Counterpunch.org on The CIA vs. The Media: "All the News That's Fit to Buy" (by Alexander Cockburn)

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December 10 / 11, 2005

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All the News That's Fit to Buy

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The Bush era has brought a robust simplicity to the business of news management: where possible, buy journalists to turn out favorable stories and, as far as hostiles are concerned, if you think you can get away with it, shoot them or blow them up.

As with much else in the Bush era, the novelty lies in the openness with which these strategies have been conducted. Regarding the strategies themselves, there's nothing fundamentally new, both in terms of paid coverage, and murder, as the killing in 1948 of CBS reporter George Polk suggests. Polk, found floating in the Bay of Salonika after being shot in the head, had become a serious inconvenience to a prime concern of US covert operations at the time, namely the onslaught on Communists in Greece.

Today we have the comical saga of the Pentagon turning to a Washington DC-based subcontractor, the Lincoln Group, to write and translate for distribution to Iraqi news outlets booster stories about the US military's successes in Iraq. I bet the Iraqi newspaper reading public was stunned to learn the truth at last.

More or less simultaneously comes news of Bush's plan, mooted to Tony Blair in April of 2004, to bomb the hq of Al Jazeera in Qatar. Blair argued against the plan, not, it seems, on moral grounds but because the assault might prompt revenge attacks.

Earlier assaults on Al Jazeera came in the form of a 2001 strike on the channel's office in Kabul. In November, 2002 the US Air Force had another crack at the target and this time managed to blow it up. The US military claimed that they didn't know the target was an Al Jazeera office, merely "a terrorist site".

In April 2003 a US fighter plane targeted and killed Tariq Ayub, an Al Jazeera reporter on the roof of Al Jazeera's Baghdad office. The Arab network had earlier attempted to head off any "accidental" attack by giving the Pentagon the precise location of its Baghdad premises. That same day in Iraq US forces killed two other journalists, from Reuter's and a Spanish tv station, and bombed an office of Abu Dhabi tv.

On the business of paid placement of stories in the Iraqi press there's been some pompous huffing and puffing in the US among the opinion-forming classes about the dangers of "poisoning the well" and the paramount importance of instilling in the Iraqi mind respect for the glorious traditions of unbiased, unbought journalism as practised in the US Homeland. Christopher Hitchens, tranquil in the face of torture, indiscriminate bombing and kindred atrocities, yelped that the US instigators of this "all-the-news-that's fit-to-buy" strategy should be fired.

Actually, it's an encouraging sign of the resourcefulness of those Iraqi editors that they managed to get paid to print the Pentagon's handouts. Here in the Homeland, editors pride themselves in performing the same service, without remuneration.

Did the White House slip Judy Miller money under the table to hype Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? I'm quite sure it didn't and the only money Miller took was her regular Times paycheck.

But this doesn't mean that We The Taxpayers weren't ultimately footing the bill for Miller's propaganda. We were, since Miller's stories mostly came from the defectors proffered her by Ahmad Chalabi's group, the Iraqi National Congress, which even as late as the spring of 2004 was getting $350,000 a month from the CIA, said payments made in part for the INC to produce "intelligence" from inside Iraq.

It also doesn't mean that when she was pouring her nonsense into the NYT's news columns Judy Miller (or her editors) didn't know that the INC's defectors were linked to the CIA by a money trail. This same trail was laid out in considerable detail in Out of the Ashes, written by my brothers, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, and published in 1999.

In this fine book, closely studied (and frequently pillaged without acknowledgement) by journalists covering Iraq the authors described how Chalabi's group was funded by the CIA, with huge amounts of money ­­ $23 million in the first year alone ­- invested in an anti-Saddam propaganda campaign, subcontracted by the Agency to John Rendon, a Washington pr operator with good CIA connexions.

Almost from its founding in 1947, the CIA had journalists on its payroll, a fact acknowledged in ringing tones by the Agency in its announcement in 1976 when G.H.W. Bush took over from William Colby that "Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any US news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station."

Though the announcement also stressed that the text the CIA would continue to "welcome" the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists, there's no reason to believe that the Agency actually stopped covert payoffs to the Fourth Estate.

Its practices in this regard before 1976 have been documented to a certain degree. In 1977 Carl Bernstein attacked the subject in Rolling Stone, concluding that more than 400 journalists had maintained some sort of alliance with the Agency between 1956 and 1972.

In 1997 the son of a well known CIA senior man in the Agency's earlier years said emphatically, though off the record, to a CounterPuncher that "of course" the powerful and malevolent columnist Joseph Alsop "was on the payroll".

Press manipulation was always a paramount concern of the CIA, as with the Pentagon. In his Secret History of the CIA, published in 2001, Joe Trento described how in 1948 CIA man Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects, soon renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency, the very first in its list of designated functions was "propaganda".

Later that year Wisner set an operation codenamed "Mockingbird", to influence the domestic American press. He recruited Philip Graham of the Washington Post to run the project within the industry.

Trento writes that

"One of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers." Other journalists willing to promote the views of the CIA, included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (Miami News), Herb Gold (Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times).

By 1953 Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies, including the New York Times, Time, CBS, Time. Wisner's operations were funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers."

In his book Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA, Alex Constantine writes that in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts".

Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner said recently, apropos the stories put into the Iraqi press by the Lincoln Group, that it wasn't clear whether traditionally-accepted journalistic practices were violated. Warner can relax. The Pentagon, and the Lincoln Group, were working in a rich tradition, and their only mistake was to get caught.

Harold Pinter's Great Speech and How the CIA May Have Silenced Paul Robeson

Harold Pinter is by no means the first eloquent enemy of the American Empire to have got the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1967 for example, when revulsion was rising across the world at the U.S.­inflicted bloodbath in Vietnam, the committee picked the Guatemalan writer, Miguel Asturias, whose work was notable for its savage depictions of the US-backed destruction of democracy in Guetemala in 1954, at the instigation of the United Fruit Company. (Asked for its reaction to Asturias' selection, United Fruit's high command said stiffly that it had never heard of Asturias and would have no comment.)

I can't find the text of Asturias' acceptance speech, but I would guess that it didn't rival the intensity and fury of Pinter's depictions of the ravages of the American Empire since 1945. It was as though the works of Noam Chomsky had been compacted into one searing rhetorical lightening bolt. It will go into the history books, alongside such imperishable excoriations of empire as the speeches Thucidides put into the mouths of the Melians, and Tacitus into the mouth of Calgacus.

Here some of Pinter's most savage paragraphs (the full speech ran on CounterPunch on Wednesday):

"But my contention here is that the US crimes in the [postwar] period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer. The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain."

Pinter recorded the speech sitting in a wheel chair. He's just fought off an onslaught cancer of the esophagus and was suffering new pains in his legs. Michael Billlington, the drama critic of The Guardian, gave a good account of Pinter's delivery.

Pinter deployed a variety of tactics: the charged pause, the tug at the glasses, the unremitting stare at the camera. I am told by Michael Kustow, who co-produced the lecture, that after a time he stopped giving Pinter any instructions. He simply allowed him to rely on his actor's instinct for knowing how to reinforce a line or heighten suspense.

Although the content of the speech was highly political, especially in its clinical dissection of post-war US foreign policy, it relied on Pinter's theatrical sense, in particular his ability to use irony, rhetoric and humour, to make its point. This was the speech of a man who knows what he wants to say but who also realises that the message is more effective if rabbinical fervour is combined with oratorical panache.At one point, for instance, Pinter argued that "the United States supported and in many cases engendered every rightwing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the second world war". He then proceeded to reel off examples. But the clincher came when Pinter, with deadpan irony, said: "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." In a few sharp sentences, Pinter pinned down the willed indifference of the media to publicly recorded events. He also showed how language is devalued by the constant appeal of US presidents to "the American people". This was argument by devastating example. As Pinter repeated the lulling mantra, he proved his point that "The words "the American people" provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance." Thus Pinter brilliantly used a rhetorical device to demolish political rhetoric.

But it was the black humour of the speech I liked best. At one point, Pinter offered himself as a speechwriter to President Bush - an offer unlikely, on this basis of this speech, to be quickly accepted. And Pinter proceeded to give us a parody of the Bush antithetical technique in which the good guys and the bad guys are thrown into stark contrast: "My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians." Pinter's poker face as he delivered this only reinforced its satirical power.

One columnist predicted, before the event, that we were due for a Pinter rant. But this was not a rant in the sense of a bombastic declaration. This was a man delivering an attack on American foreign policy, and Britain's subscription to it, with a controlled anger and a deadly irony. And, paradoxically, it reminded us why Pinter is such a formidable dramatist. He used every weapon in his theatrical technique to reinforce his message. And, by the end, it was as if Pinter himself had been physically recharged by the moral duty to express his innermost feelings.

I remarked after reading Pinter's text that it's a sign of the debility of the American Empire that its agents didn't manage to kill off his nomination, or--having failed at that--to kill Pinter before he was able to record his remarks. Hyperbole, but only up to a point.







Consider the CIA's probable poisoning, at a fraught political moment, of Paul Robeson, the black actor, singer, and political radical. As Jeffrey St Clair and I wrote a few years ago in our book Serpents in the Garden, in the spring of 1961, Robeson planned to visit Havana, Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The trip never came off because Robeson fell ill in Moscow, where he had gone to give several lectures and concerts. At the time, it was reported that Robeson had suffered a heart attack. But in fact Robeson had slashed his wrists in a suicide attempt after suffering hallucinations and severe depression. The symptoms came on following a surprise party thrown for him at his Moscow hotel.

Robeson's son, Paul Robeson, Jr., investigated his father's illness for more than 30 years. He believes that his father was slipped a synthetic hallucinogen called BZ by U.S. intelligence operatives at the party in Moscow. The party was hosted by anti-Soviet dissidents funded by the CIA.

Robeson Jr. visited his father in the hospital the day after the suicide attempt. Robeson told his son that he felt extreme paranoia and thought that the walls of the room were moving. He said he had locked himself in his bedroom and was overcome by a powerful sense of emptiness and depression before he tried to take his own life.

Robeson left Moscow for London, where he was admitted to Priory Hospital. There he was turned over to psychiatrists who forced him to endure 54 electro-shock treatments. At the time, electro-shock, in combination with psycho-active drugs, was a favored technique of CIA behavior modification. It turned out that the doctors treating Robeson in London and, later, in New York were CIA contractors. The timing of Robeson's trip to Cuba was certainly a crucial factor. Three weeks after the Moscow party, the CIA launched its disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It's impossible to underestimate Robeson's threat, as he was perceived by the U.S. government as the most famous black radical in the world. Through the 1950s Robeson commanded worldwide attention and esteem. He was the Nelson Mandela and Mohammed Ali of his time. He spoke more than twenty languages, including Russian, Chinese, and several African languages. Robeson was also on close terms with Nehru, Jomo Kenyatta, and other Third World leaders. His embrace of Castro in Havana would have seriously undermined U.S. efforts to overthrow the new Cuban government.

Another pressing concern for the U.S. government at the time was Robeson's announced intentions to return to the United States and assume a leading role in the emerging civil rights movement. Like the family of Martin Luther King, Robeson had been under official surveillance for decades. As early as 1935, British intelligence had been looking at Robeson's activities. In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services, World War II predecessor to the CIA, opened a file on him. In 1947, Robeson was nearly killed in a car crash. It later turned out that the left wheel of the car had been monkey-wrenched. In the 1950s, Robeson was targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist hearings. The campaign effectively sabotaged his acting and singing career in the states.

Robeson never recovered from the drugging and the follow-up treatments from CIA-linked doctors and shrinks. He died in 1977.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.counterpunch.org/

Bush on the Constitution: "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

Patriot Act Use Against US Citizens Extended

Steve Watson | December 9 2005

Patriot Act - in brief

House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement Thursday to extend the USA Patriot Act, before it expires at the end of the month.

Despite the fact that Resolutions have been passed denouncing the Patriot Act in over 380 communities in 43 states including seven state-wide resolutions, it is to be extended.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., announced that the negotiating committee had reached an agreement that would extend for four years two of the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions — authorizing roving wiretaps and permitting secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries. Those provisions would expire in four years unless Congress acted on them again.

Also to be extended for four years are standards for monitoring "lone wolf" terrorists who may be operating independent of a foreign agent or power. While not part of the Patriot Act, officials considered that along with the Patriot Act provisions.

Most of the Patriot Act would become permanent under the reauthorization.

The Patriot Act as we have exhaustively documented is the key police state weapon the authorities have in their armory. The party line often heard from Neo-Cons in their attempts to defend the Patriot Act either circulate around the contention that the use of the Patriot Act has never been abused or that it isn't being used against American citizens. The Legislation's reach HAS gone beyond terrorism and it IS actively being used to target American citizens.

Remember, section 802 is specifically aimed at US citizens and announces any crime as "domestic terrorism". Citizens can be held without a trial as "Enemy Combatants". Let us recap just some of the horror stories that misuse of the Patriot Act has produced, As you will see these are not isolated incidents, this is common practice.

Homeland Security Agents Visit Toy Store

When Homeland Security agents arrived at the Pufferbelly Toys store, the lead agent asked owner Stephanie Cox whether she carried a toy called the Magic Cube, which he said was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most popular toys of all time. Invoking the Patriot Act, he told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied.

Patriot Act Being Used to Harass BlackBoxVoting.org website

Activist Bev Harris was told not to reveal to anyone the fact that she and her website were being investigated under the Patriot Act. It is illegal for a government agency to go in and demand the list of all the members of a group. And you can't investigate leaks to journalists by going in and grabbing the reporter's computer.

Secret Service Questions Students

Two students who were interrogated by the Secret Service following remarks the teenagers made about the President during a class discussion. The discussion was about the war in Iraq and while the exact wording is up for debate, the teacher didn't consider it mere criticism, but a direct threat and she called the Secret Service.

Boy investigated by FBI for researching paper on Chesapeake Bay Bridge

A 12-year-old kid at Boys' Latin researches a paper on the Bay Bridge, and suddenly the Joint Terrorist Task Force shows up in the headmaster's office.

Photographer Arrested "Under Patriot Act"

A Denver photographer was arrested while taking pictures in Denver, during Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to the city. Denver resident Mike Maginnis reports being physically assaulted by Denver police.

FBI says Patriot Act used in Vegas strip club corruption probe

The FBI used the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial information about key figures in a political corruption probe centered on striptease club owner Michael Galardi, an agent said.

Webmaster Sherman Austin, Jailed under PATRIOT Act

Political prisoner Sherman Austin, who made headlines last year after being targeted as one of the first casualties of the infamous USA PATRIOT Act, was released from the Federal Corrections Institute in Tucson and left Arizona July 12 to return to Los Angeles.

Using The Patriot Act To Target Patriots

The Patriot Act has been used to obtain search warrants against doctors and scientists who had been warning about the threat of bioterrorism in the U.S.

Shopkeeper deported from South Carolina under PATRIOT Act killed in Pakistan

After marrying a naturalized U.S. citizen, having two U.S.-born children and running a Rock Hill convenience store for years, Khan was rounded up in post-Sept. 11, 2001, sweeps that targeted Muslim immigrants.

ARTISTS SUBPOENAED IN USA PATRIOT ACT CASE

Three Four artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.

Patriot Act used to prosecute U.S. civilian

The CIA contract employee accused of abusing a prisoner in Afghanistan is being prosecuted under the Patriot Act in what legal experts are calling a surprising and to some, troubling application of the new anti-terrorism law.

INFOWARS: BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND

REAL SOURCE - http://infowars.net/articles/december2005/091205Patriot_act.htm

Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'

Capital Hill Blue/DOUG THOMPSON | December 9 2005

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.”

Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine – in the end – if something is legal or right.

Every federal official – including the President – who takes an oath of office swears to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the Constitution a “living document.”

“"Oh, how I hate the phrase we have—a 'living document,’” Scalia says. “We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete's sake.”

As a judge, Scalia says, “I don't have to prove that the Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better than anything else.”

President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution over the last five years, including a controversial amendment to define marriage as a “union between a man and woman.” Members of Congress have proposed some 11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion.

Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution comes from a loss of rights.

“We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones,” Scalia warns. “Don't think that it's a one-way street.”

And don’t buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and, as one brave aide told President Bush, something that undermines the Constitution of the United States.

But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just “a goddamned piece of paper.”

REAL SOURCE - http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2005/091205pieceofpaper.htm

Remember Katrina? That bitch is still lying to all of us, and the "news" about the "Causeway Concentration Camp" isn't on the news...

[Ed note: This is just a sample of some very important House hearings on the issue of racism in the reactions to Hurricane Katrina. The testimonials are powerful, the evidence is undeniable, and the police state is first marching through New Orleans over the bodies and corpses of African-Americans as we speak. They haven't recovered, they aren't being given the help they were promised, and the victims are still suffering. I strongly recommend checking out Democracy Now! for a half-hour to get an update: if this was made a big deal in the mainstream media then we'd see it as a big deal, because in fact, it is...]



WATCH IN REALPLAYER - http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/1443240

Friday, December 9th, 2005

New Orleans Evacuees and Activists Testify at Explosive House Hearing on the Role of Race and Class in Government's Response to Hurricane Katrina

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Three months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the southern coast of the United States, decimating communities in Mississippi and Louisiana, we play excerpts of an explosive congressional hearing focusing on race and the government's response to the disaster. [includes rush transcript] It has been three months since Hurricane Katrina ripped through the southern coast of the United States, decimating communities in Mississippi and Louisiana.

After the initial slow government response to the disaster, President Bush flew to the region and promised the government will "do what it takes, stay as long as it takes, to help our citizens rebuild their communities and their lives." Well that promise is feeling increasingly hollow to many people.

Today is the start of the Survivors General Assembly and Strategy Conference in Jackson, Mississippi. Katrina survivors are gathering at this conference and demanding the right to return to their homes and to take part in the reconstruction process. They are also calling for reparations for what they say is the government's criminal indifference and malicious actions towards the survivors before, during and after Katrina.

But survivors are not the only ones speaking out. Local reporters and politicians from both sides of the aisle have criticized the government's inaction.

On Wednesday, Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barbour, a staunch Bush supporter and former chair of the Republican National Committee stated, "we are at a point where our recovery and renewal efforts are stalled because of inaction in Washington D.C." Barbour went on to say there was no money to rebuild highways and bridges and school districts were close to bankruptcy. And he was just referring to Mississippi.

The city of New Orleans remains in a state of emergency with most residents unable to return. Many say they have been abandoned by the federal government, the same way they were abandoned during the first days of the storm. The Times-Picayune carried an editorial on the front page recently pleading "Do Not Let the City Die." Local advocates say the government is not committed to rebuilding the city for all of its citizens. They point to the fact that few public housing units have been reopened and that landlords are being allowed to evict people in mass numbers.

80% of New Orleans residents have not returned. And those who have are mostly white and wealthy. African-Americans especially feel the government is not making an effort to ensure that they are able to return. A group of homeless evacuees are filing a lawsuit in Federal Court today contending that FEMA engaged in illegal practices by denying or delaying their requests for temporary housing. They are also demanding that the agency back off of its plan to kick people out of their hotels in the coming days. The FEMA deadline for evacuees to be out of their hotels is December 15th with evacuees in some states granted until January 7th to find new housing.

A recent poll conducted by the Washington Post found 61% of evacuees sampled in Houston said their experience since Katrina has made them think that the government doesn't care about them. 68% of those surveyed believed that the federal government would have responded more quickly if people trapped in the city were "wealthier and white rather than poorer and black."

On Tuesday, a special House Select Committee held a hearing focusing on the role of race and class in the government's response to Katrina. The hearing was requested by Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney. She was one of the few Democrats to participate. It was a most unusual hearing - one that we rarely see on Capitol Hill. Survivors and activists testified that racism was a big reason so many were abandoned and allowed to die.

* Excerpts of House Select Committee hearing on the government's response to Katrina. Among those who testified:
- Ishmael Muhammad, attorney for the Advancement Project and part of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund.
- Leah Hodges, New Orleans evacuee.
- Dyan French, New Orleans community leader.
- Harry Alford, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.


[Excerpts:]


LEAH HODGES: Very true. Very true. Particularly true of [inaudible] and Jefferson Parish. Jefferson Parish is where the Causeway concentration camp was housed, where we experienced the Gestapo-type oppression, as opposed to being rescued. We were three minutes away from the airport. They could have taken us to the airport. Those military vehicles could have taken us to any dry, safe city in America. Instead, they dumped us at a dumping ground, sealed us in there, and they backed up all their authority with military M-16s.

And there were thousands and thousands of people. On the last day we were in there -- and let me tell you something -- they hand-picked the white people to ride out first. Yes, racism was very much involved. They hand-picked the white people to ride out first. Every day, the crowd got darker and darker and darker until finally there were only – there were 95% people of color in that place.

REP. JEFF MILLER: Miss Hodges, would you be offended if I respectfully asked you not to call the Causeway area a concentration camp?

LEAH HODGES: I am going to call it what it is. If I put a dress on a pig, a pig is still a pig.

REP. JEFF MILLER: Are you familiar with the history?

LEAH HODGES: Yes, sir, I am. And that is the only thing I could compare what we went through to: a concentration camp.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: And that's the truth.


(...)

ISHMAEL MUHAMMAD: When we talk about being truthful, and we are dealing with an environment in which lies are consistently told to the population. From the syphilis experiment, to not want to talk about how many civilians and innocent people are being killed in Iraq, to the counterintelligence program, I mean, we have a number of instances where the government here campaigns in a way to hide its problems from the international community and from its own population. So we saw in Katrina a media campaign that began in a very humane way, and then all of a sudden, take a serious turn to the same old, same old again.

We know that there was a shoot-to-kill order given in an environment that already was problematic in terms of black people being killed by authorities. So, just using your common sense—the sense we all got a little bit of, at least—you give someone rearing to go, before Katrina, in a disaster situation, a shoot-to-kill order and create an environment where everybody is a potential looter, you are going to have people getting shot down by police, by law enforcement authorities. And then you have account after account after account of people being killed. Then you have statements being made by law enforcement officials and government officials that the only—that all deaths are going to be identified as happening August 29th as the date and no identification is going to be made of what actually killed anyone, what actually made people—what actually was the reason that people died. Why is that? And then you have reports that 10,000 people may be dead, and all of a sudden we have a body count of a little over 1,000.

I mean, it’s important that we do our job as people in the—of the people, to uncover the truth, and it's important that those that are serious about the truth in the Congress do their job to push the Congress to uncover the truth. But we have at least a number of accounts that tell us that people were shot and killed by the police. We are pursuing that. We will be suing on that, and let’s see if it gets laughed out of court. Then we'll know something about the body count.

Now, about this insurance issue—and it's interesting, too, with the body count that FEMA doesn't want to release any information. FEMA has been asked for information after information from various organizations. We actually got FEMA to give up some information to protect people's rights not to get evicted from their home without notice. That was just like the only FEMA victory so far. But FEMA doesn't want to tell anyone anything.

SOURCE - http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/1443240

Arnie, we used to love you, can you please save Tookie?

[Ed note: Remember when we used to love "Ahnold"? Back in the days of "The Terminator", "Conan The Barbarian", "Commando", "Predator", "True Lies" and a bunch of other flicks? He was Da Man, and the manlies man we knew. It's a shame he's sold out to big-business and habitually lies to the press about it, and it's a shame he's no longer a man of the people. However, even if it's a good PR-move, this would be a chance to redeem himself in our eyes. I'm quite shocked and pleased this case has gained this much attention and have a hip hop activist friend working quite hard to raise awareness of it, but it all boils down to one man having the power to spare the life of another after 25 years on death row. I hope he makes the right call here, I miss liking Arnie, and even though he'll be a bastard next week, for one day I'd like to cheer for him again...]

Demonstrators calling for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency to convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams rally at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, California December 8, 2005. (Lou Dematteis/Reuters)

Yahoo! News

Schwarzenegger ponders high-profile death row case

By Adam Tanner Fri Dec 9, 4:05 AM ET

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could decide as early as Friday whether to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the former Crips gang leader set to be executed by lethal injection next week.

Schwarzenegger heard from defense lawyers and the prosecution in a closed-door clemency hearing on Thursday. Aides said he will resolve whether to impose a lesser sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole by Monday, the day before the scheduled execution.

Williams has won celebrity supporters and a well-organized publicity campaign after writing a series of books urging youth to avoid following his footsteps and getting involved with violent gangs like the Crips.

"My hope lies in God above anything and everything else," Williams told Reuters in an interview at San Quentin State Prison last month. "I have faith and if it doesn't go my way, it doesn't go my way."

"I am not the kind of person to sit around and worry about being executed," he said. "I'm sure there are detractors who would like to hear that I am weeping. ... I fear nothing except God."

The core issue of this clemency is whether a murderer can earn redemption in the eyes of society for his actions after the crime. U.S. governors typically stay executions because of doubts over evidence in the case or fairness of the trial rather than because of perceived redemption.

Prosecutors say Williams acted especially brutally in the 1979 murders in which he killed a shop clerk and a family running a motel in robberies for small amounts of money. They also condemn his role with the Crips, a gang that now has thousands of members nationwide.

"Mr. Williams wants out of prison. This has nothing to do with redemption," said John Monaghan, assistant head deputy district attorney in Los Angeles.

Williams maintains that he did not commit the murders and was targeted because of his gang activities, which he has since renounced. Supporters say he is of much more value to society alive than dead because he can continue to warn young people about the dangers of gangs.

If his life is spared, Williams would be moved from death row at San Quentin, north of San Francisco, perhaps to a more remote state prison.

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Big Willie Style? F**k Dubya: "Clinton Says Bush Is 'Flat Wrong' on Kyoto"

[Ed note: It's amazing how much they try to protect good ol' Dubya when all of us know he and his crew are total pricks. This article is good ol' Billy Clinton slamming him for lying about how there is no evidence for Global Warming - er, I mean "Climate Change", and yet Yahoo! News and/or the Associated Press chooses to run this picture along with the article showing them working together to donate money to Katrina. Unbelievable. Then it disappeared from Yahoo's main page within minutes, though it was less than an hour old. You wonder how Dubya gets away with being The Worst President in History? Look no further then the deliberately deceptive hiding and/or soft-pedaling of criticism...]

Former president Bill Clinton announces the distribution $1.5 million from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to the University of Southern Mississippi, as dignitaries, from foreground center, former President George H.W. Bush, co-chairman of the fund; University of New Orleans Chancellor Tim Ryan; and University of Southern Mississippi President Dr. Shelby Thames. The grant to USM is part of an overall allotment of $30 million raised to aid institutions of higher education in the region affected by Hurricane Katrina. So far, more than $100 million in contributions have been made to the fund in support of storm relief efforts. (AP Photo/University of Southern Mississippi, Steve Rouse)

Yahoo! News

Clinton Says Bush Is 'Flat Wrong' on Kyoto

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 1 hour, 8 minutes ago

MONTREAL - Former President Clinton told a global audience of diplomats, environmentalists and others Friday that the Bush administration is "flat wrong" in claiming that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to fight global warming would damage the U.S. economy.

With a "serious disciplined effort" to develop energy-saving technology, he said, "we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets in a way that would strengthen and not weaken our economies."

Clinton, a champion of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing emissions-controls agreement opposed by the Bush administration, spoke in the final hours of a two-week U.N. climate conference at which Washington has come under heavy criticism for its stand.

Most delegations appeared ready Friday to leave an unwilling United States behind and open a new round of negotiations on future cutbacks in the emissions blamed for global warming.

"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities," said Clinton, whose address was interrupted repeatedly by enthusiastic applause. "We are uncertain about how deep and the time of arrival of the consequences, but we are quite clear they will not be good."

Canadian officials said the U.S. delegation was displeased with the last-minute scheduling of the Clinton speech. But U.S. delegation chief Paula Dobriansky issued a statement saying events like Clinton's appearance "are useful opportunities to hear a wide range of views on global climate change."

The former president spoke between the official morning and afternoon plenary sessions of the conference, representing the William J. Clinton Foundation, which includes a climate-change program in its activities.

In the real work of the conference, delegates from more than 180 countries bargained behind closed doors until 6:30 a.m. Friday, making final adjustments to an agreement to negotiate additional reductions in carbon dioxide and other gases after 2012, when the Kyoto accord expires.

Efforts by host-country Canada and others to draw the United States into the process were failing. The Bush administration says it favors a voluntary approach, not global negotiations, to deal with climate issues.

"It's such a pity the United States is still very much unwilling to join the international community, to have a multilateral effort to deal with climate change," said Kenya's Emily Ojoo Massawa, chair of the African group of nations at the two-week long conference.

Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, was instrumental in final negotiations on the 1997 treaty protocol that was initialed in the Japanese city of Kyoto and mandates cutbacks in 35 industrialized nations of emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases by 2012.

A broad scientific consensus agrees that these gases accumulating in the atmosphere, byproducts of automobile engines, power plants and other fossil fuel-burning industries, contributed significantly to the past century's global temperature rise of 1 degree Fahrenheit. Continued warming is expected to disrupt the global climate.

In the late 1990s the U.S. Senate balked at ratifying Kyoto, and the incoming President Bush in 2001 formally renounced the accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy.

The Montreal meeting, attended by almost 10,000 delegates, environmentalists, business representatives and others, was the first annual U.N. climate conference since Kyoto took effect in February.

The protocol's language requires its member nations to begin talks now on emissions controls after 2012, when the Kyoto regime expires. The Canadians and others also saw Montreal as an opportunity to draw the outsider United States into the emission-controls regime, through discussions under the broader 1992 U.N. climate treaty.

But the Americans have repeatedly rejected the idea of rejoining future negotiations to set post-2012 emissions controls. The Canadians continued to press for agreement early Friday, offering the U.S. delegation vague, noncommittal language by which Washington would join only in "exploring" "approaches" to cooperative action.

While rejecting mandatory targets, the Bush administration points to $3 billion-a-year U.S. government spending on research and development of energy-saving technologies as a demonstration of U.S. efforts to combat climate change.

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/climate_change_clinton;_ylt=A86.I1ObBppDHjMAggWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

THE HOSTAGES: My guess? The Americans got some "new" insurgent "Muslim" group to scare aid workers out of the country. It'll probably work too.

Okay... first off, here:







And... here:







By the way, there's hundreds more pictures, they haven't stopped torturing people, they are desperately trying to continue despite everyone asking them to stop, and in fact, they're now running more secret prisons in "democracies" around the world while simply denying what they do is "torture" or deciding it's "classified" so they can't discuss it.

Here:

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; Page A01

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

[Cont'd...]

SOURCE - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html


So... we can obviously see they are capable of anything.


(...)


Next, they've killed unembedded journalists there, roughly 11 or more by most counts from around the world. They've also bombed Al-Jazeera a few times despite receiving their coordinates (which may have helped), were thinking about bombing them again, and are clearly trying to scare any critical journalists out too by any means necessary.

Here:

US military 'brutalised' journalists

News agency demands inquiry after American forces in Iraq allegedly treated camera crew as enemy personnel

Luke Harding in Baghdad
Tuesday January 13, 2004
The Guardian

The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint to the Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation" of three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq.

The complaint followed an incident in the town of Falluja when American soldiers fired at two Iraqi cameramen and a driver from the agency while they were filming the scene of a helicopter crash.

The US military initially claimed that the Reuters journalists were "enemy personnel" who had opened fire on US troops and refused to release them for 72 hours.

Although Reuters has not commented publicly, it is understood that the journalists were "brutalised and intimidated" by US soldiers, who put bags over their heads, told them they would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and whispered: "Let's have sex."

At one point during the interrogation, according to the family of one of the staff members, a US soldier shoved a shoe into the mouth one of the Iraqis.

The US troops, from the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Falluja, also made the blindfolded journalists stand for hours with their arms raised and their palms pressed against the cell wall.

"They were brutalised, terrified and humiliated for three days," one source said. "It was pretty grim stuff. There was mental and physical abuse."

He added: "It makes you wonder what happens to ordinary Iraqis."

[Cont'd...]

SOURCE - http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1121981,00.html


So... we can see what they do to people who try to expose how evil they are.


(...)


I mean, we don't know a damn thing about the "Swords of the Righteous".

We've never heard of them, and the press doesn't seem to care a lick about telling us anything.

Surely they could get some info about the group from Iraq or some other Arab sources, but instead they remain a faceless and largely nameless representation of the blind savagery of the Iraqi "MUSLIM" insurgency, ready to kill even the "Good CHRISTIANS" trying to help them.

So, the actions of the "Swords of the Righteous" are clearly damaging to the international reputation of the Iraqi insurgency. They are being clearly and bizarrely self-defeating in holding hostage aid-workers who were helping to expose the truth behind the brutalization of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other camps, among other atrocities, and diminishing global sympathy for their cause.

Why?

And why demand the release of "all Iraqi prisoners" by capturing and killing the aid workers who were trying to help them?

Would threatening to kill the aid workers exposing how evil the U.S. military is acting really compel them to release ANY prisoners?

Would it discourage aid workers from trying to help Iraqi's knowing how bizarrely stupid and savage they'll be in killing the people who are trying to help them?

Would it help the U.S. military drive out all support in the form of concerned citizens from the West who can galvanize international media coverage?

Would ANY serious insurgent group be this stupid?


(...)


I feel bad for everyone involved and hope and pray for their safe return.

However, we've got to use our heads here.

I'm really not sure what the hell they're up to, but this is certainly a big story, so who knows?

Apparently the WAR in Iraq is back in the news again, and while you may not like this theory as an answer, based on what we know so far it certainly still stands as a reasonable question...

Macro vs. Micro: "Vioxx suxx... do you believe it? Do you believe anything? No? Wow. How much does that suck?"

It's amazing how people will easily believe the macro...

...but find it incredibly hard to believe the micro.


(...)


Most people believe the world is obviously getting worse...

...but few believe the information that supports that "fact".


(...)


Macro vs. Micro = Belief vs. Believers


(...)


Millions upon millions of human beings are providing the information that supports everyone's theory: the world is getting worse. And yet, "people of faith" don't seem to be able to put their faith in people.

What sort of corrosive effect does this have on our collective psyche?

When one stops believing in honest and hard-working people who passionately believe in a cause they found has inspired passionate belief, something nearly all of us lack and desire, then are they not worth taking seriously?

Furthermore, with all the evidence of corruption available, is it not reasonable to believe that parallel institutions are capable of the same?


(...)


I spoke with a woman who is investigating chemtrails, a sample picture is above.

They are mysterious chemical trails that hang in the sky, sometimes in a grid-pattern, sometimes dripping, and sometimes floating there for a hours. They could be jet-exhaust fumes, except that jet-exhaust fumes usually dissipate within 30 seconds. Go see an airshow, or hell, go to an airport, and you'll see how long they last. Or, how long they don't, since the skies above airports generally aren't covered with hundreds of them.

She spoke at an event of how touchy a subject this is even within the activist community, where people are afraid to bring it up, afaid of being scorned or not taken seriously, and how many notable scientists won't touch this with a 10-foot test tube. The chemtrails phenomena is about 7 years old, relatively new, though certainly long enough to spark a natural interest in concerned skywatchers worldwide.

A woman in the audience seemed skeptical, and asked if she had proof of what they were. The chemtrail activist squirmed, and said no, she didn't have proof of what they were, only that they did in fact exist. The woman in the audience was unsatisfied and still skeptical, and seemed to default to a belief that they were nothing. The chemtrail activist said she and other groups didn't have the resources to travel 30,000 feet in the air to get a sample, but soil samples taken after chemtrails have lingered do indicate some truly bizarre toxins and pollutants had landed that had no other discernible reason for being there. The woman in the audience seemed non-plussed, and settled into uncomfortable willful ignorance.

The subject is still touchy, but I think it relates to everything else in the world.

After all, if someone had said that the U.S. military was torturing naked men, women and children using dogs, electrodes, menstrual blood, simulated homosexual acts, vicious beatings, and dozens of other demeaning and painful techniques for what appears to be no valuable reason since the war(s) are still going terribly and appear to be getting worse, then we wouldn't have believed them.

In fact, those hard-working kidnaped Christian peacemakers did, and so did Amnesty International, and don't even start with the Iraqi's and others on the ground...

...but, until we saw the photos, as journalist Sy Hersh said, how do you write about it?

The bottom line: everyone who said something really, really, really, really, really bad was happening, was right.

And the rest of us were wrong.

Even if we didn't know, we were wrong on principle to disbelieve those willing to have the courage to speak the most uncomfortable truths to power.

And we're still wrong now.


(...)


Google Search: "chemtrails"

http://www.google.ca/search?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&q=chemtrails&btnG=Search&sa=N&tab=iw


(...)


I walked up the the chemtrail woman after she had spoken and was sitting with her chemtrail friends, and told her flat-out that I believed her.

She seemed surprised, and asked why.

I said she'd never lied to me before, so I thought I'd believe her.

She said she had some issues with my logic, which surprised me.

So...

...I told her that because she didn't have the history of lying to me that other sources of information like the mainstream-media have; because it wasn't costing me anything to believe her; because I appreciated that she was looking into something that we really should have an answer for; because she she seemed to be working selflessly and tirelessly on something that wasn't paying her any money and seemed fairly difficult to pursue and proselytize due to widespread cynicism and derision even within her extended social circles...

...I may as well believe her.

I also wished her group best of luck while offering to help out in generally supportive ways, believing she's on to something being the first.

She appreciated my developed logic and support.

I'm sure her group will keep in touch with updates on what they find, and frankly I also hope that other activists like her don't get discouraged by the idea that they need to be paranoid about getting something wrong.

I don't care.

A mistake is a mistake.

And until it's been made and admitted, it hasn't been.

And until they make one, I believe them, and feel much better for it.

When willful acts of deception perpetuated by larger and more respected institutions like governments and corporations are regularily forgiven, when even after Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart we still believe in the mainstream-media that hid so much important information from us that Dubya got re-elected and now 70% of the country is disappointed with how badly he does his job...

...we can see how putting our faith in the wrong people and ignoring the right ones is woefully dangerous.

Besides, it's not only our future that's at stake, it's our present.

After all, oh good people of faith, if you can't have faith in good people, then what good is the world your God created?

And how much worse do you feel right now?

Offices of the Merck & Co. plant in Rahway, N.J. are seen Friday, July 19, 2002. The company is cutting 250 jobs at Rahway, Merck's oldest plant. Merck & Co.'s announcement this week that it is slashing its work force by 11 percent and shuttering several plants is as much a reflection of pharmaceutical industry belt- tightening as it is Merck's financial and Vioxx-related legal woes. (AP Photo/Mike Derer)

Yahoo! News

New England Journal: Merck Concealed Data

By LINDA A. JOHNSON, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 27 minutes ago

TRENTON, N.J. - Vioxx maker Merck & Co. concealed heart attacks suffered by three patients during a clinical study of the now-withdrawn painkiller in a report on the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000, the journal wrote in an editorial released Thursday.

The editorial, written by the journal's editor in chief, Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, executive editor Dr. Gregory D. Curfman and a third doctor, also alleges the study's authors deleted other relevant data before submitting their article for publication.

"Taken together, these inaccuracies and deletions call into question the integrity of the data on adverse cardiovascular events in this article," the doctors wrote.

Adverse cardiovascular events include heart attacks, strokes and deaths.

Findings of the study in question have been a key part of testimony in the three product liability trials to date over the withdrawn drug, including one being deliberated Thursday by a federal jury in Texas.

Merck spokesman Chris Loder said the Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based company would issue a statement in response to the editorial Thursday.

Excluding the three heart attacks "made certain calculations and conclusions in the article incorrect," the doctors wrote, adding that they have asked the report's authors to submit a correction to the journal.

One of the study's authors was Dr. Alise Reicin, Merck's vice president for clinical research. Reicin on Wednesday testified in the Houston trial that the company never misled doctors and the public about studies linking heart attacks to Vioxx.

Merck withdrew Vioxx, once one of its top-selling drugs, from the market on Sept. 30, 2004 after other research showed the popular arthritis drug doubled risks of heart attacks and stroke with long-term use. The company now faces at least 7,000 lawsuits over Vioxx and legal liability some analysts have estimated at up to $50 billion. Those problems were part of the reason Merck last week announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs and close eight manufacturing and research facilities around the world as the first step in a sweeping reorganization.

___

On the Net: http://www.nejm.org

http://www.merck.com

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(...)


BONUS: Charity is good for the sole purpose of bragging about it...


Charity Navigator, America's premier independent charity evaluator, works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace by evaluating the financial health of America's largest charities.

SOURCE - http://www.charitynavigator.org/







Trent Stamp's Take

The semi-regular bloggings of Trent Stamp, President of Charity Navigator, America's largest charity evaluator.


Thursday, December 08, 2005

Tonight's TV Listings

I'll be on PrimeTime on ABC, tonight at 10 PM, sometime in the first half-hour, discussing why charitable giving overall is up, but giving to the poor is actually down. It's a strange phenomena, with too many reasons to enumerate here, but it's a very disturbing trend. Quite simply, our richest citizens aren't particularly interested in helping our most vulnerable, at least not at the same rates they want to help our churches, universities, and cultural organizations.

Tune in tonight to get my take on why this is so.

Or I guess you could just watch ER. I suspect it'll be an "unforgettable and very special episode."

SOURCE - http://trentstamp.blogspot.com/


(...)


BONUS VIDEO: Can you believe this segment was on a local FOX News affiliate? I'm glad the good folks at prisonplanet.com taped it, I hope they get a chance to show Part Two of this two-part special...

Dylan Avery, 9/11 Film Featured On Local Fox News

Fox News | December 3 2005

Loose Change by Dylan Avery

This amazing new 9/11 documentary analyses the physical evidence of the attacks and asks whether a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, if controlled demolition brought down the trade towers, and if there were any hijackers at all. Supplemented by a great soundtrack

Watch this entire film right now by subscribing at Prison Planet.tv.

Click here to watch a preview clip.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2005/031205dylanavery.htm


(...)


BONUS VIDEO: And this is just friggin' hilarious...


Still Standing

The new world order terrorists that blew the WTC certainly didn't make this mistake on 9/11. This video proves that even with well co-ordinated demolitions, mistakes happen. Just imagine how much precision planning would have gone into bringing down the towers.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2005/061205stillstanding.htm


(...)

R.I.P. John...

Born John Winston Lennon, October 9, 1940.

Died John Ono Lennon, December 8, 1980.

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you will join us,
And the world will live as one.

Handgun Bans Hand Gun Owners Handcuffs...

Ahhh great...

Canada's embattled Prime Minister Paul Martin is banning handguns as we speak.

I guess the plan is simple:



1. A bunch of sensational shootings. (About 50 of 'em.)

2. Porous borders with the U.S. allowing trafficking.

3. Half of the handguns on the street being illegally imported.

4. Finally banning handguns after the unpopular gun-registry tracked them.

5. Addressing the border issues by working with the U.S. to unify them.

6. Eroding the rights of Canadians to protect themselves against Martial Law.

7. Rise of the Police State under new pro-American Prime Minister Stephen Harper.



(sigh)






Good Gun Quotes

MODERN LEADERS' THOUGHTS ON GUN CONTROL:

Mohandas K. Gandhi: "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn." Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Chapter XXVII, Recruiting Campaign, Page 403, Dover paperback edition, 1983.

Sigmund Freud: "A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." ("General Introduction to Psychoanalysis," S. Freud)

Bill Clinton: (US President, has sworn an oath to defend the US Constitution, (not to violate it, criticize it, and belittle it)) "When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it." (April 19 1994, on MTV)

Admiral Yamamoto: "You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass." Advising Japan's military leaders of the futility of an invasion of the mainland United States because of the widespread availability of guns. It has been theorized that this was a major contributing factor in Japan's decision not to land on North America early in the war when they had vastly superior military strength. This delay gave our industrial infrastructure time to gear up for the conflict and was decisive in our later victory.

Benito Mussolini: �The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. ... They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.� (address to the Italian Senate, 1931)

Charles Shumer: (US Congress, has sworn an oath to defend the US Constitution) "All we ask for is registration, just like we do for cars." (Press conference, 1993, exact date being sought)

Adolf Hitler: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country." Adolf Hitler, dinner talk on April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, Second Edition (1973), Pg. 425-426. Translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens.

Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center: "A gun-control movement worthy of the name would insist that President Clinton move beyond his proposals for controls . . . and immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act . . . [which] would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns." "Dispense With the Half Steps and Ban Killing Machines," Houston Chronicle, Nov. 5, 1999

Mao Tse Tung: "All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." (Problems of War and Strategy, Nov 6 1938, published in "Selected Works of Mao Zedong," 1965)

Diane Feinstein: "US Senator, If I could have banned them all - 'Mr. and Mrs. America turn in your guns' - I would have!" (Statement on TV program 60 Minutes, Feb 5 1995)

Deborah Prothrow-Stith: "My view of guns is simple. I hate guns and I cannot imagine why anyone would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned." (Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Dean of Harvard School of Public Health)

Jill Fieldstein, CBS producer, Street Stories: Women and Guns: "As a card-carrying member of the liberal media, producing this piece was an eye opening experience. I have to admit that I saw guns as inherently evil, violence begets violence, and so on. I have learned, however, that in trained hands, just the presence of a gun can be a real "man stopper." I am sorry that women have had to resort to this, but wishing it wasn't so won't make it any safer out there. 29 April 1993.

And from one of your favorite gun-grabbing gods, Dr. Arthur Kellerman, stated: "If you've got to resist, you're chances of being hurt are less the more lethal your weapon. If that were my wife, would I want her to have a .38 Special in her hand? Yeah." (Health Magazine, March/April 1994)

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch: "In my studies as an attorney and as a United States Senator, I have constantly been amazed by the indifference or even hostility shown the Second Amendment by courts, legislatures, and commentators. James Madison would be startled to hear that his recognition of a right to keep and bear arms, which passed the House by a voice vote without objection and hardly a debate, has since been construed in but a single, and most ambiguous Supreme Court decision, whereas his proposals for freedom of religion, which he made reluctantly out of fear that they would be rejected or narrowed beyond use, and those for freedom of assembly, which passed only after a lengthy and bitter debate, are the subject of scores of detailed and favorable decisions. Thomas Jefferson, who kept a veritable armory of pistols, rifles and shotguns at Monticello, and advised his nephew to forsake other sports in favor of hunting, would be astounded to hear supposed civil libertarians claim firearm ownership should be restricted. Samuel Adams, a handgun owner who pressed for an amendment stating that the "Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms," would be shocked to hear that his native state today imposes a year's sentence, without probation or parole, for carrying a firearm without a police permit."

Senator Orrin Hatch: "If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying--that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976--establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime." Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Committee Print I-IX, 1-23 (1982).

Sen. Hubert Humphrey: "Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." Sen. Hubert Humphrey, Know Your Lawmakers, Guns Magazine, Page 4, Feb. 1960.

John F. Kennedy: "Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

George Orwell: "That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."

The Dalai Lama: "If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)

Laurence H. Tribe of the Harvard Law School: "The federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification." (2000 edition of American Constitutional Law)

Attorney General John Ashcroft: "Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers."

John F. Kennedy: "By calling attention to 'a well regulated militia,' 'the security of the nation,' and the right of each citizen 'to keep and bear arms,' our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy... The Second Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important." John F. Kennedy, Junior Senator of MA in a 1959 letter to E.B. Mann [From the 1974 Gun Digest, article titled Gun Laws]

Sanford Levinson on The Second Amendment as an Individual Right: "The structure of the Second Amendment within the Bill of Rights proves that the right to bear arms is an individual right, rather than a collective one. The collective rights' idea that the Second Amendment can only be viewed in terms of state or federal power "ignores the implication that might be drawn from the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments: the citizenry itself can be viewed as an important third component of republican governance as far as it stands ready to defend republican liberty against the depredations of the other two structures, however futile that might appear as a practical matter." Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 YALE L.J. 637, 651 (1989).

Israeli Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonisky: �There's no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them.�

President Theodore Roosevelt: "The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step � in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come � is to teach men to shoot!" � President Theodore Roosevelt's last message to Congress.

Louisiana Governor Mike Foster: "Most people don�t ever want to use a gun to protect themselves � that�s the last thing they want to do � but if you know how and you have a situation with some fruitcake running around, like they�ve got right now, it sure can save you a lot of grief."

Ted Nugent: "To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic."

James Earl Jones: "The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose."

U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop: "The ruling class doesn't care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake." - former U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wy.)

David Prosser, Wisconsin Supreme Court justice: "If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business."

Paul Hager: "One of the arguments that had been made against gun control was that an armed citizenry was the final bulwark against tyranny. My response had been that untrained, lightly-armed non-soldiers couldn't prevail against a modern army. I had concluded that the qualitative difference in firepower was such that all of the previous rules of guerilla war no longer applied. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan demonstrated that wasn't true. Repelling an armed invasion is not something that American citizens are likely to face, but the possibility of a despotic government coming to power is not wholly unthinkable. One of the sequellae of Vietnam was the rise of the Khmer Rouge and slaughter of perhaps a million Cambodian citizens. Those citizens, like the Jews in Germany or the Armenians in Turkey, were unarmed and thus utterly and completely defenseless against police and paramilitary. An armed minority was able to kill and terrorize unarmed victims with total impunity." � Paul Hagar, "Why I Carry"

Daniel Schmutter: "The tragic history of civilian disarmament cries a warning against any systematic attempts to render innocent citizens ill-equipped to defend themselves from tyrant terrorists, despots or oppressive majorities," Daniel Schmutter, lawyer for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

Jeff Cooper: "Hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them." Jeff Cooper, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth

Larry Elder: "A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders."

[Continued...]


SOURCE - http://www.sightm1911.com/Care/Gun_Quotes.htm