The Buzz Words of 2010 Explained

Every year sees new words coined and old ones gaining new meaning. The Guardian’s Rafael Behr decodes some of the key terms of 2010 with a bit of tongue and cheek humor. Opinione has put an American spin on some of the buzz words for 2010.

Austerity – Sanctimonious meanness. Budget cuts for social security, education, and health care while the Pentagon gets yearly budget increases.

Blowout preventer – Device on deepwater oil rigs that, confusingly, doesn't prevent blowouts. Something the democratic party was not able to deploy in the 2010 mid term election.

Bondage – The sado-masochistic relationship between financial markets and European economies. The relationship between despotic Middle Eastern regimes, perpetual war and America’s love affair with gas guzzling cars.

Cable – Any communication that is supposed to be private but ends up embarrassingly public.

Debt – A curse and a blight, except when incurred by students to pay university tuition fees, in which context it is an opportunity and an engine of social mobility. Disastrous for any other country with a high public debt to GDP ratio except the United States.

Deficit – An excuse to do anything really out of order, eg: "Yes, I did spill red wine on your new white carpet, but what you must remember is that Labour left that carpet with a deficit of red wine; my spillage was the only responsible course of action." While the Bush administration and a GOP Congress increased the public debt by 6 trillion dollars between 2001 and 2008, Obama and the dems are given the blame by a media that favors the wealthy status quo.

Election – Reality show for unattractive people in which members of the audience only get one vote. Something that only a minority of Americans are distracted by every two years.

iPad – A very big phone that doesn't make phone calls.

Kindle – A device that enables you to not read books you have bought without feeling guilty, since you can't see them lying around unopened.

Obama – A unit of time defined by the period that elapses between first experiencing the hope that things will change and then realizing that they won't. An American politician no different than George W Bush.

Phone-tapping – A malicious practice employed by scurrilous journalists and wholly unknown to Andy Coulson, Downing Street head of communications, and formerly editor of the News of the World. Something the NSA and other American government agencies routinely do on unsuspecting Americans in violation of the US Constitution.

Pledge – A meaningless phrase, a chat-up line based on feigned sincerity; a vow that dissolves on entry into a "coalition". An empty phrase that the republican party has replaced with the word contract.

Progressive – A decorative word with no specific meaning, applied to government policies to make them sound nicer; artificial sweetener used to disguise the taste of disgusting medicine. A word that is used by Glen Beck and other agents of the status quo who equate it with socialism, Communism, and Hitler.

Protest – What angry lovers do when they realize they've been spun a "pledge". Something that Americans have no ability to do.

QE2 – quantitative easing: the sequel, starring US federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, in which the heroes of QE1 get together for another rollercoaster adventure in monetary policy. A euphemism for the printing of money.

Royal Wedding – A ritual that can be used very occasionally to promote "middletons" to higher social status. An event held in Great Britain to remind Americans why they revolted against the British Empire.

Scrounger – Person whose lifestyle is supported by the state, with the exception of MPs and royalty. An American employee of a private security corporation like Blackwater, DynCorp, Vinnell, KBR, General Dynamics, CSC, SAIC, etc……

Tweet – Noise made by a bird; nice surprise for Jonathan Ross. A text version of Facebook that has not been used by disenfranchised American voters to social mobilize and overthrow an increasingly corrupt government.

Wiki – A prefix applied to mundane objects or actions to give them a veneer of hi-tech subversive credibility. A four letter word that US government employees are no longer allowed to say or think about.

Youth – An affliction that makes people strangely susceptible to "pledges" and "protest".

List of all 16 American Intelligence Agencies

Here is a list of the 16 American intelligence agencies that are a part of the $ 70 billion dollar national security state apparatus. Even with all the money, resources, and manpower, Americans are still forced to endure violations of their privacy and rights given to them in the 4th amendment.

1. Department of the Navy
2. Department of the Army
3. Department of the Air Force
4. Department of the Marine Corps
5. Department of the Coast Guard
6. Defense Intelligence Agency
7. Department of Energy
8. Department of Homeland Security
9. Department of State
10. Department of Treasury
11. Department of Drug Enforcement Agency
12. Federal Bureau of Investigation
13. National Security Agency
14. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
15. National Reconnaissance Agency
16. Central Intelligence Agency

Commercialism

The best Green Energy advertisement: Mr W

The best Green Energy advertisement: Mr W

What makes a good green ad? A brilliant, clear idea and simple execution.

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

Thanks to the blog MikeB302000.

Top TSA Security Jokes and Political Cartoons for 2010

Just in time for the end of the year holiday travel period, Opinione is publishing some of the best TSA Security jokes for 2010.



1. "This year marks the first holiday season in which travelers will get molested before they get to their uncle's house." —Seth Meyers

2. "Rush Limbaugh on the radio yesterday told President Obama, 'Keep your hands off my tea bag.' Don't worry, Rush, even special ops couldn't find your tea bag." —Jimmy Kimmel

3. "Have you heard the TSA's new slogan? 'We handle more junk than eBay.'" —Jay Leno

4. "TSA says they are going to crack down on the invasive pat-downs. In fact, one agent was transferred to another parish." —David Letterman

5. From David Letterman's Top Ten Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming a TSA Agent: "In five years, whose pants do I see my hands in?"

6. ‎"You know, if I wanted somebody halfheartedly patting my groin without eye contact, I'd get married." —Seth Meyers

7. "The TSA has issued some special packing tips for travelers before flyling. They say not to bring food, sharp tools, or any shred of dignity." —Jimmy Fallon

8. It’s not a grope. It’s a freedom pat.- The Caucus- The Government and Politics Blog of the New York Times

The continuing abysmal American press coverage of the leaked US State Department Cables

As the media begins to pump out their annual stories looking back on the previous year, it is disquieting that a recent Pew Research Center reported that the U.S. media devoted only four percent of its media coverage in 2010 to the never-ending military quagmire in Afghanistan. This shamefully low rate was a drop from the already dismal five percent by the media in 2009.

While Vice President Joe Biden recently said on NBC’s Meet the Press that the US military would withdrawal Afghanistan in 2014, it appears that the mainstream corporate owned media has already left Afghanistan due to viewer fatigue. Too bad political leaders like Biden are not fatigued by the never-ending war, instead of being financed and cheered on by the military industrial congressional complex and other vested interests who want the never-ending military quagmire to continue.

Similar to the lack of reporting on the Afghanistan quagmire, the weak and timid press coverage of leaked State Department cables by the American media is another glaring example of how the public lies and false information of political leaders is allowed to continue unabated with little public pressure. Haven’t the American public or the American press learned anything from the Iraq war and the failure of the press to challenge and refute the now discredited claims presented by the Bush administration during their run up to the Iraq War in 2003?

While it is impossible to definitively explain why the American media is not fully reporting on the US State Department cables, some of the information revealed in the US State Department cables reveal that American officials may be more interested in protecting themselves from answering embarrassing questions, than it is about protecting American national security as they publicly proclaim. One of the most notable US State Department documents that have been virtually ignored in the American mainstream media is a cable by the American government in October 2008 discussing a BP oil well gas leak in Armenia, 19 months earlier than a very similar gas leak that caused the Deep Water Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The cables reveal that some of BP's partners in the gas field were upset that the company was so secretive about the incident that it even allegedly withheld information from them.

In one cable from the embassy in Baku in October 2008, a U.S. diplomat says "BP has closed off a 'few suspect wells' from which they think a bad cement job caused the leaking gas." That, the diplomat says, "is actually good news, since had it been a reservoir leak the damage would have been potentially non-reparable, whereas now all BP has to do is fix the cement job." The repair work is "hard and expensive ... but preferable to losing the platform." By April 2010, that assessment would read like a gross understatement.

Although first reported on 17 December by The Guardian, highlighting the abysmal American press coverage of the leaked US State Department, Time magazine only reported on the issue on Monday December 20. Underscoring the atrocious and pathetic American press coverage of the leaked US State Department cables is the fact that the Time Magazine story referenced the British newspaper The Guardian and not The New York Times. It is an ominous indication of the freedom of the press in America when the American public has to learn of information about its government through foreign news sources.

While The New York Times may be hesitant to publish the leaked State Department cables for a multitude of reasons, not reporting on information contained in the cables does not mean the information in the cables will disappear or does not exist. Although some Americans may be angry at the actions of Julian Assange for releasing the US State Department cables, the people who lost loved ones in the Deep Water Horizon explosion or in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of government and corporate secrecy may not be as critical of Mr. Assange.

A message from Mark Zuckerberg

A great comedy skit by Saturday Night Live where Julian Assange makes his case as why he should be Time's Person of the Year. Some of the more notable reasons include, “Thanks to WikiLeaks, you can see how corrupt governments operate in the shadows.” “Thanks to Facebook, you can figure out which Sex and the City character you are.”
He also included a couple of barbs at how differently WikiLeaks and Facebook define “invasion of privacy.” His organization reveals corporate tidbits to consumers for free, while Zuckerberg’s company inverses the equation, selling your personal information to corporations.

Why Karl Rove should be tried for Treason

The conservatives who criticize the publication of the WikiLeaks material were not heard complaining when President George W. Bush and his national security team provided Bob Woodward and his coauthor, Dan Balz, with notes and minutes of still-secret National Security Council proceedings regarding the most sensitive matters of U.S. war planning and intelligence collection.

Similarly, it was liberals, not conservatives, who took the Bush administration officials to task for leaking the identity of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame in order to discredit the information provided by her husband, Joseph Wilson.

What is different about the WikiLeaks data is the scale of the leak, the motive of the leaker, and the manner in which it was ultimately made available.

The same Obama administration that condemns the leaks has said: “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.” However, if the government decides what constitutes transparency, how can it achieve either objective?

War is the most serious thing to which a government can commit a society. A government that can make war while keeping essential information about its justification and conduct secret is neither open nor fit for free people.

President Obama, like his predecessors, asks for our trust. He'd say he can’t tell us everything, but government in a democratic society requires confidence in its leaders. A similar appeal for trust failed to impress Thomas Jefferson in 1798.

In his protest of the Adams administration’s Alien and Sedition Acts (which essentially criminalized harsh criticism of the government), Jefferson wrote in the Kentucky Resolutions, “[I]t would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism – free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.”

Or as the Irish statesman John Philpot Curran said eight years earlier, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

Yet how can Americans exercise vigilance against government threats to their liberty if critical information is systematically withheld? They can’t. That’s why people such as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers 39 years ago, and perhaps Manning heroically risked personal ruin and defied authority to bring that information to us.

The statement by republican Presidential hopeful Huckabee that Assange should be tried for treason and killed show the damaging effect of Americans corrupted by perpetual war and the national security state apparatus. It would be refreshing if national news outlets would ask why Karl Rove or Gordon Libby were never tried for treason when they outed CIA officer Valarie Plame. As opposed to Assange, who is not a US citizen and cannot be charges with treason, the legal case for Rove and Libby to be charged for treason appears to be greater.

However, Rove, a man who never finished college, is still living a comfortable life, while thousands of men and woman who went to Iraq because of his advice to the president to go ahead with the attack on Iraq in 2003, came back home to the US in coffins.

The difficult job political analysts have at predicting future events

On the 20th day of media coverage related to US State Department cables released by Wikileaks, embarrassing documents are again released related to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Although the latest Wikileaks documents may be viewed as another forthright insight into the inner workings of the Berlusconi government, the latest US State Department documents reveal that the political analysis of Italian politics by American Foreign Service officers is not as judicious as the geo-political analysis of Berlusconi’s close personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to a Guardian news report,

In the leaked memo, William Meara, the economic adviser at the American embassy in Rome, reports that despite budget cuts and

"with its 2009 G8 presidency looming", the newly installed, centre-right government "may decide to maintain funding levels [to Africa] simply to avoid an embarrassing tongue-lashing from Bono et al".

The final paragraph taken directly from a State Department memo dated 23 July 2008 reveals the difficult job political analysts have at predicting the actions of politicians like Silvio Berlusconi due to the unpredictable variable of unseen events like natural disasters.

Although the American Foreign Service officer William Meara, may have been influenced by promises of Fabrizio Nava, the director of the office of sub-Saharan Africa assistance for the Italian government that African aid levels would remain the same, it appears that domestic pressures over the handling of the Italian government of the L’Aquila earthquake would later take more precedence. The American Foreign Service officer in the Rome embassy may also have forgotten or underestimated the favorable media coverage Berlusconi receives in Italy due to his control and ownership of the media in Italy, and that the international pressure of Bono and Bob Geldof were minimal. Understanding the personal history of Silvio Berlusconi and the power of the mafia in Italian society, the political analysis by the economic adviser at the American embassy in Rome that Berlusconi would be afraid of Bono or Bob Geldof is almost amusing.

Although the plight of Africans living in starvation and poverty in former Italian colonies like Eritrea and Somalia is no laughing matter, according to the Guardian article, the fallout between Bono and Bob Geldof led to “an irreverent online game in which a cartoon character of Berlusconi is hurled into the air by a hammer thrower. "

We all love a bit of fun," the site explains. "But there's a serious point to the game – since promising to increase aid to Africa in 2005 PM Berlusconi has actually cut it.

"One man alone has done nothing. In fact, Berlusconi is doing even less now than he was five years ago. Mr. Berlusconi should be thrown out by the G8," it added.

Public Propoganda and Private Reality- A look at "Bush the Decider"

Remember back in the pre Great Recession time of 2006 when George W. Bush proclaimed, "I'm the Decider"?

Fast forward four years and the US media news cycle was temporally dominated by the release of a book by former President George W. Bush, and the public propoganda that George Bush was a decider while in office. The book and its accompanying media blitz is designed to continually influence how George W. Bush would be viewed by Americans and to manipulate public opinion on the disastrous and costly wars his administration started in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the book, Decision Points, endeavors to depict George W. Bush as a decisive leader in difficult times, recently released State Department cables by Wikileaks reveal that world leaders such as Hosni Mubarak, the long time authoritarian leader of Egypt, viewed George W. Bush as being easily manipulated by political handlers and subordinates.

According to a US State Department cable approved by the US ambassador to Cairo, Margaret Scobey,

“Mubarak viewed President Bush as naive, controlled by subordinates and totally unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq, especially the rise of Iran's regional influence."
"On several occasions Mubarak has lamented the US invasion of Iraq and the downfall of Saddam. He routinely notes that Egypt did not like Saddam and does not mourn him, but at least he held the country together and countered Iran.

While the assessment of an Obama appointed US ambassador to Egypt has to be taken into consideration, the blunt assessment of George W. Bush by a long time leader in the Middle East strongly contradicts the public message that Bush and his handlers were selling to the American public in the spring of 2006. This only proves that the louder a politician speaks about something in public, the truth could not be further from the truth.

In stark contrast to the myth perpetuated by Bush in his book and the propaganda during the run up to the attack on Iraq in 2003, the decision to attack Iraq was made by his chief political strategist Karl Rove for political reasons and Dick Cheney for business reasons. The US Department cable downloaded by Bradley Manning and posted by Wikileaks supports this viewpoint.

It is no wonder that the American politicians like Joseph Lieberman, Diane Feinstein, and Mike Huckabee to name just a few want to prosecute Julian Assange and call the release of documents by Wikileaks as electronic terrorism. These less than honorable politicians want to avoid any responsibility in their support of the War in Iraq and the ensuing one trillion dollars it has cost the American people.

A clip from the Daily Show in 2006 puts a comedic spin on the public rhetoric of Bush being "The Decider" while in reality, Bush was controlled by his subordinates.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Decider - The Origin
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

'TSA Christmas Carol'

Mark Zuckerberg for Time magazine person of the year?

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for Time magazine person of the year?

Couldn’t the editors of Time Magazine have a little more intellectual aptitude and give their annual award to someone or a group of people who have tried to make the world we live in a better place, instead of just someone who gave the Internet a place for self obsessed people to post their photos and ask you to water their crops in Farmville?

Although I do not argue the social impact that Facebook has made on the Internet, giving the annual award to founder Mark Zuckerberg instead of Internet freedom of speech advocate Julian Assange or the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobao, allows the editors of Time Magazine avoid any kind of political controversy. Besides, Facebook grew more in popularity in 2009 than 2010. Did the editors at Time just see the movie?

Reviewing Time Magazine’s list of runner ups for ‘Person of the Year’ and the ‘People who Mattered’, revels that Time Magazine is nothing more than a print edition version of an infotainment cable news outlet. Ranking people like the cast of The Jersey Shore, Sandra Bullock and Betty White ahead of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobao shows that there is something seriously wrong over at Time Magazine. The listing by Time is such a disgrace that even the winners and losers of the 2010 World Cup and Prince William were considered more important people than Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobao.

While it is impossible to only distinguish only one person as a person of the year, a more accurate reflection of the world in 2010 would have a list of the top ten most influential people of 2010. Instead of the politically correct and advertiser friendly version submitted by editors at Time Magazine, the following list comprises a more intellectual and realistic look at the most important people of 2010.

1. Julian Assange - Internet freedom advocate

2. Bradley Manning – whistle blower

3 Liu Xiaobao – 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

4. Chilean Miners – dangers that blue collar workers face everyday

5. The Unemployed American – victim of broken economy and a declining world power

6 Steve Jobs – iPods, iPads, and iPhones- enough said

7. Independent Internet blogs like The Daily Beast, Beppe Grillo, and TomDispatch

8 Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – political humor at its best

9. Don’t touch my junk guy – the dangers of a country unable to stop perpetual war and a powerful central government

10. BP CEO Tony Hayward – the face of corporate negligence and arrogance

1. Julian Assange- Creating a web site that exposes government abuses and lies is what the First Amendment and the protection of a free and independent press is based upon. As the last five hundred years have been dominated by the printed word, the next five hundred years will see the transformation of a world dominated by the digital word. Ensuring sites like Wikileaks are protected in the early years of a global communications network and recognizing the courage of individuals like Julian Assange will only benefit democracy and free people in the long run.

2. Bradley Manning- A young disillusioned private serving in Iraq, with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive US documents, will be soon added to a short list of the most famous corporate and government whistle blowers like Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) , Karen Silkwood , and Jeffrey Wigand.

1. Daniel Ellsberg –was the State Department officer that gave the “Pentagon Papers” (a not-so-glowing history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967) to the New York Times.
2. Karen Silkwood –was a blue-collar worker who raised concerns about plutonium plant safety. Unfortunately, she died under mysterious circumstances after she started investigating claims of irregularities and wrongdoing at the Kerr-McGee plant.
3. Jeffrey Wigand –appeared on the CBS news program 60 Minutes, and exposed his company’s (Brown & Williamson) practice of ‘impact boosting’ (intentionally manipulating the effect of nicotine in cigarettes).

3. Liu Xiaobao - The imprisoned Chinese academic and writer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 8 for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental rights in China." Liu was the architect of Charter 08, a manifesto that encouraged China's authoritarian communist leadership to open up to reform and multi-party politics.

Considering that Time Magazine once spoke fondly of Adolf Hitler in 1933 and recently named George W. Bush as person of the year 2004, the latest award by Time Magazine proves the magazine is nothing more than a print version of a infotainment cable news station.

If Julian Assange is a terrorist? Who has been terrorized?

Tom Englehardt, the editor of TomDistach.com recently wrote an article on his blog that deserves to be republished.

Here in the United States of Fear, official voices are again rising in a remarkable crescendo of hysteria.

My advice: don’t even try getting on the subway car filled with American politicians and their acolytes accusing WikiLeaks and Julian Assange of terrorist activity. It’s already standing room only. Among those who have recently spoken out: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell ("I think the man is a high-tech terrorist"); former speaker of the House and possible 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (“information terrorism… [Assange] should be treated as an enemy combatant”); Republican Congressman Peter King, the next head of the House Homeland Security Committee (“…asked the Obama administration today to ‘determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization’”); former Republican Senator and possible 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum (“We haven't gone after this guy, we haven't tried to prosecute him, we haven't gotten our allies to go out and lock this guy up and bring him up on terrorism charges, because what he's doing is terrorism, in my opinion.”); Fox News host, Iran-Contra figure, and bestselling author Oliver North (“This is an act of terrorism. It’s information terrorism instead of a bomb going off in Times Square, but it’s still terrorism.”)

And that’s just to skim the (s)cream off the top of the terror accusations boiling out of this Congress and Republican presidential ranks. It’s quite a brew, especially when you add in senators like Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein calling for Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 and figures like Sarah Palin calling for him to simply be taken out as a terrorist, pure and simple (“Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”)

Here, however, is a small catch. If this is “terrorism,” a question arises (or at least should arise): Who has been terrorized? Who exactly has been terrified by the recent WikiLeaks releases of, so far, more than 1,000 State Department documents, some going back decades? The answer, I think, is clear enough -- not the American people, but the Washington elite who have, in these last years, put in place a version of secrecy so wide-ranging that most of the government’s significant operations abroad (and many at home) have been cast into the shadows beyond the sightlines of the voters in this supposed democracy.

Within the penumbra of spreading secrecy, that elite, sometimes aided and abetted by the mainstream media, has acted with remarkable impunity in invading other countries, kidnapping“suspects” off the streets of global cities, secretly imprisoning under catch-all categories, and torturing, abusing, or even murdering those believed to be terrorists, or at least opposed to Washington’s desires. At the same time, they have been moving to lock down this country in ever more severe (and expensive) ways. So for them, it may indeed feel like a genuinely terrifying experience to see any aspect of that secrecy removed, to discover yet again that what they thought they controlled was not really theirs to control.

And don’t think it’s just a matter of Julian Assange or WikiLeaks in the gun sights either. The Espionage Act of 1917, under which Assange may be charged, was a classic suppressive response to antiwar opposition during World War I. It remains dangerous. Prosecuting Assange under it or any other terror statute would indeed prove an ominous development. It would have -- and I’m not one for throwing around totalitarian analogies -- a distinctly Soviet feel to it.

How Don Berlusconi narrowly survived the 14 December no confidence vote

On Tuesday December 14, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi narrowly won a confidence vote that sparked violent protests in the center of Rome against police. Although most media outlets are reporting on the political ‘nine lives’ of the mafia tainted media mogul turned politician and the ensuing protests that erupted after the no confidence vote, the news reports have omitted critical background information related to the story. The lapse in reporting critical background information prevents more people to learn the internal domestic factors that fueled the protestors’ anger at the government and how Silvio Berlusconi survived yet another political scandal.

Not reporting on the high levels of corruption in Italian politics, which includes the mafia, the lack of press freedom in Italy, and the flawed democracy ranking recently given to Italy by the Economist Magazine, explains why more people do not know why Italy is often referred to as the Stinking Boot of Europe.

Corruption in Italian politics

Though most of the news media is euphemistically describing the financial power of Silvio Berlusconi to buy the votes of several key lawmakers as ‘Berlusconi's uncanny ability to survive’ a more accurate and independent analysis would highlight the rampant corruption that has been institutionalized in Italian politics. One of the most notable aspects of the story not reported on by any of the news wire services, is the fact that the vote was held on 14 December so members of Parliament would have reached the required 2 ½ years of public service to be entitled to a life time pension from the government.

It is erroneous for the news wire services not to include more information on the level of political corruption in Italy that triggered the riots, while reporting on the more sensational aspects of the no confidence vote such as including information about three pregnant lawmakers arriving in ambulances to cast their votes. Instead of wasting time talking about the circus like atmosphere surrounding the political spectacle of the no confidence vote, the news wire services should have cited research by the independent non-governmental organization Transparency International that ranks Italy as the 63rd least corrupt nation in the world. By not focusing on the level of corruption in Italy, the international press frames the recent no confidence vote and the ensuing riots as merely a violent political demonstration by youthful protesters, and downplays the factors leading to the political unrest. Perhaps fueling the rage for most of the youths in the recent riots was the revelation in US State department cables by Wikileaks that Berlusconi is “profiting personally and handsomely" from secret energy deals with Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

Taken to a new level by Berlusconi as recent classified US State Department cables highlight, the political corruption in Italy is perhaps the greatest factor contributing to the continuing political unrest in Italy and the frustration of its disenfranchised youth. The corrupt business deals by Berlusconi have gotten so bad that the US Department now feels it has undermined the geo-political relationship between the United States and Italy.

According to a Wikileaks documents provided by American Private First Class Bradley Manning serving in Iraq,

Berlusconi's close personal (and, some suspect, financial) relationship with Putin has led him to champion unquestioningly every initiative the Kremlin has rolled out. Italy's Russia policy is his personal game, one which he conducts on a tactical basis to gain the trust and favor of his Russian interlocutors. He consistently rejects the strategic advice of his demoralized, resource-starved, and increasingly irrelevant Foreign Ministry in favor of his business cronies, many of whom are deeply dug into Russia's European energy strategy.

Although most people living outside Italy have very little knowledge of who Silvio Berlusconi is or how he rose to be the most powerful and wealthiest man in Italy, the youths charging the barricades and the political opponents of Berlusconi like Beppe Grillo who often refers to Berlusconi as the ‘psycho dwarf’, are all too familiar with the mafia tainted media mogul turned politician.

While recent US State Department documents detailing the close personal and financial relationship between Silvio Berlusconi and Russian President Vladimir Putin may have lost their importance in America due to the 48-hour news cycle of the infotainment media bubble, the news was not quickly forgotten by Berlusconi’s political opponents in Italy. Young Italians not seduced and corrupted by the scantly clad models and reality TV shows on channels owned by Berlusconi, took to the streets to vent their anger and disgust at how their leaders are using their government positions to enrich themselves while public services are being cut and economic growth remains stagnant.

Lack of Press Freedom in Italy

In a political biography of Silvio Berlusconi in the book, The Sack of Rome, by Alexander Stille, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and the son of a former editor of the Italian newspaper Corriere Sierra, Berlusconi once told his close friend Marcello Dell’Utri, “

Don’t you understand? If something isn’t on television, it doesn’t exist.”

This understanding by Silvio Berlusconi between the power of the media and political power has been the cornerstone of his success and the unsolvable obstacle that political opponents of Berlusconi have had to overcome. In a political scandal that would have almost assuredly taken down any other leader in a Western European country, due to Berlusconi’s near total control of the Italian media and the government financing of newspapers in Italy totaling more than $ 239 million a year, the recent no confidence vote demonstrates the benefits of controlling the media.

From the nascent stages of Berlusconi’s wealth due to his friendship with the former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, Berlusconi has continued to avoid punishment for his numerous illegal acts and political scandals. The ‘psycho dwarf’ as Beppe Grillo calls Berlusconi, is giving the reputation Ronald Reagan had as being the Teflon President a whole new standard.

To appreciate and understand the system that Berlusconi manipulated, it is important to remember that Berlusconi began to gain a large share of his wealth and a vehicle to launch his future political career, after a 1976 Constitutional Court decision allowed private television stations to broadcast locally in Italy. Intended to open up TV frequencies to the private sector in Italy, the Constitutional Court limited private station owners to only local markets. This was intended to avoid monopolies and oligopolies from forming. Berlusconi with political cover from the Craxi government flagrantly breached the provisions set down by the Constitution Court and by 1984 Berlusconi was broadcasting on Rete 4, Canale 5, and Italia 5 covering almost the entire Italian peninsula. It should be noted that Bettino Craxi the Prime Minister was brought down by a huge corruption scandal in the late 1980s, and died in Tunisia a wanted fugitive from Italian justice in 2000.

Like all politicians, Berlusconi is a by-product of his environment. Understanding the clientilistic practices during the First Republic of Italy (1948-1992) and the United States supported Christian Democrats, Berlusconi learned that political access meant financial award. Since entering politics in 1993 to protect his financial and media empire, Berlusconi and his supporters have continued to exploit the system to their benefit. While he has been Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi has been able to use his power in the state television channels to further extend his power and influence. The type of power Berlusconi wields is equivalent to the owner of Fox News being President and Speaker of the House, while being allowed to appoint directors at 4/5 of the cable news outlets, owning several national newspapers and only the opposition having a voice on PBS public television.

In addition to the TV stations and his Media Set empire, he also has owns five national newspapers, over twenty magazines, and even the most successful soccer team in Italy, AC Milan. It is no wonder why Italy ranks as a partial free country when it comes to press freedom by the American organization Freedom House and ranked as the 50th best place in the world for press freedom by the non-governmental organization, Reporters without Borders.

Underscoring the synergy between the business and political success of Silvio Berlusconi was the news that Mediaset, the Milan-based media company that helped Berlusconi become one of the world’s richest men with a fortune of $9 billion, erased early losses and gained as much as 5 percent, after the recent no confidence vote. Mediaset stock gained 3.3 percent to close at 4.64 euros on the day of the no confidence vote.

Although Italy has the highest level of public debt in the Euro zone, forecast at 118.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for this year, the reaction on the markets was positive, with the benchmark FTSE Mib index closing up 0.36 per cent.

Italy—Full Democracy to Flawed Democracy Under Berlusconi

The elevated level of political corruption in Italy combined with the near total control of the media by Silvio Berlusconi in Italy has greatly contributed to the recent 2010 Democracy Index by the Economist Magazine to rank Italy as a flawed democracy. Due to the strengthening of anti-immigrant political forces in Italy such as Umberto Rossi’s Lega Nord (Northern League) political party and the disaffection with the political system by the centrists like Gianfranco Fini, Italy is considered to have the same type of democracy as Panama and South Africa.

According to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy 2010:

Since the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, returned to power in 2008, the media situation has deteriorated significantly. In addition to owning and controlling Mediaset, which comprises three national television channels, Mr. Berlusconi also has indirect control over RAI, the state broadcaster. RAI 1, the state channel with the largest audience, has repeatedly chosen to limit coverage of, or completely ignore, negative news about Mr. Berlusconi or his close associates. There has also been political pressure on RAI to cancel or curtail several popular left-leaning programs for their criticism of Mr. Berlusconi and his government is widespread in Western Europe, as reflected in many countries by declining levels of trust and confidence in political institutions.

The Economist Magazine analysis that cites negative news stories of Berlusconi or his ‘close associates’ not being reported on in the Italian media controlled by Berlusconi, refers to individuals such as Marcello Dell’Utri, a Sicilian lawyer convicted twice of having business relations with the Cosa Nostra Sicilian Mafia. The close relationship between Marcello Dell’Utri and Silvio Berlusconi further demonstrates the close relationship between the political power of the mafia in Italian politics and why Silvio Berlusconi has been able to remain in power.

For readers wanting to read more about the power of the mafia in Italian politics, the books Excellent Cadavers by Alexander Stille and A Concise History of Italy 1943-1980 and Italy and Its Discontents 1980-2001 both by Florence University professor Paul Ginsborg would be good places to start.

What makes a good President?

On the same day when the news media was commemorating the annual anniversary marking the attack on Pearl Harbor, The Atlantic Wire published an article describing a recent Gallop Poll that asked Americans to rank all the presidents since John F Kennedy on how they approved or disapproved of how each president handled his job in office. To no surprise, the most popular modern president for the Americans interviewed for the Gallup Poll was John F Kennedy. Coming in a close second, was the former actor turned politician, Ronald Reagan, followed by Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. Although most readers may agree with these results, the poll confirms how badly informed most Americans are about what makes a good president, and how most Americans closely associate American military strength and economic power to the success of the chief executive. The latest Gallup Poll helps to perpetuate the continued progression of the Imperial Presidency over the last 50 years and further sustains the popular misperceptions surrounding Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The Gallup Poll released on eve of the anniversary commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor also helps to further influence the predisposition of Americans to view a president’s success on the economic and military strength of the country as opposed to honoring the Constitution or his moral character while in office. Although most Americans believe that honor, family, and hard work are some of the most revered traits of being an American, the gallop poll reflects the contrary. While John F Kennedy undoubtedly gets high approval marks based on the sympathy of getting killed while in office and his work on civil rights, Kennedy also benefits from his sucessful military standoff with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis and his pledge to win the space race to the moon. Kennedy also benefited from presiding over a growing economy, a huge military expansion, and not being linked too directly to the Vietnam War. Further helping Kennedy achieve the highest ranking in the recent Gallup Poll is the exclusion of Dwight D Eisenhower from the survey.

Astute students of American political history will confirm that the large peacetime military build up of strategic nuclear missiles that Kennedy is credited for, was due to deceitful propaganda by a democratic challenger to the Eisenhower/Nixon administration. Although started by Stuart Symington, a Missouri Democratic who was a fierce opponent of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the myth of a strategic missile gap was later continued by Kennedy, even after he was given information by the CIA that the claims of a missile gap were untrue. Further justifying why Kennedy does not merit the top ranking in the Gallup Poll, is his unconstitutional abuse of power and the use of the CIA in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Although minuscule in comparison to the unethical behavior of future presidents, the constitutional abuses of power have to be acknowledged.

Likewise, the jump in ranking for Gerald Ford and Lyndon B. Johnson are disquieting signs of how the American people determine what merits a great president. The rise of public opinion for Gerald Ford, a man who is the only President who was never elected President or Vice-President, and Lyndon Johnson a president who escalated the Vietnam War to near genocidal levels, show how badly misinformed the American people of what constitutes a great president.

Although not as charming and attractive as John F Kennedy or as skilled as a politician like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, history in due course will prove that the current low public opinion of Jimmy Carter is erroneous and shortsighted. Jimmy Carter, a president who tried to warn the American people about the dangers of relying on foreign oil, and a man who never performed any kind of illegal acts such as Ronald Reagan and the Iran Contra Affair or the unethical actions of Bill Clinton treating the Oval Office like a frat house, will one day be vindicated by historians.

The leadership of Jimmy Cater was based on the long-term interests of the country and not short term political goals. Contrary to Ronald Reagan who did nothing to get America to be less dependant on foreign oil, Jimmy Carter demonstrated his willingness to be a leader and not just a politician when he urged the country to support his initiatives on solar energy and to use less imported oil.

As the recent release of Wikileaks confirm, the inability of the United States to become less dependant on foreign oil has transformed the US military into a glorified global mercenary force protecting despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain.

One can only imagine the condition of the world in 2010, if the United States in 1980 put more of its natural resources, technology, and leading academic minds to the long-term strategic fields of alternative energy and high-speed trains, instead of the short-term goals of more oil and bigger defense budgets to protect an ever-dwindling supply of that natural resource.

A more accurate reflection of a presidents ability to protect the US Constitution and the ability to put the long term interests of the country before short term political gains, would be reflected in the following ranking. Because Ford was never elected, he is excluded from the ranking.

Eisenhower
Carter
Kennedy
Bush (Sr)
Clinton
Reagan
Johnson
Nixon
Bush (Jr)

How the CIA has become a danger to the national security of the United States

In the introduction chapter of Legacy of Ashes- The History of the CIA, the author Tim Wiener writes:

Intelligence is secret action aimed at understanding or changing what goes on abroad. President Dwight D Eisenhower called it a “distasteful but vital necessity”. A nation that wants to project its power beyond its borders needs to see over the horizon, to know what is coming, to prevent attacks against its people. It must anticipate surprise. Without a strong, smart, sharp intelligence service, presidents and generals alike can become blind and crippled. But throughout its history as a superpower, the United States has not had a service.

History, Edward Gibbon wrote in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is “little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” The annals of the Central Intelligence Agency are filled with folly and misfortune, along with acts of bravery and cunning. They are replete with fleeting successes and long lasting failures abroad. They are marked by political battles and power struggles at home. The agency’s triumphs have saved some blood and treasure. Its mistakes have squandered both. They have proved fatal for legions of American soldiers and foreign agents; some three thousand Americans who died in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001; and three thousand more who have did since then in Iraq and Afghanistan. The one crime of lasting consequence has been the CIA’s inability to carry out its central mission; informing the president of what is happening in the world.

The book by Mr. Wiener which is based on three hundred interviews since 1987 with CIA officers and veterans, including ten directors of central intelligence, and more than three thousand oral histories of American intelligence officers, soldiers, and diplomats; is perhaps one of the foremost primary source documents of America’s most highly secretive and misunderstood government agencies.

The book however is not for everyone. Some of the biggest complaints from conservative readers are the author’s perceived liberal bias. Although most social conservatives have a hard time admitting that they might have been duped and manipulated by politicians such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, the information presented in the book from a historical perspective makes these complaints weak and fruitless. The chapter “Ineffective and Scared” Wiener will force ideological supporters of the republican party and every American to begin to see how the agency began to become a political tool for policy makers wanting larger defense budgets and to protect their own government jobs with the agency, rather than an impartial agency providing intelligence to the President.

In the chapter, “Ineffective and Scared” Wiener recounts how President Gerald Ford and his closet supporters avoided a potentially damaging legal battle with Congress, which might have exposed the CIA’s sensitive covert and illegal operations such as foreign assassinations. Although Ford Administration officials like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld won a short-term political battle with members of Congress wanting to investigate the CIA’s failures of espionage and analysis, the long-term damage to the American republic were evident with the run up to the Iraq war in 2003.

In the backdrop of the political fallout from the Vietnam War and the CIA’s involvement in neighboring Laos and Thailand, Wiener writes in Legacy of ashes:

The CIA was sacked like a conquered city. Congressional committees were combing through its files, the Senate focusing on covert action, the house homing in on failures of espionage and analysis. …The White House feared political destruction. In the Oval Office on October 13, 1975, the president and his men met to weigh the damage.

Any document which officially shows American involvement in an assassination is a foreign policy disaster” Colby told the president. “They also want to go into sensitive covert operations” – like Laos. Would the White House go to the courts to stop Congress? “We are better off with a political confrontation than a legal one”, said Donald Rumsfeld. To prepare for that fight, the president shook up his cabinet at the end of October 1975.

Although the White House and the unethical actions of Ford advisors like Donald Rumsfeld who became the Sec of Defense and Dick Cheney, who became Ford’s Chief of Staff in the cabinet shake up, undermined the Constitutional balance of power,the inability of the Congress to use its constitutional authority to investigate the CIA paved the way for the today’s spineless and corrupt congress.

In addition to installing Cheney as Chief of Staff and Rumsfeld as Sec of Defense, the Ford cabinet shake up also saw the firing of Bill Cosby of the CIA and the appointment of George H.W. Bush as the new director of the CIA. Bush who was neither a general, an admiral nor a spy, knew almost nothing about intelligence. However, as a political consolation for not being offered to be Ford’s vice president in August 1974, the former two time Congressman and former head of the National Republican Committee during the Watergate years, was offered the position of the CIA.

At the time of the appointment however, Bush was not happy with the appointment and saw the appointment as a political graveyard.

Soon after getting the job at the CIA, Bush loved the secrecy, the camaraderie, the gadgetry, and the international intrigue the CIA offered. As Wiener shrewdly puns in his book, “

The CIA was Skull and Bones with a billion dollar budget.”

More to the point, Wiener also astutely writes:

“In less than eleven months at the helm, he bucked up morale at headquarters, defended the CIA against all critics, and deftly used the agency to build up a political base for his soaring ambitions.”

Throughout the books 50 chapters and 516 pages, Mr. Wiener, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and three other best selling books on secret national security programs, extensively documents how political leaders in America have used the CIA as a political tool rather than an agency for national security.

From private security corporations like Blackwater and DynCorp over billing the American tax payer to the perpetual war that the institutions of the ‘national security state apparatus’ require to maintain their relevance and justification, the silence of a national debate on maintaining an $80 billion intelligence apparatus while cuts in social security are being discussed is alarming.

Most Americans are not willing to recognize the recent failures of the CIA in predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the attacks on September 11, or the false information presented by George Tenet and the CIA that was used to justify the attack on Iraq in 2003. The book by Mr. Wiener makes a very strong case for the American people to demand that the CIA and other ‘national security state institutions’ be eliminated.

In a time of 12 percent unemployment in America, it is morally and ethically wrong that there is no serious discussion in the national dialogue about downsizing or capping the budget on institutions associated with the ‘national security state apparatus’, like the CIA.

A Message from MasterCard

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange broadcasts from jail with some insight to what will happen if he's not freed.

The Vietnam War created the Khmer Rouge, Frightening to think what the Af-Pak War will produce

Although the corporate owned mainstream media in America habitually refers to the conflict in Afghanistan as the War in Afghanistan, a more accurate description would be to refer to as the Afghanistan-Pakistan war or the Af-Pak War, as most foreign policy experts refer to the nine-year-old conflict. Similar to the Vietnam War, which the Af-Pak War recently surpassed in length, the conflict in Afghanistan has spilled over into a neighboring country that will undoubtedly result in similar disastrous consequences. While the war in Vietnam started by the United States helped create the Khmer Rouge in neighboring Cambodia which was responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th Century , only history will reveal what kind of blowback will result in the American involvement in Pakistan’s Swat region.

A recent article by Fatima Bhutto, an Afghan-born Pakistani poet and writer, helps put the Af-Pak war in more context and the likely future blowback it will create.

According to the recent cache of State Department cables released by Wikileaks, his position and those of his colleagues in government haven’t wavered. In 2008, for example, Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani enthusiastically told American Ambassador Anne Paterson that he “didn’t care” if drone strikes were launched against his country as long as the “right people” were targeted. (They weren’t.) “We’ll protest in the National Assembly,” Gilani added cynically, “and then ignore it.”

In fact, protests by the National Assembly have been few and far between and yet, by the end of November, Pakistani territory had been targeted by American unmanned Predator and Reaper missile strikes more than 100 times this year alone. CIA drone strikes have, in fact, been a feature of the American war in Pakistan since 2004. In 2008, after Barack Obama won the presidency in the U.S. and Zardari ascended to Pakistan's highest office, the strikes escalated and soon began occurring almost weekly, later nearly daily, and so became a permanent feature of life for those living in the tribal borderlands of northern Pakistan.

Barack Obama ordered his first drone strike against Pakistan just 72 hours after being sworn in as president. It seems a suitably macabre fact that, according to a U.N. report on “targeted killings” (that is, assassinations) published in 2010, George W. Bush employed drone strikes 45 times in his eight years as President. In Obama’s first year in office, the drones were sent in 53 times. In the six years that drone strikes have been used in the fight against Pakistan, researchers at the New America Foundation estimate that between 1,283 and 1,971 people have been killed.

While the dead are regularly identified as “militants” or “suspected militants” in newspaper stories and on the TV news, they almost never have names, nor are their identities confirmed or faces shown. Their histories are always vague. The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) took a careful look at nine drone strikes from the last two years and concluded that they had resulted in the deaths of 30 civilians, including 14 women and children. (Perhaps, of course, superior American military intelligence classified them as “militants in training.”) Based on this study, an average rate of error can be calculated: 3.33 civilians mistakenly killed in each drone attack. The dead, Pakistanis will assure you, are largely unnamed, faceless, unindicted, and un-convicted civilians.

Pakistanis are considered irrelevant, however, and collateral damage, as it turns out, doesn’t seem to worry anyone in the governing elite.

The Pakistani media has welcomed the release of the State Department documents because much that reporters and pundits have long claimed (and which Washington has long denied) has now been confirmed: that, for instance, the mercenary private contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) has been operating in Pakistan at the behest of the Americans, that the country’s military high command has given the green light for drone strikes on its own people, and that the infamously corrupt government of President Zardari has turned the country over to the Americans in exchange for money.

Please visit TomDispatch for the complete article by Fatima Bhutto.

It is perhaps a good thing that most Americans remain ignorant and continue watching sports and television shows like Dancing with the Stars. If Americans were awoken from their voyeuristic media induced coma, they would be frightened senseless learning how close Islamic militants are to getting a nuclear weapon in Pakistan.

Fatima Bhutto, an Afghan-born Pakistani poet and writer, is most recently the author of Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir (Nation Books, 2010). Her work has appeared in the New Statesman, the Daily Beast, and the Guardian, among other places. Her father, Murtaza Bhutto, son of Pakistan's former President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and an elected member of parliament, was killed by the police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto. Fatima lives and writes in Karachi, Pakistan.

Thomas Jefferson: "Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed."

Transcript of Ron Paul's Speech to Congress

WikiLeaks’ release of classified information has generated a lot of attention in the past few weeks. The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news. Despite what is claimed, the information that has been so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government. Losing our grip on our empire is not welcomed by the neoconservatives in charge.

There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principal supporter and financier of al Qaeda, and that this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government. This emphasizes even more the fact that no al Qaeda existed in Iraq before 9/11, and yet we went to war against Iraq based on the lie that it did. It has been charged by experts that Julian Assange, the internet publisher of this information, has committed a heinous crime, deserving prosecution for treason and execution, or even assassination.

But should we not at least ask how the U.S. government should prosecute an Australian citizen for treason for publishing U.S. secret information that he did not steal? And if WikiLeaks is to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents, why shouldn’t the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others also published these documents be prosecuted? Actually, some in Congress are threatening this as well.

The New York Times, as a results of a Supreme Court ruling, was not found guilty in 1971 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg never served a day in prison for his role in obtaining these secret documents. The Pentagon Papers were also inserted into the Congressional record by Senator Mike Gravel, with no charges of any kind being made of breaking any national security laws. Yet the release of this classified information was considered illegal by many, and those who lied us into the Vietnam war, and argued for its prolongation were outraged. But the truth gained from the Pentagon Papers revealed that lies were told about the Gulf of Tonkin attack. which perpetuated a sad and tragic episode in our history.

Just as with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War was based on lies. We were never threatened by weapons of mass destruction or al Qaeda in Iraq, though the attack on Iraq was based on this false information. Any information which challenges the official propaganda for the war in the Middle East is unwelcome by the administration and the supporters of these unnecessary wars. Few are interested in understanding the relationship of our foreign policy and our presence in the Middle East to the threat of terrorism. Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.

Questions to consider:

1. Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
2. Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
3. Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
4. Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
5. Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
6. If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
7. Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
8. Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
9. Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.

How Fox News Undermined Health Care Reform

While most astute Americans understand that Fox News has long been nothing but the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and the owners of capital in America, a recent article by the independent watchdog group, Media Matters, emphatically proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

According to a recent article from The Cutline, a Yahoo News Blog,

Fox News has been accused before of promoting Republican talking points. Now, the Daily Beast reveals internal memos from Fox News executives that "echoed a key GOP talking point" during year's health care debate.

In October 2009, as the Democrats introduced a public insurance option, Fox News Washington DC managing editor, Bill Sammon, issued a memo to staff about how to describe the plan.

The Daily Beast blog had this take:

As the health-care debate was heating up in the summer of 2009, Republican pollster Frank Luntz offered Sean Hannity some advice.

Luntz, who counseled the GOP on how to sell the 1994 Contract With America, told the Fox News host to stop using President Obama’s preferred term for a key provision.
“If you call it a public option, the American people are split,” he explained. “If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it.”

“A great point,” Hannity declared. “And from now on, I'm going to call it the government option, because that's what it is.”

For all the Americans making less than 60k year , the leaked memos by Media Matters show how these working class Americans were manipulated and deceived, and voted against their best interests. It is sad that many Fox viewers are foolish enough to think that a political party who has a large base of support on Wall Street, would care for the interests of people living along Main Street.

Like sheep being herded for slaughter.