Now that one of every four Americans gets the news online, a communications authority wonders if the White House is still able to control the news.
“The transformation of media has not only undermined the imperial institutions of the mainstream media; it has undermined the imperial Presidency,” writes Ken Auletta in the January 25thThe New Yorker.
Auletta reminds that six years ago there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no You-Tube and that many regional newspapers and TV stations were “highly profitable.”
Today, he writes, Politico.com Web site has 79 editorial employees to satisfy the news hunger of its 3-million unique monthly visitors and Mike Allen, the online paper’s chief White House correspondent “has become one of Washington’s most influential journalists.”
Forget that the government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here).
Forget that the draconian Patriot Act was written before 9/11.
Forget that the Bush administration used its heightened powers granted under the state of emergency declared in 2001 (and continuing to the present day) to harass those who disagreed with its policies. See this, this and this.
Why don’t we call America the United States of England? It may be a separate entity politically and geographically, but today it truly carries forward the imperial spirit of the old British Empire.There was a period from 1775, when “the shot heard ‘round the world” was fired, to 1846, when America invaded Mexico, a span of 70 years, that the new nation “conceived in liberty” was, at the least, an imperfect democracy, without tyranny on its mind, even if it tolerated slavery. But by the time Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois assailed President Polk’s invasion of Mexico, the spirit of Liberty had succumbed to the spirit of Empire. And if we, as Americans, don’t face it, we will never change it.
Yes, the Colonists having failed at securing political representation in return for paying their taxes, demanded, fought for, and got by force of arms, freedom from the Mother Country. But as the sun set on the British Empire, it rose on the American Empire—an Empire with a paranoid streak that sees enemies everywhere it must fight to justify its struggle for world hegemony.
Free Market Capitalism remains the dominant American ideological truth. The decline of communism opened the door for unrepentant free marketers to boldly espouse market competition as the final solution for global harmony. According to the American mantra, if given the opportunity to freely develop, the marketplace will solve all evils. We will enjoy economic expansion, individual freedom, and unlimited bliss by fully deregulating and privatizing society’s socio-economic institutions.
The selection of Obama as the U.S. President placed into power the party of the trilateralist wing of the American corporate elite. Obama’s business/government revolving-door cabinet is comprised of just as many corporate CEO’s and business elites as any presidency in recent history. This new government elite will continue the work to see that the American mantra remains safe, globalized, and unchallenged.
A federal appeals court this week ruled that a California police officer can be held liable for injuries suffered by an unarmed man he Tasered during a traffic stop. The decision, if allowed to stand, would set a rigorous legal precedent for when police are permitted to use the weapons and would force some law enforcement agencies throughout the state — and presumably the nation — to tighten their policies governing Taser use, experts said.
Michael Gennaco, an expert in police conduct issues who has conducted internal reviews of Taser use for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and other agencies, said the ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prohibits officers from deploying Tasers in a host of scenarios and largely limits their use to situations in which a person poses an obvious danger.
Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements–who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism–have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The 800-pound gorilla standing in the auditorium at West Point is still waiting for an answer to why Obama made his surge-speech for 30,000 more troops and $30 billion to pay for them. That gorilla wonders “why” Obama pitched so hard for the US to stay and surge through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reasons given were that the Afghanistan Taliban and Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden were the people that attacked us on 9/11, which was an iteration of George W. Bush’s reasons for the War on Terror. They are as phony now as the day Bush promised to smoke out Bin Laden. Read the rest of this entry »
Iraq Regime Change? How long ago was it that we put Sadam in to power in Iraq? Talks of taking him back out started long before Bush was put in to power, I’m sure.- Brian
The chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee in 2001 told investigators Monday that elements of the Bush Administration were pushing for regime change in Iraq in early 2001, months before the 9/11 attacks and two years before President George W. Bush formally announced the Iraq war.
Sir Peter Ricketts, now-Secretary at the Foreign Office, said that US and British officials believed at the time that measures against Iraq were failing: “sanctions, an incentive to lift sanctions if Saddam allowed the United Weapons inspectors to return, and the ‘no fly’ zones over the north and south of the country.”
This week we interviewed Mark Klein, the AT&T whistleblower; the interview should be posted in 3 or 4 weeks. I know you’re going to find it interesting and enlightening. Speaking of AT&T, check out our contributor Ishmael’s informative interview with Jeff Farias here.
I have a few noteworthy tidbits below. Don’t pay attention to their publication dates, since the issues, these cases and reports, are ‘timeless’ in nature.
The Empire State building was lit up in NYC to celebrate China’s Total Control Syndrome. We’ll call it TCS from here on…The police in America recently showed a display of force to its citizens in Pittsburgh, which hosted the G-20 summit. The article below mentions people miles away from China’s big parade being told to “go home, watch it from your television.” If you have not yet seen videos from the G-20summit in Pittsburgh, please do. -ed
BEIJING (Reuters) – China celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing on Thursday, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism.
Tiananmen Square in central Beijing became a high-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with the Communist Party leadership and guests watching a meticulously disciplined show of national confidence.
Celebrations began in the morning with troops firing cannons and raising the red national flag while President Hu Jintao, wearing a slate grey “Mao” suit, looked on from the Gate of Heavenly Peace over the Square.
The two-hour parade of 8,000 soldiers, tanks and missiles, 60 elaborate floats and 100,000 well-drilled civilians was a proud moment for many Chinese citizens, watching the spectacle across the country on television. Later in the evening, Tiananmen Square will be lit up with a huge fireworks display.
In 1954, the Bilderberg Group was founded in the Netherlands, which was a secretive meeting held once a year, drawing roughly 130 of the political-financial-military-academic-media elites from North America and Western Europe as “an informal network of influential people who could consult each other privately and confidentially.”[1] Regular participants include the CEOs or Chairman of some of the largest corporations in the world, oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, and Total SA, as well as various European monarchs, international bankers such as David Rockefeller, major politicians, presidents, prime ministers, and central bankers of the world.[2]
Joseph Retinger, the founder of the Bilderberg Group, was also one of the original architects of the European Common Market and a leading intellectual champion of European integration. In 1946, he told the Royal Institute of International Affairs (the British counterpart and sister organization of the Council on Foreign Relations), that Europe needed to create a federal union and for European countries to “relinquish part of their sovereignty.” Retinger was a founder of the European Movement (EM), a lobbying organization dedicated to creating a federal Europe. Retinger secured financial support for the European Movement from powerful US financial interests such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefellers.[3] However, it is hard to distinguish between the CFR and the Rockefellers, as, especially following World War II, the CFR’s main finances came from the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation and most especially, the Rockefeller Foundation.[4]
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