Photo by: Mark Galasso © 2008
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Antifluff Supergirls
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Thursday, November 27, 2008
Antifluff Supergirls
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Hurricane Gustav Aftermath, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Taken around Highland Rd. Area of South Baton Rouge, Louisiana on September 1-3 2008.
Photos by: Mark Galasso
Probably one of the largest Live Oak tree roots I saw. Must have been 20ft here...
This neighborhood is named University Acres (South Baton Rouge) and it's an old subdivision with beautiful trees everywhere and it was just trees down everywhere and trees on houses and across the roads.
Friday, August 15, 2008
"BUSH GUILTY OF 1ST DEG MURDER" - BUGLIOSI TELLS CONGRESS
I don't ever recall a time in American history where Congress was told publicly, that it's president George W. Bush, was a War Criminal. How refreshing.
How is it possible that this truth can be overlooked by America at Large?
Pay attention to the Congressman on the right... when he tries to stop Bugliosi because there were so many people in the room cheering against Bush. It was like watching one of the third Reich's own lose composure to hear such ardent truths about the Nazi Bush really is.
How can the media show Bush on TV every day, walking around like he's some kind of moral diplomat that represents America? What a crazy and pitiful time for America.
How can we listen to an Obama when no one will hold accountable the Treason done to America by the Bush administration. Obama turned around and supported Bush's Illegal Wire Tapping by supporting retroactive immunity for the Telecom Co.'s... Amazingly blatant and obvious who Obama represents... even if it's clearly against the law.
The only sign of any democracy has been in the American courts thankfully. At least for now, there are still justices like Kennedy who have struck down Bush's anti-human policies... torture, Military Tribunals and stripping of civil rights, first the bad guys then yours.
They have some crazy rule in congress that says you can't say anything demeaning about the President, even is he's a crook and a murderer? What kind of democracy is that? Clinton got impeached for having Sex? Now you can't say anything bad about a asshole like Bush?
Bush should have been reigned in long ago, and certainly for the way his administration handled Katrina. That was much more than inept. That was deliberate. Just like it was deliberate to ignore all the people sick and who have died from the 911 ruble that was full of all kinds of very hazardous substances. And Bush had the EPA lie about that too. All of this has been reported... totally ignoring the soldiers' hospitals left in shambles... it's all about lack of humanity, no respect a person.
Will we ever see the day when America holds these people accountable? The people have not gotten fed up enough yet. And the media apparently thinks it can play people indefinitely, it's worked so far.
Just the other night on Charlie Rose the writer Phillip Gourevich said he thought that taking America through War Crimes trials for Bush and his people was not what the country needed. He couldn't be more wrong. You can't just shove crimes of humanity like this under a rug and think America will somehow magically regain moral and ethical composure simply because another administration takes over. If Obama was any kind of true leader or reformer he would be advocating criminal prosecution for Bush and his administration.
Instead we have Bush waving a little American flag & being interviewed by Bob Costas at the Bejing Olympics. Totally absurd. Here is the man who has overseen the murder of hundred's of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, on TV waving his flag and at the same time condeming (rightly so) the Russians for Human rights violations in Georgia.
So, here we are, we have videos of Bugliosi and Kucinich saying in front of congress that Bush is a war criminal. We have writers and intellectuals of all kinds lining up on PBS to affirm the crimes of the Bush administration... It is known, it has been said to the people... and alas, nothing has be done.
And think back about the arrogance of the Bush administration. Tragically, it appears that they can do whatever they want and not have any consequences. Libby got pardoned, Gonzales, Rove and Miers have been allowed to ignore congressional Subpoenas... they deleted millions of emails that are protected by law... they violated laws by using republican email accounts...tapped your phones/email and then gave the Telecom Co.'s immunity from breaking the law... take your computers at the air port...
Unbelievable. It just goes on & on.... It would take years to prosecute all the crimes of this administration and guess who foots the bill?... the good sense folks of America.
Was it necessary to murder thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians, over four thousand Americans and tens of thousands of injured because of a small minority of terrorists in the world? who at the time were not even in Iraq when we invaded.
Bush has made it so much worse for all of us. Now, those that have contempt for America have good reason to feel that way. Now, other enemies that capture our soldiers can feel justified to torture our soldiers and ignore the Geneva Convention laws that WE created.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
LOUISIANA ****WE ONLY HAVE UNTIL THE 23rd of JUNE to STOP WATER FLUORIDATION BILL 312 Sponsored by Louisiana Senator Willie Mount
This Blog Post is about an open letter to Louisiana Senator Willie Mount, author of Louisiana Senate Bill 312 which is a law mandating adding FLUORIDE in the drinking water in Louisiana.
LOUISIANA ****WE ONLY HAVE UNTIL THE 23rd of JUNE to STOP WATER FLUORIDATION BILL 312
I was told they are going to address it THIS WEEK!
CALL OR EMAIL YOUR SENATORS AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES members
TELL THEM THAT YOU OPPOSE LOUISIANA WATER FLUORIDATION BILL 312
This should be a crime, that somebody would try to get away with doing this,
without any debate by Louisiana citizens up till a few days before they ram it through.
*********************************************
Contact for Senator Willie Mount sponsor of Fluoridation
in drinking water mandate Bill 312 : senate.legis.state.la.us/Mount/
Link to email contact for Louisiana Senators, senate.legis.state.la.us/Senators/Default.asp
the people who passed the first bill before it was amended by the House of Representatives. The senate REJECTED the House of Rep.’s changes to the law and now I am told they will both convene to decide if they are going to poison our drinking water with Fluoride, to help the poor folks with their cavities, courtesy of who? What corporation maker/disposer of hydrofluosilicic acid (the toxic sludge they use) needs to help us in this way please? And to spend money to do this, building machines to poison the water you drink!!
The Louisiana House of Representatives contact: house.louisiana.gov/H_Reps/H_Reps_FullInfo.asp
At least the House amended the Water Fluoridation bill 312 as I understand it to allow communities a way to opt-out... not totally sure what’s going on, but LOUISIANA WE ONLY HAVE UNTIL THE 23rd of JUNE to STOP WATER FLUORIDATION BILL 312
-It’s even worse that they are trying to ram this through as fast as possible it seems, people have no idea, walking around stating, “well isn’t fluoride good for your teeth?”. And that’s as far as it goes sadly with most people.
Links: Baton Rouge, Channel 2 & The Advocate about Fluoridation Law 312
www.2theadvocate.com/news/politics/19343394.html?showAll=...
_________________________________________________________
Body of discussion & Letter to Willie Mount:
This Blog Post is about an open letter to Louisiana Senator Willie Mount, author of Louisiana Senate Bill 312 which is a law mandating adding FLUORIDE in the drinking water in Louisiana.
In the law there are op-outs that a city or parish can take, but they are asking each of us in our parishes to sign a petition to opt-out. You have to actually do some work to get the Government not to poison your own water. And there is only ONE reason this is happening. MONEY. It’s cheaper to put Fluoride in people’s drinking water, then to dispose of it properly and LEGALLY. FACT. Anyone who doesn’t believe, do some reading about the by-products of chemical processes like Fertilizer, Aluminium, enrichment of Uranium and Plutonium. Fluoride waste is a big part of all these processes all the way back to the Manhattan Project and the production of the first Nukes. And so what will they do with all this Fluoride waste product?
They invoke laws over communities asking them to take part in the disposal of Fluoride waste. And guess who’s behind this bill? The American Dental Association, of all people huh? The guys that care about the Fluoride SO MUCH, that they’d have an organization to invoke the support of dumping hydrofluosilicic acid (the toxic sludge they use) in your drinking water. If you can’t make sense out of this it’s because it’s SENSELESS.
So, here is Bobby Jindal freshly in office. And out appears suddenly a bill to MANDATE WATER FLUORIDATION. From a senator who represents, Lake Charles. What will Jindal do? Let’s make him answer. If he’s really for reform, and he’s a rhodes scholar, he should know more than you or I that Water Fluoridation is a medieval practice that has no basis in the year 2008.
These are the kinds of things, these insidious ideas introduced as law over people, that are so dangerous.
They want budget requests from the water suppliers, and the Baton Rouge Water Co. is privately owned. They won’t specify clearly where the money is to come from to pay for the equipment and cost involved in equipping the water co’s to be able to POISON your water, without you even knowing, how or what goes in it. And if there were mistakes, could people die? (YES)
This law gives, let’s say the Military Industrial Complex (they make a lot of Fluoride waste, Nukes etc), an outlet via the Federal Government to legally poison the very water that you need to survive, and pass it off by saying it’s medicine for your cavities.
It’s frankly scary to me, that people who live in Baton Rouge, or anywhere would be so aloof about such an important and fundamental part of their lives WATER. I didn’t even know about this until a day ago. And yet here is this law coming out of Lake Charles by senator named Mount wanting to mandate that I suddenly start taking Fluoride with my public water.
You might say I took this personally!
If you think it’s your sovereign right to put something I know is poison, in what I drink, same water that children drink in the schools, then you are not American. You are a traitor to all people.
It all starts in the communities. If there is any community that exists in Baton Rouge, I hope it will stand up now and Reprimand this WATER FLUORIDATION MANDATE
LOUISIANA SENATE BILL 312
_____________________________
Dear Senator Mount,
I am writing to you to express my outrage regarding your creation of a bill to Fluoridate our water supply in Louisiana. Especially, given that we have some of the best natural water aquifers in the Nation.
Anyone who would actually sit down to create a law mandating such a thing has no interest in the health and well being of people.
You don't put one of the most toxic chemicals on earth into people's drinking water to prevent tooth decay.
It should be considered a crime against humanity to “medicate” people via their drinking water with Fluoride.
Why not put antibiotics in our water too?
Other than naturally occurring Fluoride (which is too much naturally in some water and must be removed) there is no justification for putting rat poison in our drinking water.
The water fluoridation fraud is one of the most insidious assaults on the public health ever devised. The first advocacy for water Fluoridation came from a scientist who
worked for the Mellon institute, owned by Alcoa Corp. (1939) which mass produced Fluoride as waste. And presently there are mountains of evidence to support
the toxic effects of water Fluoridation on humans. Note: (the first Fluoride testing on humans was done on the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps)
Below is a link and excerpt to one of the many articles about the detrimental effect of Fluoride on the Human Thyroid gland:
thyroid.about.com/od/drsrichkarileeshames/a/fluoridechang...
"We learned that the source of fluoride for municipalities is not sodium fluoride, the compound used by researchers to determine benefit versus risk. Instead, surprisingly, we found that what is added to almost all city water when it is fluoridated is the industrial waste product hydrofluosilicic acid. This scrubber waste item, generally from phosphate fertilizer production, is frequently contaminated with varying amounts of cadmium, aluminum, arsenic, lead, or mercury. We found serious studies showing that minute amounts of these heavy metals (much less than would generally be considered toxic) are harmful in various ways when combined with fluoride. Moreover, we were amazed to find out that not a single safety test has ever been performed on hydrofluocilicic acid!"
Senator Mount, please familiarize yourself with the sordid history of water Fluoridation, if you have not already.
This is the year 2008, we are not living in Medieval times. People learned the cold hard truth during Katrina; the Government doesn't care about people.
Much less whether they have cavities.
A vote for this bill means a vote to poison the people and children of Louisiana.
You should be reprimanded for creating a bill advocating Mass Fluoridation of people's drinking water.
And even worse, it will be the poor and helpless who will have no alternative but to drink water poisoned with hydrofluosilicic acid (the toxic sludge they use) under the guise that it's good for their Teeth.
Mark Galasso
Resident of EBRP
Friday, April 04, 2008
Three Record Companies Team Up With MySpace for Music Web Site
April 4, 2008
By JEFF LEEDS and BRAD STONE
SAN FRANCISCO — In the latest effort by the ailing music industry to bolster its declining prospects, three of the industry’s four major companies have struck a deal with the social networking site MySpace to start a music Web site.
MySpace said on Thursday that as part of the deal it would turn its popular MySpace Music site into a joint venture, bringing in Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group as minority owners. The music companies are expected to make their entire digital music catalogs available for listening and downloading on the new site, which will be introduced later this year.
The deal highlights the music companies’ scramble to keep pace as consumers migrate toward the fast-changing market for digital downloads, upending the industry’s traditional approach to marketing and distribution. It is also an attempt to encourage competition to Apple’s iTunes Store, which some music executives have criticized for exercising too much control in pricing and on other business terms.
In a sign of how quickly the landscape is shifting, Apple said Thursday that it had surged to become the nation’s largest music retailer, surpassing Wal-Mart for the first time, based on data from research firm NPD Group for the first two months of this year.
The latest deal also comes as MySpace is angling to differentiate itself from rivals like Facebook and retain its role as a central site for music fans. Many thousands of musical artists, from top stars to garage bands, have pages on MySpace where fans can interact with them and listen to songs. But Web surfers have been flocking to music-oriented social networks like Buzznet and Imeem, where listeners can also hear music free.
Chris DeWolfe, chief executive of MySpace, a division of the News Corporation, described the new service as a one-stop source for all music, in all its various digital incarnations.
Visitors to the site will be able to listen to free streaming music, paid for with advertising, and share customized playlists with their friends. They will also be able to download tracks to play on mobile devices, putting the new site in competition with similar services like those from Apple, Amazon.com and eMusic.
A subscription-based music plan, where users pay a monthly amount for unlimited access to downloadable tracks, is also being considered, Mr. DeWolfe said. Additional products like tickets, T-shirts, ring tones and other music merchandise will also be available.
“This is really a mega-music experience that is transformative in a lot of ways,” he said. “It’s the full 360-degree revenue stream.”
Some artists already offer ways to buy T-shirts and other items from their MySpace pages, but music executives involved in the planning of the new venture suggest that its marketing efforts will be much more comprehensive. MySpace Music will be run by an executive team that will report to a board composed of representatives from MySpace and the music labels.
EMI Group, the fourth major music corporation, was not part of the deal, but people involved in the negotiations said it would probably join soon.
The major record companies, who have suffered a long slump as CD sales have declined, are eager to prop up digital sales. Sales of albums in the United States, including digital sales, have declined roughly 11 percent so far this year, and sales of individual digital tracks, though up about 29 percent, have not increased enough to make up for that drop. Overall music sales dropped to $11.5 billion in 2006, from a peak in 1999 of nearly $14.6 billion.
The decline has forced the industry into a new age of experimentation. All four major record labels dropped copy restrictions for Amazon’s new music service, partly in an effort to counterbalance Apple’s strong position.
In another approach, the industry is seeking revenue that does not come directly from its customers, like the ad-supported element of the MySpace service. Music executives have also recently embraced such concepts as tacking extra fees onto the cost of portable music players or Internet access to compensate the industry for rampant piracy.
Michael Nash, Warner Music’s executive vice president for digital strategy, said it would be simplistic to view the MySpace venture as a gambit to challenge iTunes, which is closely tied into the iPod player. Unlike iTunes, he said, MySpace Music “is kind of a hardware-agnostic play” that wants to convert the existing social-networking audience into paying customers.
“It’s about being in business with that construct,” Mr. Nash said, referring to MySpace’s music site, which has emerged as the pre-eminent site for fans seeking to sample music from current artists.
Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital, said MySpace was offering a big opportunity to the music companies.
“They have a huge community that wants to talk, share and learn about music,” Mr. Greenfield said. “Nobody else has that. There is music discovery happening on MySpace that is far deeper and broader than what’s going on iTunes.”
But first MySpace will have to prove that it can actually sell music. Though the company earns $70 million a month in advertising for the News Corporation, according to estimates by Pali Capital, it has never successfully sold products on a wide scale. A download service for independent music, begun in 2006 with Snocap, a music start-up, was considered a disappointment.
MySpace has not always had a friendly relationship with the music companies. Universal Music sued MySpace on the grounds of copyright infringement in 2006, saying the site’s users were illegally sharing music and videos. Universal has decided to drop the lawsuit in exchange for an unspecified cash settlement, according to people briefed on the negotiations.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
By JEFF LEEDS and BRAD STONE
SAN FRANCISCO — In the latest effort by the ailing music industry to bolster its declining prospects, three of the industry’s four major companies have struck a deal with the social networking site MySpace to start a music Web site.
MySpace said on Thursday that as part of the deal it would turn its popular MySpace Music site into a joint venture, bringing in Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group as minority owners. The music companies are expected to make their entire digital music catalogs available for listening and downloading on the new site, which will be introduced later this year.
The deal highlights the music companies’ scramble to keep pace as consumers migrate toward the fast-changing market for digital downloads, upending the industry’s traditional approach to marketing and distribution. It is also an attempt to encourage competition to Apple’s iTunes Store, which some music executives have criticized for exercising too much control in pricing and on other business terms.
In a sign of how quickly the landscape is shifting, Apple said Thursday that it had surged to become the nation’s largest music retailer, surpassing Wal-Mart for the first time, based on data from research firm NPD Group for the first two months of this year.
The latest deal also comes as MySpace is angling to differentiate itself from rivals like Facebook and retain its role as a central site for music fans. Many thousands of musical artists, from top stars to garage bands, have pages on MySpace where fans can interact with them and listen to songs. But Web surfers have been flocking to music-oriented social networks like Buzznet and Imeem, where listeners can also hear music free.
Chris DeWolfe, chief executive of MySpace, a division of the News Corporation, described the new service as a one-stop source for all music, in all its various digital incarnations.
Visitors to the site will be able to listen to free streaming music, paid for with advertising, and share customized playlists with their friends. They will also be able to download tracks to play on mobile devices, putting the new site in competition with similar services like those from Apple, Amazon.com and eMusic.
A subscription-based music plan, where users pay a monthly amount for unlimited access to downloadable tracks, is also being considered, Mr. DeWolfe said. Additional products like tickets, T-shirts, ring tones and other music merchandise will also be available.
“This is really a mega-music experience that is transformative in a lot of ways,” he said. “It’s the full 360-degree revenue stream.”
Some artists already offer ways to buy T-shirts and other items from their MySpace pages, but music executives involved in the planning of the new venture suggest that its marketing efforts will be much more comprehensive. MySpace Music will be run by an executive team that will report to a board composed of representatives from MySpace and the music labels.
EMI Group, the fourth major music corporation, was not part of the deal, but people involved in the negotiations said it would probably join soon.
The major record companies, who have suffered a long slump as CD sales have declined, are eager to prop up digital sales. Sales of albums in the United States, including digital sales, have declined roughly 11 percent so far this year, and sales of individual digital tracks, though up about 29 percent, have not increased enough to make up for that drop. Overall music sales dropped to $11.5 billion in 2006, from a peak in 1999 of nearly $14.6 billion.
The decline has forced the industry into a new age of experimentation. All four major record labels dropped copy restrictions for Amazon’s new music service, partly in an effort to counterbalance Apple’s strong position.
In another approach, the industry is seeking revenue that does not come directly from its customers, like the ad-supported element of the MySpace service. Music executives have also recently embraced such concepts as tacking extra fees onto the cost of portable music players or Internet access to compensate the industry for rampant piracy.
Michael Nash, Warner Music’s executive vice president for digital strategy, said it would be simplistic to view the MySpace venture as a gambit to challenge iTunes, which is closely tied into the iPod player. Unlike iTunes, he said, MySpace Music “is kind of a hardware-agnostic play” that wants to convert the existing social-networking audience into paying customers.
“It’s about being in business with that construct,” Mr. Nash said, referring to MySpace’s music site, which has emerged as the pre-eminent site for fans seeking to sample music from current artists.
Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital, said MySpace was offering a big opportunity to the music companies.
“They have a huge community that wants to talk, share and learn about music,” Mr. Greenfield said. “Nobody else has that. There is music discovery happening on MySpace that is far deeper and broader than what’s going on iTunes.”
But first MySpace will have to prove that it can actually sell music. Though the company earns $70 million a month in advertising for the News Corporation, according to estimates by Pali Capital, it has never successfully sold products on a wide scale. A download service for independent music, begun in 2006 with Snocap, a music start-up, was considered a disappointment.
MySpace has not always had a friendly relationship with the music companies. Universal Music sued MySpace on the grounds of copyright infringement in 2006, saying the site’s users were illegally sharing music and videos. Universal has decided to drop the lawsuit in exchange for an unspecified cash settlement, according to people briefed on the negotiations.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Intelligence Cover-Up
THE COLD HARD TRUTH:
"The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.
What Mr. Bush wants is to be able to listen to your international telephone calls and read your international e-mail whenever he wants, without a court being able to prevent it or judge the legality of his actions.
Finally, Mr. Bush said it was vital to national security to give amnesty to any company that turned over data on Americans without a court order. The purpose of this amnesty is not to protect national secrets — that could be done during a trial — but to make sure that the full damage to Americans’ civil liberties is never revealed. "
NY TIMES
March 16, 2008
EDITORIAL
The Intelligence Cover-Up
For more than two years now, Congress, the news media, current and former national security officials, think tanks and academic institutions have been engaged in a profound debate over how to modernize the law governing electronic spying to keep pace with technology. We keep hoping President Bush will join in.
Instead, the president offers propaganda intended to scare Americans, expand his powers, and erode civil liberties — and to ensure that no one is held to account for the illegal wiretapping he ordered after 9/11.
Consider last Thursday’s performance, as the House debated a sound bill that closes some technology gaps in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and gives government agencies new flexibility to eavesdrop, but preserves constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. Mr. Bush distorted the contents of the bill and threatened to veto it.
He accused House leaders of “putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists.” Actually, the bill merely ensures that special judges continue to supervise surveillance of American citizens. The “cumbersome process” is really a court that acts swiftly and has refused only a half-dozen of more than 21,000 wiretap requests in its nearly 30 years of existence.
What Mr. Bush wants is to be able to listen to your international telephone calls and read your international e-mail whenever he wants, without a court being able to prevent it or judge the legality of his actions.
Mr. Bush said the House bill would “cause us to lose vital intelligence on terrorist threats.” But he has never offered credible evidence of any operation that was hobbled because officials had to request a warrant. The law already allows the government to eavesdrop first and then seek a warrant. As for that technology gap, Congress fixed it last year. The authority has expired, but wiretapping operations started under it can continue.
Finally, Mr. Bush said it was vital to national security to give amnesty to any company that turned over data on Americans without a court order. The purpose of this amnesty is not to protect national secrets — that could be done during a trial — but to make sure that the full damage to Americans’ civil liberties is never revealed. Mr. Bush also objects to a provision that would create a committee to examine his warrantless spying program.
Mr. Bush wanted the House to approve the Senate’s version of the bill, which includes Mr. Bush’s amnesty and does not do nearly as good a job of preserving Americans’ rights. We were glad the House ignored his bluster. If the Senate cannot summon the courage and good sense to follow suit, there is no rush to pass a law.
The president will continue to claim the country is in grave danger over this issue, but it is not. The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.
"The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.
What Mr. Bush wants is to be able to listen to your international telephone calls and read your international e-mail whenever he wants, without a court being able to prevent it or judge the legality of his actions.
Finally, Mr. Bush said it was vital to national security to give amnesty to any company that turned over data on Americans without a court order. The purpose of this amnesty is not to protect national secrets — that could be done during a trial — but to make sure that the full damage to Americans’ civil liberties is never revealed. "
NY TIMES
March 16, 2008
EDITORIAL
The Intelligence Cover-Up
For more than two years now, Congress, the news media, current and former national security officials, think tanks and academic institutions have been engaged in a profound debate over how to modernize the law governing electronic spying to keep pace with technology. We keep hoping President Bush will join in.
Instead, the president offers propaganda intended to scare Americans, expand his powers, and erode civil liberties — and to ensure that no one is held to account for the illegal wiretapping he ordered after 9/11.
Consider last Thursday’s performance, as the House debated a sound bill that closes some technology gaps in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and gives government agencies new flexibility to eavesdrop, but preserves constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. Mr. Bush distorted the contents of the bill and threatened to veto it.
He accused House leaders of “putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists.” Actually, the bill merely ensures that special judges continue to supervise surveillance of American citizens. The “cumbersome process” is really a court that acts swiftly and has refused only a half-dozen of more than 21,000 wiretap requests in its nearly 30 years of existence.
What Mr. Bush wants is to be able to listen to your international telephone calls and read your international e-mail whenever he wants, without a court being able to prevent it or judge the legality of his actions.
Mr. Bush said the House bill would “cause us to lose vital intelligence on terrorist threats.” But he has never offered credible evidence of any operation that was hobbled because officials had to request a warrant. The law already allows the government to eavesdrop first and then seek a warrant. As for that technology gap, Congress fixed it last year. The authority has expired, but wiretapping operations started under it can continue.
Finally, Mr. Bush said it was vital to national security to give amnesty to any company that turned over data on Americans without a court order. The purpose of this amnesty is not to protect national secrets — that could be done during a trial — but to make sure that the full damage to Americans’ civil liberties is never revealed. Mr. Bush also objects to a provision that would create a committee to examine his warrantless spying program.
Mr. Bush wanted the House to approve the Senate’s version of the bill, which includes Mr. Bush’s amnesty and does not do nearly as good a job of preserving Americans’ rights. We were glad the House ignored his bluster. If the Senate cannot summon the courage and good sense to follow suit, there is no rush to pass a law.
The president will continue to claim the country is in grave danger over this issue, but it is not. The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Inslee floor speech on FISA
Thank you Sir, I applaud, encore, encore
All I can say is it's long since been time for people to throw the Bush administration to the criminal history archives.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
New Telecom Whistleblower Describes Possible Gateway for Massive Surveillance of Wireless Communications
Related Issues NSA Spying, Privacy
Trio of Commerce Chairmen Call for Further Investigation Based on Latest Spying Allegations
Washington D.C. - Three powerful House Commerce Committee Chairmen strongly urged their colleagues Thursday to defer acting on requests for retroactive immunity and to demand more information from the White House and the telecommunications companies in the wake of disclosures by another whistleblower that the government apparently has been granted an open gateway to wireless communications by a major telecommunications company.
Babak Pasdar, a computer security consultant, has gone public about his discovery of a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" while working for an unnamed major wireless carrier. Pasdar believes that this circuit gives the U.S. government direct, unfettered access to customers voice calls and data packets. These claims echo the disclosures from retired AT&T technician Mark Klein, who has described a "secret room" in an AT&T facility.
The White House is putting heavy pressure on lawmakers to grant the telecoms immunity from lawsuits over the spying as part of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation pending in Congress. But in today's letter -- written by John Dingell, Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce; Ed Markey, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet; and Bart Stupak, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations -- the congressmen argue lawmakers must not "vote in the dark" on the immunity issue when "profound privacy and security risks" are involved.
"When you put Mr. Pasdar's information together with that of AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, there is troubling evidence of telecom misconduct in massive domestic surveillance of ordinary Americans," said Cindy Cohn, Legal Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "Congress needs to have hearings and get some answers about whether American telecommunications companies are helping the government to illegally spy on millions of us. Retroactive immunity for telecom companies now ought to be off the table in the ongoing FISA debate."
EFF represents the plaintiffs in Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit brought by AT&T customers accusing the telecommunications company of violating their rights by illegally assisting the National Security Agency in widespread domestic surveillance. The Hepting case is just one of many suits aimed at holding telecoms responsible for knowingly violating federal privacy laws with warrantless wiretapping and the illegal transfer of vast amounts of personal data to the government.
For the full letter:
http://www.eff.org/files/newwhistleblower.pdf
For more on the telecoms' role in warrantless spying:
http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying
Trio of Commerce Chairmen Call for Further Investigation Based on Latest Spying Allegations
Washington D.C. - Three powerful House Commerce Committee Chairmen strongly urged their colleagues Thursday to defer acting on requests for retroactive immunity and to demand more information from the White House and the telecommunications companies in the wake of disclosures by another whistleblower that the government apparently has been granted an open gateway to wireless communications by a major telecommunications company.
Babak Pasdar, a computer security consultant, has gone public about his discovery of a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" while working for an unnamed major wireless carrier. Pasdar believes that this circuit gives the U.S. government direct, unfettered access to customers voice calls and data packets. These claims echo the disclosures from retired AT&T technician Mark Klein, who has described a "secret room" in an AT&T facility.
The White House is putting heavy pressure on lawmakers to grant the telecoms immunity from lawsuits over the spying as part of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation pending in Congress. But in today's letter -- written by John Dingell, Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce; Ed Markey, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet; and Bart Stupak, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations -- the congressmen argue lawmakers must not "vote in the dark" on the immunity issue when "profound privacy and security risks" are involved.
"When you put Mr. Pasdar's information together with that of AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, there is troubling evidence of telecom misconduct in massive domestic surveillance of ordinary Americans," said Cindy Cohn, Legal Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "Congress needs to have hearings and get some answers about whether American telecommunications companies are helping the government to illegally spy on millions of us. Retroactive immunity for telecom companies now ought to be off the table in the ongoing FISA debate."
EFF represents the plaintiffs in Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit brought by AT&T customers accusing the telecommunications company of violating their rights by illegally assisting the National Security Agency in widespread domestic surveillance. The Hepting case is just one of many suits aimed at holding telecoms responsible for knowingly violating federal privacy laws with warrantless wiretapping and the illegal transfer of vast amounts of personal data to the government.
For the full letter:
http://www.eff.org/files/newwhistleblower.pdf
For more on the telecoms' role in warrantless spying:
http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
White House Study Found 473 Days of E-Mail Gone
What an amazing, blatant breach of the law this is. Nixon erased some analog tapes and he was impeached. Came on TV as the criminal nut case he was.
Bush has been erasing, distorting, & destroying evidence since he got in office. On so many levels you can't prosecute them all.
The legal buck has to stop somewhere. The digital intellectual property of the government is a part of our legal system. You can’t eliminate it at will, to avoid disclosure. And it’s the same thing with the Republicans using their party email, another violation, and it’s disappeared too.
When is America going to address the crimes of the Bush administration?
Bush says he can record all our information, our email, phone, Internet and they can save all this data, and yet they can't abide by the simple process of data back up of the government infrastructure?
The only way this much email and information could be missing is if it was deliberately destroyed. It most certainly was, same with the CIA torture tapes.
Bush is in violation of the law . He broke the FISA law and started recording everything, all our communications and banking in America with one swipe of the pen, the “Patriot Act.” And what a contradiction that term is for a law that broke our constitution, the “Patriot “Act.
So much life, blood and resource has been wasted during the Bush dictatorship. Shameful and disappointing time for America.
White House Study Found 473 Days of E-Mail Gone
By Dan Eggen and Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 18, 2008; Page A01
The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.
The 2005 study -- whose credibility the White House attacked this week -- identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
Waxman said he decided to release the summary after White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday that there is "no evidence" that any White House e-mails from those years are missing. Fratto's assertion "seems to be an unsubstantiated statement that has no relation to the facts they have shared with us," Waxman said.
The competing claims were the latest salvos in an escalating dispute over whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records -- including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions -- for history and in case of any future legal demands.
Waxman said he is seeking testimony on the issue at a hearing next month from White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, National Archivist Allen Weinstein and Alan R. Swendiman, the politically appointed director of the Office of Administration, which produced the 2005 study at issue.
Another official in that office on Tuesday challenged the study's credibility in a court affidavit, contending that current White House employees have been unable to confirm the veracity of the analysis or to recreate its findings. Waxman's disclosure provides the first details about the study's findings.
The White House is required by law to preserve e-mails considered presidential or federal records, and it is the target of several lawsuits seeking information about missing data and efforts to preserve electronic communications.
The internal study found that for Bush's executive office, no e-mails were archived on 12 separate days between December 2003 and February 2004, Waxman said. Vice President Cheney's office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.
Archived e-mails were missing from even more days in other parts of the White House, the analysis found. The Council on Environmental Quality and the Council of Economic Advisers, for example, showed no stored e-mails for 2 1/2 months beginning in November 2003. The Office of Management and Budget showed no messages for 59 days -- including the period from Nov. 1, 2003, to Dec. 9, 2003 -- and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative showed no e-mail for 73 days.
The administration has so far refused to release the study and a number of documents related to it, including a large summary chart used in a closed-door briefing conducted for Waxman and other lawmakers last September by Emmet T. Flood, special counsel to the president.
The briefers took the chart with them when they left, Waxman said, but committee staffers had copied many of the details.
Waxman described the findings in a letter to Fielding, which he released. "Mr. Fratto's statements have added to the considerable confusion that exists regarding the status of White House efforts to preserve e-mails," Waxman's letter said.
Two advocacy groups suing the Bush administration over its e-mail policies, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive, also said yesterday that the White House's new statements are incomplete and contrary to earlier acknowledgments that some e-mails are missing.
CREW also asserted in court papers filed yesterday that "critical and highly relevant evidence may have been destroyed" by the White House.
The group's chief counsel, Anne Weismann, said the chart referenced in Waxman's letter corresponded to information from an informant who contacted the group and described nearly 500 days between 2003 and 2005 when no e-mails from several White House offices were archived.
Weismann said the source further described many more days during the same period when the volume of archived e-mail was unusually low. "The example I was given is that the average volumes per day in the White House office, for example, was 60,000 to 100,000, yet there were entire weeks when it was as low as five a day," she said.
Fratto said yesterday that "we tried to reconstruct some of the work . . . and could not replicate that or could not authenticate the correctness of the data in that chart." In an e-mailed response to questions, he also said the e-mails in question may exist on backup tapes that are separate from the archival system.
Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the White House Office of Administration, also said in her court affidavit that her office has "serious reservations about the reliability of the chart" and has "so far been unable to replicate its results or to affirm the correctness of the assumptions underlying it."
Payton also disclosed that e-mail backup tapes were routinely "recycled" during the first three years of the Bush administration. The White House stopped the practice in October 2003, when it "began preserving and storing all back-up tapes," Payton said.
Technology experts say recycled data is often impossible to recover, especially if the tapes have been written over repeatedly, raising the possibility that some e-mails could be gone forever.
The special counsel who oversaw the investigation of the Valerie Plame Wilson CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, wrote in a letter to defense counsel in January 2006 that some e-mail in the offices of Bush and Cheney was not preserved through "the normal archiving process" in 2003.
When asked yesterday about a previous statement by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino that some White House e-mails are indeed missing, Fratto demurred. "I'm not sure what was said on that," he said. "I could tell you today, though, that we have no evidence and we have no way of showing that any e-mail at all are missing."
Bush has been erasing, distorting, & destroying evidence since he got in office. On so many levels you can't prosecute them all.
The legal buck has to stop somewhere. The digital intellectual property of the government is a part of our legal system. You can’t eliminate it at will, to avoid disclosure. And it’s the same thing with the Republicans using their party email, another violation, and it’s disappeared too.
When is America going to address the crimes of the Bush administration?
Bush says he can record all our information, our email, phone, Internet and they can save all this data, and yet they can't abide by the simple process of data back up of the government infrastructure?
The only way this much email and information could be missing is if it was deliberately destroyed. It most certainly was, same with the CIA torture tapes.
Bush is in violation of the law . He broke the FISA law and started recording everything, all our communications and banking in America with one swipe of the pen, the “Patriot Act.” And what a contradiction that term is for a law that broke our constitution, the “Patriot “Act.
So much life, blood and resource has been wasted during the Bush dictatorship. Shameful and disappointing time for America.
White House Study Found 473 Days of E-Mail Gone
By Dan Eggen and Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 18, 2008; Page A01
The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.
The 2005 study -- whose credibility the White House attacked this week -- identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
Waxman said he decided to release the summary after White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday that there is "no evidence" that any White House e-mails from those years are missing. Fratto's assertion "seems to be an unsubstantiated statement that has no relation to the facts they have shared with us," Waxman said.
The competing claims were the latest salvos in an escalating dispute over whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records -- including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions -- for history and in case of any future legal demands.
Waxman said he is seeking testimony on the issue at a hearing next month from White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, National Archivist Allen Weinstein and Alan R. Swendiman, the politically appointed director of the Office of Administration, which produced the 2005 study at issue.
Another official in that office on Tuesday challenged the study's credibility in a court affidavit, contending that current White House employees have been unable to confirm the veracity of the analysis or to recreate its findings. Waxman's disclosure provides the first details about the study's findings.
The White House is required by law to preserve e-mails considered presidential or federal records, and it is the target of several lawsuits seeking information about missing data and efforts to preserve electronic communications.
The internal study found that for Bush's executive office, no e-mails were archived on 12 separate days between December 2003 and February 2004, Waxman said. Vice President Cheney's office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.
Archived e-mails were missing from even more days in other parts of the White House, the analysis found. The Council on Environmental Quality and the Council of Economic Advisers, for example, showed no stored e-mails for 2 1/2 months beginning in November 2003. The Office of Management and Budget showed no messages for 59 days -- including the period from Nov. 1, 2003, to Dec. 9, 2003 -- and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative showed no e-mail for 73 days.
The administration has so far refused to release the study and a number of documents related to it, including a large summary chart used in a closed-door briefing conducted for Waxman and other lawmakers last September by Emmet T. Flood, special counsel to the president.
The briefers took the chart with them when they left, Waxman said, but committee staffers had copied many of the details.
Waxman described the findings in a letter to Fielding, which he released. "Mr. Fratto's statements have added to the considerable confusion that exists regarding the status of White House efforts to preserve e-mails," Waxman's letter said.
Two advocacy groups suing the Bush administration over its e-mail policies, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive, also said yesterday that the White House's new statements are incomplete and contrary to earlier acknowledgments that some e-mails are missing.
CREW also asserted in court papers filed yesterday that "critical and highly relevant evidence may have been destroyed" by the White House.
The group's chief counsel, Anne Weismann, said the chart referenced in Waxman's letter corresponded to information from an informant who contacted the group and described nearly 500 days between 2003 and 2005 when no e-mails from several White House offices were archived.
Weismann said the source further described many more days during the same period when the volume of archived e-mail was unusually low. "The example I was given is that the average volumes per day in the White House office, for example, was 60,000 to 100,000, yet there were entire weeks when it was as low as five a day," she said.
Fratto said yesterday that "we tried to reconstruct some of the work . . . and could not replicate that or could not authenticate the correctness of the data in that chart." In an e-mailed response to questions, he also said the e-mails in question may exist on backup tapes that are separate from the archival system.
Theresa Payton, chief information officer in the White House Office of Administration, also said in her court affidavit that her office has "serious reservations about the reliability of the chart" and has "so far been unable to replicate its results or to affirm the correctness of the assumptions underlying it."
Payton also disclosed that e-mail backup tapes were routinely "recycled" during the first three years of the Bush administration. The White House stopped the practice in October 2003, when it "began preserving and storing all back-up tapes," Payton said.
Technology experts say recycled data is often impossible to recover, especially if the tapes have been written over repeatedly, raising the possibility that some e-mails could be gone forever.
The special counsel who oversaw the investigation of the Valerie Plame Wilson CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, wrote in a letter to defense counsel in January 2006 that some e-mail in the offices of Bush and Cheney was not preserved through "the normal archiving process" in 2003.
When asked yesterday about a previous statement by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino that some White House e-mails are indeed missing, Fratto demurred. "I'm not sure what was said on that," he said. "I could tell you today, though, that we have no evidence and we have no way of showing that any e-mail at all are missing."
Sean O’keefe, Bohemian Grover, Magically & Secretly Steps down from LSU, Good Riddance...
LSU Chancellor Sean O’keefe (former NASA head) admits being Bohemian Grove Member, originally uploaded by Antifluff Superstar.
Just as strange as O'keefe's appointment as Chancellor of LSU was, so is his sudden stepping down. It's was all two close to home. He brought Dick Cheney (whom I consider a war criminal) into the Pete Maravich LSU Assembly Center, to shake hands with academics and students.
Now that may be okay for some people. But Cheney is a man that is responsible, to a degree we cannot know, for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Iraq.
Anyone that has close ties to the Bush administration cronies cannot be a good thing for Louisiana, it’s like hiring a conflict for the public interest, immediately. And the state of America bears out the Bush cronies expeditious disregard for Humanity. Truly.
So, I don't know why O'Keefe was brought to LSU. LSU does a lot of progressive stuff in many areas. And the Bush administration has been notorious for censoring and silencing scientists (i.e., in the global warming area, and actually one of them was a scientist from NASA, where O’keefe came from) who had policy contrary to Bush doctrine.
And like I mentioned below in O'Keefe's Bio. He comes from a "Defense Industry" background so it makes perfect sense that the CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, was invited on the LSU campus (May 19, 2006) for the LSU graduation ceremony as some kind of role model. There were academics who refused to attend the commencement ceremonies.
And again, Dick Cheney broke the law with the Halliburton No Bid 5yr contracts in Iraq where they have made Billions, while murdering innocent people... see this post about Bunnatine Greenhouse who is from Louisiana and lost her job for whistle blowing Halliburton : www.flickr.com/photos/antifluff/52323896/in/set-1237029/
So, why was O’Keefe placed at LSU and why is he so suddenly is disappearing?
__________________________
LSU Chancellor Sean O’keefe (former NASA head) admits being Bohemian Grove Member
PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG POST:
1. To point out the Sean O’keefe (formerly head of NASA) connection with Bush and Bohemian Grove.
Read this O’keefe interview in the LSU Reveille about Bohemian Grove:
An Elite Alliance
Chancellor confirms membership in club
By Amy Brittain
March 07, 2006
www.lsureveille.com/media/storage/paper868/news/2006/03/0...
DARK SECRETS INSIDE BOHEMIAN GROVE:
(WATCH THE VIDEO)
Some of the most powerful people in the US government (George Bush, Alan Greenspan. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan Jimmy Buffet?, Clint Eastwood, Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Nixon) attend occult worship events every July at "Bohemian Grove". Is that funny? Do you think it's true? Does that sound like the kind of thing professed Christians and followers of Jesus would do? Decide for yourself.
It's surprising how few people seem to know about Bohemian Grove.
What it is, what it's about. Sex, drugs, women and world Policy all polished off at the end with a scene straight out of a KKK rally. Do I care? Not a lick. But I do care
that they try to pass themselves off as "Christians". It's sickening.
Movies of it exist:
Alex Jones was the first person to sneak in Bohemian Grove
and get the “Cremation of Care” ceremony on video. Watch it here:
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1358319439993514946
The Associated Press December 26, 2004
LSU and O'Keefe: mysteries of his hiring
By Adam Nossiter
www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/041226-lsu-okeefe.htm
Sean O’keefe Bio
www.lsu.edu/chancellor/biography.htm
_________________________________
2. To Protest Sean O’keefe selecting Dick Cheney to speak at the May 19, 2006 LSU graduation ceremony. This was strange and inappropriate to say the least. I'd go so far as to say inviting Dick Cheney (in reality) to speak at LSU was about like having Mussolini:
Benito Mussolini
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"He created a Fascist state through the use of diplomacy and propaganda. Using his charisma, total control of the media, and outright violence and intimidation against political rivals, he disassembled the existing democratic government system."
SEE: Dick Cheney: "Torture Man" : read about Cheney the man who lobbied a year for the ability to torture beyond any limits of world law. The US is not even a member of the International Courts of justice, Bush signed off on it first thing when he got in office. The US is not accountable to anyone for anything on this planet. And with the people involved in what is the Bush administration, there has been nothing but destruction, exploitation and breakdown of the foundations of all that was good about America. Their "New World Order" PNAC plans include nothing that has anything to do with the preservation and well being of Humanity. (Just ask the Katrina victims New Orleans)
You can't raise the legal limit of the national debt 4 times, a record in American history and not expect the people of that country to pay hell for it at some point. All that military/defense spending, oil/energy and cleanup of the destruction they have created is going right back into the pockets of those that made it happen. It's been a very lethal system. And most people agree that the architect of all this is Dick Cheney.
AND THIS IS THE MAN O'Keefe invited to LSU commencement.
It's deplorable, ridiculous that a man like Dick Cheney would be allowed anywhere near a serious academic institution.
SEE: Dick Cheney: "Torture Man"
www.flickr.com/photos/antifluff/63137909/in/set-1237029/
_________________________________
3. To Point out that David Gergen of the Clinton Admin. had to step down when
his being a member of Bohemian Grove was exposed:
*** Watch David Gergen former Clinton Adviser talk about Bohemian Grove:
www.infowars.com/video/previews/martial_law/wm_bb.htm
www.infowars.com/video/previews/martial_law/qt_bb.htm
Some of the most powerful people in the US government attend occult worship events every July at "Bohemian Grove". Is that funny? Do you think it's true? Decide for yourself. Movies of it exist:
BOHEMIAN GROVE EXPOSED! BUSH=OCCULT or JESUS?
DARK SECRETS INSIDE BOHEMIAN GROVE:
Alex Jones was the first person to sneak in Bohemian Grove
and get the “Cremation of Care” ceremony on video. Watch it here:
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1358319439993514946
________________________
More Bohemian Grove Info:
CHECK THIS OUT: (REAL PLAYER CLIP)
www.infowars.com/Video/BG/BG_Trailer_fast.ram
www.infowars.com/bg1.html
Occult Activities at the Elite Bohemian Grove in Northern California Exposed!
www.propagandamatrix.com/archivebohemiangrove.html
-More on Bohemian Grove: www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/bohemian-grove/
www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=b...
www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/bohos/bohofact.html
_______________________________________________
Thyseen & Prescott Bush Nazi Banking Connection:
antifluffsuperstar.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_antifluffsuper...
"It's for Your Saftey...Honest!!"
Posted on January 4, 2006
A friend sent me this.
I thought it was perfect... sums it up quite nicely.
They have control of the communications and visual aspects of what all
these people in America have bought as some kind of an acceptable image from the American leadership.
The government is opening people's mail, only for our protection of course.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10740935/
Google Rebuffs Feds on Search Requests
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 19, 2006; 8:07 PM
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/19/...
SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet's leading search engine _ a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.
Mountain View-based Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records.
The government wants a list all requests entered into Google's search engine during an unspecified single week _ a breakdown that could conceivably span tens of millions of queries. In addition, it seeks 1 million randomly selected Web addresses from various Google databases.
In court papers that the San Jose Mercury News reported on after seeing them Wednesday, the Bush administration depicts the information as vital in its effort to restore online child protection laws that have been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yahoo Inc., which runs the Internet's second-most used search engine behind Google, confirmed Thursday that it had complied with a similar government subpoena.
Although the government says it isn't seeking any data that ties personal information to search requests, the subpoena still raises serious privacy concerns, experts said. Those worries have been magnified by recent revelations that the White House authorized eavesdropping on civilian communications after the Sept. 11 attacks without obtaining court approval.
"Search engines now play such an important part in our daily lives that many people probably contact Google more often than they do their own mother," said Thomas Burke, a San Francisco attorney who has handled several prominent cases involving privacy issues.
"Just as most people would be upset if the government wanted to know how much you called your mother and what you talked about, they should be upset about this, too."
The content of search request sometimes contain information about the person making the query.
For instance, it's not unusual for search requests to include names, medical profiles or Social Security information, said Pam Dixon, executive director for the World Privacy Forum.
"This is exactly the kind of thing we have been worrying about with search engines for some time," Dixon said. "Google should be commended for fighting this."
Every other search engine served similar subpoenas by the Bush administration has complied so far, according to court documents. The cooperating search engines weren't identified.
Page 2 of 2 < Back
Google Rebuffs Feds on Search Requests
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo stressed that it didn't reveal any personal information. "We are rigorous defenders of our users' privacy," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said Thursday. "In our opinion, this is not a privacy issue."
Microsoft Corp. MSN, the No. 3 search engine, declined to say whether it even received a similar subpoena. "MSN works closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to assist them when requested," the company said in a statement.
As the Internet's dominant search engine, Google has built up a valuable storehouse of information that "makes it a very attractive target for law enforcement," said Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The Department of Justice argues that Google's cooperation is essential in its effort to simulate how people navigate the Web.
In a separate case in Pennsylvania, the Bush administration is trying to prove that Internet filters don't do an adequate job of preventing children from accessing online pornography and other objectionable destinations.
Obtaining the subpoenaed information from Google "would assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current Web users, (and) to estimate how often Web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches," the Justice Department wrote in a brief filed Wednesday Google _ whose motto when it went public in 2004 was "do no evil" _ contends that submitting to the subpoena would represent a betrayal to its users, even if all personal information is stripped from the search terms sought by the government.
"Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept," company attorney Ashok Ramani wrote in a letter included in the government's filing.
Complying with the subpoena also wound threaten to expose some of Google's "crown-jewel trade secrets," Ramani wrote. Google is particularly concerned that the information could be used to deduce the size of its index and how many computers it uses to crunch the requests.
"This information would be highly valuable to competitors or miscreants seeking to harm Google's business," Ramani wrote.
Dixon is hoping Google's battle with the government reminds people to be careful how they interact with search engines.
"When you are looking at that blank search box, you should remember that what you fill can come back to haunt you unless you take precautions," she said.
___
On the Web:
www.worldprivacyforum.org/
Electronic Privacy Information Center: www.epic.org/
Monday, January 14, 2008
Japanese Parliament Questions Official 9/11 story -no subs
Japan thinks the Bush/Cheney Lies about 911 are worth talking about in their Parliment.
And yet they are not worth mentioning in Washington even though Nancy Polosi promised she would open investigations into the 911 attacks.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Endless Reason to Incarcerate Bush
NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Notes From the Global War on Terror
Published: December 14, 2007
www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/opinion/14fri1.html
During the presidential campaign, candidates from both parties will warn of the risk of another terrorist attack on this country. Americans should insist that they also explain how they will repair the damage President Bush has done to America’s intelligence-gathering capabilities in the name of fighting terrorism.
Congress certainly has not done the job. For six years, it stood by mutely or actively approved as President Bush’s team cooked the books to justify war, drew the nation’s electronic spies into illegal wiretapping and turned intelligence agents and uniformed soldiers into torturers at outlaw prisons.
Now, with the opposition party in control on Capitol Hill, lawmakers have a chance to start setting right some wrongs in these areas. But there are disturbing signs that they will once again fail to do what is needed.
EAVESDROPPING After the disclosure that Mr. Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail messages without a court warrant, Congress has been struggling to write a law that does three important things: force the president to obey the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA; preserve the power of judges to approve and monitor surveillance of Americans; and update FISA to keep pace with technology. Last summer, Congress gave Mr. Bush a bill that had the needed updates but made it easier to spy on Americans.
That law expires in February, and the House has passed a bill that updates FISA while doing a great deal to ensure real judicial and Congressional oversight of any eavesdropping. The Senate Judiciary Committee also wrote a bill that does those things — with a sensible two-year expiration date.
Mr. Bush, of course, wants fewer, not more, restrictions and wants those powers to be made permanent. He also wants amnesty for telecommunications companies that gave Americans’ private data to the government for at least five years without a warrant.
Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, seems intent on doing the president’s bidding. He has indicated that instead of the Judiciary Committee’s bill, he may put on the floor a deeply flawed measure from the Senate Intelligence Committee that dangerously expands the government’s powers and gives undeserved amnesty to the telecommunications companies. The White House says amnesty is intended to ensure future cooperation but seems truly aimed at making sure the public never learns the extent of the companies’ involvement in illegal wiretapping.
That will leave Democratic senators like Christopher Dodd and Russ Feingold in the absurd position of having to stage filibusters against their own party’s leadership to try to forestall more harm to civil liberties.
INTERROGATIONS AND TORTURE The recent disclosure that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two Al Qaeda prisoners was a stark reminder of the catastrophic blunder that Congress made by enacting the Military Commissions Act of 2006. In addition to creating kangaroo courts to try the Guantánamo detainees, the bill permitted Mr. Bush to abrogate the Geneva Conventions by creating secret, extra-legal rules for interrogations by intelligence agents.
It was obvious that the tapes were destroyed to protect interrogators or their bosses from being held responsible for illegal acts like waterboarding. Congress must investigate the destruction of the tapes, using subpoenas, if necessary, to officials like John Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s senior lawyer, and Jose Rodriguez, the former chief of clandestine services, who ordered the tapes’ destruction in 2005.
USE AND MISUSE OF INTELLIGENCE Americans were stunned when the White House released a new intelligence assessment that said that Iran had halted its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003. Beyond those startling facts were questions about whether Mr. Bush knew of this assessment when he was warning about World War III if Iran were allowed to get a nuclear weapon.
And that was a reminder of another time when Mr. Bush misled the nation about Iraqi weapons programs that had long disappeared. The Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to have an investigation years ago into what Mr. Bush and other officials knew about the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons when they used it to stampede the country into war.
For more than two years, the Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Pat Roberts, made sure that a report would never be finished. It has now been in the hands of his replacement, Democrat Jay Rockefeller, for nearly a year, and there is still no report. That means Americans still don’t know whether Mr. Bush deliberately hyped and distorted the intelligence on Iraq or was also misinformed.
Americans need to know what Mr. Bush knew on both Iraq and Iran, and when he knew it. Anything less is unacceptable.
•
Resolving these issues will require leadership, political courage and candor — from Congress and the president. The country has had enough acquiescence, excuse-making and obfuscation.
Notes From the Global War on Terror
Published: December 14, 2007
www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/opinion/14fri1.html
During the presidential campaign, candidates from both parties will warn of the risk of another terrorist attack on this country. Americans should insist that they also explain how they will repair the damage President Bush has done to America’s intelligence-gathering capabilities in the name of fighting terrorism.
Congress certainly has not done the job. For six years, it stood by mutely or actively approved as President Bush’s team cooked the books to justify war, drew the nation’s electronic spies into illegal wiretapping and turned intelligence agents and uniformed soldiers into torturers at outlaw prisons.
Now, with the opposition party in control on Capitol Hill, lawmakers have a chance to start setting right some wrongs in these areas. But there are disturbing signs that they will once again fail to do what is needed.
EAVESDROPPING After the disclosure that Mr. Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail messages without a court warrant, Congress has been struggling to write a law that does three important things: force the president to obey the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA; preserve the power of judges to approve and monitor surveillance of Americans; and update FISA to keep pace with technology. Last summer, Congress gave Mr. Bush a bill that had the needed updates but made it easier to spy on Americans.
That law expires in February, and the House has passed a bill that updates FISA while doing a great deal to ensure real judicial and Congressional oversight of any eavesdropping. The Senate Judiciary Committee also wrote a bill that does those things — with a sensible two-year expiration date.
Mr. Bush, of course, wants fewer, not more, restrictions and wants those powers to be made permanent. He also wants amnesty for telecommunications companies that gave Americans’ private data to the government for at least five years without a warrant.
Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, seems intent on doing the president’s bidding. He has indicated that instead of the Judiciary Committee’s bill, he may put on the floor a deeply flawed measure from the Senate Intelligence Committee that dangerously expands the government’s powers and gives undeserved amnesty to the telecommunications companies. The White House says amnesty is intended to ensure future cooperation but seems truly aimed at making sure the public never learns the extent of the companies’ involvement in illegal wiretapping.
That will leave Democratic senators like Christopher Dodd and Russ Feingold in the absurd position of having to stage filibusters against their own party’s leadership to try to forestall more harm to civil liberties.
INTERROGATIONS AND TORTURE The recent disclosure that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two Al Qaeda prisoners was a stark reminder of the catastrophic blunder that Congress made by enacting the Military Commissions Act of 2006. In addition to creating kangaroo courts to try the Guantánamo detainees, the bill permitted Mr. Bush to abrogate the Geneva Conventions by creating secret, extra-legal rules for interrogations by intelligence agents.
It was obvious that the tapes were destroyed to protect interrogators or their bosses from being held responsible for illegal acts like waterboarding. Congress must investigate the destruction of the tapes, using subpoenas, if necessary, to officials like John Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s senior lawyer, and Jose Rodriguez, the former chief of clandestine services, who ordered the tapes’ destruction in 2005.
USE AND MISUSE OF INTELLIGENCE Americans were stunned when the White House released a new intelligence assessment that said that Iran had halted its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003. Beyond those startling facts were questions about whether Mr. Bush knew of this assessment when he was warning about World War III if Iran were allowed to get a nuclear weapon.
And that was a reminder of another time when Mr. Bush misled the nation about Iraqi weapons programs that had long disappeared. The Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to have an investigation years ago into what Mr. Bush and other officials knew about the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons when they used it to stampede the country into war.
For more than two years, the Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Pat Roberts, made sure that a report would never be finished. It has now been in the hands of his replacement, Democrat Jay Rockefeller, for nearly a year, and there is still no report. That means Americans still don’t know whether Mr. Bush deliberately hyped and distorted the intelligence on Iraq or was also misinformed.
Americans need to know what Mr. Bush knew on both Iraq and Iran, and when he knew it. Anything less is unacceptable.
•
Resolving these issues will require leadership, political courage and candor — from Congress and the president. The country has had enough acquiescence, excuse-making and obfuscation.
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