Monday, January 4 2010   -   First Responders/Health Effects

January 1, 2010
by Jon Gold

 

Thursday, December 31 2009   -   Other Important News

Top Censored Stories of 2009/2010
December 31, 2009
ProjectCensored.org

• 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
• 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
• 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
• 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
• 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
• 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
• 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
• 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
• 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
• 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
• 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
• 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief

Continues ...

 

Thursday, December 31 2009   -   Other Important News

The Hyperrealilty of a Failing Corporate Media System

By Andrew Hobbs and Peter Phillips

Hyperreality is the inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Corporate media, Fox in particular, offers news that creates a hyperreality of real world problems and issues. Consumers of corporate television news--especially those whose understandings are framed primarily from that medium alone--are embedded in a state of excited delirium and knowinglessness.

Corporate Media hasn't acted as a cohesive, protective "fourth estate" in several decades, instead gilding lilies such as the Iraq war, torture and the true extent of Hurricane Katrina's devastation. Contemporary corporate news is best seen in a post-modern context of hyperreality. The news from US networks is based on the presentations of partially factual stories framed inside socio-emotional story lines that juxtapose "evil" with patriotism and Christian fervor. There are multiple examples of this, but we will examine two distinct cases.

Inside the Military Media Industrial Complex: Impacts on Movements for Peace and Social Justice

By Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff

Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, "You know we don't do body counts."[i] Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.

Hope Fades for End of the American Empire under Obama

Peter Phillips - John Pilger writes a strong informational piece on the lies of Obama. As we start to see more of this from the current global dominance administration, hope fades for peace and the end of the American Empire

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.”

Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that “extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan” to “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies”. He called this “global security” and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which America has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: “We have no interest in occupying your country.”

 

Thursday, December 31 2009   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
RawStory.com

How does a massive, costly security apparatus fail to stop a known terrorism threat from boarding an airplane and wrecking devastation?

It happened on Sept. 11, 2001, and again on Dec. 25, 2009.

"There must be an agenda," suggested Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) in a recent video message to supporters.

"It seems ironic that there is so much excitement about this and now talk about attacking Yemen," he said, noting recent bombing raids by Saudi forces, carried out with the explicit blessing of the United States.

"The Saudis are our close allies," Paul explained. "We provide them with the weapons and the airplanes and we did sanction and endorse the bombing of Yemen."

He said that terrorist-style tactics carried out against the United States and U.S. interests are a response to occupation of Arab lands. The attempted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, he said, was a result of "either awful stupidity or there must be an agenda."

"I am concerned what they are going to do to the American people," he said.

And by "they," he meant U.S. leaders.

 

Monday, December 28 2009   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

by Chris Hedges
December 28, 2009
Truthdig.com

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 case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.

 

Monday, December 28 2009   -   In the Media

By Stephen C. Webster
December 27th, 2009
RawStory.com

Update at bottom: Matalin 'lied' about Bush inheriting recession

No amount of spit and polish can clean the tarnish of the 9/11 attacks from the Bush legacy, but that didn't stop GOP strategist Mary Matalin from trying.

During a Sunday appearance on CNN, Matalin attempted to prop up an analogy between the first year of George W. Bush's presidency and that of President Barack Obama's. Raising the specter of rising unemployment, anchor John King wondered whether Republicans have the right to attack Democrats over the economy.

According to a CNN transcript, Matalin--seated across a table from her husband, Democratic strategist James Carville--gave a response which was a little more than blindly partisan.

"I was there," she said. "We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history. And President Bush dealt with it. And within a year of his presidency at this comparable time, unemployment was at 5 percent. And we were creating jobs."

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 happened during the Bush presidency. While administration officials said repeatedly that nobody could have predicted such a devastating attack, an August 6, 2001, briefing delivered to President Bush -- titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." -- later surfaced.

 

Sunday, December 27 2009   -   First Responders/Health Effects

December 26, 2009
Daily News
NBCNewYork.com

A Sept. 11 hero died of cancer on Christmas Day. Jim Ryan was on the front lines during 9/11, a firefighter who spent many weeks rummaging through the destruction that encompassed Ground Zero, only to succumb to pancreatic cancer, according to a report.

The fire department confirms that his sickness was 9/11-related. And now his family -- his three children, wife and all the people who loved him -- mourn the death of a hero.

"He was just really really great," his grieving wife, Magda, told the Daily News.

Ryan, 48, was first diagnosed with cancer three years ago. He relapsed last year, reports the News.

A brave fighter until the end, Ryan desperately wanted to travel with his colleagues to Washington in November to campaign for the passage of legislation that would give $11 billion for those who contracted diseases on Sept. 11. That bill hasn't yet passed.

"It's about all the guys who are going to come after me," Ryan, who wasn't well enough to make the trip, told the News at the time. "And there's going to be plenty of them."

Ryan's family spent a quiet Christmas Eve at home, and just before 2 a.m. on Christmas Day, the Long Island father's teenage son realized he wasn't breathing, reports the News.

 

Sunday, December 27 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

GRITtv
December 26, 2009
http://www.blip.tv/file/2837830/

U.S. history has seen many presidents elected on a wave of progressive promises, only to see them compromise again and again once in office, caving to the very interests, military and corporate, that they railed against so effectively. Barack Obama is only the latest to get elected on a promise to end a war and take care of working people, only to preside over an administration stacked with Wall Street types and wind up continuing a war he wanted to wind down. Americans voted for change and are getting frustrated with the lack of it, but our guests have both written about the powerful forces holding the status quo in place. John Perkins is the author of Hoodwinked and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and has written about how corporations push politicians around and even threaten them with violence. Russ Baker, meanwhile, is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America and has written extensively about the military-industrial complex. They argue the only weapon we have is public opinion and public pressure--and we need to bring it to bear not just on the government, but on the corporations.

Video follows.

 

Saturday, December 19 2009   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

Thursday, 17. December 2009
Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs

Podcast Show #16

The Boiling Frogs Presents Russ Baker

Russ Baker discusses his book, Family of Secrets, the first complete historic portrait of the Bush dynasty, and provides us with an overview of how this dynasty shaped our politics. He tells us about the shadow government in the US, the real players, elites, and power centers within each president’s government, and the limitation on what and how much an American president can accomplish -- considering the influence of these powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. Mr. Baker defines and explains the concept of Forensic Journalism, and talks about his nonprofit news organization WhoWhatWhy, the need for nonpartisan and independent journalism today, the current media landscape in the US, and more.

 

Thursday, December 17 2009   -   Endorsements & Support

Afghanistan War - Right to Self Defense Highly Questionable

December, 15, 2009
http://www.911video.de/news/151209/indexen.html

Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth: It is very unfortunate that the media are not prepared to face the issue of 9/11 and ask the unanswered questions

Question: Do you think the proposal of an independent 9/11 investigation is realistic?

Judge Dieter Deiseroth: I think the suggestion is reasonable and necessary. Because the official investigation is the central justification for the war ( "Operation Enduring Freedom") and for serious alterations of the U.S. legal system under the so-called homeland security legislation.

 

Tuesday, December 15 2009   -   Resources and Materials

December 14, 2009

Our 911TruthStore is closing soon. Please have a look at what's left in inventory, and if you are interested in any of these items and wish to give them as gifts or share with family at the holidays, order right away. The deadline for pre-Christmas delivery is 12/16 if you wish to use Priority Mail; 12/23 if you pay for USPS overnight shipping.

There is one more item available, in addition to what's at the store ... we have just received a few brand new copies of Kristina Borjesson's excellent 2004 book, "Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press". Although I've not yet added it to the store site, they are available. Please email me to order, with BOOK ORDER in the subject line. If you're wondering why we can't "break through" the corporate media, you'll understand clearly after reading this expose! The book description follows.