The Sunday Evening Post: Censorship Edition

Internet Censorship Comes to the Western World

The Internet Is such a powerful tool for exposing those who do wrong, and everyone from the suburban mother to the Chinese government realizes that. Australia also seems to know that and is preparing a blacklist that that blocks a government accountability website, WikiLeaks. The reason for the block is that WikiLeaks exposes government website censorship lists, which in turn list out sites containing illegal porn. There is absolutely no reason to block WikiLeaks if their web filters work correctly, just because there’s a list somewhere of banned websites doesn’t give anyone inside Australia a magic key to get past their filter.

GOP Wants Execs to Keep Multimillion Bonuses

There’s been a huge firestorm over the million dollars bonuses executives and others associated with AIG have received. The Republicans have been steady lambasting Democrats, especially Chris Dodd, in an attempt to make them look like corporate cronies. But when it came to doing something about the reckless bonuses the majority of House Republicans voted to let AIG executives keep over $200 million of taxpayers money.

Obama Administration Really Understands Energy

Six people in the Obama administration don’t drive cars. Presumably they have the funds to acquire a vehicle but have decided that since DC has so many other great ways to get around (Metro, bicycle, walking, and even the dreaded bus) they don’t want a polluting and fattening automobile. It’s great to see that some of the people making energy policy decisions like Carol Browner, the Energy and Environment Czarina and Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy understand that automobiles are a huge part of the global warming problem. Hat tip, CommuterPageBlog.

Rising from the Ashes of the Burning Bush

I was nine years old when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States in 2000. I now realize that half of my life has been spent under the rule of King George II. I decided that the best way to commemorate his presidency was to look back on the ups and downs of a tumultuous eight years that changed American culture and society forever.

In September 2001 George W. Bush had been president for only eight months. He became president after one of the most controversial elections in American history. He lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but still found himself sitting at the desk in the oval office at the White House thanks to the Electoral College.

That September America was attacked on the eleventh day of that month. The President was visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. One of his aides whispered in his ear that America had been attacked. What followed was one of Bush’s most critiqued presidential moments. He didn’t freak out, jump up, and run out of the building. Instead he sat and thought. Should the President have gotten up, acted more swiftly and confidently? Should he have sat there like he did as to not panic the children in the room? He did the latter, and days later, on September 14th, in New York City at ground zero he showed a confidence in his ability to track down the people who had crashed a plane into the ground in Pennsylvania, attacked the Pentagon, and demolished the Twin Towers. “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon,” he said.

A year and half later, on March 13, 2003, Bush felt it was time to get back at those who attacked us, but we suddenly found ourselves in Iraq. We had been in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001, the location commonly believed to be near where Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11 lives. But instead, we chose to focus our resources elsewhere, and we invaded Iraq under pretenses that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction.

“Mission Accomplished,” read on a banner a little over a month later on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Bush said that we had been victorious with our major combat operations. “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” Bush declared. But, we would find ourselves in Iraq to this very day, and the terrorist who had planned 9/11, Bin Laden, still not yet captured.

The President’s re-election bid in 2004 blindsided many Americans who felt he was sure to lose that one at least. He didn’t, and America had just signed up for four more years of “Dubya.”

At the end of August, 2005 brought us the year of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in American history. President Bush was criticized for his slow reaction to rescuing and providing aid to the victims of the hurricane. He had appointed one of his friends to be the head of the Federal Emergency Management Association, Michael Brown. Brown resigned shortly after President Bush told him, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” It was also reported that Bush had been vacationing in Arizona at the time of the disaster, and when it came time to visit New Orleans for his first time since the disaster, he flew over in an airplane instead of walking among the people.

The war in Iraq had reached its most difficult year in 2006. Americans wanted out, but Bush stuck to his guns and stayed. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, also resigned that year after revelations of mismanagement in war strategy and that nine billion dollars had gone missing. Photos of tortured prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq also fueled the fire of American unrest. In January 2007, Bush even committed to sending more troops to Iraq as part of his “surge” plan.

This year, in 2008, we witnessed the devastating fall of the American economy. Private banks were bought by the government to save them from going under. American automakers find themselves on their own brink of collapse. And, now we can officially say that we are in a recession.

As George W. Bush enters his final days in office we can look back and say that he has at least done one thing right. That is his graciousness at a time of the transition of power in America. Barack Obama won the presidency this year, and I’m sure when Obama spoke to Bush over the telephone on election night that he thanked him for doing all that he did over the last eight years, right and wrong (mostly wrong) to help him get elected.

Today is a good day

I’m sure that I’m not the only one who was upset with the preliminary Senate results this year. Sure, the Democrats did great, but Ted Stevens was winning in Alaska. Convicted felon/Senator Ted “The Internet Is A Series of Tubes” Stevens was getting re-elected.

Today though, the final results have come out, and Ted Stevens has lost the Alaska Senate race. By just a few votes, Democrat Mark Begich has won a seat in the Senate. This makes Stevens the longest serving senator to lose re-election. Save for an end to corruption, and Joe Lieberman admitting he isn’t a Democrat, this is the best thing that could possibly happen to the Senate this election season.

Goodbye Senator Stevens. You will not be missed.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8[/youtube]

The American Dream Deferred

The American Dream Deferred

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men. “-Woodrow Wilson

It has been many years since the time of American Dreams realized. It would seem, since the birth of this great nation, that we the people have forgotten to realize the vision. A vision , that sculpted the mountain of the American way and made the U.S. the pinnacle of the World. Founded on the principles of liberty, freedom, and justice for all, we have throughout history contradicted the very principles that made us who we are. We as America have been the wind that has carried democracy, natural rights, and freedom throughout the valleys of the world, yet we deny many who are our fellow the natural right for well being.

Today’s America has matured from the days of slavery, denial of women’s rights, civil rights for all Americans, and public discriminatory racism to childish bickering of democrats versus republicans, conservatives versus liberals, and patriots and terrorism. When will the debauchery in America end. When will our greed and selfishness be replaced with Americanism and selflessness. People elect their representatives for irrational views than for the commonwealth of people and our nation. Our country bled the blood of countrymen for rights of freedom of religion but dictated politicians to the code of “Christianity”. Our spite of our fellow man and self interest blind our founding principles of the American way. The American dream.

Somehow we as a people have tarnished the glorious western light of liberty with pettiness and and foreign bullying. We arrogantly borrow from countries whose governmental ideologies differ from one another and then shove democracy in to nations whose culture and religion that conflicts with our concepts. The American Dream has evolved into the nightmare from the west, who dictates and forces our religion and democratic ideologies on the very difference that we cherish as America. How have we stray so far from home. Why do we roam for fear and force instead of exploration and innovation. We have allowed our fear to distort our vision of the world and manipulated Christianity to justify the cause.

It is that clouded judgment that has somehow made Christianity a qualification to be a real American. In a country founded on the bases of freedom of religion, we have become a nation that persecutes and isolate those whose religious preference differs from our own. In today’s world, we fight the crusade against Muslim nations and label it the war on terror so we can have a clear conscience. when we go to bed at night. Subsequently. we have become the very terrorist we despise and seek out. Not to point fingers but, it seems since Conservative Republicans took office eight years ago, hate, fear, and deception has been the fuel that drove our military into the heart of Muslim nations to wage war with and idea.

From observation of this nation’s past decade, one notion is true the American dream has been lost, abandoned for hate, diminished by fear and discouraged by deception. When will she return, when lady America grace American shores with her glory. It is not certain the time nor the hour, but merely determined by the minds and hearts of the American People who dream the dream of dreams.- William R. Gilbert, Jr.

Maryland Police Spied on Peace Protesters

When Republican governor Robert Ehrlich governed Maryland, police infiltrated anti war and anti death penalty groups with undercover officers. The police found no illegal activity occurring, but invested over 200 hours of surveillance of various groups reports the Washington Post:

Detailed intelligence reports logged by at least two agents in the police department’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division reveal close monitoring of the movements as the Iraq war and capital punishment were heatedly debated in 2005 and 2006.

Organizational meetings, public forums, prison vigils, rallies outside the State House in Annapolis and e-mail group lists were infiltrated by police posing as peace activists and death penalty opponents, the records show. The surveillance continued even though the logs contained no reports of illegal activity and consistently indicated that the activists were not planning violent protests.

While attending a meeting as undercover officers isn’t technically illegal, it still does raise some flags. But then we found out that various participants were described as “anarchist and socialist” and one was entered into a criminal database:

A well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, 63, was singled out by the undercover agents and entered into a “Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area” database. His entry indicates a “Primary Crime” of “Terrorism-anti-government” and a “Secondary Crime” of “Terrorism-Anti-War Protesters,” according to the documents.

These anti-violence groups never did anything violent (I know, shocking) to advance their interests. The police eventually concluded that their might be “tensions” but nothing particularly dangerous about their protests. What’s not clear is if the now Democratic governor, Martin O’Malley has continued these surveillance programs.

Update

Current Democratic governor Martin O’Malley has commented on this matter, as the Post writes in a follow up article:

Governor Martin O’Malley says state police are obligated to investigate threats to public safety, but his administration will not use public resources to monitor the peaceful exercise of free speech.

The governor noted Friday that state police must investigate threats to public safety. But if there is no evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing, all intelligence gathering must stop.

Republican Congressman Turns into Arms Dealer

That headline isn’t a crime in itself, plenty of politicians go to work for large defense contractors, who are basically arms dealers. The problem here is that a former Republican congressman, Curt Weldon (PA) is brokering arms deals with blacklisted countries like Iran and Russia:

Former congressman Curt Weldon is helping broker deals between Russian and Ukranian weapons suppliers and the Iraqi and Libyan governments as part of his new job with a private American defense consulting firm, Wired.com has learned.

Weldon, who is currently being investigated by the FBI over alleged corruption during his time in office, visited Libya in March to discuss a possible military deal, according to a letter describing the trip from Weldon to Defense Solutions CEO Timothy Ringgold. In May, Weldon, together with Ringgold and another company representative, traveled to Moscow to discuss working with Russia’s weapons-export agency on arms sales to the Middle East.

Both trips were part of the company’s effort to tap into the growing — and often legally murky — market for selling weapons from former Eastern Bloc countries to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The reason this is described as legaly murky, is because he is operating as a middle man to supply countries with Soviet weapons they already have, and that were never manufactured in the US. While it may legally okay, it certainly is morally and politically dubious.

But doesn’t it seem like the party (Republicans) that likes to falsely flaunt a strong security record would have ties to selling weapons to former enemies, and other countries that regularly export anti-Americanism and terrorism? This reminds me of the situation last year when another Republican senator was charged with laundering money Al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Vulnerable Republicans: The Mitch McConnell Edition!

Nationwide backlash against the Republican Party cost them control of the Congress in 2006. This year, the same backlash could cost them 20-30 seats in the House, and as many as 6 or 7 in the Senate. Among the handful of Republican Senators worried about their jobs is none other than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). From Rasmussen:

United States Senator Mitch McConnell has a seven-point advantage over Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford in the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Kentucky voters. It’s McConnell 48%, Lunsford 41%.

[...]

Still, any incumbent who polls below the 50% level of support is considered potentially vulnerable and McConnell remains in that category.

Under Senator McConnell’s leadership, the Republican Party has engaged in almost-unprecedented obstructionism, using parliamentary tactics to consistently block promising pieces of legislation put forth by the Democratic majority. The only factor in play making McConnell a tough challenge is the generally-Conservative nature of his home state. However, while Kentucky may be Conservative, I can’t conceive of the people of Kentucky appreciating counterproductive politics and politicians any more than the people of any other state in the nation. That could make all the difference.

I Am An Angry Voter

I am an angry voter. I worry that a McCain or Clinton administration will continue the same Washington politics that are destroying our nation. Like politicians getting free vacations trips to tropical destinations for signing free trade deals at the request of lobbyists.

There are many blacks like me that share this same anger, and even bitterness.  Some blue collar workers might look at some blacks as lazy, destructive people on welfare and wonder why we’re surprised Wal-Mart won’t open and bring employment opportunities in black neighborhoods. And then some blacks might look at the white male factory worker as getting what he deserves, because for past generations he had a free “white male” card.

But in the end the white father and the black father are both angry when they find it hard to place food on the table. Whether as Americans, they scrape money from the grandparents or from the federal government, the shame of not being able to provide for your own family creates anger at the system.

But the media (which is funded by corporations) and selfish politicians are seeking to divide Americans that are affected by the same failed economic policies, so that they can rake in more money and profits. They’re creating “voter outrage” of Barack Obama’s “bitter” comments.

His statement was intended to help a group of elitist California fund raisers understand what the unemployed American feels. Every election cycle presidents and senators pose against shuttered factories and promise jobs. And the January after each election cycle we see more American jobs sent to places like Asia and South America.

The Washington and corporate establishment is scared that a candidate has finally called politicians on their economic BS. The establishment is worried that blue collar America and urban America might realize our economic issues are the same. If Americans are able to look past the small differences that separate us, and exercise our right to make America a better place, corrupt politicians and companies looking at short term and selfish gains will be forced to change or leave.

Bitter is not a bad word. I am “Marked by resentment or cynicism” as the dictionary says, when it comes to politics. When watching you, your family, your community, and your country slowly dieing because of irresponsible decision making, it is no shame to be a bitter voter.

Cross posted at my personal site.

Corporate Control

It is a well-known and unfortunate fact in the United States that businesses, corporations, and special interests play a much greater role in our politics and government than we would certainly like it to. There has been, for decades, if not centuries, the element to our politics that is the corrupting influence of money. It has become particularly pronounced in recent years, especially in this 2008 Presidential Election, where candidates of both political parties are raising millions and millions of dollars each in campaign cash. In fact, this could be the first billion-dollar presidential campaign in our country’s history. That is, assuredly, not a positive sign.

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The Illogicality of Perpetual Wars

Throughout human history, humankind has been fond of waging perpetual wars, the meaning of which being a war waged upon an enemy that can never be definitively defeated. We likely do this because we are rather illogical creatures, creatures whose passions and prejudices can easily trump logic. In modern times, one place in the world where this illogicality of perpetual war has fully taken root is the United States of America. Given, all countries behave illogically to some extent (as they are all governed by fallible human beings), but America is the one that I know the most about. This illogicality is illustrated perfectly by two “wars”, one military and one not, that America currently is waging: the War on Terror and the War on Drugs.

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Trade

Trade is an issue which, relative to more prominent issues, many do not feel strongly about. It is an issue upon which the mainstream candidates from each of the major parties agree, so it can not be used as an issue to inflame voters with partisanship and get them to go to the polls to vote against the opposition party. Trade is quite unlike the issues of abortion, or gay marriage, or the War in Iraq, in that respect. However, I believe that Trade is a very important issue which affects all of our lives here in the United States on a daily basis. Specifically, whether the United States assumes the policies of Free Trade or of Fair Trade.

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Republican Congressman Supported al-Qaida and Taliban

Just when you thought Republican corruption had hit a peak, a Kansas City grand jury charged former representative Mark Deli Siljander (R-Michigcan), who was also Reagan appointee to the UN, with money laundering, fraud and 42 other counts. Here’s what the Kansas City Star said:

A Kansas City grand jury has charged a defunct charity in Columbia with sending money to an Afghan terrorist with ties to al Qaida and the Taliban.

The indictment, returned early this afternoon, also accuses a former U.S. congressman of money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

Siljander received $50,000 in stolen money to lobby the US senate to remove the terrorist financing organization from a list of banned non profits. The money was removed from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The charges where appended to an investigation of Islamic American Relief Agency, which has sent money to al-Qaida and Taliban

The only thing we have to fear is…

Franklin Roosevelt said in his First Inaugural Address, during the thick of the Great Depression, to a frightened, uncertain, and despairing population: “Firstly, I would like to assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is… fear itself.” Roosevelt, arguably one of the greatest Presidents of these united states, gave new hope and comfort to the down-trodden population with his first address to the American people. And, ultimately, he would assuage the people’s fears altogether by lifting them out of the terrible Depression. 

In 1933 and the years following Roosevelt’s Inauguration, the leaders of yesteryear triumphed over the problems facing them. We must face many new challenges in this new millennium, and it seems to me that we have something new that should be feared above all. Read more

Corporate Censorship

You may or may not know that Former Alaskan Senator and current 2008 presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, Mike Gravel, has been excluded from the October 30th MSNBC Democratic debate and will be excluded from the November 15th CNN debate. He met all of the arbitrary requirements for the November 15th debate, except for one: he has not raised $1 million dollars. This only serves to further the corruption and influence of money in our politics, which is ridiculous considering that most Americans believe that there is already an inordinate emphasis on money in politics. (For example, Chris Dodd has about the same amount of support levels as Mike Gravel, and yet Dodd has raised over $13 million total? How is that possible?)

So, Gravel is holding an Alternative debate on November 15th (which will be able to be seen on Ustream.tv). But I am not writing here to simply rally support against Gravel’s censorship. It is my duty to address the full scope of the problem, so I would also like to note the problem of censorship by the media in general, and its implications for our society.

Gravel is certainly not the first candidate to have been censored by the media. Ralph Nader (who I defend against accusations that he is the reason that Al Gore lost in 2000), Dennis Kucinich, and countless others who don’t quite fit the mainstream media’s ideas, or who are not corrupt and don’t take money from special interests and corporations, have been censored or are in danger of being censored.

Because, you see, if a candidate is not in the pocket of the corporation that owns the media, then it is against the self-interest of the corporation to allow that candidate to speak out on the media outlets that the corporation controls. This works vice-versa, as well. Candidates who are in the pockets of the corporations that own the media will be allowed to speak on the media outlets that the corporation owns.

This corporate influence in our media only serves to make sure that the candidates that we elect to our highest offices in the land are the most corrupt candidates. It serves to make sure that the candidates with the most integrity are silenced. It’s no wonder that we have such a sorry bunch of representatives in Washington. It’s no wonder that we have a man like George W. Bush as president. Unfortunately, their lack of integrity is why they win.

It is very dangerous to allow the corporate media to have this kind of power over us, to thin out the field of candidates before a single vote is even cast. It undermines the values which our democracy was founded upon, and it undermines our democratic elections. Are we really such a democracy after all, when the rich and powerful alone decides who runs our government? Our government is not of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

Our so-called “democracy” is currently in a very unfortunate state. It’s time to bring Democracy back.

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