FBI Whistleblower says Neocons Negotiated Iraq Invasion with Foreign Agents in Summer 2001

This pretty well documents the Bush White House planning before 9/11 to invade and partition Iraq.  Finally, something close to mainstream media (MSM) is paying attention to Sibel Edmonds and her testimony. I've been writing about this story since 2005 when I first heard about it. So far, few MSM agencies have chosen to give this story much attention.

This has far reaching implications and chronicles a hidden power game within the Bush Administration including illegal espionage activities by key neo-cons. It also gives a glimpse of Bush's conspiracy to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American people based on false information.

Suggested here also is evidence, as I have pointed out before, that Turkish, Iranian and Israeli spies had inappropriate access to the Bush Administration and very likely manipulated Bush towards an invasion of Iraq.

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In an interview with former CIA officer Phillip Giraldi, FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds named Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle as having been wiretapped and recorded discussing plans with the Turkish ambassador in the Summer of 2001 to invade Iraq and occupy the Kurdish region bordering Turkey.

A Department of Justice inspector general’s report called Edmonds’s allegations "credible," "serious," and "warranting a thorough and careful review by the FBI." Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee members Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have backed her publicly. "60 Minutes" launched an investigation of her claims and found them believable. No one has ever disproved any of Edmonds’s revelations, which she says can be verified by FBI investigative files.

via Daily Kos: FBI Whistleblower says Neocons Negotiated Iraq Invasion with Foreign Agents in Summer 2001.

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• Democratic Peace Theory (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)


• FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Tells of Bribery, Espionage and Cover-up at the Highest Levels of US Government (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


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The Plan for White Slavery?

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Racism has a hidden face within all of us. Anyone who is different beyond our imaginings is suspect. By placing people in the "other" category, we distance ourselves and make them the enemy. To the Right Wing Nuts, Obama has become the thief.

The Plan for White Slavery | The LA Progressive.

In his bestseller, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell noted that people make powerful associations with appearances and make “snap decisions” based on “thin slices” of experience. One of the many studies he cited required the subjects to assign positive or negative words to images of white or black people. To their surprise, the subjects, including himself, associated positive words with pictures of white people and negative words with photos of black people.

Thus after a history of repeated othering of African Americans in the US, it is not unusual for the picture of the black thief climbing through the windows of our homes to evolve into the imaginings of a black man in the White House stealing our healthcare and hard fought freedoms. As educator and writer Tim Wise, shrewdly observed “the longstanding association in white minds between social program spending and racial redistribution has been long established, by scholars such as Martin Gilens, Kenneth Neubeck, Noel Cazenave, and Jill Quadagno, among others.” What is reparations in the mind of the Right?—another form of stealing. Tim further notes, bestselling writer and conservative commentator Glen Beck, as well as shock talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, have linked health care reform and every piece of Obama’s legislative program with reparations. “His (Obama’s) goal is to create a new America. A new model. A model to settle old racial scores..,” decries Glen Beck.

Leaders from the healthcare corporate industry and the Right have been tapping into this programming. Observing the town hall rage and media coverage, historian and journalist Rick Perlstein reminds us that throughout history “the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.” Rick goes on to cite various examples such as Vice President Nixon claiming he found hidden in the White House “a blueprint for socializing America” or the various absurdities from the Right that the 1964 Civil Rights Act would “enslave” whites and that the Soviet Union served as an incubator for the “civil rights movement.” He concludes, “Good thing our leaders weren’t so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill—because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.”

However, the escapees of the Goldwater asylum are not the only ones prone to their programming being activated. Each one of us has it in them. Remember, during the struggle for desegregation of the lunch counters and outlawing racial housing covenants, a number of opponents used free market arguments of the “right to refuse service.” As Ronald Reagan once said as he successfully campaigned to be governor of California, “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, he has the right to do so.” Reagan, who publicly opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, still overwhelmingly won as president despite launching his campaign with a speech on state rights at the site of three slain civil rights activists. I am not saying all those who disdain any governmental involvement in healthcare want to push people of color to the back of the bus, but in the current healthcare debate, they have de facto shoved those without healthcare to the side to fend for themselves.

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Comcast Guilty of Net Neutrality Violations

eWeek.com

FCC holds nation's second largest broadband provider broke network neutrality principles when it throttled P2P traffic from BitTorrent. FCC rejects Comcast contention that network throttling is part of routine network management by broadband service providers.
In the first major test of the FCC's (Federal Communications Commission) network neutrality principles, the agency found Comcast guilty Aug. 1 of secretly degrading network traffic. On a 3-2 vote, the FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking traffic, disclose to the FCC the full extent of the cable giant's traffic practices and to keep the public informed of its future network management plans.
The FCC said Comcast violated the agency's Internet policy when it blocked P2P traffic by BitTorrent. The agency also found that Comcast misled consumers when it did not properly disclose its P2P policy.
Voting for the sanctions were Republican Chairman Kevin Martin and Democratic Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. Republicans Robert McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate opposed the measure.
"Comcast was delaying subscribers' downloads and blocking their uploads," Martin said. "It was doing so 24/7, regardless of the amount of congestion on the network or how small the file might be."

Moyers: Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes, and We May Be Running Out of Luck

AlterNet

The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children's children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it. It isn't necessary to be a Jeremiah crying aloud to a sinful Jerusalem that the Lord is about to afflict them for their sins of idolatry, or Cassandra, making a nuisance of herself as she wanders around King Priam's palace grounds wailing "The Greeks are coming." Or Socrates, the gadfly, stinging the rump of power with jabs of truth. Or even Paul Revere, if horses were still in fashion. You need only be a reporter with your eyes open to see what's happening to our democracy. I have been lucky enough to spend my adult life as a journalist, acquiring a priceless education in the ways of the world, actually getting paid to practice one of my craft's essential imperatives: connect the dots.


The conclusion that we are in trouble is unavoidable. I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments -- genuine savings -- in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope.


And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of sixty-year-old banking and securities regulations designed during the Great Depression to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? An administration and Congress who are the political marionettes of the speculators, and who are well rewarded for their efforts with indispensable campaign contributions. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of an electoral system that effectively limits competition to those who can afford to spend millions in their run for office. Like it or not, candidates know that the largesse on which their political futures depend will last only as long as their votes are satisfactory to the sleek "bundlers" who turn the spigots of cash on and off.


The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly "veneration for wealth" are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined. "Money rules Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.

Valerie Plame Wilson Describes Sibel Edmonds Disclosures as 'Stunning'

The UK Sunday Times Published a series of three articles releasing information that may have been covered by Sibel Edmonds' Bush Administration gag order. She has been claiming her gag order was covering up a scandal. Perhaps the UK articles represent the real story, or at least part of it. Plame now calls the Times articles "stunning" and decries the media black out of the story in the US.
There is no freedom of the press in the Bush era.
The BRAD BLOG

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK's Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are "stunning"...


The previously covert agent, who had worked in the agency's counter-proliferation division for years monitoring traffic in the nuclear black market under the guise of a cover company named Brewster Jennings until being outed by Bush Administration officials, was asked about the recent series of explosive stories in the British paper during an interview this morning with Florida radio host Henry Raines of American AM.


Those disclosures include allegations that Brewster Jennings' real identity as a CIA front company was outed to Turkish officials by then-Asst. Sec. of State for European Affairs Marc Grossman as early as 2001...


A text transcript of the interview, as well as the audio, is now posted at the end of this article.


The series of three Times stories so far has corroborated information detailed by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds has been gagged by the Bush Administration's Department of Justice in this country under the "State Secrets Privilege" since 2002, disallowing her from speaking about her work at the bureau. In a BRAD BLOG exclusive late last year, Edmonds announced she would disclose all of the information she'd be barred from revealing to any major U.S. broadcast media outlet that would allow her to tell the full story.


Every U.S. mainstream media outlet failed to take up her offer, though the London Times contacted her through us after we ran our story. After they subsequently ran their first blockbuster in the series early last month, the story became front page news around the world, yet the U.S. media continue, incredibly enough, to ignore it.


The second and third articles in the Times series allege a "senior State Department" official participated, along with a network of moles at sensitive nuclear instillations and military bases, in the sale of nuclear secrets to American allies and enemies alike. The official has subsequently been identified as Grossman, a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, and, at the time of the alleged disclosures, the #3 State Department official beneath Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.


Grossman, according to the Times' and Edmonds' allegations, even tipped off Turkish officials, as long ago as 2001, to the fact that Plame Wilson's Brewster Jennings was a CIA cover company. Grossman denies the charges.


While Plame Wilson offered today that she has "no insight" into the story, other than what has been published by the Times, she joined Edmonds and other whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg in her criticism of the U.S. mainstream media for failing to investigate and report on the story.


"I think it's very interesting that it's showing up across the pond and not here at all, in any of our newspapers," Plame Wilson said.


"It's fair to say that in general the American media has been extremely intimidated, it's been supine, and I think it's let the American people down," she explained, pointing to the run-up to the Iraq War when the U.S. media, "took simply what the Administration was dishing up and didn't question it, didn't analyze it, didn't go seek secondary sources. And look where we are today as a result of that."

Save the Internet: Take Action!

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

Hey, Murdock can't be all bad. His newspaper in London, often used as a disinformation leaker for US intelligence, has a real story today.
Today, I got more information on Sibel Edmund than in any US news source.
I'm guessing that what Sibel tripped over was the Bush Administration, via the Turkish ambassador and the No 3 man in the State Department, leaking nuclear secrets to Turkey to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions. It seems that Bush is in the business of nuclear proliferation to India, and now to Turkey??
Worse yet, Turkish intelligence has a cozy relationship with Pakistani intelligence. Now doesn't that sound reassuring??
Hat tip to The Brad Blog.
Times Online

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.


The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.


Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.


She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.


One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.


Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.


"œI can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,"€ she said.


The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.


The letter says: "€œYou may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office."€


It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file “ many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.


Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.


She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.


The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.


It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.


The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.


Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.


"œI cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,â€" she said, €œ"but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.


"This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.

Preserve Internet Liberty, Prevent Corporate Monopoly

A great article from Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

We all know the drawbacks of corporate news outlets, and the great blessing that the internet represents for grassroots organizing and information sharing. But of course, the big corporations are very unhappy about losing some control of these matters, and have been pushing for legislation to end internet liberty and make it into the Corporate Monopoly Internet (CMI), cutting out individuals and small groups.


Some may think the word "monopoly" an exaggeration. But all private television news broadcasts are owned by only five corporations in the United States. Five is too little for healthy competition, and all five disallow centrist and progressive points of view as most Americans would define them (i.e. the range of acceptable opinion on the US airwaves is from center-right to far right). Opinion polling decisively shows that the American public is very substantially to the left of virtually all television broadcasts with a social or political content. Yet of the three cable news networks, 2 are center-right and 1 is far right!


[..]Save the Internet is a key site for organizing to stop the imposition of a Corporate Monopoly on the Internet.

Comcast Interferes with Customer's Broadband Use

FreePress.net

Tell the FCC: Stop Comcast and Other Gatekeepers


You're the only person who should decide where you go, what you do, and whom you connect with on the Web. Net Neutrality protects your right to choose. Phone and cable lobbyists have called Net Neutrality "a solution in search of a problem." Well, here's the problem. In the past three months, incidents of censorship and blocking by Verizon, AT&T and now Comcast have made headlines around the world. That's just the tip of the iceberg. We stopped these gatekeepers in 2006. We can stop them for good by taking action right now. It's time to restore Net Neutrality once and for all.

We Can Stop Them

Comcast Traffic Monitoring a Slap in the Face to Net Neutrality

Free Press

As we’ve mentioned before, Comcast does, despite what the company says, limit BitTorrent traffic. The Associated Press recently ran some tests and discovered that, yes, Comcast does throttle BitTorrent traffic. So how can Comcast say it doesn’t throttle traffic when in fact it does? The answer is in semantics.


Comcast has previous told Wired News that “we do not block access to any applications,” it does however admit that it uses traffic shaping tools to “manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers.” In other words, Comcast doesn’t block BitTorrent applications, but it does block BitTorrent traffic.


Now it would seem that the fun doesn’t end there for Comcast subscribers. The EFF reports that Comcast also limits Gnutella traffic and Kevin Kanarski claims that Lotus Notes traffic is similarly choked.


In all three cases Comcast’s limiting technique is quite insidious and would be difficult for the average user to notice. Comcast’s network monitoring tools (most likely Sandvine) sits between your connection and the outside world and sends reset packets to both both ends, disrupting your connection. From the the end user point of view it will merely look like your connection is slow. Very, very slow.


This is more or less the two-tiered internet that net neutrality proponents have long warned about.

If this type of conduct is allowed to continue, many innovators will have to get active assistance from an ISP in order to have their protocols allowed through the ISP’s web of spoofing and forgery. Technologies like BitTorrent and Joost, which are used to distribute licensed movies and are in direct competition with Comcast’s cable TV services, will be at Comcast’s mercy.

ATT Demonstrates the Need for Net Neutrality

Scholars and Rogues

Slashdot broke the news on Saturday that AT&T's updated terms of service for its high-speed Internet packages essentially forbid you from criticizing the company on pain of cancellation. The full terms of service are here, and here's the offending passage highlighted, courtesy of Ars Technica:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

This is the exact kind of overbroad legalese that gets companies in trouble in ways they probably never thought of. If I am an AT&T subscriber, for example, and I post derogatory comments about AT&T on a site they own, does this give them leave to terminate my service? What if I post or send a complaint about AT&T to a complaint site or consumer news site, like ConsumerAffairs.Com (whom I write for), and they publish said complaint? Am I liable if I was using my AT&T ISP while writing said complaint? What if I did so while using my laptop at a Wi-Fi hotspot? The mind boggles.


This goes well beyond the already-vast power companies exert over customers through TOS, EULAs, and other such agreements. This isn't pointed at a customer who's using AT&T's service to download copyrighted content, bandwith hog, or hack other users - no, this is deliberately designed to punish customers simply for speaking out against the company. You wouldn't tolerate that from the government, so why should you tolerate it from a corporation? I think this Ars commenter has it right:

This is another step in the codification of corporate behavior of the every day lives of Americans. Increasingly, we are being forced to behave in private as we would at work. This simply won't work. I do not serve the board of directors as a paying customer of a system. What AT&T is doing might not be a violation of the letter of the law, but it certainly is a raping of the spirit of free speech and a free society. Corporations are slowly becoming proxies for governments to do things governments couldn't otherwise do.

What amazes me about this is the sheer gall with which AT&T thought it could get away with such an egregious jab in the eye to its customers. The company has already gotten itself in hot water over censoring Pearl Jam for criticizing Bush - are they going to claim this was a "mistake" or "glitch" as well? And coming on the heels of Verizon's about-face after blocking text messages from NARAL, does AT&T really think it'll be able to defend or justify this kind of abrogation of its customers' rights without some kind of backlash?


Needless to say, this is yet another reason why we need net neutrality as codified law. AT&T's lawyers may have written this just to enforce its rules against hate sites, spammers, and such, but they've written it so broadly that it could easily be interpreted as a "chiller" against legitimate criticism of a company. Not to mention that this is the same company that gleefully assisted the NSA in spying on Americans without warrants or oversight for years. Like I said, what utter gall.


Corporations do not have the right to control what you say or think any more than governments do, and the idea that we can excuse abrogations of these rights if they come from business is a slippery slope indeed.

Don't Let TV Kill the Internet

The issue of access to the Internet is more important than most people know. It's about retain our freedom of speech, our freedom of information free from the censorship of the tel com companies. Vice President Gore has been warning us about this struggle since 2005. They have demonstrated their willingness to censure. It's all about money and monopoly over the news, what we see for sale, and what information we can get access to.
Free Press

What if I told you we could use empty TV channels to connect millions of Americans to the Internet?

New technology would do just that. But the powerful TV broadcast lobby is standing in the way with a multimillion-dollar misinformation campaign.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to make a critical choice: support innovation or side with the broadcasters and let the United State slide further behind the rest of the world in Internet access.

Tell the FCC: Open the Internet for Everyone

The fight for universal Internet access is now being waged over "white spaces" -- empty frequencies between television channels on the public airwaves. New devices can use these vacant airwaves to connect millions to the information superhighway, including many people still stuck on dial-up -- or without any service at all.

Here's the problem. The National Association of Broadcasters wants to keep white spaces for themselves. This week, they're blitzing Washington with television ads and lobbyists. They're making outright false claims that any new devices will interfere with over-the-air TV broadcasts.

Their scare tactics are aimed at convincing the FCC and Congress to stifle new technologies that can revolutionize our airwaves. Unless we act now, the FCC could side with the broadcasters and deny us one of our last opportunities to deliver a better Internet to more people.

Take Action: Open White Spaces for Everyone

It's a familiar story. Big media companies will use any means to squash new ideas that threaten their control. For too long, our policymakers put the narrow interests of a few conglomerates before innovation, competition and the public good.

Last year we sent 1.5 million letters to Congress and halted the phone and cable industry efforts to kill Net Neutrality. This year, we're fighting to make the Internet available and affordable to everyone. Opening up white spaces is key to creating the healthy competition, consumer choices and technological innovation we need to provide an open Internet to all.

We can win this fight. Take action to open white spaces today.

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net
www.savetheinternet.com

Protect Free Speech

Incredibly, the FCC is considering locking up the final market place of ideas that drives our great democracy. With conservative corporations controlling all of our news media, giving them the final frontier of freedom, the Internet, to lock down to serve their own interests. This is unconscionable. You have two days to speak out.
ACT NOW!

Big corporate communication companies, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast are petitioning the FCC to allow control of the Internet. They think companies that can afford to pay steep fees should be able to travel in the “fast lane” on the Internet.


Those who can’t afford those steep fees will be stuck in the slow lane – from blogs and non-profits to small business and campaigns – most of us will suffer in an internet traffic jam.


If the FCC won’t protect Net Neutrality now, our right to free speech will be impinged and the Internet as we know it will cease to exist.


The FCC is accepting public comments until June 15 – just 2 more days.


Email the FCC now and tell them to Protect Net Neutrality.

Time to Defend Our Freedom of Information

Concerned about protecting our freedom of speech and access to information? The FCC is about to give our rights away to the huge tele-coms who have demonstrated their intent to control our access and expression of information.
This may be our last chance to save the internet from corporate control.

The FCC is on the verge of turning over a large chunk of the public airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed Internet access for 96 percent of American home users.


This public "spectrum" could revolutionize the Internet in America. Its wireless signal passes through concrete buildings and over mountains; it can connect tens of million of Americans that are now being bypassed by Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.


Don't let the FCC turn over these airwaves to the same price-gouging network giants that control wired access. We need a new alternative to DSL and cable. The FCC must use this wireless opportunity to connect more Americans to an open, neutral and accessible Internet.


Save the Internet

Murdoch Almighty: When the Public Loses Opinion

I don't always find GlobalResearch.ca to have a balenced view of the world. However, everyone once in a while, there is a well written article that addresses the truth in a way that is seldom available in the big money dominance of the new media in the US. Here is an article written by a Palestinian activist whose views are present and openly stated, however his point about the media and the "marketplace of ideas" is much the same as the point made by Al Gore a year ago. This is a well written piece. The whole article is worth the read. Here is an excerpt of the key points.

[...]an article in The Guardian on 1 July by Lance Price, former media advisor to the British prime minister, brought the topic [of public spheres, i.e. public opinion] back to mind. Price asserted that media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was arguably the most powerful man in the media world today. Murdoch, an Australian-born US citizen, literally owns a significant share in public opinion through his control of the world's largest media conglomerates.


"I have never met Mr Murdoch, but at times when I worked at Downing Street he seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet. His voice was rarely heard [but, then, the same could have been said of many of the other 23] but his presence was always felt," Price wrote.


Murdoch "attended many crisis meetings at the Home Office -- the influence of the Murdoch press on immigration and asylum policy would make a fascinating PhD thesis," the author of the best-selling The Spin Doctor's Diary added. "There is no small irony in the fact that Tony Blair flew halfway round the world to address Mr Murdoch and his News International executives in the first year of his leadership of the Labour Party and that he's doing so again next month [July, 2006] in what may prove to be his last."


Shocking as they may seem, the revelations of Price, a man once intimately involved in the workings of the British government, appear utterly consistent with the strengthening bond between the mainstream media and governments in Western democracies. Such a bond is equally, but especially visible in the United States.


But the relationship between states and media become even the more dangerous when both team up -- and not by accident -- on the same ideological turf. Murdoch is a right-wing, pro-Israeli (widely known to be a personal friend of Ariel Sharon), pro-war ideologue. In 2003, every editorial page of his raft of 175 newspapers around the world touted the same pro-war mantras. Some might have innocently deduced that the "world's media" were all inadvertently converging on a consensus that sees President Bush as someone who is "acting very morally [and] very correctly", to borrow Murdoch's own language, and that such convergence is a reflection of the overall international public consensus on the matter. Reality, however, was starkly different.


Of course, Murdoch, who owns numerous newspapers, TV stations and news services throughout the world is not the exception, but the norm. In fact, a greater convergence is constantly taking place in the media world in the United States, which gives a few individual media conglomerates unprecedented ownership of thousands of radio and television stations, newspapers, magazines, etc. While some still laud the "freedom of the press", little aware of who owns what, democracy is being greatly compromised: the "life-world" is conceding like never before to the ever-encroaching "system", and a true "public sphere" is almost non-existent, at least in any meaningful form.


While states cannot prevent events or guarantee absolute power for themselves, they've understood the inimitable value of the media in its ability to forge a favourable climate of public opinion that seems incidentally consistent with that of the state. In exchange, the commercial and even ideological interests of those who own the media are always guaranteed. As long as such a correlation is not fully recognised and disabled, true democracy will continue to experience a frightening decline, whereby meaningful participatory democracy is replaced by mere democracy rhetoric used to satisfy political, ideological, and ultimately imperialistic ends. Without a crucial awakening that gives the public back what is rightfully theirs -- its opinion, its public sphere and its democracy -- this downward spiral is likely to continue.

Please Act Immediately to Save the Internet

Congress is poised to privatize the Internet. A resource created by tax payers dollars is being relegated to a private network controlled by Telcom corporations who have demonstrated an inclination to limit access to information and commerce.
Do you want to allow a handful of multinational corporations to control everything you see and hear? Congress must preserve a free and open Internet by creating enforceable network neutrality and keep tollbooths, gatekeepers, and discrimination off my Internet.
Please act immediately to save the Internet. The bill before Congress today promises to take the greatest resource of our Democratic process and gut it into private conduit controlled by big money and the telcoms, restraining commerce and freedom of speech.
Net neutrality is as basic to Democracy as the Bill of Rights, in fact it is one of the few means to express many of those rights in a level open forum. This bill will kill our world's greatest resource for communication today.
Take Action: Sign the Petition -- Don't Let Congress Ruin the Internet

Key Links

MoveOn petition. (Please include - each signer will get future action items.)

Call Congress today.

Original MoveOn email describing the issue.

How gutting Net Neutrality affects regular people (Ipod users, Google users), and proof that telecom companies abuse their power.

Actress Alyssa Milano blogs on Internet freedom.

Our coalition MySpace profile – including a video explaining this issue (please include).

Coalition website (please include – mentioning our partners Gun Owners of America and Craig from Craigslist).

Coalition blog – good recent developments.

A key House committee already voted against Internet freedom. See if your representative is on this committee.

Find out where your representative stands.

Good Articles

Net Losses," New Yorker, March 20, 2006

"Why You Should Care About Net Neutrality," Slate - Prof. Tim Wu Guest Column, May 1, 2006

"Gun Owners, Librarians Unite Against Bells,"Telephony Online, April 24, 2006

"New Group Aims to ‘Save the Internet’" CNet News, April 24, 2006

"Average Joe And Saving The Internet," Webpronews.com, April 24, 2006  

"Panel Vote Shows Rift Over 'Net Neutrality'" Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2006

Freedom In America Is In Danger

If you don't see the pattern, you are not paying attention. The cornerstone of our liberty is our freedom of speech and access to information. Our right to choose and form our own opinions is under grave threat.
1. Journalists from unpopular publications are harassed.

2. All press kicked out of Gitmo except Fox.

3. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin -- backed by the biggest media giants -- is angling to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast "cross-ownership" ban that prevents a single conglomerate from owning the major daily newspaper as well as radio and TV stations in a single market. And he wants to lift local ownership caps on how many TV stations one company can own in your town.

4. A handful of conglomerates control virtually all of our mainstream news.

5. AT&T, Verizon and Comcast lobbying for a law that would abandon the Internet's First Amendment -- a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you -- based on what site pays them the most. A very damaging bill has passed the House.

6. The Bush Administration regularly intimidates the press in a systematic attack on it's credibility.

7. The Bush Administration regularly muzzles and harasses whistle-blowers in a systematic undermining of laws protecting us from government excess.

8. The Bush Administration uses priviledged media plants to taint news coverage.
Because of the loss of newspaper readership, media outlets now controlled by conglomerates with a political agenda are closing off our access to free information, threatening to hollow out our Democracy. If we have access only to propaganda from billionaires, how are we to provide advise and consent to Congress as require under the Constitution?
Listen to an interview with Walter Cronkite on this topic with a rousing debate between media experts.
Take action now to protect our last free access to information: the Internet.

ATT: Your Phone Calls and Internet Records Are Not Yours

ATT asserts that everything you do on their extensive telcom network belongs to them. They claim that phone calls and internet behavior can be shared within their company or with the government at their discretion because it belongs to them.
This assertion has staggering implications. This has been one of the fears of the lack of legislated Net Neutrality. The Broadband providers could claim ownership of your choices, and your behavior. You would no longer have privacy or freedom of choice on the Internet. If people don't wake up to the call, we will no longer have a free society!
WaPo

Consumer advocates said yesterday that a new privacy policy from AT&T Inc. marks the first time a major telecom company has asserted that customer calling and Internet records are corporate property and raises concerns about how the company tracks consumer behavior and shares data with government and law enforcement agencies.


The new privacy policy is scheduled for release today on the company's Web site. AT&T said it does not share the data with third-party marketing firms, but it cites circumstances under which it shares customer information with the government and law enforcement. For its broadband Internet customers, the company also makes clear that it will collect information about which Web pages its customers view, how much time is spent on each page and what links are clicked on.


"While your account information may be personal to you, these records constitute business records that are owned by AT&T," the new policy states. "As such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."

Bush's Veil Over History

New York Times

SECRECY has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts's tenure in the Justice Department, President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. And he has been spectacularly effective, making Richard Nixon look almost transparent.


But perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one.
Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office.


Now, however, Mr. Bush can prevent the public from knowing not only what he did in office, but what Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did in the name of democracy. (Although Mr. Reagan's term ended more than 12 years before the executive order, the Bush administration had filed paperwork in early 2001 to stop the clock, and thus his papers fall under it.)


Bill Clinton publicly objected to the executive order, saying he wanted all his papers open. Yet the Bush administration has nonetheless denied access to documents surrounding the 177 pardons President Clinton granted in the last days of his presidency. Coming without explanation, this action raised questions and fueled conspiracy theories: Is there something to hide? Is there more to know about the controversial pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich? Is there a quid pro quo between Bill Clinton and the Bushes? Is the current president laying a secrecy precedent for pardons he intends to grant? MORE

I would presume Bush has lots to hide. What he plans to do in the future, especially regarding pardons is the least of it. We can't learn from history unless we know what it is. Without disclosure, Presidents truly become above the law. There is no way to hold them accountable for illegal acts. Republicans will certainly not want to disclose Bush shenanigans when it will cost them at the polls.
Just how are we supposed to function as a democracy? An informed populous is to educate itself about government and give advice and consent to those that govern. We do that by voting and consulting with our representatives. If the Presidential papers become secret, just how do we know what we are getting?
Truly, Gore was right, our very way of life is in grave danger.