-publicly-finance-federal-elections-1327069

"Occupy the Courts" Protests Hit Supreme Court and Federal Courthouses Nationwide

The “occupy” movement took its campaign against corporate domination to the federal judiciary on Friday, storming the U.S. Supreme Court building and demonstrating at other federal courthouses nationwide to protest the high court’s 2010 “Citizens United” decision.

“Corporations are not persons, and money is not political speech!”
proclaimed “Occupy the Courts” leader David Cobb in front of several hundred people at a grassy area on U.S. Capitol grounds across the street from the Supreme Court.

Demonstrators, some of them from the Occupy Wall Street encampments in Washington, later moved across the street to the Court, where they pushed through a police barricade and ran up the Court’s steps almost to the columns that guard the bronze front doors. Court police allowed the demonstrators to advance, even though federal law prohibits demonstrations on Court grounds. Finally, an hour after the protesters entered onto Court property, police began making arrests and ordering remaining demonstrators down the steps. Late Friday afternoon, a Court spokeswoman said a dozen people had been arrested.

The protests marked the two-year anniversary Saturday of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down restrictions on independent expenditures by corporation and unions in election campaigns. Critics say the ruling has injected millions of dollars into campaigns, often in the form of attack advertising funded by independent “Super-PACs” that cannot be directly traced or imputed to candidates.

Several leaders of the protest Friday said coverage of the Super-PACs and their impact on the Republican presidential primaries has helped galvanize opposition. “We are seeing how this disgusting decision is corrupting our system,” said Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, a longtime D.C. activist who helped organize Friday’s protests. “And we ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait until the races get underway, and this will be influencing congressional races, everything.” Asked why she was demonstrating at the Court, she said, “This is the scene of the crime.”

Some of the protesters are hoping to build on Friday’s actions and push for a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United by stating that money is not speech and corporations are not persons under the law. Asked if a constitutional amendment is a realistic goal, Joan Stallard, a demonstrator from D.C., said, “The constitution has been amended 27 times, and we can do it again.” She said more and more of the public is beginning to understand “the power of corporations in our political system” and will be receptive to a constitutional chance.

The demonstration at the high court began with some light theater – black-robed “justices” dancing and singing.

In Boston, protests included speeches and music by a fife and drum team dressed in Revolutionary-era clothing. An “auctioneer” dressed in top hat and tails sold rights such as free speech and freedom of the press to the highest bidders, who were corporations represented by people dressed in boxes with the names of companies. About 150 people braved 29-degree weather to participate in the Boston protest behind the John J. Moakley U.S. Courthouse. One woman pushed a toddler in a stroller and a sign attached that said, “no corporation ever gave me a hug.”

Roughly 100 people chanted slogans outside the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. And in West Palm Beach, Fla., according to a Palm Beach Post report, approximately 40 people protested at the federal courthouse, with one stating, “I don’t want corporations to buy the presidency.” Demonstrators also gathered in Portland, Ore. and Detroit. In Chicago, 50 demonstrators came out in driving snow, with one holding a sign that said, “Citizens United against Citizens United.”

In New York City, where the “Occupy” protests began, demonstrators moved the location of their anti-court protest to Foley Square, after a federal judge on Thursday nixed their preferred location outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan courthouse. Judge Lewis Kaplan said the General Services Administration had properly denied the group’s application for a permit, because the location the demonstrators sought was not a designated public forum.

The World War on Democracy

By John Pilger

That the most numerous victims of terrorism - western terrorism - are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30303.htm

SAS On Ground During Libya "Crisis"

By BBC

Newsnight has learned that British soldiers were on the ground in Libya, alongside the anti-Gaddafi forces.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30302.htm

Who Wants War With Iran?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Netanyahu is desperate to have the United States launch air and missile strikes to stop Tehran from becoming the world's ninth nuclear power. And he is echoed not only by U.S. neocons, but GOP candidates save Ron Paul.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30306.htm

The Confrontation with Iran: A Covert War

By Akbar E. Torbat

The purpose of the pressures on Iran is to change its leaders to those who will take orders from Washington. In other words, the US plans to make a client Islamic regime out of the existing "moderate clerics"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30305.htm

Did The Republican Party Formally Abandon The Two-State Solution?

By Ali Gharib

The Republican National Committee (RNC), at their winter meeting in New Orleans, unanimously adopted a resolution that appears to support a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30311.htm

The CIA's Cassandras

By Gabriel Kolko

Paying people to whom one pays scant attention, is merely an overhead charge of the essential hypocrisy which is an integral part of American life and a dimension of its ethos.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30310.htm

Ecology and the Pathology of Capitalism

By Charles Sullivan

Contrary to everything we have been taught, there is no actual United States of America. The U.S. is an occupied territory that could more accurately be described as the Corporate States of America.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30304.htm

Beating Up on Chavez

By Stephen Lendman

The business of America is war and grand theft. People are increasingly on their own sink or swim. Duopoly power governs. Rigged elections defile democratic governance. Banker bailouts, imperial wars, policies favoring wealth and power, and repressive police state laws define their agenda.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30309.htm

"We the People," not "We the Corporation."

By Ralph Nader

This year, Congress will spend well over $3 billion on its own expenses to do nothing of significance other than shift more debt to individual taxpayers by depleting the social security payroll tax by over $100 billion so both parties can say they enacted a tax cut!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30308.htm

Working and Poor in the USA

By Bill Quigley

Millions of people in the US work and are still poor. Here are eight points that show why the US needs to dedicate itself to making work pay.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30307.htm

STOP SOPA: …CONTINUE THE PRESSURE!

2012-01-18T18:05:00.000-08:00

STOP SOPA: …CONTINUE THE PRESSURE!

SOPA, PIPA: What you need to know
CBS News
"It's not a battle of left versus right," said progressive activist Adam Green, ... House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who sponsored ...

SOPA Blackout: Wikipedia, Google, Wired Protest 'Internet Censorship'
ABC News
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and first ..... ruin the internet and our right of free speech, its stupid, and pointless. .

Protest Exposes Silicon Valley-Hollywood Rivalry
NPR
"It has nothing to do with stolen songs or movies," said Justin Ruben, executive director ofMoveOn.org, which is participating in the blackout. Ruben says tougher legislation — even directed overseas — could make domestic cultural commentators more ...See all stories on this topic »

Congress wants to censor you
The Hill (blog)
By Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn.org - 01/18/12 07:05 AM ET China has long been a political target for members of Congress -- whether they criticize their government's trade policies, or the way they regulate free speech. ...See all stories on this topic »

What is SOPA? Possible Consequences that Could Ruin the Internet
International Business Times
By Kukil Bora: Subscribe to Kukil's RSS feed As an act of protest against a pair of legislations - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) - more than a dozen Web sites, including Wikipedia, Moveon.org, Craigslist, Reddit, ...See all stories on this topic »

Blackout Strike: Anonymous Calls for Street Protests; Lawmakers Drop Support of SOPA and PIPA
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "The decentralized hacktivist network Anonymous has issued a press release calling for physical street protest against the [Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA)] bills, recommending that protesters converge at freeways, malls, libraries and schools. 'IF YOUR GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN THE INTERNET ... SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT,' the release declares.... The Internet has not crumbled as a result of the blackout strike, but support for both bills in Congress has." Read the Article

What Is SOPA? Here Are Five Things You Need to Know
Jorge Rivas, ColorLines: "Media justice advocates say the [Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)] bill is anathema to basic functioning of the Internet ... SOPA would work as the online world's stingy gatekeeper, giving government the power to shutdown websites altogether. Today, hundreds of websites are joining in a day of action to SOPA's threat to freedom of expression on the Internet ... joining in what's been called an 'Internet strike,' by closing their websites from 8 am to 8 pm eastern time." Read the Article

Internet Blackout Today: The Fight for a Free and Open Web
Isaiah J. Poole, Campaign for America's Future: "Because our fight for a people-powered democracy ... depends on a free and open Internet ... many websites ... are protesting two bills pending in Congress that are direct and profound threats to that freedom. Many of these websites ... have decided to 'go dark' today to symbolize what could happen if the draconian measures in these bills are put into effect." Read the Article

Websites Flex Political Power by Going Dark
The Bay Citizen
Well-known Bay Area-based organizations like the Internet Archive, Wikipedia, BoingBoing,MoveOn.org and O'Reilly Media, took part in the boycott, which they say could bring significant losses in revenue, contributions or traffic — or all three. ...See all stories on this topic »

Websites going dark in protest of proposed legislation
USA TODAY
Wikipedia, Moveon.org, Craigslist, user-submitted news site Reddit, the blog Boing Boing and the Cheezburger network of comedy sites plan to participate in a blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills. ...See all stories on this topic »

Today Could Be The Day We Save The Free Internet.

The US Congress was poised to pass a law allowing officials to censor access to any website around the world. But after we delivered our 1.25 million strong petition to the White House, it came out against the bill and with public pressure at a boiling point even some bill backers are switching sides. Now, the Wikipedia - led blackout protest has rocketed the public campaign to the top of the news.

We are turning the tide. But the dark forces of censorship are trying to revive the bill right now. Let’s bury it for good today. Click to sign this emergency petition to save the Internet now and if you've signed already, to email, call, Facebook, and tweet Congressional and corporate targets. Then send this to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet_action_center_b/?vl

The bill would make the US one of the worst Internet censors in the world -- joining the ranks of countries like China and Iran. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) would allow the US government to block any of us from accessing sites like YouTube, Google, or Facebook.

We got the White House to switch sides and now our global campaign and the growing public pressure is forcing Congress to abandon the bill. Last weekend, Senator Cardin, who cosponsored the legislation, announced he will vote against it! Then six prominent Republicans penned a letter requesting that the bill be shelved. Now the lower house vote is reportedly on ice.

Just days ago we were told it was impossible to stop the corporate censorship cabal, but now this is at a tipping point and amazingly we could win! Let’s stop US censorship today. Sign this emergency petition to save the internet now and forward it to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet_action_center_b/?vl

This US legislation could infringe on all of our freedoms. But if we win, we will show that when people unite with one voice from all over the world we can stop the abuse of power anywhere. We have brought this bill back from the brink. Now, if we amplify our voices today, we can put an end to the most powerful Internet censorship threat that the world has ever seen.

White House statement:
https://secure.avaaz.org/whitehouse_internet_statement

Wikipedia joins web blackout in SOPA protest (BBC):
http://www.avaaz.org/bbc_sopa_wikipedia

American Censorship's fact sheet on SOPA:
http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html

Everything you need to know about Congress's online piracy bills in one post (Washington Post):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-congresss-online-piracy-bills-in-one-post/2011/12/16/gIQAz4ggyO_blog.html

SOPA and PIPA sponsors caving in to opposition (Talking Points Memo):
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/sopa-and-pipa-sponsors-caving-into-opposition.php

White House will not support SOPA, PIPA (Huffington Post):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/14/white-house-sopa-pipa_n_1206347.html

Controversial online piracy bill ‘shelved’ until consensus is found (The Hill):
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/204167-sopa-shelved-until-consensus-is-found

Today has been amazing, but there's one thing that could completely stop SOPA and PIPA in their tracks:

President Obama has expressed concerns about the bills, but hasn't pledged to veto them.

Please click here to urge President Obama to promise to veto SOPA and PIPA.

There's enough opposition to these bills now that even if they pass, the won't be able to overcome a veto.

A promise to veto the bills will force opponents into a full retreat, and be the perfect way to cap off this week's protests.

We'd be able to declare a victory for the Net, free speech, and democracy.

Please click here to urge President Obama to promise to veto SOPA and PIPA.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/online-protest-over-sopa-helps

Today, major tech advocates are dimming their websites in protest over a proposed new law that would result in our government blocking access to websites that contain copyright infringing material. And they’re right to be concerned.

There are two bills pending before Congress — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate — that would not only impact unlawful infringing content, but also a wealth of completely legal content that has nothing to do with online piracy.

We opposed SOPA in its original form mostly because the impact on non-infringing content would violate the First Amendment right to free speech of the owners and authors of that content, as well as the rights of Internet users to access that content. In fact, we were asked to present our views at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee scheduled for today and submitted our testimony in preparation for that hearing. But the hearing was postponed after SOPA’s proponents promised to significantly change the bill and after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor proposed not to bring any bill to the floor for a vote unless it represented a true consensus of those who support and those who oppose SOPA.

Because of those developments over the weekend — and because the White House also issued a statement opposing any bill that would impact First Amendment-protected online content — we are redoubling our efforts to find the compromise that will not only inhibit online infringement of original works of art, but also will truly eliminate online access restrictions to lawful non-infringing content.

So even though we are not dimming our website, we stand with those who are and urge those concerned about open access to the Internet to continue tocontact their Members of Congress to voice their opposition to SOPA. There is way to help reduce online infringement without violating the First Amendment rights of online content producers and their readers and users. We’re counting on our elected officials in Congress to do the hard work to figure it out.

Learn more about free speech: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

By Glenn Greenwald :Chris Dodd's paid SOPA crusading

In his SOPA advocacy, Dodd has resorted to holding up Chinese censorship as the desired model, mouthing the slogans of despots, and even outright lying. Like virtually all extremist, oppressive bills backed by large industry, SOPA and PIPA have full bipartisan support; among its co-sponsors are Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and GOP Rep. Lamar Smith, with many Senators from both parties in support and Harry Reid pushing it.

By Rob Kall :Stop Internet Censorship. Oppose SOPA and PIPA

Opednews.com stands with Google, Wikipedia, and countless other Internet activists protesting Internet censorship today. The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and Protect-IP Act (PIPA) threaten the many glorious freedoms of the web and the communities that have risen from it--including our own.

In SOPA, PIPA Protest, Wikipedia to Black Out Site

You might want to get your Encyclopedia Britannica set out of storage: Wikipedia will go dark Wednesday, joining a growing number of popular websites staging an online revolt against two anti-piracy bills. Tony Romm, Politico

House Shelves SOPA, but Blackout Protests Continue

Protests against the proposed anti-piracy bill SOPA, combined with a recent statement from the Obama administration criticizing the legislation, seem to have had some effect. According to reports, the bill has been put on hold indefinitely, until some kind of "consensus" can be reached. Is this a victory? Not quite. This move could be just a delaying tactic, and note that an equally unfavorable bill called PIPA is going ahead in the Senate. As a result, many of those planning to stage Web "blackouts" in protest of the legislation,including Wikipedia, are continuing with their efforts. Mathew Ingram, GigaOM

White House Blasts Internet Blacklisting Bills

The Obama administration said that it would not support legislation mandating changes to Internet infrastructure to fight online copyright and trademark infringement. David Kravets, Wired

Bills to Stop Web Piracy Invite a Protracted Battle

When the Obama administration announced its opposition to major elements of two congressional bills intended to curtail copyright violations on the Internet, the technology industry, which has been loudly fighting the proposed legislation, could declare victory. But few people in Silicon Valley or Hollywood consider the battle over. Jenna Wortham and Somini Sengupta, New York Times

Web Piracy Bill Faces Fiercer Fight

Supporters of controversial anti-piracy legislation face a struggle to regain momentum after the White House sided with irate Internet companies and users over the weekend and complained that the proposal could hurt innocent companies and undermine cybersecurity. Amy Schatz, Wall Street Journal

Consensus Needed on Web Piracy

The Senate plans to take up anti-piracy legislation soon, despite the lack of consensus about how to rein in pirate websites without censoring legitimate speech or stifling innovation. That would be a mistake. Los Angeles Times

SOPA Threatens American Innovation

Internet theft is a problem. Stealing another person's ideas, creations and inventions deprives authors, artists and entrepreneurs of proper credit and compensation. That leaves them with little incentive to continue their contributions. This is terrible for innovation, economic growth and prosperity. So is the Stop Online Piracy Act. Elmira Bayrasli, Forbes

Internet Access for All: Three Ways the FCC is Trying to Close the Digital Divide

The reality is that the digital divide still exists. Only about 60 percent of users in America have access to home-based broadband connections, and many low-income, black and Latino households lack access. Here are a few of the FCC's efforts to deal with the digital divide -- the good and the bad of each. Jamilah King, AlterNet

Josh Levy
Internet Campaign Director
Free Press
SavetheInternet.com

1. “Debating SOPA,” Up with Chris Hayes, Jan. 15, 2011: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8175?akid=3206.8761640.WOCkdN&t=3

2. Meet the Press, Jan. 15, 2011: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8176?akid=3206.8761640.WOCkdN&t=5

3. Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra and Howard Schmidt, “Combating Online Privacy While Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet”: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8177?akid=3206.8761640.WOCkdN&t=7

4. “Web Goes on Strike!: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8178?akid=3206.8761640.WOCkdN&t=9

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2012/01/17/oath-keepers-joins-the-fight-against-sopa-blackout-of-oathkeepers-org-jan-18/

On January 18th, 2012, from 8am to 8pm Eastern, the Oath Keepers website will go dark to protest the looming SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate) Bills. We are joining with many other websites across the internet who are also going dark in protest.

On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill – PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House – to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity.

Our First Amendment protected right of free speech is now directly under assault by a berserk U.S. Congress and White House. Our voluntary black-out is being done in conjunction with countless other websites to help the public understand the serious dangers in SOPA and related bills awaiting passage in Congress right now.

SOPA and PIPA are to the First Amendment what the NDAA military detention and trial provisions are to the Fourth, Fifth, And Sixth Amendments – allowing for the “black bagging” and “disappearing” of websites on a mere accusation alone. If such laws are enacted, the following may as well be posted by the government when they shut sites down:

“NOTICE: THIS SITE HAS BEEN DECLARED AN UNLAWFUL BELLIGERENT SITE BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT OR ONE OF ITS CORPORATE PARTNERS. THIS SITE HAS BEEN BLACK BAGGED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY, AND IS NOW INTERNED IN GITMO.

Your attempting to access and associate with this site has been noted, your IP address has been recorded, and you too are now being evaluated as a possible candidate for unlawful belligerent designation. Have a nice day.”

That is the kind of Orwellian world the internet will have become, under SOPA/PIPA or other such nonsense.

The First Amendment is first for a reason.

Please join me in adding your name to this petition regarding the freedom to post information on the internet. It seems that there is a law being considered today regarding the free exchange of information on the internet. While it seems that this is a fundamental right, perhaps we shouldn’t assume that this right will be protected without making our voices heard.

Will you sign our pledge to work against candidates who support Internet censorship? Just click here.

CNN’s Dana Loesch: Today’s Ugliest American.

2012-01-13T18:34:00.000-08:00

CNN’s Dana Loesch: Today’s Ugliest American.

CNN Contributor On Marines Urinating On Dead Bodies: "Supposed To Be A Scandal"? "I'd Drop Trou And Do It Too" from Media Matters on Vimeo.

CNN contributor Dana Loesch is under fire for comments she made on her radio show dismissing outrage over video that appears to show members of the United States Marine Corps urinating on dead bodies that early reports have identified as Afghans, saying that she would "drop trou and do it, too." Loesch's comments are so extreme, they put her out on a fringe where even Rush Limbaugh won't go.

Thursday night, Loesch complained that "we have a bunch of progressives that are talking smack about our military because there were Marines caught urinating on corpses -- Taliban corpses." She went on to say:

Can someone explain to me if there's supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who was -- as part of an organization murdered over 3,000 Americans? I'd drop trou and do it, too. That's me, though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say?

Loesch's comments have been widely rejected, leading to her responding that she was "defending" the Marines from "overly-dramatic hysteria."

Her comments put the talk radio host out on the fringe where even Rush Limbaugh won't go. Dana Loesch - a CNN contributor - responded to the video by saying she would "drop trou and do it, too." Limbaugh -- RUSH LIMBAUGH -- responded to the video by saying there is "no defense of this":

Well, there's a video, nobody knows how old it is, of some U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of Taliban combatants in Afghanistan. Peed on them. And of course it's Marines. It violated the rules. There's no defense of this. The overreaction of this is nuts, but still it happened.

Dana Loesch's comments, too extreme for Rush Limbaugh, put her out on the fringe where CNN should never go.

Stop the Great Firewall of America: When Can the President Assassinate Americans? And More…

2012-01-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Stop the Great Firewall of America: When Can the President Assassinate Americans? And More…

Stop the Great Firewall of America

…Compliance with the Stop Online Piracy Act would require huge overhead spending by Internet companies for staff and technologies dedicated to monitoring users and censoring any infringing material from being posted or transmitted. This in turn would create daunting financial burdens and legal risks for start-up companies, making it much harder for brilliant young entrepreneurs with limited resources to create small and innovative Internet companies that empower citizens and change the world.

Adding to the threat to free speech, recent academic research on global Internet censorship has found that in countries where heavy legal liability is imposed on companies, employees tasked with day-to-day censorship jobs have a strong incentive to play it safe and over-censor — even in the case of content whose legality might stand a good chance of holding up in a court of law. Why invite legal hassle when you can just hit “delete”?

The potential for abuse of power through digital networks — upon which we as citizens now depend for nearly everything, including our politics — is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age. We live in a time of tremendous political polarization. Public trust in both government and corporations is low, and deservedly so. This is no time for politicians and industry lobbyists in Washington to be devising new Internet censorship mechanisms, adding new opportunities for abuse of corporate and government power over online speech. While American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet…

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:

The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online

By invoking the acronym SOPA right at the get-go, I may be daring many of you to check the next column over for something a little less chewy. After all, SOPA, which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, sounds like a piece of arcane Internet government regulation — legislation that entertainment companies desperately care about and that leaves Web nation and free-speech crusaders frothing at the mouth. The rest of us? What were we talking about again?

Stay with me here.

SOPA deals with technical digital issues that may seem to be a sideshow but could become crucial to American media and technology businesses and the people who consume their products. The legislation is the rare broadly bipartisan piece of apple pie. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to resume hearings on it this month and all indications are that it will approve the measure, setting up a vote in the full chamber. The Senate is also expected to vote on its own version of the bill when it returns from the holiday break.

Virtually every traditional media company in the United States loudly and enthusiastically supports SOPA, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for the rest of us. The open consumer Web has been a motor of American innovation and the attempt to curtail some of its excesses could throw sand in the works of a big machine on which we have all come to rely.

Rather than launch into a long-winded argument about why the legislation is a bad idea — it is, as currently written — I thought it might be worthwhile to boil SOPA down into a series of questions.

A NONEXISTENT PROBLEM?

Hardly. Regardless of what Web evangelists tell you, SOPA is an effort to get at the very real problem of rogue Web sites — most operating from overseas — offering illicit downloads of movies, music and more. The Motion Picture Association of America cites figures saying that piracy costs the United States $58 billion annually.

Mark Elliot, an executive from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a letter to The New York Times that such piracy threatened 19 million American jobs. Those figures surely include some politically motivated hyperbole, but anybody who has spent time around a twentysomething consumer knows that piracy is a thorny fact of life for content companies.

In an effort to stanch the flow, on Oct. 26 Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, introduced the legislation that has come to be known as SOPA. The Senate version,called the Protect IP Act, is seen by tech companies as less onerous because it targets domain name providers and ad networks and not Internet service providers. Both bills seek to create remedies to pirated content because most of the foreign-based sites operate outside of the United States’ legal system.

WOULD IT FIX THE PROBLEM?

Probably not, and even if it made some progress toward reining in rogue sites, the collateral damage would be significant. Under the terms of each proposed bill, the federal Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, could seek a court order against a Web site that illegally hosts copyrighted content and then wall off the site permanently.

Under the House version, private companies would be allowed to sue Internet service providers for hosting content that they say infringes on copyright. That represents a very big change in the current law as codified in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants immunity to Web sites as long as they act in good faith to take down infringing content upon notification.

WHY ALL THE ALARM?

The bill has exposed a growing fracture between technology and entertainment companies. Digitally oriented companies see SOPA as dangerous and potentially destructive to the open Web and a step toward the kind of intrusive Internet regulation that has made China a global villain to citizens of the Web.

Entertainment companies think that technology companies are aiding and abetting thieves on a broad scale, but the legislation is alarming in its reach, potentially creating a blacklist of sites and taking aim at others for unknowingly hosting a small fraction of copyrighted material. In a joint letter to Congress, Google, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Yahoo, eBay and many other companies made it clear that they perceived a broader threat in the effort to thwart pirate sites.

“We support the bills’ stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ Web sites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting,” the letter read, which was published in a full page ad in The Times.

“Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of Web sites.”

Laurence H. Tribe, the noted First Amendment lawyer, said in an open letter on the Web that SOPA would “undermine the openness and free exchange of information at the heart of the Internet. And it would violate the First Amendment.”

You can see why big Internet guys are upset by SOPA. Maybe you and I should be, too.

WHY THE POLITICAL SUPPORT?

Various amendments intended to tone down SOPA or limit its damage were voted down by large majorities in the House Judiciary Committee in mid-December, an indication that the indignation of various constituencies on the Web is having little impact.

That’s partly because entertainment companies have deep and long-lasting relationships inside the Beltway. Maplight, a site that researches the influence of money in politics, reported that the 32 sponsors of the legislation received four times as much in contributions from the entertainment industry as they did from software and Internet companies.

There is also a cultural divide at work, according to Yancey Strickler, one of the founders of Kickstarter, a Web site that helps raise funds for creative projects, and a critic of SOPA.

“The schism between content creators and platforms like Kickstarter, Tumblr and YouTube is generational,” he wrote in an e-mail. “It’s people who grew up on the Web versus people who still don’t use it. In Washington, they simply don’t see the way that the Web has completely reconfigured society across classes, education and race. The Internet isn’t real to them yet.”

The debate has highlighted how little Congress knows about the Internet they are proposing to re-tool. In a piece often cited on the Web, the computer culture journalist Joshua Kopstein watched the debate in Congress in which members bragged about their online ignorance, and he wrote an open letter on the technology Web site Motherboard titled, “Dear Congress, It’s No Longer O.K. to Not Know How the Internet Works.”

Whether they know what they are doing or not, lawmakers seem intent on moving forward.

Congressional supporters of piracy legislation have been in a big hurry because the Web is starting to come alive with opposition — nearly 90,000 Tumblr users have phoned members of Congress and more than a million people have signed an online petition protesting the legislation.

Last week, in a much talked about blog post, Declan McCullagh of CNet speculated that even though big Web companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook are outgunned in terms of political connections, they have the capability to turn their sites into billboards denouncing SOPA and utilizing their close, constant relationship with consumers.

I like my movies (and music and television) as much as the next couch potato, probably more. And I wouldn’t steal content for any reason, in part because I make a living generating a fair amount of it. But it’s worth remembering that the film industry initially opposed the video cassette recorder and the introduction of DVDs, platforms that became very lucrative businesses for them and remarkable conveniences for the rest of us.

Given both Congress’s and the entertainment industry’s historically wobbly grasp of technology, I don’t think they should be the ones re-engineering the Internet. The rest of us might have to just hold our noses and learn enough about SOPA to school them in why it’s a bad idea.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter.com/carr2n

http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/31/sopa-whos-in-and-whos-out/

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/anonymous-targets-sony-over-sopa-nintendo-quietly-withdraws-support-20111230/

Boycott Forces GoDaddy to Drop Its Support for SOPA

Under intense pressure from an Internet-wide boycott, domain registrar GoDaddy has given the open Internet an early Christmas present: It's dropping its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica

Sony and Nintendo drop SOPA support amid Anonymous threats

Google, Facebook and more mull anti-SOPA blackout

Google, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal and other big-name sites are contemplating a complete, coordinated blackout in an attempt to call users to arms over SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act. “There have been some serious discussions about that” Markham Erickson, head of the NetCoalition group of anti-SOPA organizations told CNET, with the so-called ‘nuclear option’ also being considered by Wikipedia and others.

When Can the President Assassinate Americans?

By Daniel McCarthy

January 03, 2011 "American Conservative" -- The New York Times puts this question to the GOP contenders. Sophistry ensues. “Under what circumstances, if any, would the Constitution permit the president to authorize the targeted killing of a United States citizen who has not been sentenced to death by a court,” the paper asks. Gingrich, Huntsman, Perry, and Romney take the same line: “Under wartime circumstances” says Newt; “If such an individual is engaged on a battlefield,” says Huntsman; “Due process permits the use of deadly force against all enemy combatants, including citizens,” Romney avers; and “The President would be so authorized … where a citizen has joined or is associated with a nation or group engaged in hostilities against the United States” according to Perry. Only Ron Paul describes the conditions in which extrajudicial targeted killing of Americans is permitted as “none.”

The others engage in Orwellian obfuscation, claiming that “battlefield” circumstances permit this — as if the situation the Times is asking about is one in which some American terrorist is shooting away at U.S. troops in combat or about to detonate a bomb on American soil. But that isn’t “targeted” killing. The practice Huntsman, Gingrich, Romney, and Perry — and President Obama — defend includes the assassination of Americans who are, in Perry’s words, only “associated with a nation or group engaged in hostilities.” In fact, the power claimed by these men goes far beyond that since, again, this is extrajudicial killing, in which there is no obligation for the executive to provide evidence to a judge or anyone else that the murdered man is guilty of what Uncle Sam accuses him of.

Stripped of the evasions, what they are saying is that you or anyone else can be killed if the president thinks — or claims to think — that you are “associated” with “a nation or group” that is engaged in hostilities with the United States. Janet Reno would approve. This doctrine would have saved her some crocodile tears over the slaughter of the Branch Davidians at Waco. Even the unarmed women and children there, after all, were “associated” with a group engaged in hostilities with the United States.

Needless to say, there are Americans who join extremist groups, but existing law-enforcement powers and military doctrines already permit killing them when they are actually engaged in acts of deadly violence. The Republicans’ invocations of a “battlefield” might sound reassuring, until you realize that the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, according to two of its supporters, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), designates even the U.S. itself as a battlefield. The whole world is one.

I have trouble taking these claims to more-than-royal power seriously; more precisely, I have trouble ascribing good faith to the intellectuals who try to justify an omnipotent presidency. But it’s a nominally free country, so let them have their say, in elections as well as op-ed pages and the corridors of our think tanks and universities. It seems to me, though, that we ought to hear from those who believe in a limited and law-bound executive as well.

Ron Paul shouldn’t be alone in this. The public needs to know what’s at stake here and just how few political leaders think there should be any restraints at all on the power of the president to kill.

Trial Begins for Guantanamo Protesters Arrested in House Gallery

Jury selection began this morning in a trial against protesters arrested inside the U.S. House of Representatives gallery this summer while demonstrating against funding for the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Politicususa.com Shills for Obama on Whether NDAA Military Detention Applies to American Citizens.

Ralph Lopez

Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing
December 27, 2011, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/under-obama-an-emerging-global-apparatus...

In the space of three years, the [Obama] administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents. No president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force. In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives. Although human rights advocates and others are increasingly critical of the drone program, the level of public debate remains muted. [One] reason for the lack of extensive debate is secrecy. The White House has refused to divulge details about the structure of the drone program or, with rare exceptions, who has been killed.

Note: Not that the US citizens killed were not given their constitutional rights for a fair trail before being assassinated. For lots more from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.

After Struggle on Detainees, Obama Signs Defense Bill
January 1, 2012, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military-spending-bill.html

President Obama, after objecting to provisions of a military spending bill that would have forced him to try terrorism suspects in military courts ... signed the bill on [New Year's Eve]. The White House had said that the legislation could lead to an improper military role in overseeing detention and court proceedings and could infringe on the president’s authority in dealing with terrorism suspects. But it said that Mr. Obama could interpret the statute in a way that would preserve his authority. The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because “doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.” He also said he would reject a “rigid across-the-board requirement” that suspects be tried in military courts rather than civilian courts. Congress dropped a provision in the House version of the bill that would have banned using civilian courts to prosecute those suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. It also dropped a new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda and its allies. Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, still oppose the law, in part because of its authorization of military detention camps overseas.

Note: This New York Times article amazingly fails to mention that civil liberties groups oppose this law primarily because it eliminates habeus corpus, Posse Comitatus and Bill of Rights protections, and enables the military to arrest and imprison American citizens on American soil and subject them to military tribunals without due judicial process. These protections are what Pres. Obama was referring to when he mentioned "our most important traditions and values as a nation." Is his statement that he will not use the new powers the law gives him sufficiently reassuring?

Occupy Wall Street Condemns the NDAA | The Dissenter
By Kevin Gosztola
Occupy Wall Street held a press conference on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law by President Barack Obama on New Year's.Firedoglake

ALEC - America's Secret Political Power
Olivia Ward, The Star: "As the coming federal election sucks all the oxygen out of America's political room, it's easy to ignore the power of the states, and the changes that are quietly taking place across the country independent of - and often hostile to - the federal government. But, for understanding grassroots America, ALEC, here in God's golf country, is a good place to start."
Read the Article

Super PACs, Occupy Iowa Protests and a Surging Rick Santorum: Iowa GOP Caucus Begins 2012 Race (Video)
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!: "Iowa is awash in millions of dollars of negative campaign ads funded by so-called Super PACs as voters head to their caucuses in the first real test of the 2012 election. 'If you want to see the future of politics in America, turn on the television in Iowa,' says John Nichols, correspondent for The Nation magazine."
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

John Pilger | First Signs of an Indian Spring
John Pilger, Truthout: "In Kashmir, a forgotten India barely reported abroad, a peaceful resistance as inspiring as Tahrir Square has arisen in the most militarized region on earth. As the victims of Partition, Muslim Kashmiris have known none of Nehru's noble legacies."
Read the Article

Seven Years After Sieges, Fallujah Struggles
Dahr Jamail, Al Jazeera: "Fallujah still bears the scars of war; skeletons continue to be pulled from the rubble of bombed buildings, and, worse, rates of birth defects and childhood malformations have skyrocketed. There is evidence of reconstruction, but shortages of electricity and clean water remain prevalent. The overall mood in the city is one of anger, hopelessness, and fear."
Read the Article

On the News With Thom Hartmann: Montana's Supreme Court Blocks Citizens United Decision From Applying to State Election Laws, and More
In today's On the News segment: The Occupy Wall Street movement celebrated the New Year by reoccupying Zuccotti Park, natural gas "franking" just caused an earthquake in Ohio, the Supreme Court of Montana blocked the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision from applying to state election laws, as many as 5,000 blackbirds fell out of the sky in a small town in Arkansas just as the calendar year turned over into 2012, and more.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

Robert Reich | The Roots of the Republican Party Crack-Up
Robert Reich, San Francisco Chronicle: "The underlying conflict lies deep in the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old.... It's no coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties."
Read the Article

As Big Bank Stocks Plunge, CEOs Continue to Reap Huge Salaries
Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress: "Wall Street Pit's Ron Haruni points out that as the banking industry's stocks plunged this year - with major megabanks like Bank of America facing uncertain fates - their executives have walked away with sky-high salaries."
Read the Article

New Graphic Novel Reveals the Orwellian Underworld of the Iranian Theocratic Regime
Rose Aguilar, Truthout: "Over the past few years, Amir, an Iranian human rights activist and documentary filmmaker living in the United States, struggled to tell anyone who would listen why three million people put their lives on the line by taking to the streets of Tehran on June 15, 2009, chanting, 'Where is my vote?'"
Read the Article

Panetta to Offer Strategy for Cutting Military Budget
Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, The New York Times News Service: "Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is set this week to reveal his strategy that will guide the Pentagon in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from its budget, and with it the Obama administration's vision of the military that the United States needs to meet 21st-century threats, according to senior officials."
Read the Article

Nineteen Million Jobs for US Workers
Robert Pollin, James Heintz, Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Political Economy Research Institute: "Amid the ongoing employment crisis in the US economy, US commercial banks and large corporations are sitting on huge hoards of cash and other liquid assets. The banks are carrying $1.6 trillion in cash in their accounts at the Federal Reserve while the corporations are carrying about $2 trillion in liquid assets. In combination, these holdings amount to about 23 percent of US GDP."
Read the Article

Paul Krugman | When Economics Gets Political
Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "These days, you constantly see articles that make it seem as if there was a great debate in the 1930s between the economists John Maynard Keynes and Mr. Hayek, and that this debate has continued through the generations."
Read the Article

Debacle! How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: "It was to be the war that would establish empire as an American fact. It would result in a thousand-year Pax Americana. It was to be 'mission accomplished' all the way. And then, of course, it wasn't. And then, almost nine dismal years later, it was over (sorta)."
Read the Article

The Last Thing Medicare Needs Is More Privatization
Richard Kirsch, New Deal 2.0: "The big hype in federal health care politics last week was the announcement of a joint proposal to mostly-privatize Medicare from Republican House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. But all the hubbub about bipartisanship won't mask the truth: the plan takes Medicare in the wrong direction, building on the program's failures and undercutting its most promising reforms."
Read the Article

Marketing And Science Clash In Gardasil Debate : A Cure in Need of a Disease : Merck… Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money

2011-12-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

Marketing And Science Clash In Gardasil Debate : A Cure in Need of a Disease : Merck… Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money

Marketing And Science Clash In Gardasil Debate

by Jared Yee | 18 Nov 2011 | 3 comments

tags: research, US, vaccination

Gardasil, Merck’s vaccine against the human papilloma virus, the most common sexually transmitted disease, is once again at the centre of political, moral, bioethical and economic controversy after last month’s recommendation by the Centres for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) that 11 and 12-year-old boys be vaccinated.

The CDC recommended in 2006 that that girls and young women between 11 to 26 should be vaccinated. Not all parents were happy. Some thought that protecting their daughters against HPV, the most common cause of cervical cancer, was common sense. Others thought that it would encourage promiscuity. The controversy infected Republican campaigns for the presidential nomination. Foes of Texas governor Rick Perry pointed out that he backed universal vaccination although it failed in the state legislature. Michele Bachman was ridiculed for asserting that Gardasil caused mental retardation.

The controversy is back on the boil. Although the main benefit is that vaccinated boys will be less likely to spread HPV to girls and thus promotes gender equity, it also is said to prevent oral and anal cancers associated with oral and anal sex. Parents are even less likely to support a vaccine which assumes that their sons will engage in homosexual activity.

This week science journalist Jeanne Lenzer criticised the vaccine in the on-line magazine Discover. Her complaint was economic, not moral. Merck is promising far more than its vaccine can deliver, she feels, and questions the real-world efficacy of the vaccine in preventing deaths from cervical cancer. “Whether Gardasil will reduce cervical cancer deaths in real-world conditions has simply never been answered. It might—but that would take a long-term study, and one that should be done before it’s widely promoted.”

Similarly, she contends, assertions that the vaccine prevents oral and anal cancers in men who have sex with men are weak. “On closer inspection, some of the numbers don’t just deflate, they evaporate,” she says. On the other hand, “in rare instances, some vaccines may trigger the potentially fatal and paralyzing condition Guillain-Barré.”

Given the risks, is a Gardasil campaign worthwhile? She quotes Dr. Diane Harper, who helped to develop the HPV vaccine. She told the Kansas City Star that the vaccine for boys is “pie in the sky…We’re short of health care dollars. Why should we spend it on that?”

This is a controversy which still has plenty of life in it: politics, vaccine phobias, cost controls, the evils of Big Pharma, the culture wars, sexual politics. Stay tuned!

~ Discover Magazine (blog), Nov 14; New York Times, Oct 25

Should Boys Be Given the HPV Vaccine? The Science Is Weaker than the Marketing

How Effective Is the HPV Vaccine at Preventing Cancer? A Closer Look…

Merck’s promotion of Gardasil, its vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV), has a complicated history. First there was the exuberant claim about its reputedly great effectiveness in preventing cervical cancer. Now comes the recommendation last month from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that all 11- and 12-year-old boys should be given the vaccine.

Of Science and Truthiness

The vaccine for boys is important, say advocates, because reducing HPV in boys will reduce transmission to girls and women—only 32 percent of whom have been getting the shots to date. Giving the shots to boys, they say, promotes gender equity. As a bonus, the vaccine may protect against oral and anal cancers in men who have sex with men.

Since a key part of the rationale for vaccinating boys is to protect girls, it’s worth a moment to examine the claims about reducing cervical cancer deaths. Merck won approval for Gardasil from the Food and Drug Administration in June 2006. On May 10, 2007, Merck published the results of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that claimed an astounding 98 percent efficacy in preventing changes in the cervix used as a marker for cervical cancer.

But that statistic begs closer examination.

To achieve the 98 percent efficacy claim, Merck excluded from analysis anyone who “violated” the study protocol. In other words, all real-world problems that arose were excluded from analysis. Problems like girls who refused to take a second or third shot after they became sick and (correctly or incorrectly) blamed the vaccine. Or doctors who incorrectly gave the vaccine to someone who shouldn’t have received it. While it’s worth knowing how effective the vaccine is when it’s used exactly as it should be, for a public-health decision, it’s not as relevant as its real-world effectiveness.

To Merck’s credit, they reported that when all women in the study were analyzed, the vaccine’s efficacy dropped to 44 percent. Still, 44 percent might be considered a smashing success when you’re talking about saving lives. Except for one thing: the numbers get worse. The 44 percent benefit included only those women with the two specific cancer-causing HPV strains found in the vaccine. But when the researchers looked at negative cervical changes from any causes, they found that changes occurred in unvaccinated women at a rate of 1.5 events per 100 person-years, while vaccinated women had 1.3 events—dropping the benefit to 17 percent.

Moreover, most of the cervical changes tracked by the researchers weren’t even indicative of cervical cancer in the first place. Most were innocent cellular abnormalities that either disappear entirely on their own, or never progress to cancer. In fact, when they looked more closely at advanced cervical changes most likely to progress to cancer versus more innocent changes that go away spontaneously, it was the innocent changes that accounted for the decline.

Whether Gardasil will reduce cervical cancer deaths in real-world conditions has simply never been answered. It might—but that would take a long-term study, and one that should be donebefore it’s widely promoted.

A Cure in Need of a Disease

Now, come the boys. If cervical cancer prevention and gender equity don’t have you jumping out of your seat to grab every preteen boy to get a shot, what about the claim that Gardasil might prevent anal and oral cancers men may get from having sex with other men?

Merck says that in males, the vaccine is 89 percent effective against genital warts and 75 percent effective against anal cancer. On closer inspection, some of the numbers don’t just deflate, they evaporate. First off, let’s define the problem: The annual number of deaths from anal-rectal cancer among all men in the U.S. is 300. And how did Merck get its happy statistics on efficacy? Once again, they reported an idealized benefit by excluding from analysis 1,250 study violators out of 4,055 total test subjects. When the real-world analysis was conducted, the numbers plunged—right down to plum nothing. After evaluating tissue changes in male genitalia that were suggestive of a cancer precursor, Merck reported that vaccine efficacy against such lesions “was not observed.”

Given this, is it worth the risk of exposing millions of youth to the as yet uncertain harms of the vaccine? The CDC states that in rare instances, some vaccines may trigger the potentially fatal and paralyzing condition Guillain-Barré, and Nizar Souayah, MD, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, says he and his colleagues found “clear evidence from our database of an increased incidence of Guillain-Barré syndrome in the first six weeks, especially the first two weeks, after [HPV] vaccination.” Guillain-Barré is very rare, even among people who are HPV vaccinated, but the problem is emblematic of the downsides of subjecting millions of people to any medical treatment.

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money

So how did the HPV vaccine become a multi-billion-dollar winner for Merck? Well you might not be surprised to hear that the company happily lavished money on doctors, professional societies, and over 100 legislators. Of course, there is no tie between the recipients of this largesse and their promotion of the vaccine, say beneficiaries like presidential candidate and current Texas governor Rick Perry. In 2007, Perry signed an executive decree mandating that all girls in Texas receive the vaccine. The $28,500 Perry received was minor compared to his other connection to Merck: Perry’s chief of staff, Mike Toomey, became a lobbyist for Merck, championing the HPV vaccine. Once in that position, announced his plans to raise over $50 million for Perry’s presidential campaign.

In any case, the marketing certainly doesn’t seem to have hurt the adoption of Gardasil, which has been administered to millions of girls around the country. Caught up in the joy, some 41 state legislatures have initiated bills to promote or mandate the shots for all girls. With the CDC’s new recommendation for boys, one can imagine that promotion or mandates for them might come next.

Fortunately, some researchers don’t believe the hype. Dr. Diane Harper, one of the lead researchers in the development of the HPV vaccine, recently told the Kansas City Star, the vaccine for boys is “pie in the sky…We’re short of health care dollars. Why should we spend it on that?”

Indeed. There are better ways to spend the billions of dollars currently being spent on HPV vaccines. First, we already have a pretty terrific way to prevent most cervical cancer deaths, and it’s called the Pap smear. Since poor women are less likely to get Pap smears and more likely to die from cervical cancer, we could start by extending medical services to them. Second, many oral cancers are caused by smoking, and men and women who smoke are more likely to die of oral and cervical cancer, so we could invest in smoking cessation efforts.

As Angela Raffle, a specialist in cervical cancer screening, told the New York Times‘ Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Oh, dear. If we give it to boys, then all pretense of scientific worth and cost analysis goes out the window.”

Unfortunately, the hope that we would undertake low-tech, high-yield public health efforts might be the real pie in the sky thinking.

Full disclosure: I am not anti-vaccine. I’m happy to sport that little scar on my thigh from the smallpox vaccine I received as a kid. Smallpox is a scourge I can live without. Nor do I believe that every claim of calamity occurring after a vaccine is due to the vaccine. What I question is the promotion of vaccines, drugs and medical devices that aren’t backed up by solid clinical evidence and shown to be cost-effective in the real world.

Post-Gardasil Syndrome - The New Name For The Spectrum Of Side Effects Following HPV Vaccination

Wednesday, December 07, 2011 by: Rosemary Mathis, Vice President of Victim Support, SANE VAX,

(NaturalNews) 2007 Ohio: 21 year old college student, Brittney (http://sanevax.org/brittany-from-ohio/), was told by her family doctor she needed the Gardasil vaccine to protect her from getting an HPV (human papillomavirus) infection via an accident at her college lab. Afraid that the doctor may be right and after being assured there were no risks involved, she consented to vaccination with Gardasil. New medical conditions began to appear almost immediately. After the second dose, Brittney lost the use of her legs. Four years and more than 40 medical specialists later, she has still not recovered from the extensive list of 'new medical conditions' aka adverse events she began to experience after Gardasil. She still suffers from PGS (Post-Gardasil Syndrome).

2010 California: A mother takes her 13 year old daughter for a routine check-up. When the doctor is informed that they have decided Gardasil is not right for her, the doctor asks to speak with the child alone. After taking the girl into a private room, she is told horror stories about cervical cancer from HPV and informed that she can have the vaccine right now and doesn't even have to tell her mother. The girl still refuses. The pediatrician then escorts mom and daughter to the waiting room and announces loudly that "Your refusal to take Gardasil puts you at risk of getting cancer and dying should you be raped."

2011 Canada: A 13-year old girl presents a signed vaccine waiver form for Gardasil to her school nurse. Camille's mother had even gone so far as to call the school on the morning Gardasil injections were scheduled to make sure there would be no problem with their decision to refuse this particular vaccine. Two school nurses spend a total of 25 minutes threatening, cajoling and intimidating Camille (http://sanevax.org/victim-of-post-g...) until she finally gave in and consented to the injection. She was told not to show her mother the vaccination record. Barely two hours later, she was admitted to the hospital - another victim of Post-Gardasil Syndrome suffering fever, rash, fainting, fatigue, weakness, headaches, stomach pains, urinary infection, and abscesses in her mouth, vision impairment and oral Candida.

February 2011, Tennessee: Wendy's daughter had been ill. After a couple of weeks, when she was still not feeling quite normal, Wendy decided to take her to the pediatrician for a check-up. The doctor walked in the examining room, looked at the girl's medical chart, and said she needs her chicken pox vaccination. Wendy informed him that she had already had her chicken pox vaccine. Doctor explained that it was time for a booster, so she agreed.

Then the pediatrician informs Wendy that her daughter will be receiving four shots that day - chicken pox, hepatitis A, meningitis and Gardasil. Wendy had no objections to the first three, but she had done some research on Gardasil and decided this particular vaccine was right for her daughter. She told the doctor that under no circumstances was her daughter going to get Gardasil.

The doctor proceeded to argue with her, trying very hard to convince her to allow her daughter to get the shot. He went so far as to present arguments like, "What if she is raped? You can drive a car with no insurance, but if you get in an accident - you're done." Wendy held her ground - the doctor threw up his arms and left. All of this time, he never inquired about the girl's illness.

Enter the nurse, with four syringes instead of three. When Wendy informs her that the Gardasil will not be injected, the nurse sternly replies, "Well, he wrote it down and I am giving it to her!" A brief shouting match later, Wendy and her daughter leave the pediatrician's office - without the Gardasil injection.

Consider the serious adverse reactions reported after Gardasil injections. Steven Rubin posted disturbing data on the MedAlerts Blog (http://medalerts.org/analysis/archi...), sponsored by NVIC, regarding reports filed with VAERS. Refer to the chart in the blog for reference.

Number of Serious Events Reported to VAERS by Disease:
The chart clearly illustrates serious HPV vaccine injury reports filed were more than double the number of similar events reported for other 'CDC-recommended vaccines' administered in the 7-18 age group despite the fact that Gardasil is not yet the most widely used vaccine in that cohort.

Any VAERS report that indicates hospitalization, permanent disability, life-threatening illness, congenital anomaly or death is classified as serious.
Of the 75 FDA-approved vaccines, two HPV vaccines account for 16% of the entire VAERS database. What is wrong with this picture?

In the United Kingdom, according to Anne Milton (UK Health Minister), one out of every six adverse reactions reported after Cervarix is considered serious. PCS (Post-Cervarix Syndrome) is becoming all too prevalent in their teen population.

PGS (Post-Gardasil Syndrome) is being experienced around the world. Thousands of parents (acceptable collateral damage?) are left trying to put the pieces of their child's former life back together, or worse - trying to put their own lives together without the children who were once there.

Still, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, medical professionals and health authorities continue to push so-called 'safe and effective' HPV vaccines on their innocent, uninformed patients. Does pediatric pressure promote PGS/PCS? Research, look at the evidence and then decide.

Medical consumers are banding together world-wide to inform themselves. They are examining the hard scientific data, consulting experts and determining what is best for their own health.

Most importantly, victims of PGS/PCS are shouting their stories from the rooftops. Families are telling the world in no uncertain terms their children are real people - not statistics, and certainly not acceptable collateral damage in a mass medical covert experiment to determine whether or not HPV vaccines have any impact on cancer fifteen to twenty years down the road.

Medical consumers are no longer willing to accept a 'poke and hope' proposition with their children being used as the guinea pigs. It is time for the medical community to wake up and pay attention to the science. It is time for government health officials to do the job they are paid to do. It is time for governments to get out of the vaccine business and start protecting their constituents' health and safety.

It is long past time for independent, well designed studies on HPV vaccine safety, efficacy, and need. Medical consumers will accept nothing less.

[Note: If you, or a friend, suffer from PGS/PCS, please contact us at admin@sanevax.org, we will be happy to help you be a part of the solution by telling your story.]

By Norma Erickson, President of SaneVax Inc. (http://sanevax.org/).

About the author:

THE SANE VAX MISSION is to promote Safe, Affordable, Necessary & Effective vaccines and vaccination practices through education and information. We believe in science-based medicine. Our primary goal is to provide the information necessary for you to make informed decisions regarding your health and well-being. We also provide referrals to helpful resources for those unfortunate enough to have experienced vaccine-related injuries.

Articles on this site are written by Norma Erickson, President and Leslie Carol Botha, women's health educator, broadcast journalist and Vice-President Public Relations for SANE Vax, Inc. We also allow content from various contributing authors. Other members include Rosemary Mathis, mother of a Gardasil-injured daughter and Vice President Victim Support; Janny Stokvis, Vice-President Research, Freda Birrell, Secretary and HPV vaccine lobbyist United Kingdom /Scotland, and Linda Thompson, Treasurer.

We are demanding the HPV vaccines be taken off the market until an independent study on their safety and efficacy has been conducted. Until then, we are committing our efforts to an educational media campaign to alert the public about the dangers of the HPV vaccines.

SANE Vax, Inc. is involved in the ground-breaking production of the One More Girl Documentary which will premier in 2012. Please join our cause by contributing to this project by contacting Ryan Richardson, Producer at ryan@onemoregirlfilm.com.

For more information, please visit our site athttp://sanevax.org/.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/034338_Post-Gardasil_Syndrome_HPV_vaccines_side_effects.html#ixzz1fu7MBQ3X

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