Complaints Flood CNN After Beck Smears Ron Paul Supporters As Terrorists

Neo-Con and ex-Marxist demonize founding fathers, Ron Paul supporters as terrorists in outrageous attack on free speech, urge use of U.S. military against domestic enemies, anti-war left, libertarians, talking points have roots in September 2006 White House strategy document, demands for retraction flood CNN, sponsors boycotted

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, November 16, 2007

Complaints and demands for a retraction and an apology are flooding CNN today after Neo-Con host Glenn Beck and ex-Marxist David Horowitz smeared Ron Paul supporters, libertarians and the anti-war left as terrorist sympathizers and inferred that the U.S. military should be used to silence them, parroting a talking point that traces back to a September 2006 White House directive.

This is part of an ongoing propaganda assault which has also been mimicked by other anti-American Neo-Con talking heads like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

Beck opened up his show segment by inferring that the U.S. military should be used to silence domestic dissent against the war, claiming that those he would later identify as Ron Paul supporters, libertarians and the anti-war left and link with terrorists, were a "physical threat."

"When you enlist in the U.S. military, you have take an oath that says you're gonna support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies - foreign and domestic - we talk a lot on this program about the foreign threats - maybe we should spend some time tonight on the domestic one....the physical threat may be developing domestically as well," said Beck.

Beck then goes on to make the absurd insinuation that Ron Paul supporters are a terrorist threat because they are causing disenfranchisement with the government. His evidence? The November 5th donation drive coincided with a 400-year-old piece of British history and Guy Fawkes plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

Beck then introduces his guests, the great grandson of Winston Churchill, and admitted former Marxist and now Neo-Con ideologue David Horowitz.

Watch the video.

We are forced to digest the bizarre and abhorrent spectacle of a British elitist, "former" Marxist Horowitz and anti-American Neo-Con Glenn Beck infer that 1776, the founding fathers and the very birth of freedom in America is somehow evil and affiliated with terrorism and extremism.

This brought back memories of a July 2001 FEMA training meeting in Missouri where a FEMA representative was caught on video instructing local police that the American people were the enemy and that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the founding fathers were a terrorist organization.

Watch the video below.

Ex-Marxist Horowitz and Beck then go on to link the anti-war left, Ron Paul supporters on the right and libertarians like Lew Rockwell, with "Islamofascists" and terrorists.

Horowitz states, "I think it's very significant he (Ron Paul) chose Guy Fawkes as an image."

This in itself is a complete lie - the Ron Paul campaign did not create the November 5th donation drive, it was created by one individual and the November 5th motif was merely a gimmick to make people remember to donate. To suggest it was a thinly veiled expression of sympathy with a 17th century terrorist is manifestly ridiculous.

Horowitz then claims, "There are plenty, unfortunately, libertarian websites which are indistinguishable from the anti-American left these days - LewRockwell.com and others like that - they are totally in bed with the Islamofascists and have turned against this country."

This is a completely fallacious, slanderous and damaging lie, but Horowitz and Beck are still laboring under the illusion that the American people buy their bellicose smear attacks which are completely devoid of any substance and delivered only with the aid of discredited sound bites and rhetorical clichés.

During the course of the segment, Beck also repeated the contention that another Timothy McVeigh would emerge from one of the groups he demonized.

Beck's diatribe is just the latest in a series of smear attempts to equate 9/11 truthers, Ron Paul supporters and other activists with violence and terrorism, or otherwise discredit them. Bill O'Reilly has been doing it for weeks.

What is the origin of the talking points that are now being disseminated by the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others?

Back in September 2006, we reported on a White House strategy document for "winning the war on terror," in which conspiracy theorists were targeted as a wellspring of terrorism. The document threatens to "address" and "diminish" the problems they are causing the government in fulfilling their agenda.

The document states that terrorism springs from "subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation," and that "terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda."

Bush referred to the strategy paper as "an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001," that takes into account, "the changing nature of this enemy."

The Neo-Con talking heads are actually parroting White House propaganda handed down to them by the Bush administration.

You can even trace the legacy right back to Bush's November 10, 2001 speech to the U.N., in which he said that "outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th" should not be tolerated.

Watch the video.

In the current context, this unified assault also dovetails with the advance of H.R. 1955, entitled the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007", which is vaguely worded and could easily be used to label activist groups as terrorist recruiters.

As Kurt Nimmo writes, "The only serious threat to the neocons and their neolib partners in crime emanates from the patriot and 9/11 truth movements—and that is why, as increasing numbers of patriotic and politically diverse Americans rally around the Ron Paul presidential campaign, we are witnessing increasingly virulent and desperate attacks against Paul, who is now absurdly conflated with “Islamo-fascist” terrorists."

"If they are able to successfully characterize Ron Paul as a terrorist and thus sabotage his political campaign, there will be no end to the state-sponsored domestic terrorism they will unleash against the American people stripped of all advocates," he concludes.

It also coincides with a House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on "Terrorism and the Internet" held last week, broadcast on C-Span, which featured a panel of "experts", including representatives formerly of the RAND Corporation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center who presented 9/11 truth websites sites alongside sites that celebrate the attacks and offer training in terrorist tactics.

Why are Glenn Beck and David Horowitz a threat to America?

a) They openly call for the U.S. military to be used to suppress freedom of speech, a complete violation of the first amendment and everything that America stands for. This in itself exposes them as anti-American traitors.

b) They openly state, without any evidence whatsoever to substantiate the claim, that Lew Rockwell, libertarian and anti-war groups are "totally in bed with the Islamofascists," which could prompt their nutcase followers into physical violence and perhaps even assassination attempts against anti-war and libertarian leaders as well as Ron Paul supporters.

c) If there are real terrorist groups in America, as we are constantly told, then Beck and Horowitz are diverting attention away from them by fingering peaceful protest and activist groups, leaving genuine terrorists under less scrutiny by law enforcement and the FBI.

Beck and Horowitz are the only ones doing harm to America - they are anti-American traitors.

TAKE ACTION

- Use this form to contact CNN and demand that Glenn Beck issue a retraction and an apology for his wrongful and damaging characterization in linking Ron Paul supporters with terrorists.

- Spread this article to the four corners of the Internet and let anti-American trash like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and their followers know that we will not be intimidated into silencing our support for Ron Paul. Every time they pull one of these stunts, re-double your activism.

- Boycott CNN's sponsors until they issue a retraction and an apology.

Gulf states’ dollar peg comes under threat

Peter Garnham
Financial Times
Friday November 16, 2007

Speculation heightened on Thursday that Gulf Arab states were preparing to ditch their currencies’ pegs against the dollar as the United Arab Emirates expressed concerns over the policy for the second time this week.

Sultan Nasser al-Suwaidi, governor of the UAE central bank, said on Tuesday that the dollar’s slide had pushed the country to a “crossroads” over the UAE dirham’s peg.

On Thursday, Mr al-Suwaidi followed up those comments, saying there were strong social and economic pressures to drop the dollar peg, suggesting the UAE could move to track a basket of currencies instead, which would predominantly, but not entirely, consist of dollars.

The statement sent the dirham, which has been fixed at Dh3.6725 against the dollar since 1997, sharply higher in the forward currency market, with one-year forward rates predicting a 2.7 per cent appreciation in the currency.

Kuwait switched from a dollar peg to a currency basket in May, but other members of the Gulf Co-operation Council – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar – have held steadfastly to their dollar pegs, in spite of the US currency slumping to record lows.

The UAE said it would only drop its dollar peg in concert with other GCC members. Saudi Arabia, the GCC’s most influential member, has so far showed strong determination to fight speculation that it would revalue the Saudi riyal, intervening aggressively last week in the forward foreign exchange market to defend the riyal’s peg.

Full article here.

ALERT: Digg Bans Video Seen on Fox News, and YouTube Labels it 18+

news hounds

Earlier today (November 15, 2007), Brave News Films (BNF) debuted FoxNewsPorn.com. Video displayed there is entirely, entirely, footage from the Fox News Channel. Just hours ago, Digg banned that domain for carrying "adult content." Additionally, YouTube flagged FoxNewsPorn.com as 18+. It essentially checks your I.D. before you can watch it.

Interestingly -- and this is big -- Digg did a deal with the Wall Street Journal yesterday -- Rupert Murdoch's new toy that he'll use to toy with what we know -- and there have been rumors that Digg hopes to be acquired by News Corp. -- as if owning Fox News, MySpace, DirecTV, HarperCollins, the Wall Street Journal, and a slew of other outlets isn't enough for Rupert.

So, Fox's "news" content is too hot for Digg? YouTube considers it 18+? Join the protest here, here, and here.

The time has come for Fox to run a continuous disclaimer along the bottom of its screen that warns that its content is adult-only!

C.H.A.N.G.E. confronts Larry Silverstein

You Tube
Thursday November 15, 2007

6000 US Veterans Killed Themselves In 2005

Your New Reality
Friday November 16, 2007

More American US veterans are dying by their own hand back home in one year, than have died in battle in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It's impossible to comprehend the horror that these men and women experienced, and witnessed, that made them unable to keep living once they were home from the war. But the story of the 'Malboro Man', James Blake Miller (see below) provides some insight into life during and after the war in Iraq for American soldiers.

A report from CBS News exposes some of the appalling statistics of the homeland carnage :

* In 2005, more than 120 American war veterans took their own lives each and every week. That is more than double the national US suicide rate. As a rough rule, for every successful suicide there are usually three or four who try and fail to kill themselves.

* More than 100,000 vets are seeking help for mental health issues.

* More than 52,000 were trying to get help for PTSD alone. And that's only the veterans who have come forward.

* Of 90,000 vets returning from Iraq, 28% had mental health problems.

* Vets are 11% of the general population, but make up 25% of the United States' homeless people.

Note : this story has been corrected after more research and a third viewing of the CBS News story made clear that it was 6000 veterans of America's wars since World War 2 who took their own lives in 2005, not 6000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. On a first viewing of the CBS News story, the introduction gives the mistaken impression that the 6000 veteran suicides figure was related to only veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Regardless, it is still a shocking number of post-war suicides, and considering the high rate of PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, it is only likely to climb higher unless more help is made available to these veterans.



The infamous 'Malboro Man', James Blake Miller(above) is just one of the hundreds of thousands of American 'War on Terror' veterans whose life has fallen apart since returning from the warzone.

Once hailed by the American media, particularly Fox News and conservative bloggers, as a true American hero, he has now been abandoned by those who used him as a recruiting tool. He suffers from PTSD, his marriage fell apart, he has battled the urge to take his own life.

The lives of the 'Malboro Man' and his photographer, Louis Sinco, who captured the iconic image image during the Battle Of Fallouja, have become intertwined once more, years later.

It's a truly remarkable story of survival, slow recovery, the horror of war and PTSD, and the bond formed by two men who were thrown together by the rough tide of American history.

Some excerpts, and quotes from Miller, from the story written by photographer Louis Sinco :

Miller told...how empty and confused he had felt when combat ended. How he had placed the barrel of an M-16 assault rifle in his mouth on the outskirts of Fallouja one day, taken a deep breath and reached for the trigger.

"What made me so special that I deserved to stay here and my buddies didn't?" Miller asked, speaking of friends who had died. "At one point, I was almost mad at them. How could my buddies leave me like that? We came together. We were supposed to leave together. I don't know how you can disconnect that feeling."

He told us about an event that haunted him. From an observation post in Fallouja, he had seen a head pop up amid the wreckage of several cars. It was a free-fire zone. He squinted into his rifle scope, saw a patch of dark curly hair and squeezed the trigger.

Later, Marines advanced on the scene and found a dead boy, 6 or 7 years old, his curly hair mottled by bits of brain and blood.

There was more, he said -- terrible things he couldn't divulge. Not now. Maybe never.

As Miller and I drove back to West Virginia, news crackled over the radio. The Democrats had routed the GOP in the midterm congressional election. Public sentiment about Iraq had soured, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the architect of the war, was resigning.

Miller had mixed feelings. "That's good news, I guess," he said. "But it should've happened a long time ago. Everybody that's dead now. I mean, what's the point?"

It was Nov. 9, 2006 -- two years after I took the famous picture of Miller and a year after he left the Marines.

The attack of the Libertarian neo-Nazis

Rebellion
November 14, 2007

A reader responds to Playing by their rules:

Great analysis. Have you noticed how the same charge is being made against Ron Paul? He’s the last person in the world who could be accused of appealing to neo-Nazis, but it’s happening, and his detractors are getting some mileage out of it. What a joke.

You’re right on both points. I think Paul is really shaking these people up. It seems their self-esteem requires having a powerful leader to worship, and splendid little overseas victories to make them feel good about themselves. Paul is commiting the unthinkable by letting folks realize we actually have a choice, that we can actually debate whether this country must follow the course of endless war and intervention the Neocons demand.

But the anti-Paul hysteria is almost laughable. Check this out:

Indeed, Ron Paul has become the most popular candidate among right-wing extremists, including white separatists, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists who believe that “the Zionists” were behind 9/11. …

Ron Paul will take money from Nazis. But he won’t take telephone calls from Jews.

And if the above was too subtle for you, check out this dazzling display of lunacy, with the screaming title, The Ron Paul Campaign and its Neo-Nazi Supporters.

All I can say is – these people are truly frightened of this candidate. Apparently, they don’t want a debate on whether the US should try to control the world, ending up in a series of endless wars, and wrecking what’s left of our republican institutions. The pro-war crowd has just got to have its wars, and Paul is a threat to their prospects for glory and treasure.

Actually, the slam that Ron Paul is attracting neo-Nazis is ludicrous. Paul believes in smaller, less intrusive government, and dispersed political power. His anti-war stance is solid. But Nazis glorify the power of the state, especially in aggressive war, and believe in centralization of political power. As William Shirer wrote of the early days of Nazi rule:

…Within a fortnight of receiving full powers from the Reichstag, Hitler had achieved wht Bismarck, Wilhelm II and the Weimar Republic had never dared to attempt: he had abolished the separate powers of the historic states and made them subject to the central power of the Reich, which was in his hands. He had, for the first time in German history, really unified the Reich by destroying its age-old federal character. … as Minister Frick explained it, “The state governments from now on are merely administrative bodies of the Reich.” Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 279.

Now that’s the kind of government Nazis want. Paul, on the other hand, would be dismissed by any Nazi as a libertarian, decentralizing peacenik. So what’s the appeal?

Actually, someone who gets off on the glorification of the state, nationalistic wars of aggression, and the prospect of the US military wiping out hundreds of thousands of brown-skinned people has the perfect candidate who promises to do just that if elected. I speak, of course, of Benito Giuliani. Now there’s a candidate for Nazis.

Neocon Attack on Ron Paul: Greasing the Skids for Implementation of H.R. 1955?

Kurt Nimmo TruthNews November 15, 2007

It has all the hallmarks of a concerted effort—the corporate media, in particular Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, are attacking Ron Paul and the 9/11 truth movement at the very moment H.R. 1955, entitled the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007″ (although more accurately entitled the Thought Crime Bill) inches its way toward the Senate, having passed the House of Representatives, that is to say the house of corporate and neocon whores in the District of Criminals. As if to send a strident message they mean business, a Ministry of Homeland Security subcommittee on “terrorism risk assessment” went out of its way on November 6 to conflate so-called jihad terrorism—you know, terrorism engineered by the CIA—with 9/11 truth.

“Under the guise of a bill that calls for the study of ‘homegrown terrorism,’ Congress is apparently trying to broaden the definition of terrorism to encompass both First Amendment political activity and traditional forms of protest such as nonviolent civil disobedience, according to civil liberties advocates, scholars and historians,” writes Jessica Lee. “Many observers fear that the proposed law will be used against U.S.-based groups engaged in legal but unpopular political activism, ranging from political Islamists to animal-rights and environmental campaigners to radical right-wing organizations. There is concern, too, that the bill will undermine academic integrity and is the latest salvo in a decade-long government grab for power at the expense of civil liberties.”

Of course, “political Islamists,” at least here in America, are too intimidated—thanks to the Palmeresque round-up and sadistic abuse of Muslims in the wake of September 11, 2001—to be of serious concern to the neocon-hijacked government. Many of the “animal-rights and environmental campaigners” fall into the category of the big foundation controlled opposition and do not sincerely pose a threat to the neocon “clash of civilizations” agenda abroad and the orchestrated attack against the Bill of Rights at home.

In fact, the only serious threat to the neocons and their neolib partners in crime emanates from the patriot and 9/11 truth movements—and that is why, as increasing numbers of patriotic and politically diverse Americans rally around the Ron Paul presidential campaign, we are witnessing increasingly virulent and desperate attacks against Paul, who is now absurdly conflated with “Islamo-fascist” terrorists.

H.R. 1955 is scary because it does not target actual terrorists but rather “extremist belief systems” and “is not necessarily about violence” but rather the potential “use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence,” according to Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. “What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this? These are broad definitions that encompass so much…. It is criminalizing thought and ideology.”

H.R. 1955 is a “form of prior restraint,” explains David Price, a professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University who studies government surveillance and harassment of dissident scholars. It will prevent people from petitioning the government, lest they find themselves equated with terrorists.

Kamau Franklin, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is concerned the bill will be used to target peaceful protests. Franklin believes the “Commission’s broad mandate can lead to the ability to turn civil disobedience, a form of protest that is centuries old, into a terrorist act,” thus making it possible “that someone who would have been charged with disorderly conduct or obstruction of governmental administration may soon be charged with a federal terrorist statute…. My biggest fear is that they [the commission] will call for some new criminal penalties and federal crimes…. Activists are nervous about how the broad definitions could be used for criminalizing civil disobedience.”

“There are all sorts of things that activists do that involve little or no risk of hurting people, but their actions get labeled as violent, or even worse, as acts of terrorism,” explains Bron Taylor, a professor at University of Florida. “For example, if 10 activists push themselves into a congressperson’s regional office, make noise, pull out files and make a scene, is that an act of terrorism? It is quite possible that the act could scare the hell out of the secretary and office workers because they don’t know these people or what they intend to do? But is that terrorism? Some people would like to frame it that way.”

Indeed, no doubt “some people” would like to characterize We Are Change—infamous for confronting Giuliani, Romney, Biden, the neocon grand dragon Podhoretz and others—as a terrorist organization that needs to be arrested en masse and shipped to Camp Gitmo or one of those CIA torture dungeons in Poland or Jordan.

“One of the most useful tools for political campaigns today is the use of the internet,” writes Anthony Merola. “Certainly we can see how this has been used over the last few months as Congressmen Paul, as well as other candidates, has used the internet to spread their messages and appeal to new voters, but don’t worry, HR 1955 has taken care of this,” as H.R. 1955 declares the “Internet has aided in facilitating ideologically-based violence and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”

With this piece of legislation in congress, my generation will no longer be able to use the internet in a peaceful manner. All activity will certainly be logged, and every letter typed will be scrutinized by the state.

My generation has, without their knowing, been forced into a society in which we cannot choose, where we cannot think, where we cannot be free. This legislation is another step towards an Orwellian society that will create misery and despair for generations to come. We will be forced into more wars, more taxation, and more Statist welfare, and there is nothing we will be able to do to stop those in power.

That is, unless we elect Congressman Paul. Ron Paul is the only person in our government advocating for personal liberty, and for privacy rights of the Citizens of this country. Sure, Barack Obama may appeal to the youth vote. But, he has made it clear that he is just another member of the Welfare/Warfare state. He has already told us that he cannot promise our troops will be home by the end of his first term. Style and Substance are two completely different things.

Our rulers understand this as well as the youthful Anthony Merola—and that’s why they are pulling out all the stops to pass the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.”

If they are able to successfully characterize Ron Paul as a terrorist and thus sabotage his political campaign, there will be no end to the state-sponsored domestic terrorism they will unleash against the American people stripped of all advocates.

Neocon Projections

Butler Shaffer
Lew Rockwell
November 16, 2007

An elder Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.” “This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too,” he added. The grandchildren thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

~ The old Cherokee simply replied: “The one you feed.”

For the word “projection,” a dictionary could offer no better illustration of the meaning of this psychological trait than to quote a few neocons. The practice of attributing to others one’s own “dark side” (e.g., the fear that one might be capable of engaging in some moral or illegal wrong) is essential to the health of all political systems. We tend to be uncomfortable with the presence of our “dark side” voices reminding us that, if adequately provoked, we could resort to violence, or acts of dishonesty, or other behavior we consciously reject. To alleviate such distress, most of us are only too happy to have the state encourage us to project our ill-motivated characteristics onto a “scapegoat.”

Thus the neocons – alarmed at the growing success Ron Paul is having in focusing widespread popular opposition to the war machine that is synonymous with neoconservatism – have resorted to projecting onto Paul’s supporters attributes of their own. One American Enterprise Institute hatchet man declared that Paul’s admirers “celebrate the violent overthrow of established government.” The explanation for this charge? That November 5th – the anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day, as celebrated in the film ’V’ for Vendetta – was used as the date upon which some $4.2 million was raised for Paul’s campaign!

The cable television babbler, Glenn Beck, was not to shirk his neocon duty to castigate Paul’s supporters. Yapping over a printed message that read “there are enemies among us,” Beck used the Vendetta film as an opportunity to suggest that Ron Paul might be appealing to people who want to use violence to overthrow the government! Beck – more “knave than fool,” to quote Cervantes – trotted out the chameleonic David Horowitz to echo the neocon party-line.

Let us put aside the fact that the neocons are apparently unable to distinguish the metaphorical nature of a motion picture from reality. I suspect that, had Orwell’s Animal Farm been used in such a figurative way, Beck would have berated the Paul supporters for believing that farm livestock could run a political system. I find the morally self-righteous to be a humorless lot; for humor – like the use of metaphor – challenges the rigidity of boundary lines upon which sanctimonious thinking depends.

Let us focus, instead, upon the charge that Paul supporters “celebrate the violent overthrow of established government.” Is there anyone of such dull wit as not to see the psychological projection inherent in such statements? What has the neocon-driven war machine been if not a rapidly metastasizing campaign to promote “the violent overthrow of established government,” whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or any other targeted country?

What nation-state is more thoroughly committed to the “violent overthrow” of other regimes than the neocon-dominated United States of America? What government is more dedicated to the use of terror – such as its “shock and awe” bombing of innocent Iraqis, and the succeeding indiscriminate killing of Iraqi men, women, and children – than that headquartered in Washington?

At a recent Republican “debate” on “values,” Ron Paul was booed by neocon parrots for saying that Jesus was known as the “Prince of Peace.” What psychotic “values” are embedded within the psyches of those who can condemn a man for embracing “peace,” and loudly cheer candidates whose “dark sides” and their own run amok in a synchronized dance of death?

Is there any way out of our collective madness than for each of us to return to that point of departure at which so many of us allowed our “dark side” to become mobilized by ambitious men and women? If we are to save ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren from being devoured by the destructive forces that we feed, we must look at what we most fear to see and to accept: the “dark side” of our humanity. Only by withdrawing our energies from such mobilized forces can we rediscover the “values” that the power-brokers want booed off the stage: the central role that peace and liberty play in the better sense of what it means to be human.

China Tortures, Imprisons Cyber Dissident

Reporters Without Borders
November 15, 2007

Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned a five-year prison sentence and 40,000 yuan (€4,000) fine imposed today by a district court in Tianhe (in the southeastern province of Guangdong) on cyber-dissident Yang Maodong (better known as Guo Feixiong) for “illegal commercial activity.”

“We are shocked by this harsh and unjustified sentence,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “The court seems to have acted on local or national-level political instructions. We repeat our demand for Guo’s release before next year’s Beijing Olympic Games.” One of Guo’s lawyers said they would advise him to appeal, since he had always said he was innocent.

His trial began on 9 July after nearly a year of investigations during which he was held in custody. He was tortured during interrogation and in June, his wife Zhang Qing wrote to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. The organisation Human Rights in China said Guo had been kept in bed for several weeks and then prevented from sleeping for some days. He staged a 40-day hunger strike to protest against his conditions of detention.

Guo was officially accused of selling 20,000 books using a bogus publishing reference. His wife said his lack of a licence was just an excuse to hide the fact that the authorities did not like the content of the books. Guo said at the start of his trial that “during my first 10 months in prison, 90% of the 175 interrogations I was subjected to involved human rights issues, so it was clearly political persecution.”

Guo, who is also a human rights activist, has been held in Canton’s number 3 prison since the publication of his book The Political Earthquake in Shenyang, in which he condemns corrupt officials of the city in the northeastern province of Liaoning. He has also posted many articles on the Internet.

Cafferty: I trust government to guard our privacy, don’t you?

Greg Wasserstrom and Mike Aivaz
Raw Story
November 13, 2007

CNN’s Jack Cafferty of the Cafferty File joined CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday to discuss a Bush Administration intelligence’s official suggestion that the American people need to “redefine privacy” in order to confront the threats of the 21st century.

In late October, as the Associated Press reported, Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Directory of National Intelligence, delivering the keynote address at GEOINT 2007 (the annual United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation symposium), said that today’s times called for a new definition of privacy.

“Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture,” Kerr said. “The Long Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn’t seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You’d think he would probably need one even more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity — or the appearance of anonymity — is quickly becoming a thing of the past.”

Kerr added, “We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment…. I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that up doesn’t empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.”

According to Kerr, privacy should mean only that government and business are safeguarding people’s sensitive information, rather than relying on anonymity.

“Of course, I trust the government to do that, don’t you?” Cafferty asked facetiously. Cafferty went on to explain how, in his view, Congress’ handling of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act demonstrates that the government may not have the people’s best interest in mind when it comes to privacy.

“Remember last summer when it was threatened they might be held and not be able to go on their break in time, they hastily changed the law and gave the government powers to eavesdrop inside the United States without a warrant as long as one of the parties was reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”

“Reasonably believed,” Cafferty added. “That’s a loophole you could drive a train though.”

Cafferty asked CNN viewers to weigh in on the privacy debate.

“The question then for this hour is this: A top intelligence official says it’s time for people in the United States to redefine privacy,” Cafferty said. “The question is: why should we?”

One viewer wrote in, “Good God, I wouldn’t want my personal information to fall into the hands of a bunch of unsavory characters. So I better do everything in my power to keep it out of the government’s hands.”

Another opined, “Redefining privacy is a bit like redefining virginity. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

The above video is from CNN’s Cafferty File, broadcast on November 12, 2007

American Gangster's Wad of Euros Signals U.S. Decline

James G. Neuger and Simon Kennedy
Bloomberg News
Thursday, November 15, 2007

``It may be our currency, but it's your problem'' was Treasury Secretary John Connally's taunt when the U.S. unhooked the dollar from the gold standard in 1971, unilaterally rewriting the rules of world business in America's favor.

Now the world is taunting back. Almost four decades after the U.S. tore up the monetary arrangements that governed the post-World War II international economy, the dollar's fall from grace amounts to a tectonic shift in the global hierarchy. This time, the U.S. currency is on the losing side.

After declining in five of the last six years, the weakest dollar in the era of floating currencies reflects a period of diminished U.S. political and economic hegemony. Whoever wins the White House next year will confront two unpopular choices: Accept the fall in U.S. clout and the rise of new rivals, or rein in record public and consumer debt that the rest of the world no longer wants to bankroll.

``What we're seeing is a very broad rebalancing of economic and political power in the world,'' says Jeffrey Garten, a Yale School of Business professor who was the Commerce Department's undersecretary for international trade in the Clinton administration. ``The scales are moving, and they're moving quite fast.''

The dollar blues have migrated from the halls of central banks to images of rap musicians.

In a video for the movie ``American Gangster,'' hip-hop maestro Jay-Z thumbs through a wad of 500-euro notes on a night of cruising through the concrete canyons of New York, a city where the euro isn't legal tender. The euro gained against the dollar today as European economic growth in the third quarter accelerated more than forecast.

FULL STORY: CLICK HERE