THE REPUBLICANS CROSS THE RUBICON

Paul Craig Roberts

Does anyone remember when National Public Radio was an independent voice?

During the 1980s NPR was continually on the case of the Reagan administration. NPR certainly had a Democratic slant, and a lot of its reporting about the Reagan administration was one-sided. Yet, NPR was an independent voice, and it sometimes got things correct.

In the 21st century that voice has disappeared, which was the intention of the George W. Bush regime. Bush put a Republican woman in charge who made it clear to NPR producers and show hosts that the federal part of their funding was at risk.

Money often over-rules principle, and when corporations added their really big money NPR collapsed. Today the local stations still pretend to be funded by listeners, but if you have noticed, as I have, there are now a large number of corporate advertisements, disguised in the traditional terms “with support from . . .” If you are not listening to classical music, you are listening to corporate advertisements.

Today the entire “mainstream media” is closed to truth-tellers. The US media is Washington’s propaganda ministry. The US media has only one function–to lie for Washington.

What reminded me of NPR’s surrender was NPR’s August 31 report with its two regular talking voice political pundits discussing the Republican Convention and Romney’s speech. After witnessing the Republicans at their nominating convention at Tampa violate all their own rules and ride roughshod over the Ron Paul delegates, one expected some discussion of the Republican Party’s refusal to allow Ron Paul to be placed in nomination or his delegate account to be announced.

The operative question was obvious: How can the American people trust the Republicans with the awesome power of the executive branch when the Republican Party just finished demonstrating for all to see its Stalinist qualities by crushing the anti-war, anti-police state wing of its party?

The authoritarianism was gratuitous. Romney had a sufficient number of delegates to be nominated. It would have cost Romney nothing to follow the rules and allow Ron Paul to be placed in nomination and his delegate numbers to be reported. Instead, Romney wrote off the liberty contingent of the Republican Party. The Brownshirts demonstrated their power.

The last Republican who wrote off a chunk of his own party was Barry Goldwater, and he went down to crushing defeat. Makes one wonder if the Republicans are relying on those electronic voting machines programed with proprietary Republican software that leave no paper trail. The Democrats have acquiesced to Republican election theft. There have been numerous cases where exit polls indicate that voters chose a different candidate than the one chosen by the Republican programmed voting machines.

One would have thought that NPR and its pundits would have found the parallel with Goldwater worth comment, but the suppression of the Ron Paul delegates was already down the memory hole.

One would also have thought that NPR and its pundits would have found Clint Eastwood’s speech a fascinating topic of discussion. Eastwood had a Republican National Committee approved speech, but discarded it. Instead, Eastwood stood beside an empty chair and pretended to be talking to Obama, but it could just as well have been Romney in the chair. By pretending to be talking to Obama, Eastwood made his points without eliciting boos from the Republican audience.

Not many in the Republican audience caught on, but there were some stony faces when Eastwood said “I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there are 23 million unemployed people in this country.” More stony Republican faces when Eastwood showed his opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wars and asks the chair, “why don’t you just bring them [the troops] home tomorrow morning?” Those who thought he was digging at Obama cheered; those who realized he was criticizing hardline Republican positions were displeased.

But NPR and the US media in general are uncomfortable with such real news as a political party being told off by one of its heroes and a political party sufficiently stupid to repeat Barry Goldwater’s mistake. The establishment might complain. The money might dry up or employees be fired for permitting such a story to be aired. The Democrats lost their independent financing when jobs offshoring destroyed the unions. There are no longer countervailing powers to Wall Street and the corporations, which have been endowed by the Republican US Supreme Court with First Amendment rights to purchase US elections, and placed in charge of the US Treasury, the regulatory agencies and the Federal Reserve.

In Tampa the Republicans wrote off the Ron Paul vote, because they are enamored of power and its gratuitous demonstration. Can people so desirous of power and the thrill of its use be trusted to let go of power when they lose the next election? There are enough presidential executive orders and national security orders, even some signed by the Democrat Obama, that any president can assert them and refuse to face election.

Once Rome accepted Julius Caesar’s coup, the Roman Republic was gone. Those who tried to save the Roman Republic by assassinating Caesar failed, because the majority of the legions had gone over to the dictatorship, which promised them more money than the Republic had. Caesar’s name became the title for Rome’s dictators.

In the US, even your friendly local police have gone over to dictatorship. And they are armed with its tools. A friend, a competitive shooter for accuracy, told me that as he left his gun club on August 27, a local sheriff department entered in a military armored vehicle, something one would expect to see on a battlefield, followed by a large sheriff’s department truck full of military equipment. He says that the gun club allows local police to use the club’s facilities so that club members are not stopped and harassed about their firearms as they go to and from the club. He reports that the police will line up 30 abreast, with automatic weapons, not allowed to club members, and fire at one target, with 30 police emptying 30-round magazines at the same target.

He once asked our protectors if they were practicing for some competition. The answer was, “No, we are preparing to control the outcome when there is trouble.”

Control is the operative word. We have seen for a number of years now that the Republican Party is power-addicted. Remember when the Bush administration fired the US Attorneys who refused the order to indict only Democrats? Remember the Republican Party’s transparent frame-up of popular Alabama Democratic governor Don Siegelman? Evidence indicates that the Republican operative Karl Rove took advantage of a Republican federal judge, vulnerable according to news reports to corruption charges, and a compliant Republican US attorney in Alabama to railroad Governor Siegelman. The message to Democrats was: if you get elected in our Southern Territory, we will get you.

But never fear, we have “freedom and democracy.” George W. Bush told us so himself.

The weak, chicken-hearted Obama administration has not commuted Siegelman’s outrageous sentence. The inability of the Democrats to stand up for their own members and their own principles is the best indication we have that Republican tyranny will prevail.

It didn’t take Caesar George W. Bush 10 minutes to wipe out the prison sentence of vice president Dick Cheney’s chief aid for revealing the identity of a CIA operative, a felony under US law. But the Obama Justice (sic) Department supports Karl Rove’s destruction of one of its most popular governors.

It was the German left-wing’s weak opposition to the National Socialists that gave the world Hitler.

The Republican Party has become the Party of Hate. Decades of frustration have made Republicans mean. They object to everything that has happened since the Great Depression in the 1930s to make the US a more just and humane society.

The Republican Party wants power so that it can smash all vestiges of regulation and welfare and all those of whom Republicans disapprove: the poor, the minorities, liberals, the imagined “foreign enemies,” war protestors and others who challenge authority, those American weaklings who have compassion for the unfortunate, the US Constitution, that pinko-liberal-commie document that coddles criminals, illegal aliens, and terrorists, and all dissenters from the policy of enriching the one percent at the expense of the 99 percent.

Above all else, the Republicans want to turn Social Security and Medicare into profit centers for private corporations.

Would the world be surprised if Republicans donned brown shirts? America has declared itself to be “the indispensable nation,” justifying its hegemony over the world. Any country that does not submit to Washington is “a foe.” The neoconservative propaganda that America is the indispensable nation with a right to world hegemony sounds a lot like “Deutschland uber alles.”

Why I had no choice but to spurn Tony Blair

I couldn't sit with someone who justified the invasion of Iraq with a lie

The Guardian
Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu: pulled out of a seminar which Tony Blair was scheduled to attend. 

The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.

Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.

If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Days before George W Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world. Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.

On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers' circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush's chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?

The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

But even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.

Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?

Leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality. The question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many of his people he massacred. The point is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should not have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level.

If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?

My appeal to Mr Blair is not to talk about leadership, but to demonstrate it. You are a member of our family, God's family. You are made for goodness, for honesty, for morality, for love; so are our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in the US, in Syria, in Israel and Iran.

I did not deem it appropriate to have this discussion at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg last week. As the date drew nearer, I felt an increasingly profound sense of discomfort about attending a summit on "leadership" with Mr Blair. I extend my humblest and sincerest apologies to Discovery, the summit organisers, the speakers and delegates for the lateness of my decision not to attend.

Gates Foundation Funds Surveillance of Anti-Vaccine Groups

Green Med Info
Sayer Ji

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation launched the Grand Challenges in Global Health (GCGH) in partnership with the National Institutes of Health in 2003 which, according to the GCGH website, is aimed at "creating new tools that can radically improve health in the developing world."  So far, 45 grants totaling $458 million were awarded for research projects involving scientists in over 30 countries.¹
But where has all the money actually gone?  Towards developing and implementing water purification and sanitation systems? Or basic nutritional support aimed at optimizing immune function? How about providing shelter and medical facilities for the homeless? Not even close.  

For example, a $100K grant was recently disbursed to Seth C. Kalichman, professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, for "Establishing an Anti-Vaccine Surveillance and Alert System," which intends to "establish an internet-based global monitoring and rapid alert system for finding, analyzing, and counteracting misinformation communication campaigns regarding vaccines to support global immunization efforts." [emphasis added]

We can only wonder what organizations might be labeled as "misinformation communication campaigns" considering the fact that Bill Gates, in a Feb. 4^th, 2011 interview on CNN with Sanjay Gupta said that "anti-vaccine groups "kill children."" Here is the full quote:

“So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.”

It is quite possible that any dissenting voice not in support of universal vaccination campaigns may be included in this type of "surveillance and alert system" as a potentially endangering the lives of others, i.e. "killing children."  What is so ironic about the situation is that the Gates Foundation supported Polio Global Eradication Initiative may have resulted in over 47,500 cases of vaccine-induced paralysisin Indian children in 2011 alone, and which is twice as deadly as the wild-type polio it claimed to have put an end to officially on Jan. 11 2012. Who here then, is truly concerned about the health of children?
Moreover, it is exceedingly difficult to view Bill & Melinda Gates foundation's GCGH as a strictly humanitarian foundation considering many of the projects it chooses to fund. Here are a few listed on their website which have already received funding.

• Synthetic Lymph Nodes: Steven Meshnick and Carla Hand of the University of North Carolina in the U.S. will develop a bio-compatible, biodegradable polymer device that can be placed under the skin to introduce vaccines and antigens to the immune system. The device will attract immune cells and trigger their proliferation as well asact as an adjuvant at the site of injection. If successful, the device could help boost immune response to new and existing vaccines. [see our article on transhumanistic technologies].
• Needle Free Vaccination Via Nanoparticle Aerosols: Vaccine delivery systems that target specific areas of the body have the potential to be especially effective against some types of infection. For example, inhaled vaccines may better guard against respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, and those that commonly infect the tissues of the nose and throat, such as diphtheria. Dr. Edwards is leading a multidisciplinary team using materials science technologies combined with infectious disease, device, and toxicology expertise to reformulate tuberculosis and diphtheria vaccines into aerosol sprays that can be inhaled. The team's ultimate objective is to develop a cell-based BCG vaccine for tuberculosis and a protein antigen CRM 197 vaccine for diphtheria in the form of novel porous nanoparticle aggregate (PNAP) aerosols.
• Plant-Produced Synthetic RNA Vaccines: Alison McCormick of Touro University, California in the U.S. will test the ability of a low-cost plant-based synthetic biology method to produce a combined viral protein epitope with an antigen RNA expression system for use in an RNA malaria vaccine. Using plants for this viral transfection system could make RNA vaccine production scalable and cost effective.
• Profitable Vaccine Distribution In Emerging Markets: Lisa Ganley-Leal and Pauline Mwinzi of Epsilon Therapeutics, Inc. in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that selling vaccines through medicine shops in emerging markets can lead to profits for both vaccine developers and the small business owners. Demonstrating profitability may lead pharmaceutical companies to invest greater resources in vaccine development and distribution and develop local partnerships for profitability strategies.
• Genetically Programmed Pathogen Sense and Destroy: Saurabh Gupta and Ron Weiss of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. proposed creating sentinel cells that can detect the presence of a pathogen, report its identity with a biological signal, and secrete molecules to destroy it.This project's Phase I research demonstrated that commensal bacteria can be engineered to detect and specifically kill the model bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In Phase II, Gupta and Weiss will engineer the human microbiota to specifically detect and destroy the gut pathogen Shigella flexneri, which is responsible for high mortality rates in children.
• Vaccine in a Salt Shaker: A New, Safe, Low-Cost Approach: Shiladitya DasSarma will lead a team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the U.S. to develop an inexpensive, safe, and effective oral vaccine against invasive Salmonella disease using gas-filled bacterial vesicles. The project seeks to produce a salt-encased, shelf-stable vaccine requiring no refrigeration for distribution worldwide.
• A Humanized Mouse Model to Evaluate Live Attenuated Vaccine Candidates: To develop new vaccines against some of the world's biggest killers, including HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, scientists must be able to evaluate promising candidates. Some of the most promising potential vaccines, are made from weakened live versions of the infectious agent. As a result, they cannot be studied in human trials unless researchers can be confident that the weakened vaccines will be safe. Dr. Flavell and his colleagues are working to genetically engineer laboratory mice whose immune systems are similar enough to humans to permit testing of vaccines against diseases that disproportionately affect people in the developing world.
• Alternative Delivery of Human Milk Proteins to Infants: Qiang Chen of Arizona State University in the U.S. proposes to engineer edible plants, such as lettuce and rice, to express beneficial proteins found in human milk. The protein bodies in these plants allow for the stable, high accumulation of these human milk proteins, and the plants can either be eaten directly by infants or formulated into baby food to provide essential nutrients and antibacterial benefits.
• Non-Hormonal Female Contraceptive Targeting Egg-Specific Metalloprotease: John Herr of the University of Virginia in the U.S. will research the egg-specific membrane enzyme metalloprotease as a target for a non-hormonal female contraceptive. After determining the nature of the enzyme's catalytic pocket, a family of peptidomimetic compounds will be tested for their ability to bind to the enzyme and block its key role in egg fertilization.
• Bacillus-Fermented Natto as Edible Vaccines for the Developing World: Michael Chan of the Ohio State Research Foundation in the U.S. will develop an engineered strain of bacteria used to ferment beans in traditional Asian and African diets, to display an antigen from the Tuberculosis bacterium.  The engineered bacillus will then be used to make the traditional Asian dish natto, which can serve as a kind of oral vaccine to elicit a strong immune response. If successful, this strategy can be used to introduce a variety of disease antigens through culturally accepted foods.
• Nanotechnology-Based Contraception: David Clapham of Children's Hospital Boston in the U.S. will develop and test a nanoparticle contraceptive that releases sperm tail inhibitors in response to vaginal pH changes or exposure to prostatic fluid. If successful, the nanoparticles could be incorporated into a vaginal gel to block sperm motility required for fertilization.
• Circumcision tool For Traditional Ceremonies In Africa: Kathleen Sienko of the University of Michigan in the U.S. has developed a prototype circumcision tool for use in traditional ceremonies in Africa, and seeks to demonstrate the functionality, cultural suitability, and potential for low-cost mass production of the device. Such a tool could increase the circumcision rates leading to lower rates of HIV transmission in the region.
• Discovery of Chemosensory Molecules as Novel Contraceptives: John Ngai and Scott Laughlin of the University of California, Berkeley in the U.S. seek to identify chemical compounds in the female reproductive system that guide sperm cells to the egg. By characterizing these "odorants," synthetic versions can be produced and administered to disrupt this navigation system thus inhibiting fertilization.
• Transgenic Cow Milk Containing Human Antimicrobial Protein: Hironori Matsushima of the University of Toledo in the U.S. will test the hypothesis that adding an antimicrobial peptide to powdered milk products can confer protection against enteric diseases. Research will focus on testing the peptide for its ability to kill pathogens in stomach conditions, and on its ability to maintain integrity through the milk pasteurization and drying processes.
• Ultrasound as a Long-Term, Reversible Male Contraceptive: James Tsuruta and Paul Dayton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill will study the ability of therapeutic ultrasound to deplete testicular sperm counts. Characterizing the most beneficial timing and dosage could lead to the development of a low-cost, non-hormonal and reversible method of contraception for men.

You will notice from the examples listed above that all of these funded projects involve the development of proprietary (read: potentially profitable) and as-of-yet unproven technologies, and which will require the transformation and/or alteration of a natural process or substance. Also, many of the grant disbursements have gone towards contraception. This appears to diverge from the GCGH's mission statement of "improving health in the developing world," insofar as it is focused on reducing population in the developed world, rather than supporting the health of those already living, in need of help.
¹ Grand Challenges In Global Health, About Us

Sayer Ji is the founder and director of GreenMedInfo.com and co-author of the bookThe Cancer Killers: The Cause Is The Cure with New York Times best-seller Dr. Ben Lerner and Dr. Charles Majors. His writings and research have been published in the Wellbeing Journal, the Journal of Gluten Sensitivity, and have been featured on Mercola.com, NaturalNews.com, Reuters.com, GaryNull.com, Infowars.com and Care2.com.

Fukushima plant “to keep contaminating the Pacific Ocean for the rest of time” if fuel can’t be removed — No good solution, must constantly pump out water from under buildings

ENENews

Title: Arnold Gundersen with another update on the unfolding effects of the Fukushima disaster
Source: KPFT Houston, If You Love This Planet Radio
Date: Aug 31, 2012
Description: This week, Dr. Caldicott brings on nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen  [...]

At 19:00 in

Caldicott: If you put concrete on it, you know it’s going to keep going down into the water table. 

Gundersen: Right. 

Caldicott: And you know it’s going to keep contaminating the Pacific Ocean for the rest of time. 

Gundersen: Right. So the solution — there is no good solution — but the solution would be to bore holes underneath and constantly pull water out from under the buildings.

[...]

At 23:00 in

Caldicott: You are sacrificing the Pacific by leaving this stuff there for the rest of time, which will leak and drain consistently into the Pacific. 

Gundersen: You’re right. It needs to be constantly pumped out

[...]

Secret CIA Prisons in Europe (Full Version)

Underground Documentaries


In Eastern Europe, people thought they became free when the Iron Curtain fell. Freedom was the buzzword. After 9/11, however, the American-based CIA began planting secret prisons in Poland and Lithuania. Russia Today investigates two claims of the existence of these prisons and presents a remarkable documentary showcasing CIA lies, secrets, and coverups.

It’s called “rendition”: a euphemism of a word that hides its true meaning. People are being kidnapped and brought to secret prisons all over the world, including several European countries. Government leaders fall over it, parliaments do not get the right information, and journalists trying to uncover the facts often encounter people who are unwilling to speak about it.

Netanyahu: Zionism succeeded because of Christian support

WhyIsrael

By Ryan Jones.. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday stated that Zionism and the rebirth of the Jewish state would not have succeeded without the backing and support of Christian Zionism.

Netanyahu was speaking at a rededication ceremony for the landmark windmill situated at the entrance to Mishkenot Sha’ananim, the first neighborhood built outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls.

Built in 1858 by Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore, the windmill quickly became a recognized symbol of Jerusalem. But over the years, it fell into disrepair.

The windmill’s restoration was made possible by the cooperation of various government bodies and private charities, but the bulk of the funding has come from the Dutch organization Christians for Israel.

Last month, Dutch experts oversaw the installation of a new dome and blades on the iconic structure, and managed to return the windmill to working order.

Acknowledging the role played by Christians for Israel in this particular project, and the involvement in general of Christian Zionists in Israel’s restoration, Netanyahu said:

“I don’t believe that the Jewish State and Modern Zionism would have been possible without Christian Zionism. I think that the many Christian supporters of the rebirth of the Jewish State and the ingathering of the Jewish people in the 19th century made possible the rise of…modern Jewish Zionism. We always had the deeply ingrained desire to come back to our land and rebuild it. …That was made possible in the 19th century, by the resurgence of Christian Zionism… It’s well represented here today by our Dutch friends.”

Members of Congress Demand Answers for Homeland Security’s Unjust Domain Name Seizures

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Trevor Timm

This morning, a bipartisan group of Representatives, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), sent a pointed letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano protesting the recent spat of domain name seizures—executed on dubious copyright grounds—that have been censoring websites with no due process.

“Our concern centers on your Department’s methods, and the process given, when seizing the domain names of websites whose actions and content are presumed to be lawful, protected speech,” the letter said, which was also signed by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut.).

The Representatives’ letter focused on the case of former hip hop website Dajaz1. Dajaz1’s domain name had been seized for over a year, despite evidence that the website had lawful material, and that “many of the allegedly infringing links to copyrighted songs, and specifically the links that were the basis of the seizure order, were given to the site’s owner by artists and labels themselves” including Kanye West, Diddy, and a vice president of a major record label.

Adding to the injustice, the government refused to cooperate with Dajaz1’s attorneys for months, and sought numerous extensions of the seizure authority in secret. When the court records were finally released, it showed that the government was waiting on the RIAA to evaluate a "sampling of allegedly infringing content" and respond to other “outstanding questions.”  While the RIAA fiddled, Dajaz1 lost the right to speak and the public lost its right to read what was published there.

Finally, after a year, control over dajaz1.com was handed back to the owners with no apology, and no explanation.  It is disturbing enough that DHS has been effectively acting as the tax-funded hired gun of the content industry, but, even more horrifying, it censored the wrong targets, for no good reason, for a year.

Dajaz1’s case is far from unique, as we found out earlier this week when a similar situation happened to Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org, the popular sports streaming sites that were seized—again with no due process—back in February 2011. The sites, which have been in the midst of a court fight to return its domains, had been arguing that linking was not infringing, noting that a Spanish court had already found the sites legal. Yet the government still held onto their domain for 18 months.  On Wednesday, they again handed back their domains with no explanation. 

As we explained:

Dropping the case was, of course, the right move. The government's copyright arguments were incredibly weak (it’s pretty well-settled that linking is not infringement). Even more troubling, the seizures also captured plenty of legal and protected speech. Indeed, many (including EFF) have been making these arguments for well over a year. The real question is why it took so long. 

We also demanded the government should explain why it reversed its position, and provide a clear policy rationale so websites around the world could assess their risk for unexplained and unjustified seizures.

The Representatives want answers to the same questions. At the end of their letter, they ask seven specific questions about DHS’ policy, their rationale, and what procedures they plan on implementing so websites’ rights aren’t trampled on again. You can read the full letter here.

EFF is encouraged that Congress is taking an increased interest in making sure First Amendment protected speech is not censored on the Internet due to draconian copyright policy, and we look forward to the Justice Deparment and Homeland Security’s official response.  

Rights Groups Denounce Dropping of CIA Torture Cases

AntiWar
Jim Lobe

U.S. human rights groups have roundly condemned Thursday’s announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that the Justice Department will not pursue prosecutions of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers who may have been responsible for the deaths of two prisoners in their custody.

The announcement appeared to mark the end of all efforts by the U.S. government to hold CIA interrogators accountable for torture and mistreating prisoners detained during the so-called “Global War on Terror” launched shortly after the al-Qaeda attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

For rights activists and for supporters of President Barack Obama, it was the latest in a series of disappointing decisions, including the failure to close the detention facility at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. They had hoped Obama would not only end the excesses of President George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war, but also conduct a full investigation of those excesses, if not prosecute those responsible.

“This is truly a disastrous development,” said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “To now have no accountability whatsoever for any of the CIA abuses for which there are now mountains of evidence is just appalling.”

“It completely undermines the U.S.’s ability to have any credibility on any of these issues in other countries, even as it calls for other countries to account for abuses and prosecute cases of torture and mistreatment,” she told IPS.

“Continuing impunity threatens to undermine the universally recognized prohibition on torture and other abusive treatment and sends the dangerous signal to government officials that there will be no consequences for their use of torture and other cruelty,” noted Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Today’s decision not to file charges against individuals who tortured prisoners to death is yet another entry in what is already a shameful record.”

In his announcement, Holder suggested that crimes were indeed committed in the two cases that were being investigated by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham but that convictions were unlikely.

“Based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.

The two deaths took place at a secret CIA detention facility known as the Salt Pit in Afghanistan in 2002 and at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison the following year. The victims have been identified as Gul Rahman, a suspected Taliban militant, and Manadel Al-Jamadi, an alleged Iraqi insurgent.

The two were the last reviewed by Durham, who had originally been tasked by Bush’s attorney general, Michael Mukasey, in 2008 with conducting a criminal investigation into CIA interrogators’ use of “waterboarding” against detainees and the apparently intentional destruction of interrogation videotapes that recorded those sessions.

In August 2009, Holder expanded Durham’s mandate to include 101 cases of alleged mistreatment by CIA interrogators of detainees held abroad to determine whether any of them may be liable to prosecution.

At the time, he also stressed that he would not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the controversial legal guidance given by the Bush administration regarding possible “enhanced interrogation” techniques that could be used against detainees.

Such techniques, which include waterboarding, the use of stress positions and extreme heat and cold, are widely considered torture by human rights groups and international legal experts. As such, they violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT), as well as the Geneva Conventions and a 1996 U.S. federal law against torture.

Holder’s position was consistent with Obama’s statement, which human rights groups also strongly criticized, shortly after taking office in 2009 that he did not want CIA officials to “suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering” to escape prosecution and that he preferred “to look forward as opposed to…backwards.”

In his first days in office, Obama ordered all secret CIA detention facilities closed and banned the enhanced techniques authorized by his predecessor.

In late 2010, Durham announced that he would not pursue criminal charges related to the destruction of the CIA videotapes. Seven months later, he recommended that, of the 101 cases of alleged CIA abuse referred to him, only two warranted full criminal investigations in which CIA officers had allegedly exceeded the Bush administration’s guidelines for permissible interrogation techniques.

Now that Holder and Durham have concluded that prosecutions of the individuals involved are unlikely to result in convictions, it appears certain that no CIA officer will be prosecuted in a U.S. jurisdiction. Prosecutions of Bush officials responsible for authorizing the “enhanced interrogation” techniques have also been ruled out.

In 2006, a private contractor for the CIA was successfully prosecuted and sentenced to six years in prison for beating an Afghan detainee to death three years before.

Some commentators suggested that these decisions, including the dropping of the two remaining cases, have been motivated primarily by political considerations. Indeed, HRW director Kenneth Roth wrote in an op-ed last year that “dredging up the crimes of the previous administration was seen as too distracting and too antagonistic an enterprise when Republican votes were needed.”

In a statement Thursday, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee praised Holder’s decision. Republicans protested Holder’s referral of the 101 cases to Durham in 2009.

But rights activists expressed great frustration. Holder’s announcement “is disappointing because it’s well documented that in the aftermath of 9/11, torture and abuse were widespread and systematic,” said Melina Milazzo of Human Rights First (HRF), which has been one of the most aggressive groups in investigating and publicizing torture and abuse by U.S. intelligence and military personnel.

“It’s shocking that the department’s review of hundreds of instances of torture and abuse will fail to hold even one person accountable.”

Similarly, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) noted that Holder’s announcement “belies U.S. claims that it can be trusted to hold accountable Americans who have perpetrated torture and other human rights abuses.”

It said the decision “underscores the need for independent investigations elsewhere, such as the investigation in Spain, to continue.” Victims and rights groups including CCR filed criminal complaints against former Bush officials in Spanish courts in 2009, launching two separate investigations by judges there.

Why media neutrality over the US presidential election is fuelling lies

Journalists' failure to challenge Paul Ryan's Tampa speech showed the lack of rigour and challenge

The Guardian
Emily Bell

When Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan closed his speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa last week with the emphatic incantation "let's get this done!", the inner pentagram of the Republican party was on its feet cheering its approval.

Cut back to the CNN studio where anchor Wolf Blitzer noted how enthusiastic the delegates seemed, although he also noted there were one or two items the fact-checkers might want to come back on. He had, he said, made a list of "seven or eight points" that might be contentious, but didn't mention what they were. Cut to a panel discussion for instant reaction, cut to Ryan and family looking pleased, cut back to the studio. Still no specifics on those pesky facts.

Meanwhile Democrats and those with reasonable knowledge of US politics were furiously filling the internet with accusations that the speech was at best disingenuous, at worst deliberately misleading. What about the car plant Ryan referred to – mocking Obama for talking about it lasting 100 years, yet it was closed within a year of his becoming president – when the Bush administration had closed it? Or chiding Obama for failing to act on a fiscal report when Ryan himself had sat on the committee which blocked the adoption of its recommendations ? Or his Medicaid calculations?

Back in the CNN studio, Blitzer finally felt comfortable listing the points where Ryan had clearly created a misleading impression, noting that "emails and Twitter" had raised such questions, rather than producers and correspondents. For the viewer, it was puzzling.

A major news network that doesn't say, even as the ovation continues, "hang on a minute", is surely falling short. The reluctance of American journalists to tackle the substantive issues raised by politicians, lobbyists, pressure groups and others for fear of being seen as "biased" forms part of a culture of "neutrality" that is essentially driven by economic forces but which is presented as an ethical touchstone.

"The view from nowhere" is a phrase coined by philosopher Thomas Nagel, which was applied to American journalism by academics and commentators like Jay Rosen and James Fallows. It describes a flawed process of delivering "unbiased" reporting. The "neutral" journalist conveys two sides to an argument without forming a judgment. The theory sounds fine until you try it out: "some scientists believe in the Darwinian theory of evolution, but many other people believe that God created men and monkeys from different pieces of magic clay'. An extreme, and absurd example perhaps, but one which illustrates the fundamental bankruptcy of "the view from nowhere".

The culture that favours "neutrality" over "truthiness" was illustrated by Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin's now infamous assertion that "legitimate rape" carries almost no risk of pregnancy, when his interviewer Charles Jaco allowed it to slip by unchallenged. Again, this local interview rapidly found an international audience through the hyper-connected web of consumers and commentators, making the journalistic failure to tackle this at source even more egregious.

The existence of a "fact-checking movement" which runs parallel to, but is not part of, the press shows how disjointed the process of informing the public has become. So much so that a former public editor of the New York Times attracted some ridicule earlier this year when he asked if it was the job of journalists to be "truth vigilantes".; given the prevailing conditions, however, one can see why he was asking the question even it if was phrased in a rather unfortunate way.

Every one of the 15,000 editors, correspondents, producers, gofers and commentators who packed into the convention last week should be asking themselves the same question. If the job of journalism is to strengthen democracy, and if you can't move in downtown Tampa for accredited press, why did Ryan and his team of speechwriters produce something so wilfully misleading? The ugly truth is, they did it because they could.

Shading the earth could combat global warming: Study

Editor's Note: Why the insistence that Global Warming is driven by CO2 levels? Here is the sales pitch for geoengineering to offset the effects of "global warming". This will be pushed along with carbon derivatives/taxes in a rush to implement policy regardless of where the science truly leads us. Years from now, it will turn out that they have been spraying us with similar chemicals for years and the excuse presented is how our benevolent, heroic, eugenicist, overseers had the good insight to spray us despite ourselves. Years from now, they truth will leak out but, by then, it will be only so much paper.

eai

Transporting materials into the stratosphere that can reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth could lower the effects of global climate change, a new study has found.

Researchers from the US found that the basic technology to transport solar geoengineering materials in the atmosphere currently exists and could be assembled and implemented in a number of different forms for less than USD 5 billion a year.

Put into context, the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is currently estimated as roughly USD 200 to 2000 billion.

Currently, a technique of geoengineering called Solar radiation management seeks to reflect sunlight and thus reduce global warming.

It creates stratospheric sulfur aerosols but the study found that it was not a preferred strategy as reducing incident sunlight does nothing at all to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

It also did not address the issue of oceans acidification.

The researchers noted that other research has shown that the effects of solar radiation management are not uniform, and would cause different temperature and precipitation changes in different countries.

"As economists are beginning to explore the role of several types of geoengineering, it is important that a cost analysis of SRM is carried out. The basic feasibility of SRM with current technology is still being disputed and some political scientists and policy makers are concerned about unilateral action," co-author of the study, Professor Jay Apt, said in a statement.

In the study, the researchers, from Aurora Flight Sciences, Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University, performed an engineering cost analysis on six systems capable of delivering 1-5 million metric tonnes of material to altitudes of 18-30 km.

It included an existing aircraft, a new airplane designed to perform at altitudes up to 30 km, a new hybrid airship, rockets, guns and suspended pipes carrying gas or slurry to inject the particles into the atmosphere.

Based on existing research into solar radiation management, the researchers performed their cost analyses for systems that could deliver around one million tonnes of aerosols each year at an altitude between 18 and 25 km and between a latitude range of 30°N and 30°S.

The study concluded that using aircraft is easily within the current capabilities of aerospace engineering, manufacturing and operations.

The development of new, specialised aircraft appeared to be the cheapest option, with costs of around USD 1 to USD 2 billion a year; existing aircraft would be more expensive as they are not optimised for high altitudes and would need considerable and expensive modifications to do so.

The study was published in journal Environmental Research Letters.