Fmota News

Another name on the Dishonor Roll of /Republicans/ convicted of election/voter fraud—including California party op Mark Jacoby, phone-jammer Allan Raymond, who helped “elect” New Hampshire’s John Sununu to the Senate, and the eight who went down for election-stealing in Clay County, Kentucky.

Since 2000, the GOP would not have held Congressional majorities, or many top state offices (including governor), without election theft, because their “base” is way out on the fringe. They’re so far right they think Obama’s on the left—and yet, despite their actual minority, they /could/ “take back” the White House, just Bush/Cheney did—twice— against the will of the electorate.

So why, oh why, do Democrats refuse to face this issue? We’ve been asking this key question for the last ten years; and we’ll be asking it for years to come, until we know the answers.

MCM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/04/charlie-white-voter-fraud_n_1254311.html

Charlie White, Indiana Election Chief, Found Guilty Of Voter Fraud

INDIANAPOLIS — While Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels held off Saturday on appointing a permanent replacement for the state elections chief convicted early that morning of voter fraud, Democrats said they planned to move quickly to wrest control of the politically powerful office from the GOP.

A jury from Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis, deliberated for 13 hours before convicting Republican Secretary of State Charlie White on six felony charges. Among other things, White was accused of lying about his address on voter registration forms.

Indiana law does not allow felons to hold statewide office, and Daniels quickly appointed White’s chief deputy, Jerry Bonnet, as interim secretary of state. But the governor said he was holding off on naming a permanent replacement because a judge could reduce the charge to a misdemeanor, allowing White to regain the office.

Democrats didn’t want to wait, however. Chairman Dan Parker told The Associated Press the party will seek to have its 2010 candidate, Vop Osili, who lost to White by about 300,000 votes, certified as secretary of state during the coming week. A civil judge in Marion County ordered the state to declare Osili the winner in December, saying White wasn’t an eligible candidate because he had lied about where he lived on a voter registration form.

Parker said White’s conviction removed the sole objection to Marion Circuit Judge Louis Rosenberg’s ruling ordering the Indiana Recount Commission to certify Osili, the second-place finisher, as the winner. Parker said the conviction proved White had committed voter fraud as Democrats contended. Rosenberg had stayed his order pending appeal.

“Now is the time for the stay to be lifted and for the recount commission to certify Vop Osili as the winner and have him sworn in this week, and all of this can be put behind us,” Parker told The AP.

But a spokesman for the state Republican party said the civil lawsuit filed by Democrats and the criminal charges handed down by a grand jury were separate. Pete Seat said Democrats were unfairly trying to change the outcome of the election.

“The Democrats, this is what they do,” he said. “They lose elections and then they try to litigate victory.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Daniels would appoint another Republican to the office once he received a certified copy of White’s sentencing order.

The case is likely to end up in the state Supreme Court, although the justices have not said yet whether they will take up the appeal of Rosenberg’s order.

White also is expected to appeal his criminal conviction.

Jurors in White’s criminal trial deliberated overnight before reaching a verdict about 2 a.m. Saturday.

“I’m disappointed for my family and the people who supported me,” White said outside the courtroom after the verdict was announced.

Prosecutors said White used his ex-wife’s address instead of a condo he had with his fiancee because he didn’t want to give up his $1,000-per-month Fishers Town Council salary after moving out of that district.

White claimed the charges ignored a complicated personal life in which he was trying to raise his 10-year-old son, plan his second marriage and campaign for the statewide office he won that November. He said he stayed at his ex-wife’s house when he wasn’t on the road campaigning and did not live in the condo until after he remarried.

The Indiana Recount Commission unanimously upheld White’s candidacy in June after Democrats challenged its legitimacy, but Democrats appealed the decision to Rosenberg, who ordered it reversed. A Hamilton County grand jury had indicted White in March following an investigation by two special prosecutors, one Republican and one Democrat.

Amid all the turmoil, work at the secretary of state’s office continued.

Office spokesman A.J. Feeney-Ruiz said Bonnet would report to work as secretary of state Monday and “it’ll be business as usual.”

http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_IndiansOrigDemoc.html

American Indians: The original democrats

Many people think that our democratic tradition evolved primarily from the Greeks and the English. But those political cultures, steeped in slavery, aristocracy, and property-power, provided only a counterpoint to the real source of our federal democracy – the American Indians. In the following selections from his book Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World (Crown Publishers, NY, 1988), Jack Weatherford looks into the historic record to correct the mythology we have been raised with. — Tom Atlee

The most consistent theme in the descriptions penned about the New World was amazement at the Indians’ personal liberty, in particular their freedom from rulers and from social classes based on ownership of property. For the first time the French and the British became aware of the possibility of living in social harmony and prosperity without the rule of a king.

As the first reports of this new place filtered into Europe, they provoked much philosophical and political writing. Sir Thomas More incorporated into his 1516 book Utopia those characteristics then being reported by the first travelers to America…. More’s work was translated into all the major European languages….

Louis Armand de Lom d’Arce, Baron de Lahontan, wrote several short books on the Huron Indians of Canada based on his stay with them from 1683 to 1694 [during which he] found an orderly society, but one lacking a formal government that compelled such order…. Soon thereafter, Lahontan became an international celebrity feted in all the liberal circles. The playwright Delisle de la Drevetiere adapted these ideas to the stage in a play about an American Indian’s visit to Paris… Arlequin Sauvage,…. which had a major impact on a young man named Jean Jacques Rousseau…. and eventually led to the publication of his best-known work, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, in 1754….

During this era the thinkers of Europe forged the ideas that became known as the European Enlightenment, and much of its light came from the torch of Indian liberty….

When the American Revolution started, [Thomas] Paine served as secretary to the commissioners sent to negotiate with the Iroquois…. [He] sought to learn their language and throughout the remainder of his political and writing career he used the Indians as models of how society might be organized.

– pp. 122-125

Reportedly, the first person to propose a union of all the colonies and to propose a federal model for it was the Iroquois chief Canassatego, speaking at an Indian-British assembly in Pennsylvania in July 1744…. He suggested that they do as his people had done and form a union like the League of the Iroquois….

Benjamin Franklin…[was] Indian commissioner…during the 1750s and became intimately familiar with the intracacies of Indian political culture and in particular with the League of the Iroquois….. Speaking to the Albany Congress in 1754, Franklin called on the delegates of the various English colonies to unite and emulate the Iroquois League…. This model of several sovereign units united into one government presented precisely the solution to the problem confronting the writers of the United Sates Constitution. Today we call this a “federal” system in which each state retains power over internal affiars and the national government regulates affairs common to all….

The Americans followed the Iroquois precedent[s] of always providing for ways to remove leaders when necessary …..admitting new states as members rather than keeping them as colonies….allowing only one person to speak at a time in political meetings….

One of the most important political institutions borrowed from the Indians was the caucus….The word comes from the Algonquian languages….. The caucus became a mainstay of American democracy both in the Congress and in political and community groups all over the country.

– pp. 135-145

===================================

February 4, 2012 Posted or Forwarded by: Reznews List Owner Larry Kibby – l.kibby@frontier.com

American Indian Poetry http://lkibby1.webs.com/

Saturday Morning Reznews February 4, 2012

U.S. Government & Political Briefs & Summary’s

$12.8 Million Grant Announcement Modified for Adam Walsh Implementation Grant … Targeted News Service (subscription) This funding opportunity is open to state governments and Native American tribal governments. A funding opportunity notice from the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking…

Reservation & Tribal Government Briefs & Summary’s

EXCLUSIVE: Evictions from tribes cost Indian families tens of thousands in income North County Times Members of the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, which owns Valley View Casino in Valley Center, each earn nearly $100000 a year in gambling revenues, but not all members of the tribe are receiving their share, according to court records….

Conservation & Environmental Briefs & Summary’s

In Lake County, a vestige of prairie gets state protection Chicago Tribune The land looks much as it did during the time of the early American settlers and the Native Americans before them. In fact, the roots of the prairie plants in this undisturbed preserve are likely hundreds of years old and reach 16 or more….

Education & History Briefs & Summary’s

Dakota Homecoming lands $70K Legacy grant Winona Daily News Organization members are working with area schools to see if Native American cultural studies can be integrated into curriculum. White also hopes to screen “Dakota 38,” a film focused on the uprising, which premiered at the Frozen River Film….

Historical Society presents a history of state’s Native Americans Escanaba Daily Press ESCANABA – Dr. Charles Lindquist, president of the Delta County Historical Society, will give a talk he calls “The People Who Loved Michigan the Most: The Story of Michigan’s Native Americans.” Presented in partnership with the Escanaba Public…

Court & Legal Briefs & Summary’s

Judge seeks federal help in White Mountain Apache Tribe dispute Tucson Citizen 03, 2012, under Arizona Republic News The White Mountain Apache Tribe’s chief judge has asked federal authorities to intercede in a governmental showdown that has divided the Native American nation near Show Low. Judge Reagan Armstrong….

Court rules against Toppenish on air agency fees Yakima Herald-Republic City officials stopped paying annual assessments to the agency about five years ago because Toppenish is on the Yakama Indian reservation, which is under the authority of the US Environmental Protection Agency. But on Thursday, Superior Court…

Nedrow man gets prison time for bringing drugs from reservation WatertownDailyTimes.com According to a news release from the US Attorney’s Office, Mr. Sky played a role as a mid-level distributor in a marijuana conspiracy in which a total of well over 100 kilograms of marijuana was brought from the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation…

Sheriff hosts annual meeting with tribal representatives Ukiah Daily Journal By TIFFANY REVELLE The Daily Journal Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman on Wednesday hosted his fifth annual meeting with representatives from all seven of the county’s American Indian tribes across 11 rancherias, to discuss a myriad….

Bemidji gang leader arrested DL-Online Wakinyan Wakan McArthur, 33, was arrested Wednesday night and appeared in federal court Thursday on charges which, if convicted, could land him in prison for life. A Bemidji man, the suspected leader of the Native Mob gang with ties to reservations….

People in the News Briefs & Summary’s

Indigenous featuring Mato Nanji ~ “Things we do” (Music Video) Gather.com The Nakota Nation members grew up on South Dakota’s Yankton Indian Reservation, where their father, Greg Zephier became a spokesperson for Native American rights. A musician in his own right during the 1960s and ’70s, Zephier provided his children….

Events & Activity Briefs & Summary’s

5 Things You Should Know This Weekend Patch.com … perform its Spring Pow Wow, according to the Suncoast News. The pow wow lasts from 10 am to 10 pm Saturday. It also goes from 10 am to 6 pm Sunday….

Editorial & Opinion Briefs & Summary’s

Sri Lanka’s Independence Day- a Black Day for Tamil Eelam Salem-News.Com (SALEM) – How do Native American people really feel each time the 4th of July is celebrated in the United States? A friend of mine has a shirt featuring an Indian warrior with the words, “Fighting Terrorism Since 1492″ and that seems to define….

Green Acre Radio: UW exhibits highlights Hanford legacies Crosscut Both speak of their Native American heritage and desire to honor their culture and shed light on questions that have long gone unanswered. Native Americans mined for plutonium at Hanford when their reservations, along with farms and small towns….

E-Verify proposal will perpetuate racism Springfield News-Leader Such were-here-first, been-here-longer historical fact is immaterial to anti-immigrant politics and proponents, as once it was when Native Americans were labeled godless savages, driven from their lands, and the survivors exiled on reservations…

Posted by: L.Kibby – l.kibby@frontier.com

*Cybergate: Was The White House Stolen By Cyberfraud? [Kindle Edition] by Simon Worrall* http://amzn.to/yjJma0

Robert Kennedy Jr. calls it ” more important than Watergate.” In this gripping, investigative work, critically acclaimed author, Simon Worrall, follows the trail of evidence to show that the 2004 Ohio election, which put George Bush into the White House for the second time, may have been hacked. At the center of the drama is Karl Rove’s, brilliant IT expert, Michael Connell, who died when his Piper Saratoga plane crashed mysteriously in 2010. Was Connell murdered to cover up the truth? Drawing on extensive, forensic evidence and candid testimonies, including an exclusive interview with Connell’s widow, Worrall unravels the mystery of Connell’s death. Previously unpublished, secret documents obtained by the author point towards a chilling, possible cause. The result is a dramatic, True Crime story underpinned by colorful characters and painstaking research, which takes the reader inside the shadowy world of electoral fraud. And with a Presidential election looming this year, Worrall’s detailed exposure of the vulnerability of digital voting machines to abuse could not be more timely.

http://amzn.to/yjJma0

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/02/03/418797/exclusive-ari-fleischer-komen-planned-parenthood/

EXCLUSIVE: Ari Fleischer Secretly Helped Guide Komen Strategy On Planned Parenthood

By Judd Legum on Feb 3, 2012 at 4:55 pm

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, secretly helped guide Komen Foundation’s disastrous strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Fleischer’s relationship with Komen and the Planned Parenthood controversy was previously undisclosed. Fleischer confirmed to ThinkProgress his recent role in filling a key communication position at Komen. He stressed, however, that another communications firm (Ogilvy PR ) was retained by Komen to deal with the explosive controversy over the last few days.

In November, Komen advertised for a top level communications position in Roll Call. Promising applicants received a call from Fleischer. The advertisement is no longer posted on the Roll Call website, but a portion is accessible via Google:

According to a source, during at least one interview, Planned Parenthood was a major topic of conversation. Fleischer indicated that he had discussed the Planned Parenthood issue with Komen’s CEO, Nancy Brinker, and that she was at her wits end about how to proceed. Fleischer described himself as a longtime friend of Brinker.

Fleischer confirmed to ThinkProgress that he would receive a fee from Komen when the search is complete. Fleischer did not specify the amount of his fee but said it would be “substantially below the normal placement fee charged by executive search companies” because “they’re a charity I believe in.”

Fleischer’s high-level involvement with Komen further complicates its image as an apolitical cancer charity. Fleischer is a prominent partisan commentator and a longtime critic of Planned Parenthood. In his book, Taking Heat , Fleischer criticized Planned Parenthood as a partisan, ideological organization that receives undeserved positive coverage in the press. In 2001, Fleischer said that the Clinton administration verged too far to the left on family planning efforts because “if Planned Parenthood wanted it, the previous administration favored it .”

***

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13308

http://www.tnr.com/blog/timothy-noah/100370/ehrenreichs-prescience

Ehrenreich’s Prescience on Komen

*

Timothy Noah

* February 3, 2012 | 12:35 pm * 16 comments * |More * PrintPrint *

The Susan G. Komen Foundation’s once-spotless reputation is getting dirtier by the minute. First it yanked funding for Planned Parenthood. Then itchanged its story about why it pulled the money. (Both versions denied that the reason had anything to do with Planned Parenthood’s support for abortion.) Now we learn that the foundation teamed up with a firearms manufacturer in the marketing of a“Hope Edition” handgun with a “DuraCoat pink slide in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” What better way to raise breast cancer awareness than to pump somebody you hate full of lead?

One writer who’s been on to the Komen Foundation con for years is Barbara Ehrenreich, whose excellent 2009 book /Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America , /excoriates the group for creating a “pink-ribbon culture” that promotes “the redemptive powers of the disease” and “transform[s] breast cancer into a rite of passage—not an injustice or a tragedy to rail against but a normal marker in the life cycle, like menopause or grandmotherhood.” In /The First Year of the Rest of Your Life/, a collection of breast cancer testimonials with a foreword by Komen Foundation founder Susan Brinker, one contributor writes, “For me, breast cancer has provided a good kick in the rear to get me started rethinking my life.” This, Ehrenreich observes, is a reaffirmation of Nietzche’s notion that whatever doesn’t kill you “makes you a spunkier, more evolved sort of person,” a construct that Christopher Hitchens, on his deathbed, took strong exception to . “In the brute physical world,” Hitchens wrote, “and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and leave you considerably weaker.” Nietzche himself, Hitchens observed,

seems to have caught an early dose of syphilis, very probably during his first-ever sexual encounter, which gave him crushing migraine headaches and attacks of blindness and metastasized into dementia and paralysis. This, while it did not kill him right away, certainly contributed to his death and cannot possibly, in the meanwhile, be said to have made him stronger. In the course of his mental decline, he became convinced that the most important possible cultural feat would be to prove that the plays of Shakespeare had been written by Bacon. [...] Eventually, and in miserable circumstances in the Italian city of Turin, Nietzsche was overwhelmed at the sight of a horse being cruelly beaten in the street. Rushing to throw his arms around the animal’s neck, he suffered some terrible seizure and seems for the rest of his pain-racked and haunted life to have been under the care of his mother and sister. [...] The most he could have meant, I now think, is that he made the most of his few intervals from pain and madness to set down his collections of penetrating aphorism and paradox. This may have given him the euphoric impression that he was triumphing, and making use of the Will to Power.

Closer to home, my late wife, the journalist Marjorie Williams, spent the last three and a half years of her life trying to get cured of, or at least postpone dying from, liver cancer. After she died I published a posthumous collection of her writings that included an unfinished memoir she’d written about being a cancer patient. I’m afraid the Komen Foundation wouldn’t approve. Far from embracing the Outward Bound-style challenge fate had gifted her, Marjorie flew into a rage when a woman she knew sent her a card to “congratulate” her on her “cancer journey.” The note “quoted Joseph Campbell to the effect that in order to achieve the life you deserved, you had to give up the life you had planned. /Screw you/, I thought. /You/ give up the life /you/ had planned.” The flip side to this upbeat talk, Marjorie knew, was that if you didn’t make it you had only yourself to blame—a principal theme in Ehrenreich’s /Bright-Sided/. (Ehrenreich is herself a breast cancer survivor.) “I can’t count the times I’ve been asked what psychological affliction made me invite this cancer,” Marjorie wrote. “My favorite /New Yorker/ cartoon, now taped above my desk, shows two ducks talking in a pond. One of them is telling the other: ‘Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re inviting all this duck hunting into your life right now.’ ” Shortly before Barbara Boggs Sigmund, the late sister of Cokie Roberts and a onetime mayor of Princeton, N.J., died of melanoma in 1990, she published an op-ed piece in the /New York Times/ that addressed this vile conceit with admirable directness. “I Didn’t Give Myself Cancer,” was the headline. Nor did her failure to beat it indicate any psychological or spiritual deficit on her part, anymore than did Marjorie’s failure, or Hitchens’s.

To be sure, neither Marjorie nor Hitchens nor Sigmund had /breast cancer/, which comes branded with special sisterhood-is-powerful uplift that, Ehrenreich wrote in a memorable 2009 essay (“Not So Pretty In Pink ”), was becoming for many women a sort of watered-down substitute for feminism.

When a corporation wants to signal that it’s “woman friendly,” what does it do? It stamps a pink ribbon on its widget and proclaims that some miniscule portion of the profits will go to breast cancer research. I’ve even seen a bottle of Shiraz called “Hope” with a pink ribbon on its label, but no information, alas, on how much you have to drink to achieve the promised effect. When Laura Bush traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2007, what grave issue did she take up with the locals? Not women’s rights (to drive, to go outside without a man, etc.), but “breast cancer awareness.” In the post-feminist United States, issues like rape, domestic violence, and unwanted pregnancy seem to be too edgy for much public discussion, but breast cancer is all apple pie.

Back then it was wine. Now it’s guns and knuckling under to the anti-abortion movement. Give Ehrenreich a gold star for seeing it coming.

/Update, 2 p.m/.: The Komen Foundation today announced it’s changing its policy of not funding organizations (like Planned Parenthood) that are under investigation. Now it will only decline to fund organizations under investigation if the investigation is “criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.” It still isn’t clear whether Planned Parenthood will receive funding in the future because the GOP congressional fishing-trip investigation of Planned Parenthood was only one of two conflicting reasons Komen gave for disqualifying the group. (The other was that Planned Parenthood doesn’t do its mammograms in-house.) The Komen statement didn’t address the question of whether it would continue to allow use of its philanthropy to market pink guns .

Without an unrestricted internet little of our outreach would have been possible. ACTA is the latest of the tools to control the flow of information: ~Scott http://blacklistednews.com/

The Corporate Usurpation of the Internet

By Nile Bowie BlacklistedNews.com

In the wake of a public outcry against internet regulation bills such as SOPA and PIPA, representatives of the EU have signed a new and far more threatening legislation yesterday in Tokyo. Spearheaded by the governments of the United States and Japan and constructed largely in the absence of public awareness, the measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) dramatically alter current international legal framework, while introducing the first substantial processes of global internet governance. With complete contempt towards the democratic process, the negotiations of the treaty were exclusively held between industry representatives and government officials, while excluding elected representatives and members of the press from their hearings.

Under the guise of protecting intellectual property rights, the treaty introduces measures that would allow the private sector to enforce sweeping central authority over internet content. The ACTA abolishes all legal oversight involving the removal of content and allows copyright holders to force ISPs to remove material from the internet, something that presently requires a court order. ISPs would then be faced with legal liabilities if they chose not to remove content. Theoretically, personal blogs can be removed for using company logos without permission or simply linking to copy written material; users could be criminalized, barred from accessing the internet and even imprisoned for sharing copyrighted material. Ultimately, these implications would be starkly detrimental toward the internet as a medium for free speech.

The Obama Administration subverted the legal necessity of allowing to US Senate to ratify the treaty by unconstitutionally declaring it an “executive agreement” before the President promptly signed it on October 1st, 2011. As a touted constitutional lawyer, Barack Obama is fully aware that Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, mandates Congress in dealing with issues of intellectual property, thus voiding the capacity for the President to issue an executive agreement. The White House refused to even disclose details about the legislation to elected officials and civil libertarians over concern that doing so may incur “damage to the national security.” While some may hang off every word of his sorely insincere speeches and still be fixated by the promises of hope offered by brand-Obama, his administration has trampled the constitution and introduced the most comprehensive authoritarian legislation in America’s history.

In addition to imposing loosely defined criminal sanctions to average web users, the ACTA treaty will also obligate ISPs to disclose personal user information to copyright holders. The measures introduce legislative processes that contradict the legal framework of participant countries and allows immigration authorities to search laptops, external hard drives and Internet-capable devices at airports and border checkpoints. The treaty is not limited solely to internet-related matters,

ACTA would prohibit the production of generic pharmaceuticals and outlaw the use of certain seeds for crops through patents, furthering the corporate cartelization of the food and drug supply.

ACTA would allow companies from any participating country (which include EU member states, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Morocco) to shut down websites without any explanation. Hypothetically, nothing could prevent private Singaporean companies from promptly taking down American websites that oppose the Singapore Air Force conducting war games on US soil, such as those conducted in December 2011. By operating outside normal judicial framework, exporting US copyright law to the rest of the world and mandating private corporations to conduct surveillance on their users, all prerequisites of democracy, transparency and self-expression are an afterthought.

The further monopolization of the existing resources of communication, exchange and expression is ever present in the form of deceptive new articles of legislation that unanimously call for the implementation of the same austere censorship measures. Even if the ACTA treaty is not implemented, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP) between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Vietnam and the United States offers more extensive intellectual property regulations. Leaked documents prepared by the U.S. Business Coalition (which have been reportedly drafted by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Motion Picture Association of America) report that in addition to ACTA-style legislation, the TTP will impose fines on non-compliant entities and work to extend the general period of copy write terms on individual products.

Under the sweeping regulations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, individual infringers will be criminalized and sentenced with the same severity as large-scale offenders. Within the United States, the recently announced Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) H.R. 3782 regulation seeks to install policies largely identical to SOPA and PIPA. The Obama administration is also working towards an Internet ID program, which may be mandatory for American citizens and required when renewing passports, obtaining federal licenses, or applying for social security. Spreading these dangerous measures to other countries participating in these treaties would necessitate a binding obligation on the US to retain these policies, averting any chance of reform.

The ACTA will become law once it is formally ratified and cleared by the European Parliament in June. By petitioning members of the European parliament and educating others about the potential dangers imposed by this legislation, there is a chance of the treaty being rejected. Upon closer examination of the human condition with all of its inequalities, food insecurity and dire social issues, our governments have lost their legitimacy for giving such unwarranted priority to fighting copyright infringement on behalf of lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries. The existence of ACTA is a clear statement that surveillance, regulations and securing further corporate centralization dwarfs any constructive shift towards stimulating human innovation and self-sufficient technologies.

When former US National Security Advisor and Trilateral Commission co-founder, Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010, he warned of a global political awakening beginning to take place. Technology such as file sharing, blogging, and open source software has the potential to undermine the oligarchical governing interests seeking to centrally control our society and enforce the population into being entirely dependent on their commodities. The following excerpt from Brzezinski’s book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, provides invaluable insight into the world being brought in; “The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iwqD6c77s5PYJ7fb-jcDMOvOzoJA?docId=CNG.861464d99790ab4ab20401b49b8c3580.71

US appeals court nixes bid to revive torture suit

(AFP) – 21 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A US appeals court Tuesday rejected an effort to revive a lawsuit by Jose Padilla, a US citizen arrested in 2002 for an alleged “dirty bomb” plot who claims he was illegally detained and tortured.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, affirmed a lower court decision which said former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current Pentagon chief Leon Panetta are immune from the suit for actions taken in their official capacity.

“The political branches, exercising powers explicitly assigned them by our constitution, formulated policies with profound implications for national security,” the appeal panel decision said.

“One may agree or not agree with those policies. One may debate whether they were or were not the most effective counterterrorism strategy. But the forum for such debates is not the civil cause of action pressed in the case at bar.”

Padilla, who is incarcerated at a high security jail in Colorado, previously sued in an attempt to hold Rumsfeld and other US officials accountable for his alleged suffering, but a district court judge dismissed the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claimed in the suit that Padilla was imprisoned without trial for four years and subjected to a range of abuse.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and Muslim convert, was convicted in 2007 of aiding a US-based Al-Qaeda cell and was subsequently sentenced to 17 years in jail.

He left the United States in the 1990s to study in Egypt and later traveled to Afghanistan. He was arrested in 2002 as he returned to the United States.

The terror cell was alleged to have supplied recruits and funding to Islamic extremists abroad, and conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.

US authorities justified his detention without charge at a US navy prison in South Carolina by saying he was an “enemy combatant” who had planned to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States.

The ACLU expressed disappointment over the latest ruling.

“Today is a sad day for the rule of law and for those who believe that the courts should protect American citizens from torture by their own government,” said the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, who argued the appeal in court.

“By dismissing this lawsuit, the appeals court handed the government a blank check to commit any abuse in the name of national security, even the brutal torture of a US citizen on US soil.”

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin charges California lawyers with “frivolous” case re: Mineta testimony of Cheney stand down orders for Pentagon & no order to evacuate the building with established knowledge of incoming attack well after previous attacks in NYC. Judge declares the charges to be a product of “cynical delusion and fantasy”.Court sanctions lawyers behind 9/11 case http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/New_York/News/2012/02_-_February/Court_sanctions_lawyers_behind_9/11_case

Feb 2 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Thursday sanctioned lawyers behind a lawsuit accusing former officials in the Bush administration of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks .

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuitordered two California lawyers to pay $15,000 in addition to double what the government spent defending the case. For the next year, the lead lawyer behind the litigation must inform other federal courts in the circuit of the sanctions against him.

Three attorneys — Dennis Cunningham, William Veale and Mustapha Ndanusa — filed the lawsuit in 2008 on behalf of April Gallop, a member of the U.S. Army injured in the Pentagon attack on Sept. 11, 2001. The lawyers accused then-Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld of causing the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in order to create a political atmosphere that would allow the U.S. government to pursue domestic and international policy objectives. The suit alleged conspiracy to cause death and bodily harm and a violation of the Antiterrorism Act.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin dismissed the case in 2010, ruling that the complaint was frivolous and a product of “cynical delusion and fantasy.” A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit upheld that decision, imposing $15,000 in sanctions on the three lawyers for filing the suit.

In requesting a rehearing before the full 2nd Circuit panel, the lawyers asked the court to disqualify the panel “and any like-minded colleagues” from participating in the decision to grant en banc review. Their motion accused the panel of exhibiting “severe bias, based in active personal emotions arising from the 9/11 attack.”

But the 2nd Circuit took exception to the disqualification request, concluding that no attorney would make such a demand in good faith.

The court imposed an additional punishment on Cunningham, who described himself as “the decider” in developing the case and writing the court filings. For the next year, Cunningham must inform other federal courts in circuit of the sanctions order.

“We are not delusional by any means. We have the facts, and they cannot be explained,” said Veale, a former chief assistant public defender for Contra Costa County, California.

Cunningham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The 2nd Circuit reversed the sanctions against Ndanusa, who only served a minor role as local counsel. Ndanusa said all of the lawyers acted in good faith in bringing the lawsuit.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the litigation.

The case is Gallop v. Cheney et al, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, No. 10-1241.

For Gallop: William Cunningham, Mustapha Ndanusa and William Veale.

For Cheney et al: Assistant U.S. Attorney Alicia Simmons.

(Reporting By Terry Baynes)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/computers/10656-columnist-calls-for-internet-quality-control-to-quash-dissent

Columnist Calls for Internet “Quality Control” to Quash Dissent

Do you think anthropogenic global warming is a hoax? Are you unconvinced that your ancestors had more in common with Cheetah than with Tarzan? Have you any doubts about the official version of how 9/11 went down? Then you, according to Evgeny Morozov, are part of a “kooky” “fringe movement” whose growth must be checked by forcing you to read “authoritative” content whenever you go looking for information on such topics on the Internet.

Morozov is a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, and a former fellow at George Soros’ Open Society Institute — in other words, a reliable bellwether of globalist establishment thinking. His musings in Slate — in which he argues that while outright censorship of the web may not be possible, getting browsers and search engines to direct people to establishment-approved opinions would be an excellent idea — offer “proof of how worried the bad guys are about popular disbelief in State pieties, and about sites … that stoke it,” Lew Rockwell averred, citing his own website as an example. The New American undoubtedly would fall under that rubric as well.

The problem, as Morozov sees it, is that people who “deny” global warming or think vaccines may cause autism — opinions that conflict with those proffered by governments, the United Nations, and other globalist organizations — can post anything they want on the Internet with “little or no quality control” over it. As a result, he says, there are “thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories.”

In addition, Morozov worries that those searching for information on a disputed topic will, because of the way search engines are structured, tend to find sites giving the politically incorrect version of events first and may never get around to reading the “authoritative” sources on the subject. “Meanwhile,” he argues, “the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them.”

Then comes the big question with the foreordained answer: “Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?” Morozov, not surprisingly, replies strongly in the affirmative. Since dissuading those already committed to these outré views may be impossible, he thinks “resources should go into thwarting their growth by targeting their potential — rather than existent — members.” “Given that censorship of search engines is not an appealing or even particularly viable option” — note that he doesn’t say he opposes censorship per se — Morozov argues for changes to browsers and search engines that would notify users that they are about to see something that the self-appointed arbiters of acceptable opinion have deemed unfit for human consumption and, if possible, direct them elsewhere.

He suggests two approaches to ensuring that web searchers are not exposed to unapproved thoughts:

One is to train our browsers to flag information that may be suspicious or disputed. Thus, every time a claim like “vaccination leads to autism” appears in our browser, that sentence would be marked in red — perhaps, also accompanied by a pop-up window advising us to check a more authoritative source. The trick here is to come up with a database of disputed claims that itself would correspond to the latest consensus in modern science — a challenging goal that projects like “Dispute Finder” are tackling head on.

The second — and not necessarily mutually exclusive — option is to nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like “global warming” or “vaccination.” Google already has a list of search queries that send most traffic to sites that trade in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories; why not treat them differently than normal queries? Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds.

Morozov admits that his suggestions “may seem paternalistic” and “might trigger conspiracy theories of [their] own — e.g., is Google shilling for Big Pharma or for Al Gore?” However, he concludes, it is “a risk worth taking as long as it can help thwart the growth of fringe movements.” In fact, he adds, Google should “atone for its sins” of inventing “social search” (whereby links shared by one’s friends are presented more prominently than others) by “ensur[ing] that subjects dominated by pseudoscience and conspiracy theories are given a socially responsible curated treatment.”

Morozov’s concerns about the Internet’s openness to anti-establishment views are not new among the power elite. As far back as 1998, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton bemoaned the lack of a “gate-keeping function” that allows anyone to post anything on the web. Morozov’s proposed solutions to this perceived problem are not exactly original, either, as Paul Joseph Watson observed at Infowars.com:

[Morozov’s contention] represents a similar argument to Cass Sunstein’s “cognitive infiltration,” an effort by Obama’s information czar to slap government warnings on controversial websites (including those claiming that exposure to sunlight is healthy). In a widely derided white paper, Sunstein called for political blogs to be forced to include pop ups that show “a quick argument for a competing view.” He also demanded that taxes be levied on dissenting opinions and even suggested that outright bans on certain thoughts should be enforced.

Indeed, notes Watson, “Morozov’s rhetoric is merely one aspect of the wider move to turn the Internet into an echo chamber of establishment propaganda.” We can, therefore, expect calls for Internet censorship to continue and even become more pronounced. Many people thus have good reason to fear that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a back door to government censorship of the web.

Clearly the globalist establishment is running scared. As the anti-SOPA blackout and the popularity of Ron Paul attest, the Internet is enabling individuals to see through the smokescreen of propaganda emanating from Washington and to mobilize effectively against threats to their liberties. In fact, that very free flow of information on the web may be the one thing standing between the elites and their dreams of — as Watson put it — “Chinese-style thought control.”

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