Posted by Raymond on February 8, 2010

From ABC News:

Prosecutors at the human rights trial of former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor alleged Thursday that Christian televangelist Pat Robertson had lobbied the White House on Taylor’s behalf in return for a gold mining contract.

The controversial pastor and former Republican presidential contender met with then-President George W. Bush on Taylor’s behalf, prosecutors charged during cross-examination of Taylor in a Dutch courtroom, allegedly in return for a contract to mine gold in southeast Liberia — a contract they say that Taylor had no legal right to grant.

Lead Prosecutor Brenda Hollis questioned Taylor about how he may have skirted the Liberian legislature in order to get Robertson his gold mining contracts.

“Mr. Taylor, even the legislature in place in 1999 actually refused to ratify this agreement you had with Pat Robertson. Isn’t that correct?” asked Hollis.

Taylor answered: “There was contention about different issues, yes.”

And so you just went around the legislature. Isn’t that right, Mr. Taylor?

“I don’t know if we went around them. I would disagree with you,” replied Taylor.

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Palin not Paul? From the Washington Independent:

His son Rand’s campaign for Senate in Kentucky is going better than anyone could have expected — every Kentuckian I met at the National Tea Party Convention backed him — but Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is drawing three primary opponents for his own re-election bid. Ironically, all three are from the Tea Party movement, which, as reporter Tom Benning points out, would be hard to imagine without the energy stirred up by Paul’s 2008 presidential bid.

Tea Party associations aside, many of the challengers’ criticisms echo concerns of Paul’s past opponents: that he is too focused on his national ambitions; that his views are too extreme; that he doesn’t support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; that he votes “no” on everything, including federal aid for his district after Hurricane Ike.

“The word I keep hearing is ‘ineffective,’ ” said [challenger John] Gay, a school business administrator. “This district is not really being represented as it could be.”

The criticism is, to say the least, ironic. Almost nothing that Paul does cuts against the rhetoric of the Tea Party movement that is mentioned most in the press: responsible spending and adherence to the Constitution. But some of it does cut against the priorities of national security conservatives and partisan Republicans…

[continues at the Washington Independent]

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Posted by Ralph Bernardo on February 7, 2010

Steve Elliott writes on New Junkie Post:

A remarkable scenario played out in the American media recently, and beyond the import of the story itself is the quantum shift in public perception that it illustrates.

A pro-cannabis group based in Colorado called for a nationwide boycott of coffee giant Starbucks after activists spotted a Starbucks logo on the website of a virulently extremist anti-drug organization. After intense negative publicity ensued, Starbucks actually felt moved to issue a denial.

Once Mason Tvert of Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recation (SAFER) called for the boycott, it took only a couple days until Starbucks denied funding the Colorado Drug Investigators Association (CDIA). Starbucks further said they officially took no position on the marijuana issue, one way or the other.

That doesn’t sound so remarkable until you realize that the very nonchalance, the need to be noncommital, is emblematic of the change, the bedrock reality in the politics of marijuana that has already occurred under our feet.

Read More: New Junkie Post

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[The  views in this essay are those of the author alone. Publication here does constitute endorsement by waronyou®:

Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:

Special thanks to Bulldogger for showing me the way to the rabbit hole.

Many readers of Black Sun Gazette are doubtless familiar with Alex Jones, the Austin, TX-based radio show host and film maker. I have long struggled with what to make of Alex Jones. On the one hand, he provides people with difficult to find information about the frightening truth of the American government’s lurch toward police state and global empire. On the other, he is a frothing at the mouth crypto-fascist who seems to do little more than lead people down blind alleys and arguably does more to terrorize people into inaction than anything to spur resistance. Recently, however, information has been brought to my attention that is worth sharing with my reading public. This article is meant to be primarily speculative, though I think that the issues that I raise bear consideration.

The above video is required viewing for anyone wishing to seriously consider who Alex Jones is, what his broader role in society is, who benefits, and why. Even though the video largely deals with the media outlet formerly known as Russia Today, it provides the necessary backdrop for this narrative. I admit that the video raises more questions than it answers, but these questions are a necessary first step towards having this discussion. Primarily, the video introduces us to the players in this bizarre tragicomedy.

Russia Today

RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a news outlet owned by the Russian state, and almost certainly an arm of Russian intelligence. Such claims can ever only be supported- once again, short of confessions or canceled checks- by circumstantial evidence. For those with a lick of common sense, the knowledge that RT is owned by the Russian state, coupled with fifteen seconds spent surveying these advertisements should be convincing enough to heavily support the connection. That the Russian government would have a program similar to Voice of America should come as a surprise to no one. However, the more curious question is why do they repeatedly shill for Alex Jones and We Are Change, while providing copious amounts of time for the fascistic American “Patriot” to voice its views?

The Corporatist / Christian American Far Right

These elements are key in understanding how all of this ties together. Specifically, I am talking about highly disciplined and professional organizations such as the Western Goals Foundation, and the Council for National Policy. Still, I am not leaving out what could be termed the more “popular frontist” elements of the movement including Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and most importantly the John Birch Society. The last of which is implicated by highly suggestive circumstantial evidence to be a prime candidate for a KGB front operation.

Alex Jones

Alex Jones is indisputably a savvy media operator. Seemingly from out of nowhere he has built a cottage industry media empire out of Austin, TX, winning the ear of good old boys, Hollywood elites, and an international community of youth who are highly skeptical of the official narrative pushed by the capitalist media. He also has all the earmarks of an agent provocateur, acting as a person who does much to attract radically-minded but politically confused youth while at the same time actively derailing the movements he purports to endorse. As an aside and a segue; I have listened to Alex Jones’s radio show for years. I have never heard him “cut a mic” Bill O’Reilly style except for here:

Cui Bono?

This is all interesting, but what does it say? What ties it all together? To even begin to answer these questions, they must be broken down into a few more constituent parts. However, the underlying question is always cui bono? Who benefits from the words and ideas of Alex Jones?

Climate Instability Denial

There is, among the mainstream scientific community, a consensus that the Earth’s climate is changing, and that human activity is the root cause. Those who deny this are frequently funded by those with a strong interest in maintaining the status quo on energy production. Namely, international energy cartels such as Exxon-Mobil, and the governments of countries sitting on large fossil fuel reserves.

Intensification of Exploitation

Despite their rhetoric, the libertarian, patriot, and constitutionalist movements are little more than ideological cover for a return to the bad old days of the Gilded Age. This was a time of extremely pointed superexploitation of labor by capital during the first period of American ascendancy after the defeat of the Southern slavocracy by an alliance of Northern capital, labor, and free land holders, with a big assist from revolutionary slaves. There are places on Earth, most notably China, but any Asian export platform will do, where labor, safety, and wage conditions are comparable or worse to the Gilded Age in the United States. Those who viewed the video at the beginning of this entry will note that David Koch is heavily invested in selling Chinese-style labor conditions on American soil to the American people.

Drifting Toward Police State

When capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union, little else changed about Russia and the other former Soviet republics. They remain intensely authoritarian countries with little in the way of free elections or basic human freedoms. For its own part, the United States has become increasingly authoritarian over the last 40 years, culminating with the rule of George W. Bush, who paid little attention in either action or rhetoric to the human rights and privacy protections enshrined in the United States Constitution. While such policies were deeply unpopular among Americans of all political stripes, they were supported vigorously by Bush’s supporters little and big.

A New Era of Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

It wasn’t just the government that didn’t change at the end of the Soviet Union. The Russian Bear remains in sharp competition with the United States, particularly since the fomentation of color revolutions by American intelligence in Russia’s neighbors immediate and otherwise. It is important to remember that “taking over” the United States would not be in the best interests of Russian capital. Assuming responsibility for our problems is too difficult and expensive. However- and this is very, very important- removing the United States from the world scene as an international player frees up Russia’s hand politically, economically, and culturally in Europe as well as the developing world, in particular southwest and central Asia.

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

Despite a lack of explicit rhetoric on the subject, it doesn’t seem like a bold claim to say that many on the far corporate / Christian right have some sort of admiration for China and Russia. In the case of the former, China is a model for a hyperexploitative form of capitalism where workers have almost nothing in the way of rights or protections. In the case of the latter, you have a political system run by a nationalist strongman. Even term limits haven’t prevented Vladimir Putin from continuing his iron grip over Russia. Translated into the American, this would mean a repeal of almost all labor laws and an intensification of the imperial Presidency, two projects which are very near and dear to the hearts of the far right in the United States.

Alex Jones: Controlled Opposition

If you’ve listened to Alex Jones you’ll notice that one thread runs throughout his show. Nearly everyone is some kind of agent of the system. Even the venerable Glenn Beck whose rhetoric is nearly identical to that of Alex Jones. Both attack the Federal Reserve, a conspiracy of eugenicists, and progressivism and socialism. Both are also self-styled champions of “the little guy” and “mainstream America.” Still, Beck earns a vitriol on Alex Jones’s radio show similar to that of anyone else Jones deems to be a tool of the system. All of this raises a very important question: Why is Alex Jones, the man who attacks anyone and everything as a tool of the system so ga ga in love with the John Birch Society, a group that even many on the far right fear as an intelligence organization? Why is he so incensed by attacks on the John Birch Society that he cuts off a caller who criticizes them? Further, why is a man so in love with the United States and its Constitution, so distrustful of “globalist” (i.e. foreign) elites willing to go on a news service run by remnants of the KGB? Why is he willing to have Luke Rudkowski on his show every fifteen minutes when Mr. Rudkowski “works for the Russian media,” which almost certainly means Russia Today? It is worth noting that Rudkowski’s group We Are Change are a sort of unofficial youth movement of Alex Jones, and the connection between Rudkowski and the “Russian media” raises serious questions about who funds WAC and why.

“You Judge a Tree By It’s Fruits”

The above quote is from Alex Jones in his defense of the John Birch Society. What are Alex Jones’s fruits? He goes on the radio every day shrieking like a madman about a “global control grid” that is going to “enslave” Americans. In addition to promoting generalized fear and anxiety, he also promotes a political agenda that favors withdrawing the United States from the world stage. But his “fruits,” such as they are, go beyond that. Alex Jones is also an accomplished agent provocateur. Notice how his “confrontation” of Michelle Malkin has more to do with petty personal attacks than a political deconstruction of her line in the following video. Before watching, remember that Michelle Malkin is part of the wing of the Republican Party which supports a robust American military presence around the world.

Now watch this video where a normal, peaceful protest of what could be termed mainstream libertarians against gun control is thrown into utter chaos and turned into a sideshow by Alex Jones and his bullhorn:

Tying It All Together

Most people reading this blog are probably familiar with COINTELPRO. However, it isn’t just the United States government that has spies and agents. Private groups have them as well. Is it too outrageous to assume that groups like the Western Goals Foundation and the Council on National Policy have intelligence operations? Is it further too outrageous to assume that their intelligence operations work hand in hand with Russian intelligence in an attempt at finding common cause? The common cause being a fifth columnist beneficiary of the collapse of the United States as an international player. Once you answer either of those questions in the affirmative you then have to acknowledge that someone, and probably a very effective and public “someone” is acting as an intelligent agent for the aforementioned groups.

Which brings us back to Alex Jones. Who is Alex Jones? Why is so little known about his life before he became a public personality? How is he able to get high profile people like the head of the Rothschild family and Nobel laureates on his show? How is it that he has such a large, widespread audience, but is never able to muster any effective resistance to the “globalists” that he opposes? Why is he pushed so hard by Russia Today? His studio was recently refurnished- who provided these funds?

These are all questions which require careful thought and warrant answers. However, there does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence implicating Alex Jones as an agent provocateur for a wing of the American ruling elite who have made their peace with Chinese and Russian capital, or at least think that they have. I would sincerely like to be pointed in the direction of more information about Mr. Jones, and welcome contributions from my readers unpacking all of this rather diffuse information.

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Police are planning to use an anti-terror law deemed unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights across the country during the London Olympics, The Times has learnt.

Senior officers are considering using Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at every Underground and railway station nationwide.

Privacy campaigners criticised the proposal yesterday. The powers would enable police to stop and search members of the public without any suspicion that they were involved in terrorism.

The Times understands that this would be the first time that the powers would have been used across such a wide area. Police said that Section 44, which must be granted by the Home Secretary for a designated area, would be used only in the event of an escalated terror threat. Officers are being trained to use behavioural profiling to spot suspicious characters during stop- and-search operations.

Privacy experts said that the plan could heighten tensions between the public and police. Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, said: “The history of stop and search in this country is abhorrent. I wouldn’t trust the police to make the right judgment.

“It is well known that stop-and- search powers have created extraordinary tensions among a range of ethnic groups,” he said. “There’s no doubt that extension of the use of those powers would exacerbate those tensions.”

Last month the use of the terror law was criticised by the European Court of Human Rights. It found that Section 44 violated individual freedoms guaranteeing the right to private life.

The court said that the power to search an individual’s clothing and belongings in public involved an element of humiliation that was a clear interference with the right to privacy. Judges also attacked the arbitrary nature of the power as well as the way in which its use was authorised.

Despite this, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said that police would continue to use Section 44. The Home Office is appealing against the European Court ruling.

The Metropolitan Police agreed last year to limit its use of the powers after critics claimed that it was discriminating against minority groups. However, Assistant Chief Constable Steve Thomas, of the British Transport Police, told The Times that the powers would be considered for 2012.

Mr Thomas, the Olympic National Transport Security Co-ordinator for the Home Office, said: “If there is a severe level of threat we will be looking to use Section 44 at every Underground and railway station. We are planning on the assumption that there will be a severe threat to the UK during the Games, on the basis that we can then scale down rather than quickly scale up.” He said that if Section 44 was put in place across the country it would not mean that every station would be flooded with officers, but individual stations would be targeted as part of an operation.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the campaigning organisation that brought the European Court case, said that while there was an obvious need for heightened precautions during the 2012 Games, Britain’s antiterrorism laws need to be “tightened up”. She said: “It would be incredibly dangerous to build Olympic security on such a legally flawed foundation.”

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‘Reality’ Show Lets You Decide If Women Get Abortions?

February 4, 2010 |

A new web show called “BUMP+” is stirring up controversy and conversation about abortion. It’s a “fake” reality show in which three actresses portray women facing unintended pregnancies. These characters, entirely fictional, have agreed to appear on a reality TV show and let the public weigh in on what they should do about their pregnancies: keep it, terminate it, adoption? The creators of the web series say they will pick what happens to “contestants’” pregnancies based on viewer response.

It’s not exactly what we pro-choicers have always dreamed about: a decision left up to a woman, her doctor, and a vast and anonymous internet audience. When feminists say we want more realistic portrayals of abortion in the movies and on TV,  we don’t mean reality-show realistic. My body, everybody’s choice?

BUMP+ aims for more than just controversy however; it seeks to, in the words of its creators, spark an honest, Obama-style “common ground” dialogue about the choice based on women’s reality rather than ideological scuffling. The tag-line:

“In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court gave women a choice. Thirty-seven years later, we’re giving them a voice. BUMP+ is a provocative web series from Yellow Line Studio that follows the fictional stories of three women facing unintended pregnancies.”

As someone who writes constantly about the weird avoidance or squeamishness surrounding abortion on TV and the movies, I’m not opposed to this kind of show in theory. Zooming in on women’s lives can often really illuminate what reproductive freedom is all about. A brilliant example is the essay collection “Choice” from a few years back, in which women wrote about every angle of reproduction, from abortion to adoption to surrogacy to miscarriages to regular old pregnancy, and it became clear that there is no one-size fits all rule for such intimate decisions. And that’s what the show’s creators claim are trying to do–brush off the rhetoric, leave us with the stories.

But there are a few barriers to this goal. The show’s format — a fictional reality show with traditional actors playing reality show contestants — has a couple of meta-layers between real women’s stories and the audience. Reality show contestants are not there for us to empathize with, as a rule; they’re there to make us feel superior. Most importantly, the show doesn’t merely follow three women with unexpected pregnancies, but it allows viewers to weigh in on whether they’re going to carry their pregnancies to term or have abortions.  The show has already gotten major backlash from both sides for this supposed callousness.

“So let me get this straight: two dudes, yet again, come up with a TOTALLY novel way of framing a debate that fundamentally affects women and that novel method turned out to be wholly insensitive?” said a commenter at Jezebel. While over at FOX news, a commenter wrote “This is the height of depravity and one more sign that America has truly lost it’s [sic] way…How sad that the killing of the unborn has now become “entertainment.”

However, when I called Bump+’s Director, Chris Riley, he wanted to emphasize that although the show seeks viewers’ input, there’ no up-or down American Idol style vote on these women’s futures (whew). “We have shot multiple endings, and we’ve shot 50 hours of which we’ll only see about 75 minutes. So in post-production we’ll have a lot of latitude to shape things in terms of what happens and the input we get, but as characters these women will fully make their choices on their own,” he said.

Another potential criticism from our end, Anna North at Jezebel noted, is that reality TV shows seem to exist for the purpose of watching women conform to stereotypes. “The general overarching premise that producers look for as they create all of their shows is drama, not necessarily other human emotions,” says Jennifer Pozner of Women in Media and News, who is writing a book about gender and reality TV. “Even if women on these shows don’t act like head cases, editing makes them seem as if they are.”

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The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated.

“Things are a little bit worse than had been expected,” says Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration. “Clearly, we’re going to be negative for a year or two.”

Since 1984, Social Security has raked in more in payroll taxes than it has paid in benefits, accumulating a $2.5 trillion trust fund. But because the government uses the trust fund to pay for other programs, tax increases, spending cuts or new borrowing will be required to make up the difference between taxes collected and benefits owed.

Experts say the trend points to a more basic problem for Social Security: looming retirements by Baby Boomers will create annual losses beginning in 2016 or 2017.

“The moment of truth has arrived,” says Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., top Republican on the House Budget Committee. “This is a wake-up call.”

Social Security took in only $3 billion more in taxes last year than it paid out in benefits — a $60 billion decline from 2008, according to federal data. The slide in revenue occurred sooner than Social Security actuaries had expected, for three reasons:

• Payroll tax revenue that was growing at a 4.5% average annual clip along with wages flattened out in 2009 because of rising unemployment and pay raises that largely disappeared.

• The number of retired workers who began taking benefits increased by 20%; those taking disability jumped by 10%.

• Monthly benefits were raised 5.8% because of a spike in energy prices the year before.

Social Security was saved from bankruptcy in 1983 by a bipartisan deal that increased payroll taxes, taxed some benefits and gradually raised the retirement age to 67. That was supposed to keep the system solvent at least until 2058, but the projection has slipped to 2037.

The impact of the recession shows that “for all these projections, unexpected things happen,” says Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.. “Money has to be found to repay those trust funds.”

President George W. Bush proposed voluntary private retirement accounts in 2005, but the effort stalled in Congress. President Obama has proposed giving Social Security and other thorny fiscal issues to a bipartisan commission.

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A U.S. soldier has been accused of ‘waterboarding’ his four-year-old daughter because she couldn’t recite the alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police that he used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter ’squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face – upwards – three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, admitted to investigators that his daughter was terrified of water and he had deliberately chosen the punishment.

Read entire article

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Via: Oregonian:

A bizarre blowup between a professor and a student in a Portland State University classroom recently has sent ripples of concern and curiosity through the campus.

It also has prompted the student, openly accused by the professor of being an FBI informant and a killer, to hire a prominent local civil rights attorney, and led the university to launch an investigation into the educator. The school has taken the unusual step of stripping the tenured professor of his teaching responsibilities while it conducts its inquiry.

Meanwhile, others at PSU are divided along two lines: Those who think the professor did the right thing, if in an unorthodox way; and those who think his actions were strange and out of line.

Some questions remain unanswered: Why would a tenured professor choose to openly confront a student he viewed as dangerous; and what does the situation mean for the student, who has not been charged with a crime, yet is said to have offered to teach others how to make Molotov cocktails and buy assault rifles.

Professor John Hall has not taught on campus since Jan. 14, when, during a comparative economics course, he accused a 30-year-old student of being an FBI informant and threatened to place posters of him around campus. Depending on the outcome of the internal inquiry, Hall could face a range of sanctions, including termination, said Scott Gallagher, communications director for PSU. Gallagher did not know when the inquiry would be completed.

The Oregonian made several attempts to reach Hall, who has taught at the university for 25 years, but he didn’t return messages. However, Phil Lesch, executive director for the Portland State chapter of the American Association of University Professors, defended Hall and said by e-mail Friday that Hall had asked him to act as his spokesman. The association is the union that represents faculty members.

PSU student Brett Condron, 20, who is studying German, was in class that day. He said about 40 students witnessed the confrontation between Hall and the student.

Condron said with about 30 minutes left in class, Hall made a dramatic announcement: An FBI informant was enrolled in the class. He talked about his experience with government informants in East Germany, then identified the student as Zach Bucharest.

Hall put a letter detailing his accusations on the overhead projector so the class could read it. Condron said Hall then handed Bucharest a packet to give to “his superiors.”

“And then he proceeded to say a lot of unpleasant things about Bucharest,” Condron said. For instance, he said, Hall called Bucharest a killer and said that he had the “spirit of Cain and the spirit of Judas.”

During the confrontation, Condron said, Hall snapped a digital photo of Bucharest and said that if “he ever saw him on campus again, he would plaster his photo and copies of his photos all over campus and tell everybody who he was.”

Condron said Bucharest was stoic and silent as Hall lashed out at him. Afterward, Bucharest defended himself, then walked out.

The Oregonian tried to talk to Bucharest multiple times but his attorney, Elden Rosenthal, advised his client against talking to reporters.

In one of two statements Bucharest released through Rosenthal, the student said he has admired Hall and “cannot imagine what I did or said to cause him to treat me the way he did.”

Another student in Hall’s class is Daniel Dreier, a 26-year-old economics major. He was among those who had earlier become concerned about Bucharest’s behavior.

He said at a winter term Economics Department party in December, Bucharest told a campus activist how to make a particularly effective Molotov cocktail. Dreier said Bucharest also offered to act as a middleman to help students buy military style rifles — AR-15s or AK-47s — through a gun dealer he knew in Washington and that he had access to machine guns.

In a second interview, Dreier said that Bucharest frequently told stories about confrontations involving guns and said that Bucharest had shown him a gun that he carries on campus.

Meanwhile, Lesch, the union representative, confirmed that Hall confronted Bucharest in front of the class, but did so solely out of concern for the safety of his students and the community. Lesch said Hall’s actions came after other students went to Hall with concerns that Bucharest was trying to “create a cabal of students on campus oriented toward violence.”

“There were some students who ended up being very upset but there were also students who were grateful” to Hall for confronting Bucharest, Lesch said.

He said previously a group of eight students that Hall had been advising came to him with concerns about Bucharest.

They told Hall that Bucharest “was trying to get them interested in shooting and blowing things up — all kinds of weapons, not just rifles, illegal weapons,” Lesch said. “They were scared. They had a close relationship with Professor Hall and they brought it to his attention.”

Asked why Hall didn’t go to authorities with his concerns, Lesch said Hall had extensive experience with school bureaucracy and “did not feel like taking this to campus safety was the right way to go.”

Lesch added in an e-mail that in Hall’s years at PSU, “There have been a number of occasions where his personal safety has been threatened … Hall reported these incidents through proper channels at the time, but the university either did nothing to address his concerns or dismissed his reports outright.

University officials could not be reached late Friday for response to Hall’s perception of campus security.

“In addition,” Lesch said Friday in an e-mail, “several of Professor Hall’s students, in expressing their concerns about Bucharest, conveyed that Bucharest boasted on a number of occasions about a ’special’ relationship with campus public safety, which suggested that they might not take any complaint about him seriously.”

“Unfortunately, he ended up doing something that was very public and inflammatory and now his career is on the line,” Lesch said. “He ended up doing this knowing he could face personal negative consequences. He thought it was the most immediate way of resolving what he thought was a potential threat.”

Bucharest has been a PSU student since 2006, and a member of student government since 2009.

“Mr. Bucharest … is not and never has been an FBI agent, or an FBI informant,” Rosenthal wrote in a statement to The Oregonian.

The FBI in Portland confirmed last month, then again Thursday, that Bucharest is not an informant for the bureau.

“The suggestion that Mr. Bucharest in any way has tried to incite violence, or illegal activity, is false,” Rosenthal wrote. “The suggestion that Mr. Bucharest in any way has threatened any PSU student is false. Mr. Bucharest is disheartened that Professor Hall’s union representative is making inflammatory public statements, rather than letting the PSU investigation run its course.”

In a previous statement through Rosenthal, Bucharest said, “I truly hope that the university will take steps to clear my name.”

Hall has fans among his students at the downtown university, among them 23-year-old senior Allison Faris, who has spent five years as a college student in the United States and France.

“I would definitely classify him as one of the top five lecturers I’ve ever had in a university setting,” said Faris, who is studying French and English. “I’ve never studied economics, and he actually made the subject accessible. He contextualized it, and he made it just very fascinating.

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Sure, American politicians have been bought and paid for by the Wall Street giants. See this, this and this.

And everyone knows that the White House and Congress – while talking about cracking down on Wall Street with strict regulation – have actually watered down some of the most important protections that were in place.

For example, Senator Cantwell says that the new derivatives legislation is weaker than the old regulation. And leading credit default swap expert Satyajit Das says that the new credit default swap regulations not only won’t help stabilize the economy, they might actually help to destabilize it.

But the U.S. is not being sold out in a vacuum.

On March 1, 1999, countries accounting for more than 90 per cent of the global financial services market signed onto the World Trade Organization’s Financial Services Agreement (FSA). By signing the FSA, they committed to deregulate their financial markets.

For example, by signing the FSA, the U.S. agreed not to break up too big to fails. The U.S. also promised to repeal Glass-Steagall, and did so 8 months after signing the FSA.

Indeed, in signing the FSA and other WTO agreements, the U.S. has legally bound itself as follows:

• No new regulation: The United States agreed to a “standstill provision” that requires that we not create new regulations (or reverse liberalization) for the list of financial services bound to comply with WTO rules. Given that the United States has made broad WTO financial services commitments – and thus is forbidden by this provision from imposing new regulations in these many areas – this provision seriously limits the policy [options] available to address the current crisis.

• Removal of regulation: The United States even agreed to try to even eliminate domestic financial service regulatory policies that meet GATS [i.e. General Agreement on Trade in Services] rules, but that may still “adversely affect the ability of financial service suppliers of any other (WTO) Member to operate, compete, or enter” the market.

• No bans on new financial service “products”: The United States is also bound to ensure that foreign financial service suppliers are permitted “to offer in its territory any new financial service,” a direct conflict with the various proposals to limit various risky investment instruments, such as certain types of derivatives.

• Certain forms of regulation banned outright: The United States agreed that it would not set limits on the size, corporate form or other characteristics of foreign firms in the broad array of financial services it signed up to WTO strictures …

• Treating foreign and domestic firms alike is not sufficient: The GATS market-access limits on U.S. domestic regulation apply in absolute terms; that is to say, even if a policy applies to domestic and foreign firms alike, if it goes beyond what WTO rules permit, it is forbidden. And, forms of regulation not outright banned by the market-access requirements must not inadvertently “modify the conditions of competition in favor of services or service suppliers” of the United States, even if they apply identically to foreign and domestic firms.

In other words, the problem isn’t just that Congress and the White House have sold out to the Wall Street giants.

The problem is also that the U.S. has signed WTO agreements that have given the keys to the too big to fails, and have neutered their regulators. Even if some politicians tried to stand up to Wall Street – or even if we “through out all of the bums” currently in political roles – the U.S. would still be locked into the WTO’s scheme for helping the financial giants to grow ever bigger and to take ever-bigger and ever-riskier gambles.

Indeed, the financial giants are pushing hard for further deregulation, demanding that the WTO’s “Doha round” of agreements be signed.

On the other hand, if the American people stood up for our sovereignty and demanded that the financial giants be reined in, it would be easy to fix the WTO agreements which the U.S. has already signed. Public Citizen notes, “as a legal matter, these problems are easy to remedy …”

Will the American people stand up and demand that the WTO deregulatory scheme be rolled back?

Or will we continue to let the financial giants destroy our country through buying and selling politicians (with the help of the Supreme Court) and forcing us into more and more draconian WTO treaties which destroy our sovereignty altogether?

Many people assume that they just have to hang in there until things improve. But the powers-that-be are grabbing more and more power and – unless we stand up to them – they will take it all.

As highly-regarded economist (Michael Hudson, Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and who is a former Wall Street economist at Chase Manhattan Bank who helped establish the world’s first sovereign debt fund) said

:

“You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.”

And Foreign Policy magazine ran an article entitled “The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism“, arguing that the power of nations is declining, and being replaced by corporations, wealthy individuals, the sovereign wealth funds of monarchs, and city-regions.

We either stand up, or we slip back into a darker age.

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Undersecretary for management at the State Department, Patrick F. Kennedy, told Congress that the State Department wanted to keep crotch bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab out of the U.S., but that intelligence agencies insisted that Abdulmutallab be let into the country.

Specifically, on January 27th, Kennedy told the House Committee on Homeland Security that intelligence agencies blocked revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa because it would have foiled a “larger investigation” into Al Qaeda.

As noted by The Detroit News:

The State Department didn’t revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort.”

This is eerily similar to 9/11:

• One of al-Qaeda’s top trainers in terrorism and how to hijack airplanes, who was a very close associate of Bin Laden, was an American citizen who was an operative for the FBI, the CIA, and the Army (see this article from the San Francisco Chronicle and this article from the Globe and Mail). Indeed, while he was acting as an FBI informant, he smuggled Bin Laden in and out of Afghanistan, helped plan the attacks on US embassies in Africa, and apparently played a pivotal role in planning 9/11.

According to a 1995 Boston Globe report, his entry into the country was made possible by “clandestine CIA sponsorship.” According to West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center, the terrorist was:

Given a visa waiver under a “little known visa waiver program that allows the CIA and other security agencies to bring valuable agents into the country, bypassing the usual immigration formalities.” While perhaps “little known,” this authority was granted to the Director of National Intelligence by the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 and codified in 50 U.S.C. §403h, which states that if “the admission of a particular alien into the United States for permanent residence is in the interest of national security or essential to the furtherance of the national intelligence mission, such alien and his immediate family shall be admitted to the United States for permanent residence without regard to their inadmissibility under the immigration or any other laws and regulations….”

• 11 of the hijackers received visas to the U.S. through a consular office where, according to the former head of that office, the CIA routinely insisted that visas be granted to terrorists, even when their visa applications should have been rejected under standard operating procedure

Indeed:

• An Al Qaeda operative very close to one of the top Al Qaeda leaders was a CIA informant

• In an article on the nephew of the supposed key mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Newsday reported in 1995: “FBI officials also are considering a probe of whether the CIA had any relationship with [the nephew], who fought with the CIA-financed mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s.” A classified FBI file also reportedly indicated that the nephew had been recruited by the local branch of the CIA (pages 220-221)

• The president of Pakistan said that one of the masterminds of 9/11 was an MI6 (British intelligence services) agent

And U.S. and allied intelligence services had penetrated the highest levels of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. For example:

• In January 2001 — the French intelligence services gave a report to the CIA entitled “Plan to hijack an aircraft by Islamic radicals”. Indeed, “foreign agents had infiltrated Osama bin Laden’s network and were carefully tracking its moves” prior to 9/11. The original story from the leading French newspaper makes it clear that such infiltration went to the highest levels of Al-Qaeda’s camps, and included listening to the hijackers’ debates about which airlines’ planes should be hijacked, and that allied intelligence services also listened into satellite phone conversations between the hijackers

• Moroccan intelligence penetrated Bin Laden’s inner circle, and reported on Bin Laden’s plans to the U.S.

• A longtime CIA officer says, “Egyptians, Jordanians, [and] Palestinians penetrated the bin Laden organization for us. It’s B.S. that we didn’t.” (page 143)

• Former CIA director George Tenet says that “a group of assets from a Middle Eastern service”, working for the CIA, penetrated al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan by September 2001. Bin Laden was dropping hints about the upcoming 9/11 attacks to training camp trainees in the summer of 2001, and US citizen John Walker Lindh was told details of the 9/11 attacks within weeks of joining a training camp that summer

• USA Today states: “U.S. intelligence overheard al-Qaeda operatives discussing a major pending terrorist attack in the weeks prior to Sept. 11 and had agents inside the terror group”

• Indeed, in the summer of 2001, the CIA allegedly told President Bush that the highest levels of Al-Qaeda had been penetrated

In addition, U.S. and allied intelligence services followed the hijacker’s every move:

• The Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House (confirmed here by the Co-Chair of the Joint Inquiry and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham)

• The Pentagon also tracked the hijackers before 9/11

• Israel tracked the hijackers’ every movement prior to the attacks, and may have sent agents to film the attack on the World Trade Centers. Israel, a very close ally of the U.S., presumably shared intelligence prior to 9/11

• And Saudi intelligence was “actively following” most of the September 11, 2001, plotters “with precision” prior to the attacks. Saudi Arabia, like Israel, is a very close ally of the U.S.

Moreover, the U.S. intercepted many high-level Al Qaeda phone calls:

• The CIA and the NSA had been intercepting phone calls by the hijackers for years

• The National Security Agency and the FBI were both independently listening in on the phone calls between the supposed mastermind of the attacks and the lead hijacker. Indeed, the FBI built its own antenna in Madagascar specifically to listen in on the mastermind’s phone calls. The day before 9/11, the mastermind told the lead hijacker “tomorrow is zero hour” and gave final approval for the attacks. The NSA intercepted the message that day and the FBI was likely also monitoring the mastermind’s phone calls. (The NSA claims that it did not translate the intercept until September 12th; however, the above-mentioned FBI translator said that she was frequently ordered to falsify dates of translations regarding 9/11)

• Shortly before 9/11, the NSA also intercepted multiple phone calls from Bin Laden’s chief of operations to the United States

• Only two days before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden called his stepmother and told her “In two days, you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while.” US officials later told CNN that “in recent years they’ve been able to monitor some of bin Laden’s telephone communications with his [step]mother. Bin Laden at the time was using a satellite telephone, and the signals were intercepted and sometimes recorded.” Indeed, before 9/11, to impress important visitors, NSA analysts would occasionally play audio tapes of bin Laden talking to his stepmother

Moreover, the financiers for Al Qaeda were not mysterious and unknown before 9/11:

• According to intelligence officials in India, Pakistan’s military chief of intelligence wired $100,000 to the lead hijacker days before 9/11 (mentioned here in a news roundup). This is especially interesting because: That particular chief of intelligence was appointed to that position with the approval of the U.S., and the intelligence chief had held “consultations” with his U.S. counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon during the week prior to September 11. Coincidentally, the above-described military chief of intelligence who wired the $100,000 to the hijacker actually met with the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on the very morning of 9/11

Other facts point towards penetration of the highest levels of Al Qaeda:

• 9/11 family member and “Jersey Girl” Patty Casazza was told by whistleblowers that — before 9/11 — the government knew the exact day, the type of attack, and the targets

• One of France’s largest newspapers claims that the CIA met with Bin Laden in an American hospital in Dubai in July 2001

Did 9/11 – like the crotch bombing – also involve U.S. intelligence services letting smaller terrorists into the U.S. so that they could catch the “big fish”?

If so, this would be ironic, since the U.S. could have killed Bin Laden in 2001 and again in 2007, but chose not to do so.

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January 22nd, 2010 | Author: Rachel

The Oklahoma Sovereignty Driver License Protection Act, introduced by State Rep. Mike Ritze, and seeks to protect the people’s right to privacy in the face of a de-facto national ID card still on the books in Washington D.C.

If passed, the act would prohibit, among other things:

• the Department of Public Safety from retaining certain information
• the collection, retention or disclosure of Social Security numbers
• the use of radio frequency identification technology

It would also require “any state agency or department charged with motor vehicle registration or operation” to:

• Cease all biometric comparisons and cease collection of any biometric data, biometric sample or biometric template;
• Render inoperable any computer software capable of such comparisons;
• Disconnect, from any computer system, all hardware used specifically for collecting finger images

“Privacy is essential to our Freedom and I feel HB2923 addresses the essence of what many serving our country have died for,” said Ritze. “As a Veteran I cherish Liberty over tyranny and it must be protected from an all encompassing federal government that does not live in the boundaries of our Constitutional Republic.”

In 2005, the Bush Administration and the Republican-dominated Congress passed the Real ID act, which many civil-rights advocates said was a clear violation of privacy.  In response, more than 20 states passed resolutions or binding legislation refusing to comply with the law.  And, as a result, both the Bush and the Obama administrations have been unable to implement it.

Read More Here

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by Tolu Olorunda / February 2nd, 2010

Communication is what one does with words and what they do to us.

— J. Samuel Bois, The Art of Awareness¹

Our language points up contrasts and dichotomies while reality often falls through the cracks between the categories.

— S.I. Hayakawa and William Dresser, Dimensions of Meaning²

Aristotle was right in acknowledging that “the power of speech is intended to express what is advantageous and what harmful, what is just and what unjust.” Our ability, as human beings, to communicate with each other, to inspire and motivate, to exchange ideas about the world, has not only made life easier, but separated us from other breeds of species surrounding. And, it appears to me, the value of language (or communication) can be used to measure the quality of life within any society and community.

The words used; the verbs expressed; the labels invented—all measurements of a people’s understanding of, and connection to, reality. If this is true, what can be said of the “illegal immigration” debate that has taken greater command of the imaginations of our society in recent times? And what can be delineated from the key words bandied around ruthlessly?

Right off the bat, we are informed—by Right-wing ideologues—that Mexican citizens who cross the border overnight to establish humble livings for themselves in the U.S. are not “undocumented workers” but “illegal aliens.” In this context, there is little room left for the histories and backgrounds of the “criminals” to breathe. The policies that provoke families, for instance, to take such drastic measures is utterly erased—and condemned as inconsequential. They are “aliens”—foreign species unworthy of recognition and hostile to the well-being of human beings—citizens. That the combination of “illegal” and “alien” is nonsensical at best and intellectually valueless at worst never crosses the minds of the pundits and shock jocks whose hard work has brought it into mainstream and celebrated discourse. It would seem, to those below the legal alcohol limit, that no rational basis exists upon which to condemn an “alien” as “illegal.”

The very nature of an “alien” prescribes wholly different sets of principles—unlike the pre-established tenets used to punish or promote citizens—for engagement and interrogation. An “alien,” by nature, belongs to a different world and different geographical territory. And, if Star Wars is to be taken seriously, aliens demand unique devices just to understand them—let alone control and repress them. But the adjective “illegal”—as opposed to, say, “undocumented” or “unregistered”—came to life once brain-zapped nitwits, bent on dehumanizing otherized citizens (“aliens”), ran out of creative options to make ends meet. They convinced themselves: by adding “illegal” as a prefix, no one would be left unsure if our targets are innocent or guilty. Whether or not the term “illegal alien” is just as silly—if not more—as “illegal criminal” isn’t of mental merit. This, unfortunately, is the limit to which many are willing to go beyond in criminalizing and demonizing those seen as different—thus deficient.

It’s critical intellectuals and educators take seriously the effect words can have on citizens who otherwise consider themselves enlightened enough to stay clear of semantic manipulation. History shows even the most advanced of men and women can be seduced into unconscionable deeds by trained orators. As was the case in Germany during the Hitlerian regime, many never thought themselves that gullible, that impressionable; but even words that appealed to most as abstract and indirect evoked strong and costly reactions in the hearts and minds of everyday citizens.

Language scholars S.I. Hayakawa and William Dresser explained more definitely four decades ago how vulnerable human beings really are to “magic words”:

The Nazis purposely used terminology which appeared concrete but was in reality ambiguous and meaningless. The “enemies” of Germany that had to be destroyed, said Hitler, were the “November criminals,” the “red dragon,” the “Jewish plague,” the “parliamentarians,” the “democratic-Marxist-Jew,” the “Jewish bacillus.” All these referentially meaningless abstractions were in turn grouped together into the equally abstract “System.”³

English psychiatrist Anthony Storr added deeper layers in suggesting that Hitler’s words, specifically at Nuremberg rallies, “was not intended to convey information but took on the quality of an incantation or chant.”⁴ Storr noted that the marching bands and musical instruments preceding and proceeding Hitler’s remarks provided much cover for his oratorical deficits and “reinforce[d] the effect which the music, the banners, the search-lights, and the processions had already induced.”⁵ Thus, even the most inhumane and repugnant charges, in this sense, took on melodic tones—better digested and internalized.

Many on the extreme Right today, though not as powerful or skilled or smart as Hitler was, have been eliciting just as dangerous an effect in listeners’ minds. A man who shot his way into a Tennessee Unitarian church in June 2008 confessed he “hated the liberal movement” in America and didn’t care too much for “liberals in general as well as gays.” He was particularly disturbed by some of the liberal stances taken by the Unitarian church in past times.⁶ In a letter written right before his murderous rampage, the gunman expressed desire to “kill … every Democrat in the Senate & House [and] the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book.” Here, he was making reference to a book written by the conservative commentator, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37), in which liberals and democrats are recreated as America-hating traitors with deep-seated desires to see their country destroyed. Police officers also discovered other liberal-bashing books at the gunman’s house which, by their title, reveal how effective hate speech can be in pushing human beings over the edge of sanity: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism.

Shock-jocks understand that in times of economic uncertainty and political upheaval, human beings are vulnerable and impressionable, and can be manipulated with ease. A local Tennessee police chief explained how the church shooter, a 58-year-old unemployed truck driver, came to blame liberals for his financial woes: “It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement.”

Like in Hitler’s Germany when it was fashionable to blame the Jews, and in George Wallace’s Alabama where it was rational to blame the Niggers, so it is in the hard-Right’s America easy to blame the liberals, or democrats, or progressives—or anyone bold enough to think for themselves.

With tens of millions of Americans tuned into the various streams of talk radio, those who cherish the very foundations upon which a livable society stands must become more concerned about the level of acidity spewed daily in the name of Free Speech. Examples of the corrosiveness that today passes for rhetoric from those corners are endless, but a few are worth citing.

Consider the words of talk show host Michael Savage on Autism, which he considers “a fraud, a racket”:

I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.”⁷

Similar comments were made by fellow crackpot Neal Boortz who, in early 2008, ridiculed then-candidate John Edwards’ work on behalf of New Orleans residents, insisting that “so-called refugees” from the region who sought relief around the country following the 2005 category-5 hurricane “was just a glorified episode of putting out the garbage.” He went further:

That wasn’t the cries of the downtrodden. That’s the cries of the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not, and had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them.⁸

FOX News star Bill O’Reilly had laid the foundation three years earlier:

Now, our government has a duty to provide a safety net so these people aren’t living under bridges. But some of them are anyway, because all the entitlement money they get they spend on heroin or crack or alcohol. … Many, many, many of the poor in New Orleans … weren’t going to leave no matter what you did. They were drug-addicted. They weren’t going to get turned off from their source. They were thugs.⁹

These aren’t just the expressions of relatively heartless values and presuppositions; they are marching orders to listeners who, as is the case with one celebrated commentator, happily refer to themselves as “dittoheads.” And you don’t have to take my words for it. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh, currently the most listened-to personality in the genre, explained over a decade ago that the primary purpose of the shock jock is “to make you mad. And the formula for making you—the viewer or the listener—mad hasn’t changed a bit; yet people keep falling for it.” And whether the “dittoheads” who’ve made an idol of him are aware at all, his fulfillment is not in educating or enlightening, but in “stirring them up.” For Limbaugh, “callers are like music on a record station—you play the top ten. You don’t take bad calls.” These “callers” cannot be granted license to “control the show.” After all, “people turn on the radio to be entertained, to be entertained, to be entertained.”¹⁰

Unsurprisingly, Limbaugh’s language pales in comparison to those shared by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who, in a talk to Black radio announcers in 1967, cautioned broadcasters to be cognizant of “the role which the radio announcer plays in the life of our people—for better or for worse.” King praised the efforts of Tall Paul White, Pervis Spann, and Georgia Woods for using their airwaves to furnish social justice—educating, fundraising, etc.—during the Civil Rights battles of the ‘60s. “We would certainly not have come so far without your support,” King told them. “In a real sense, you have paved the way for social and political change by creating a powerful, cultural bridge between Black and White.” Dr. King believed the radio was the only avenue upon which the masses depended for information; and with that much given, much was required from radio announcers. King, nonetheless, acknowledged much still had to be done to expand the possibilities, on a national scale, of radio as an educational tool: “But, my brothers and my sisters, we are only beginning. We still have a long, long way to go.”

How disappointed might Dr. King be today, in what has come to define radio as we know it? How embarrassed might he be to witness the rise of the shock jock and the decline of the radio educator? And how morally indignant might he feel toward the various ways talk show personalities dangerously inflame passions and incite emotions in viewers—often culminating in lamentable episodes, such as Bill O’Reilly’s accused contribution to the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller (whom he numerously attacked as “Tiller the Baby Killer”). Media critic Rory O’ Conner explained in a Bill Moyers feature just how listeners are, as Limbaugh might put it, stirred up—over and over again:

Here’s the real problem. When you shock somebody, if you come back the next time and you apply the same stimulus, it’s not shocking any longer. It’s already happened. So you have to ratchet it up a little bit. So how do you cut through? How do you really shock? … [Y]ou have to constantly be jacking up the pressure. And ultimately, there’s gonna be some deranged person out there in that audience who’s gonna say, “You know what? That’s a good idea. Let me act on that.”¹¹

When words are used weapon-like, to attack and destroy, to conquer and dominate, those who suffer the most are those on the sidelines—those considered spectators, entertained by the spectacle of cruelty. What is rarely addressed is how much of a psychological impact takes toll on the minds of listeners and viewers who, day-in-day-out, are terrorized by on-air personalities whose careers rest solely on calling enemies incendiary names and putting political fatwahs on the heads of opponents. If the incidents of the Unitarian church and the abortion doctor are of any significance, its clear more emphasis must be placed on the non-neutral observers who are “shocked” into ever higher levels of inhumanity by men who consider themselves little other than entertainers.

As Henry Giroux put it recently,

the language of oppression and cruelty becomes normalized, removed from the sphere of criticism and the culture of questioning. Such a language does more than normalize ignorance, illiteracy and irrationality; it also produces a kind of psychic hardening and deep-rooted pathology in a society increasingly willing to eliminate the policies that enable social bonds and protections necessary for a substantive democracy.¹²

In times such as this, marked by mass civic illiteracy, coupled with economic uncertainty, tripled with political instability, quadrupled with the arrogance of private and political elites, citizens are most vulnerable to the primitive suggestions of the low-grade thinkers employed by Right-wing organizations to bluster on for four hours daily.¹³ But it is also in times like this that those same vulnerable populations can be best uplifted and educated by concerned thinkers and intellectuals dedicated to making the best with what’s left of our wobbling world.

1. J. Samuel Bois, The Art of Awareness: A Textbook on General Semantics and Epistemics (Dubuque, Iowa: W. C. Brown Co., 1973), p. 130. [↩]
2. S.I. Hayakawa and William Dresser, Dimensions of Meaning (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1970), p. 5. [↩]
3. Ibid., p. 50. [↩]
4. Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 46. [↩]
5. Ibid., p. 47. [↩]
6. Associated Press, “Police: Killer targeted church for liberal views,” MSNBC (July 28, 2008). [↩]
7. Transcript and Audio [↩]
8. Transcript and Audio [↩]
9. Transcript and Audio [↩]
10. Video [↩]
11. Bill Moyers Journal, “Rage on the Radio,” PBS (Septem

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