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.

Image via Wikipedia

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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• Sibel Edmonds Cover Story at 'The American Conservative' (bradblog.com)


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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)


• Bombshell: Bin Laden Worked for US Until 9/11 (citizengkar.wordpress.com)

The Plan for White Slavery?

Image via Wikipedia

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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• Right-Wing Craziness Has Always Been* (themoderatevoice.com)


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• Obama's Justice Department Renews Civil Rights Fight (usnews.com)

Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested at RNC in St. Paul

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

AlterNet

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.
All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar's violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, "I'm Press! Press!," resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman's arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.
On Tuesday, Democracy Now! will broadcast video of these arrests, as well as the broader police action. These will also be available on: www.democracynow.org.
Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman's crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were arrested on suspicion of rioting, a felony. While the three have been released, they all still face charges stemming from their unlawful arrest. Kouddous and Salazar face pending charges of suspicion of felony riot, while Goodman has been officially charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a "peace officer."
Democracy Now! forcefully rejects all of these charges as false and an attempt at intimidation of these journalists. We demand that the charges be immediately and completely dropped.

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Bush Administration Would Have F.B.I. Be Big Brother

The ghost of J. Edgar Hoover has raised it's ugly head in the form of George W. Bush. As part of his legacy, Dubya wants to make legal activities of the FBI make illegal in the 1970s. The plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a file on any American without any clear basis for suspicion. That is what J. Edgar was infamous for. He created files on anyone who he considered a security problem. This included citizens, political writers, commentators, and peaceful protesters as well as members of Congress. He used his files to protect his political interests sometimes at the expense of the average American.
Wikipedia

John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 - May 2, 1972), generally known as J. Edgar Hoover, was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation--predecessor to the FBI--in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. During his life, Hoover was highly regarded by much of the U.S. public, but throughout his career and after his death he became an increasingly controversial figure. His many critics assert that he abused his power and exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI. He is known to have used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to have amassed secret files on political leaders and to have used illegal methods to collect evidence. It is because of Hoover's long and controversial reign that FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.

Bush hopes to remove most if not all of the restrictions imposed on the FBI after it's miss use was exposed in Congress. Legal protections of our civil liberties are necessary. They have been exploited for political gain sometimes harming innocent citizens whenever they have not been forbidden. We have seen this administration routinely use the excuse of "national security" just to cover up it's own illegal activities.
That must stop. This measure must be stopped. Let us hope the wimpy responses of this Congress can be amended.
NYTimes.com

Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.
The plan, which could be made public next month, has already generated intense interest and speculation. Little is known about its precise language, but civil liberties advocates say they fear it could give the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations.
Congressional staff members got a glimpse of some of the details in closed briefings this month, and four Democratic senators told Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey in a letter on Wednesday that they were troubled by what they heard.
The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps "without any basis for suspicion." The plan "might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities," the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
As the end of the Bush administration nears, the White House has been seeking to formalize in law and regulation some of the aggressive counterterrorism steps it has already taken in practice since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Woman Arrested at McCain Event for "McCain=Bush" Sign

Video at AlterNet

A 61-year-old librarian was ejected from an ostensibly public McCain campaign event at the Denver Center of Performing Arts in Denver, CO on June 7 because she was brandishing a deadly memetic weapon: a hand-lettered sign that read "McCain=Bush."
Carol Kreck was standing outside the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on city property. When she was asked to either discard the sign or get out, Ms. Kreck objected that she was standing on city property.
She was lead away by police officers and subsequently ticketed for trespassing. As she was being removed, Kreck asked if was being arrested. The officer answered, "Yes."

Government May Have Massive Surveillance Program for Use in National Emergency

AlterNet

“Main Core,” a program that authorizes “computer searches through massive [unspecified] electronic databases” in order to discover “potential threats” in the event of a “national emergency”:

According to a senior government official…”There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” … One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

These so-called “Continuity of Governance” plans, Radar notes, “are shrouded in extreme secrecy, effectively unregulated by Congress or the courts.” “Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets,” said a former military operative. Furthermore, the NSA domestic surveillance program reportedly “suppl[ies] data to Main Core.”


According to Radar, a “number of former government employees and intelligence sources with independent knowledge of domestic surveillance operations” say Main Core is strikingly similar to what Comey refused to authorize at Ashcroft’s bedside:

[T]he program that caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency. Sources familiar with the program say that the government’s data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

“We are at the edge of a cliff and we’re about to fall off,” said constitutional lawyer and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein. “To a national emergency planner, everybody looks like a danger to stability.”

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.

Court Attacks Free Speech

Los Angeles Times

A coalition of media and public interest organizations went to federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday urging a judge to reconsider his order to shut down a muckraking website that publishes leaked documents from businesses and government agencies worldwide.


Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen and several news organizations, told U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White that two orders he issued last week against wikileaks.org were prior restraints that violated the 1st Amendment.


Laura Handman, a Washington, D.C., attorney for the news organizations, said White's order was so expansive that the only way to describe it was as if a judge had shut down a newspaper because of controversy over one article.


"I can't think of another injunction that was so broad," said Matt Zimmerman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil rights group that focuses on digital issues.


White acted in response to a lawsuit filed Feb. 6 by Julius Baer & Co., a Zurich-based bank, alleging that a disgruntled former employee had posted internal documents alleging money-laundering and tax evasion schemes at its Cayman Islands branch.


Wikileaks.org specifically urges readers to post leaked documents in an effort to discourage "unethical behavior" by corporations and government agencies. Among the 1.2 million documents that Wikileaks says it has posted over the last several years is an operations manual for the controversial U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


Julius Baer, represented by the Century City firm Lavely & Singer, past lawyers for several celebrities in battles with news organizations, alleged that the postings violated privacy and bank secrecy laws of Switzerland and the Cayman Islands and posed a serious threat of identity theft.

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.

Hope For Free Speech in America

Has there ever been freedom of speech in America? It seems to me that there has always been a risk of social-political consequences for expressing an opinion. But when that prohibition prevents us from looking at the wisdom of some of our central assumptions and values in foreign policy, the risk of not discussing is akin to abdicating policy to a hidden agenda. This is exactly what has happened in US policy towards Israel. Anyone who dares disagree with Israel is a candidate for the label of "anti-Semite".
What do you think? Does Jimmy Carter hate Jews? Henry Ford did, and he got away with helping build the German war machine before war broke out. Jimmy just spoke out in public.
Newsweek.com

If it weren't for that single word, apartheid, Carter's book would likely not have become a best seller. "I devised the title myself," he told an audience of former aides and supporters after a screening Tuesday evening in Washington. "I wanted to precipitate a debate that has been totally absent and is still totally absent." It was the first time he had seen the film on the big screen, and he felt it had turned out well despite his initial trepidation. He commended Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for convening a Mideast summit in Annapolis, Md., next month, but decried what he called "a complete dearth" of leadership among the presidential candidates for a balanced approach in the Middle East. In Carter's view, the pro-Israel lobby has made an open discussion "political suicide."

Tutu Excluded - Double Standard at the University of St. Thomas

Here is evidence of incredible hypocrisy from the Mpls's St. Thomas University. Ann Coulter who calls for killing Muslims who won't convert to Christianity can speak there, but Desmond Tutu can't. He has been falsely attributed to comparing Israelis treatment of Palestinians to the Nazi's treatment of the Jews. This apparently lead to his being uninvited.
What incredible hypocrisy demonstrated by one of our honored "Liberal Arts University"!
Informed Comment

Bishop Desmond Tutu has stood all his life for nonviolent peace-making and an end to racism. Obviously, he would be upset about the Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians, and has said so. For that stance he was uninvited from speaking at the Catholic University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.


The "quote" attributed to Bishop Tutu supposedly comparing Israel to Hitler and Nazi Germany was completely made up by the Zionist Organization of American (which has a long history of such cult-like lying and smearing) and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency printed it without fact-checking.


The Israel lobby strikes again, limiting what can be heard in public in the United States about those policies of Israel that are contrary to basic human rights norms.


And here is the kicker. UST is guilty of a whopper of a double standard. Two years ago, the university allowed Ann Coulter to speak on its campus.


Ann Coulter once said of Muslims, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."


Coulter can speak at UST. But not Desmond Tutu.

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

Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions

washingtonpost.com

A federal judge struck down controversial portions of the USA Patriot Act in a ruling that declared them unconstitutional yesterday, ordering the FBI to stop its wide use of a warrantless tactic for obtaining e-mail and telephone data from private companies for counterterrorism investigations.


The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York said the FBI's use of secret "national security letters" to demand such data violates the First Amendment and constitutional provisions on the separation of powers, because the FBI can impose indefinite gag orders on the companies and the courts have little opportunity to review the letters.


The secrecy provisions are "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values," Marrero wrote. His strongly worded 103-page opinion amounted to a rebuke of both the administration and Congress, which had revised the act in 2005 to take into account an earlier ruling by the judge on the same topic.


Anthony D. Romero, head of the ACLU, said the ruling illustrates the "efforts of this administration to use powers that are clearly unconstitutional."

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

Another Enemy of the People

Sometimes it seems that the Bush Administration is so determined to carry out it's agenda, it's willing to chew off it's own leg to get it's way. Now the Bush Administration has turned to harassing a conservative law professor who dared to make a speech critical of the Bush Administration.
Has anyone any doubts how fascistic these guys are? Bush's comment, "You're either with us or against us" takes on a new meaning.
Balkinization

Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton University. For those who do not know, Professor Murphy is easily the most distinguished scholar of public law in political science. His works on both constitutional theory and judicial behavior are classics in the field. Bluntly, legal scholarship that does not engage many themes in his book, briefly noted below, Constitutional Democracy, may be legal, but cannot be said to be scholarship. As interesting, for present purposes, readers of the book will discover that Murphy is hardly a conventional political or legal liberal. While he holds some opinions, most notably on welfare, similar to opinions held on the political left, he is a sharp critic of ROE V. WADE, and supported the Alito nomination. Apparently these credentials and others noted below are no longer sufficient to prevent one from becoming an enemy of the people.


"On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving."


"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."


"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. "

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

India Blocks Internet Access Targetting Blogs

"Democratic" India is looking less so today, by blanket blocking Blogger and Geocities, apparently with concern risk of sharing terroristic ideas and inspiration via the Internet. I'm sure Doublethink Dubya would love to do this too. Thank goodness for rightwing bloggers. They are the only reason we aren't shut down I'm sure.
WaPo

India's department of telecommunications sent an order late last week to Internet service providers to block several Web sites, according to a department spokesman. The spokesman, Rajesh Malhotra, declined to disclose the contents of the letter or discuss the order, saying it was a "confidential exchange of information between the department and the operators."


Several telecom operators confirmed that they were directed to block more than 15 Web sites. Close to a third of those are home to blogs, or personalized Web logs, such as Blogger.com and Geocities.com. Included on a list seen by the Wall Street Journal are sites that showcase views of an Islamic holy man; conservative Hindus; and dalits, the low caste in India pejoratively referred to as untouchables.


The government blacklist follows the July 11 commuter-train bombings in Bombay, which killed an estimated 207 people. It isn't clear whether the move was related to the blasts, in which Indian officials suspect militants in neighboring Pakistan.

Alternate access for those blocked: