Glenn Greenwald, well respected journalist, constitutional attorney, and best selling author gave an informative speech in New Mexico on March 8 2011. I highly recommend listing to the speech and follow-up Q&A period despite the length (combined approx 90 minutes).
Presentation here, through Lannan Podcasts. Q&A here with long time journalist, David Barsamian is here.
You can pre-order Glenn Greenwald’s next book through Amazon here.
Art by great street artist Banksy. Check out some of his art at ResourcesforLife or his web page.
For almost 20 years, Wisconsin had one of the best representatives in the Senate, Russ Feingold. After 3 months of his replacement, Scott Walker, the people of Wisconsin have had enough. Here is the video of Michael Moore addressing the courageous Wisconsin elite.
The 4th amendment to the United States Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
If you have set foot in an American airport, you will notice these rights being violated. To a more and more extreme degree, these rights are being crushed by Government officials who use fear as their weapon. Bags and persons have been searched with neither warrant nor cause in actions that could not violate the Constitution in any clearer terms. Most recently, people, regardless of age, are required to either have their naked body revealed, their entire body molested (including genitalia and breasts) or be arrested and/or fined a large amount.
Folks, we have finally reached the tipping point. The citizens will not allow their Constitution violated like this anymore.
John Tyner, an ordinary American, brought these tactics to light by videotaping security at an airport. He posted the video on his website here. There are many scary and creepy parts to the video, such as the security peon who describes how he plans to touch Tyner’s legs and crotch, but one phrase stated by security keeps getting repeated in my mind –
you gave up most of your rights when you bought a ticket.
He said what? Yes, the position of these scumbags is that all Constitutional rights are waived once they decided on Air travel. I guess there is no good argument to why they have to see your kids naked and grope your grandma, so they will come up with anything.
More info on this here at FDL. Please do sign the petition here to stop this illegal harassment. Although the petition inaccurately refers to the scanners as ‘porno scanners’ (nudity does not equal pornography), the more signatures we have, the better.
In March 2009, new President Obama held a ‘Health Summit‘ at the White House to ‘kick start his Health Care Plan’. At the time, the stock prices of the 2 largest Health Insurance Companies were:
Wellpoint, Inc. $31.01/share
United Health Group Inc. $16.57/share
By June 2009, hatred and distrust of Health Insurance Companies were still high. Polls showed public support for a public health plan by 72% to 20% and were significantly higher than support of private industry, even among Republicans.
By September 2009, support for a public health plan was even higher, but evidence that the Obama administration had already made a deal with the Health Industry were openly discussed.
In March 2010, Obama signed the Health Care Bill into Law, without the public option. What was the state of the Health Insurance Industry, hated by the public for bad service and high costs, while people suffered around the country?
At the time the Bill was signed in March 2010, the stock prices of the 2 largest Health Insurance Companies were:
Wellpoint, Inc. $66.33/share
United Health Group Inc. $35.16/share
Yes, their worth more than doubled. The Obama Health Care Bill is a large financial gift to the Health Industry.
I understand why people continue to support the Obama administration, even if I don’t agree with it. Here are a few reasons they do:
1. There are only 2 options, Democrats and The Republicans and other right wingers (so called tea party and libertarians): crazy, hateful, ignorant, thieves who constantly get attention, scaring us into believing anything else must be good.
2. Current and past racism in America is so disgusting and vile that instinctively, criticism of the first Black president feels wrong. This feeling is reenforced by racist criticism coming through from Republicans and Tea Baggers. Get over it – the Obama administration has made it worse for Black Americans. Prison rate, poverty, employment, health – everything has gotten much worse since Obama took over. It is actually more harmful to African Americans to continually support politicians and other governors (Judge Clarence Thomas) based on the color of their skin, rather than looking at their policies.
3. Obama is very convincing. I can’t listen to him anymore because I know he is lying, but he could convince me to sell my neighbors’ internal organs for donation money.
4. Confirmation bias. The emotion of support for Obama’s candidacy, as he ran against George W. Bush, the least popular president since Harry S Truman, convinced everyone that he was the right choice. This is hard to drop.
5. Supporting a ‘third party’ that supports the people, rather than the large governing corporations is a long term difficult and sometimes abstract process. Picking the seemingly best candidate put forth by the same large governing corporations is much easier, although self destructive.
Thanks to you readers who contacted me, wondering when I will post again. Well, ‘ere I am. Let’s see if I can catch up in just one article. What’s been going on…
SkeptiSys on his break
1. Tiger Woods has been attacked mercilessly by the government (Disney) for having consensual sex with White women. And for dominating a previously all White sport. Yes this is repeat news from 1912 – see Jack Johnson, Boxing champion.
2. The Obama/Exxon administration manages to be considered ‘left’ and ‘liberal’ despite:
a) nominating 2 right-wing corporate loyalists to be U.S. Supreme Court Justices. In fact, most of Obama’s position choices are right wing corporatists, many of whom served under Bush
b) turning over multiple trillions of dollars from the people to large banks that caused a depression, auto and gas industries that caused global warming, military companies that have committed murder, fraud, and the Iraq fiasco, and the Insurance industries that have caused our medical and disaster recovery to be the worst in civilization.
c) blocking all investigations into war crimes committed under the Bush administration, which itself is a War Crime.
d) Protecting large telecommunications companies that committed crimes by spying and wiretapping American citizens then sharing the private info.
e) Increasing the already sick military budget and escalating wars, resulting in well over one million civilians dead – many are women and children. Somewhere during this, Obama receives Nobel Peace Price from obviously stoned Nobel panel.
f) Declaring the President can order the assassination of any American citizen without oversight.
g) resisting all humane health options (single payer or public option) to assure record profits by scummy health insurance companies.
h) increasing the prison rate, poverty rate… and on, and on, and on.
Somehow the ‘media’ has defined ‘left’ and ‘liberal’ to include Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, John Lennon, and Hitler. Take that Propaganda, old mother Russia!
3. The Catholic Church, obviously upset that they have lost their crown as Most Evil Institution to Islamic Fundamentalism – makes a comeback with their ‘we rape children’ advertisement campaign.
Here is Pat Condell with his unique view on the Catholic Church:
As an aside, did you notice that you are considered by pollsters to be voting based on ‘morals’, if you vote for a candidate that hates Gays, but not if you vote for a political candidate because you hate killing and rape by military and religious wackos? In this weird culture,to be more ‘moral’ means having more hate and bigotry.
I guess that is enough to get out of my hiatus. As always, be skeptical of everything, and make a joke out of everything. Peace and love!
In America, the large corporate entities that govern the country have found another bizarre step in their attempt to completely control speech on the Internet: censorship of non-copyrighted material. Seriously.
From today’s New York Times: an article about the availability of Rorschach tests on Wikipedia in which they liken the posting of the Rorschach tests to cheating and immorality. The article is so slanted, it has to be read carefully to determine if it was penned by The Onion.
Please read the article for yourself, and look carefully for the answer to two major questions:
1. Why are people able to publish the Rorshach tests in books freely, but not on the Internet?
2. Why should any group (psychologists in this instance) have more access to free available information than the rest of the public?
I couldn’t find the answers in the article.
Disclaimer: I have participated in the administration and analysis of psychological tests in my business capacity (we paid for all tests in full), and come from a family of Psychologists.
I see Marlon Brando being attacked by a pig. Is that normal, doc?
When Judge Sonia Sotomayor was first mentioned as a potential candidate to the Supreme Court, I wrote my concerns here. That article dealt with one manner in which PR firms for large governmental corporations manage to motivate the opposition to support their corporate candidate. Today, I would like to revisit that topic, mainly due to Glenn Greenwald’s just published article. It appears that Glenn Greenwald has fallen into their clever trap.
Although I disagree with Glenn in this one instance, I mean no disrespect towards him:
1. Glenn Greenwald is one of the best journalists in existence. I read his work every chance I get, including his excellent books. To paraphrase what someone once said of Noam Chomsky in The Nation, “not to have read Glenn Greenwald is to court genuine ignorance.”
2. The public relations industry has spent decades and trillions of dollars to influence public opinion and behavior. Not one individual can claim they have not subconsciously been affected by such a large influence, except perhaps a deaf dumb and mute African tribesman. Not me, not you, and not even Glenn Greenwald – whose endurance in this area is remarkable.
Today, the New York Times announced that President Obama will officially nominate Sotomayor for U.S. Supreme Court. Sotomayor, originally appointed by former radical CIA director George Bush Sr, has made the following decisions (from ScotusBlog, linked to in Glenn’s current article.)
Privacy rights: Sotomayor is against individual privacy rights. From the article: “workplace conditions can be such that an employee’s expectation of privacy…is diminished.” Here, she explained, the search was permissible because it could have revealed employee misconduct.
Sotomayor, however, is very compassionate towards governmental privacy: “In two cases involving requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Sotomayor wrote an opinion that declined to order the release of the requested information, explaining that she did not want to “unreasonably hamper agencies in their decision-making.”
Public health vs. corporate profits. Sotomayor prefers profits, apparently. She ruled against the EPA in its fight to enforce the Clean Water Act against power plants. “Sotomayor wrote and opinion holding that the EPA was not permitted to engage in a cost-benefit analysis to determine “best technology available”; instead, it could consider cost only to determine “what technology can be ‘reasonably borne’ by the industry” and whether the proposed technology was “cost-effective”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a sympathetic character, a minority female who is intelligent and inappropriately attacked by wacky republicans. Instinctively, I want to side with her. But I also want clean water and air, and I want an open government by and for the people. I cannot support a dangerous corporate stooge. We have enough of those already in the U.S. Supreme Court.
United States Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter has announced he will be leaving his position in June, providing President Obama with the opportunity to replace the Republican chosen Justice with someone more socially aware.
Justice Souter was appointed by Republican President George H. W. Bush to represent big business in the Supreme Court. Souter did not let Bush down, consistently voting for big business over society whenever possible, to the extent that business publications openly admit the Court was sided 6-3 or 7-2 in favor of big business (Justice Kennedy being the swing vote, see this Forbes article for an example). Per that same Forbes article,”…William Eskridge, a professor at Yale Law School and a prominent scholar on Supreme Court dynamics said: “Many of the business cases were 6-3 or 7-2 [decisions] and that isn’t likely to change.”
Probably the most extreme example (but not the only one) of Souter’s fixation on putting large corporate profits over people’s rights was his lead opinion in 2008 to drastically reduce the fine paid by Exxon for their negligent and destructive oil spill (Exxon Valdez). Souter’s twisted ruling came as Exxon was pulling down record profits, thanks to so many Americans willing to die and kill for oil profits.
In order to ensure another pro-business candidate replaces Justice Souter, a well financed PR campaign has begun. One slimy psychological tactic used is: to ‘announce’ a likely candidate who is favorable to corporate profits, in this case Justice Sonia Sotomayor a Bush I appointee. Then, to build opposition support for their own candidate, release media ‘attacks’ based on bigotry. In this case, many articles were placed attacking Sotomayor for being a Hispanic woman. These articles cause the expected instinctive reaction from people who hate bigotry to support Sotomayor, a candidate against their own interest. Now many people are supporting Sotomayor, unfortunately without any idea they are being manipulated by well financed PR campaigns.
The candidacy of President Obama is a perfect example of this tactic. Large corporate funding supported his candidacy for president.
Step 1: finance a Black and a female candidate for President who are both strong supporters of Big Business. Both Clinton and Obama have been in favor of increases in military budget, banking financing, etc. Obama has continued to push money to big business since his election.
Step 2: Use ownership of newspapers, TV, and radio media to attack candidates based on sex or race. Never mention the candidates support of controlling corporate financing.
Step 3: Watch people get upset by attacks and become defensive, as planned. Continue attacks to spur their enthusiasm for your candidate.
Step 4: People enthusiastically vote for sympathetic character, who happens to be against their values.
Step 5: Profit!
Obama’s pro-big business actions since his election reinforces an important ideal: it is more beneficial to elect someone whose policies will help Black people than someone who is Black themselves. I’d rather we had Ralph Nader, who has fought for woman’s rights, than a woman who ignores those rights, like Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin. Please, let’s not get fooled again.
meet the new spokesmodel, same as the old spokesmodel
How do we fight back against a powerful American police and military system run amok? ‘Kop Busters’, a group fighting back against police corruption, had an entertaining idea. They decided to run a sting operation that would catch only police corruption. Noting a rash of police ‘misinformation’ on search warrant requests, Kop Busters decided to ‘plant’ 2 Christmas trees in an apartment without any illegal activity taking place. Odessa, Texas Police then illegally raided the house and arrested (with no basis) the attorney waiting for them.
Watch a news report on the public service sting operation here:
I expect severe punishment of the police who arrested the attourney without any hint of illegal activity, as well as of any police officer who lied on an official court document to obtain a warrant. As this is not an isolated incident, but a reaction to a glut of similar suspected acitivty, I also expect an independent probe into potential corrupt behavior among upper level police and D.A. in Odessa Texas. God bless these patriots!
Kathryn Johnston age 92, gunned down by police in her own home
Read about Kathryn Johnston, the 92 year old lady who was gunned down by police in riot gear breaking into her home on warrant misinformation, in wikipedia.
One useful means to distract people from ‘the Great Depression 2.0’ is a good cops and robbers story. With that in mind, the big news this week in the New York sports world is Giants star Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg with a pistol. Here are the main alleged facts, as we know them.
Plaxico Burress is a Wide Receiver for the football Giants, as opposed to a wide receiver in prison. Oh zing! – a prison rape joke! Plaxico may have been a ‘tight end’ at some point, but no more.
Plaxico Burress was wearing sweatpants, when his gun slipped down the flimsy lining. Apparently, he has the same problem as we all do, namely: finding sweatpants with a good place to stash a gun. Personally, I have to put my weapon in my sock when I go jogging. Yes, we here at SkeptiSys are addressing the problem by developing a sweatpants holster.
Plaxico Burress in happier times
After the gun slipped down his sweat pants, Plaxico Burress reached down and pulled the trigger, with the safety somehow disengaged. After this, Plaxico Burress did his John Wilkes Booth impersonation and hobbled off for undercover medical attention for his leg. The police later found him in a Manhattan barn.
Plaxico first contended he was in Applebee’s during the shooting, and the Police contend it was an upscale VIP dance club. This is easy to figure out. Everyone wears sweat pants to Applebee’s – even the waitresses. No way he was in a nightclub with sweatpants.
The current Mayor of New York, Napoleon Bloomberg, (who has recently received treatment for believing he is James Cagney) doesn’t think we need a trial to put Plaxico in the ‘slammer’ for at least 3.5 years. Yes, Sherrif Bloomberg, who plans to keep his job illegally, actually said Plaxico will go to the “slammer” – so I do not expect a fair trial. The pressure will be on Plaxico to accept a plea agreement, guilty or not. Shorty McBloomberg thinks the law should apply harshly to anyone, from poor Black people to Black sports stars. Financial laws and term limits? Not so much ‘slammer’ talk, it seems.
The Doctor who treated Plaxico’s gunshot wounds, and kept his information confidential was suspended and will probably be arrested.
As for the New York Giants football team and the rest of the NFL, the Police are prepared to give them a stern lecture (New York Times article, “Police again take issue with N.F.L. in shooting”). No word from Midge Bloomberg if this ‘issue taking’ will apply to everyone equally.
Predictably, Mayor McCheese Bloomberg does not think laws should be applied harshly, or at all, for Wall Street deregulation and crimes that caused the current financial crisis, as well as the laws that protect people’s rights.
SkeptiSys 
