Check this out:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/30/amy_goodman_detained_at_canadian_border

I’m a volunteer with my local campus radio and Democracy Now has been a long time staple. Ms. Goodman was detained while on her way to speak at the Vancouver Public Library at a benefit for community radio stations.

She was clearly screened as a potential Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics protester. The border guard demanded to see her notes and prodded her at length about what she would be discussing at her talk in Vancouver. They kept her more than an hour and a half late to the talks.

Clearly screening for 2010 Olympics protesters. It looks awful, and someone should respond. I recently crossed from Victoria through to Seattle by ferry and back again and noticed no such screening, but now I wonder if I was not paying attention.

The point around the 22 minute mark is crucial: It is a threat to the free flow of information if journalists feel that they cannot cover certain topics without fear of being detained or questioned.

On the bright side, hey, new studio!

This will give the issue a bit of exposure in the U.S. Most notably, the increasing movement toward detention for dissension and displacement of the street folk of DTES; as well of the complete lack of transparency regarding government activities surrounding these issues.

I wonder if protesters, journalists, and speakers are best to cross through Victoria and take the ferry to Vancover. It would lengthen travel by 2-3 hours. Probably as time goes on Victoria would be no better.

A collection of sensitive Soviet and Warsaw Pact military journals from 1961 to 1984 providing a view into Warsaw Pact military strategy.

Click here.

O  thanks o great lucky collge for puttin me on probation. Please now put all F grade on all courses taked . I want u to .  There is no reason to go back to your campus cause u will expell me for the next 1000 years.  Thats right i bearly got out of that place at  hammerky and gessner.  Its a good idea to have 2 high  school diplomas .  Where is that old man called WW Emmons  i need to give him back that piece of shit paper called a diploma. Least i can wipe my ass with it.  Thats rite im not in a good fuccking mood.  Gofer dont need no good jog no fuin way.  Weak wage will do.  Looks like when bozo gets one they gone to work till there dead.  U know those bull shitters lied at ITT they sure did   . Nope goard ant going to meet those suckers no way.  They just wont to suck some on in there.  Army Salvaton thats the next place  may be find a cot at the star of hope.  No garfe is not smart enough to tie there own shoes, in fact they should be come retarted.  Thats right.

We Are Change Chicago - November 30, 2009

CHICAGO IL – On Tuesday, November 24th 2009, We Are Change Chicago attended a book signing with former vice president Al Gore, at the Borders Bookstore on 150 N. State Street.

The previous Thursday, news had begun to circulate that hacked documents and communications from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) had been published to the internet. The information revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change. Please review ClimateGate for Dummies.

To ensure the public that the media and Al Gore are aware of the facts that prove global warming to be a hoax, patriots from WAC Chicago marched to the book signing. Scattered throughout a crowd of a few hundred were members of WAC Chicago ready to ask Al Gore what he thought about ‘ClimateGate.’

First up was Saad Ali. As he approached Gore, he peacefully and respectably asked, “Sir, can you comment on the emails and documents that were hacked [ClimateGate] that reveal… that the research was a fraud and that it was all manipulated?” Gore, with an evil smirk, claimed that “he never read them.” By the look on his face and his stutter, it became quite clear that Gore was extremely uncomfortable with the question, so he quickly glared towards his security. The agents grabbed and assaulted Saad, escorting him away from Gore for merely asking a simple question. The press took notice and started filming and snapping pictures of what was going on. One of which appeared the next day in the Chicago Sun Times.

Following Saad’s confrontation, Sati Word, a member of WAC Chicago, questioned Gore on why the IPCC hasn’t released any reports on sunspot activity. However, before he could get an answer from Gore, security grabbed Sati and escorted him out of the building.

A little while later, Anthony, an activist from We Are Change Ohio, approached Gore and handed him the petition of the 31,486 scientists who say that Global Warming is a complete hoax. Anthony asked, “What do you think about the science behind this sir?” Mr. Gore rolled his eyes, and security escorted him out of the building.

Steve (swizzlesteve), was the last activist to question Gore. Within seconds of asking, “Any comments on ClimateGate? The emails that prove it’s a scam, a farce, that global warming is a joke, any comment?” Mr. Gore is heard to utter a few “uhhhhhhhs” and security quickly steps in to remove him as well.

The press was waiting outside Borders. They wanted to find out who this group was, that dared question what the elite had forced us to consume as truth. WBBM news radio, 780, ran a sound bite of WAC Chicago, WGN news ran footage, Medill Reports wrote an article, and blog posts were popping up all over the internet about the Al Gore confrontation in Chicago. Many also asked about the footage of WAC Chicago chasing after Gore’s SUV after the event. You will find all of it in this video. Al Gore was confronted multiple times in line, outside the event as he rushed to his waiting Mercedes SUV, (were you expecting something electric?), and once again in the streets of Chicago. We Are Change had people outside with signs, banners, fliers, and DVDs.  Activists were inside asking questions and demanding answers; the world is waking up, it’s a great time to be alive.

Restore The Republic

Link to original article below…

http://www.wearechangechicago.com/algore.html

I dont know what to say .  If some well fat lady wants over here with a tidy cave ok.  Then just rub her down i guess. Feet first  work up from there. O then one leg to the other. Then back shoulders.

Government officials are working at breakneck speed to halt the pending declassification of millions of historical records scheduled for release next month, according to a report by Secrecy News.

The Office of Management and Budget has asked federal agencies to return comments on a new executive order on the classification of national security information by Nov. 23, according to the report. The revised order preempts the current Bush administration executive order that set a Dec. 31 deadline for automatic declassification of historical records passed between agencies that are more than 25 years old.

The Obama administration’s proposed new executive order comes in response to government complaints that the end-of-year deadline does not give agencies enough time to review the records slated for release.

According to Secrecy News, the potential executive order proposes that instead of automatically releasing the records — some of which date back to World War II — archival documents would first be processed by a national declassification center that does not yet exist.

BEIJING – The week before the visit of United States President Barack Obama, the Chinese media were full of hope and expectations: Obama’s meeting with China’s leaders would lead to new and higher-level bilateral relations, newspapers wrote. But it was already clear that, contrary to the ideas of the foreign press, this would not mean that China was to become a second America.

In fact, on November 14, less than 48 hours before Obama’s arrival in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency released a long statement in Chinese only explaining that Xi Jinping, vice president of the state and president of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Central Party School), had held a conference about the necessity to “actively encourage the building of a ruling party study model of Marxism“.

Xi, in his speech at the Party School, which was chaired by Li Jingtian, the executive vice president of the same school, recommended studying socialist theory with Chinese characteristics and applying the “core values of socialism”

The school is the highest institution in the country to train officials of the Communist Party of China.

It sounds like a trip back in time, light years away from the wave of freshness and optimism that seems to blow in the West and in the US around Obama, with his liberal, charismatic aura.

But it is not an isolated gesture. The strong emphasis on Marxism has been echoed by headlines in recent months. The current economic crisis places in question the faith, previously almost blind in China, in the capitalist system.

On November 11, the Chinese edition of Global Times, China’s best-selling national newspaper, led the front page with a report that a BBC survey in 21 countries had found that a majority of people no longer had confidence in capitalism. (More than 29,000 people in 27 countries were questioned. In only two countries, the United States and Pakistan, did more than one in five people feel that capitalism works well as it stands.)

In a sense, China is emerging from decades of reticence about its political system. On November 13 and 14, immediately before Obama arrived in Beijing, Zheng Bijian, credited as a political adviser to President Hu Jintao, flew to Taiwan to take part for the first time in a seminar on political systems. Zheng was executive vice president of the Party School in the 1990s when Hu was its president.

t was the first time that a very senior Beijing official had agreed to discuss the differences between the political systems in China and Taiwan, which have been a major stumbling block in any potential process of reunification of the island with the mainland. Taiwan is a parliamentary democracy, and China isn’t.

The message appears to be that with the current crisis – which is economic, but to a certain extent systemic in the US – China is having renewed doubts about the value of the US and Western system, and is growing cautious.

This does not mean that Beijing will turn back or stop, although it is willing to explore different directions.

In his speech, Xi coined a new term in China’s ultra-coded political rhetoric: “The ruling party study model of Marxism.” The definition is cryptic for people in the West, but it is still clearly miles away from the days when the party called itself “Communist Marxist-Leninist“.

The indications are that the Chinese are no longer inclined to define their party as “communist”, although they acknowledge a real, not simply rhetorical, value in the study of Marxism and the “core values of socialism”. China is becoming more convinced and self-confident in its trial reforms of the political system.

This greater confidence was evidenced in Zheng Bijian’s trip to Taiwan. In essence, the message to the Taiwanese, who might still one day unite with the mainland, was, “We will certainly change our political system, but your parliamentary democracy also must reform; otherwise, it risks being derailed and overwhelmed by demagoguery and populism.”

Zheng’s position is not without support on the island, where many entrepreneurs and tycoons are beginning to admire the efficiency and economic success in mainland China.

China’s leaders stress they do not want to export their political model, and they even ask others not to imitate them but to look for their own development paths. Still, China’s politicians are becoming unwilling to endure lectures on politics or ethics, given the fact that their system is working today, while others falter.

In the run-up to Obama’s visit, all this meant that the message to the visitor was to keep domestic politics out of big-policy discussions. But it was also a statement: China is reforming its political system, although it might not be totally along the lines Washington or the West wants to see.

Some high-caliber reporting about Florida’s Castle Doctrineright here:

Whoops! There goes Harold! Just an accident!

And all because one of its contributors wrote articles critical of his former employer. A court in Cherepovets placed the internet magazine (http://zhurnal.lib.ru/) on the Justice Ministry’s list of extremist publications after retired Severstal employee Vitaly Dunayev used the site to publish articles attacking the steel and mining giant’s owner, Alexei Mordashov.

The court ruling sees the entire samizdat website pigeonholed alongside those of neo-Nazi and radical Islamist groups. Distribution of any of its articles, and not just those penned by Dunayev, whose essays, according to The Moscow Times, were described by prosecutors as “propaganda” against officials and Severstal management, is, as a result, a criminal offence punishable by a fine and/or spell in gaol.

Severstal is, coincidentally, the city’s main employer. Funny that . . . .

TV Audience in Washington, D.C. Metro Area Prefers Watching Russia Today To Other Foreign TV News in Prime Time

According to the survey by Nielsen Media Research, Washington, D.C. DMA* TV audience prefers watching news on Russia Today TV (RT) in prime time, rather than news on Al Jazeera English, Deutsche Welle, France 24, Euronews and CCTV-9 PRWeb.com reports.

Nielsen reported that RT’s daily audience is over 6.5 times bigger than that of Al Jazeera English, the second most popular source of TV news among foreign broadcasters in the US after BBC. RT’s monthly audience is 5 times bigger than that of Deutsche Welle.

RT is a relative newcomer to a well-saturated TV news market, and its budget is a fraction of that of any of its competitors among international TV news broadcasters.

“We are pleased that residents of Washington and its suburbs – in other words, the people who generally define American politics – often prefer to get their news from RT. We believe it proves again that the channel has chosen the right strategy. From the very beginning we’ve been aiming to show our viewers news that they won’t be able to find on other channels. It’s nice to know that such an approach is proving attractive for the most educated and influential part of the American viewing audience,” – said Margarita Simonyan, RT’s Editor-in-Chief.

Nielsen Media Research carried out the research in July 2009, which focused on TV-audience of Washington DMA.

RT is available to almost five million viewers in the Washington Area on the following platforms: MHz Networks 5: Comcast Cable, Cox Cable, RCN Cable, Dish Network and Verizon FIOS TV.

* Washington DMA Designated Market Area, is a term coined by Nielsen Media Research to define groupings of mutually exclusive television marketing areas. The Washington DMA in 2008 consists of 33 counties and seven independent cities, in four states and the District of Columbia, with a total of 2,334,800 households.

About the research: 4574 respondents participated in the poll, which was conducted by phone from May to July, 2009. The respondents were subscribers of leading TV operators such as Comcast, RCN, Cox, DirecTV, Dish Network, who know RT and have access to it among other subscription channels.

Men and women (age 18 and above) were polled. Information about social membership: 13.4% work in management, 10.7% own companies and businesses. Over 10% of respondents said that their annual income amounted to $200,000 or more.

The top lawyer at the Central Intelligence Agency, General Counsel Stephen Preston, recently introduced himself during an American Bar Association conference on national security as “the chief legal officer of a well-understood and enormously popular agency, the object of universal praise and appreciation.” He was greeted with laughter, reports The Washington Post.

We imagine that as Mr. Preston went on to describe some of the issues on his plate, the grins faded. The multitude of problems faced by the national security agency are no laughing matter. They include:

–Two criminal investigations by the Department of Justice. One is looking into the destruction of videotapes of interrogations of three detained terrorists who were waterboarded. The other is a special prosecutor’s review of previously dismissed allegations of detainee abuse by CIA personnel;

–Inquiries by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into CIA detention and interrogation programs and its “rendition” or transfer of suspected terrorists sought by other nations;

–Three different White House task forces addressing CIA interrogations, prisoner transfers, disposition of Guantanamo detainees and future detention policies;

–Responses to legal challenges from detained terrorists;

–Preparing documents and testimony for terrorist prosecutions in military commissions and federal courts.

The red-tape wrapping of the CIA comes from the Supreme Court’s gift of legal rights to military detainees. And the determination of the White House, the Justice Department and Senate Democrats to rewrite terror war procedures adopted by the Bush administration contemplates punishing people who thought they were acting legally.

Maybe one day the CIA will be allowed to devote its energies solely to gathering intelligence needed to further counter terrorism. The threat is still out there, even as all these assuredly well-intentioned probes into agency operations continue.