What American police do to someone who 'Tweets' about a protest.

The Twitterest Pill By JACK Z. BRATICH

Or, to quote from the article

What happens in Tehran, stays in Tehran.

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Much of the news discourse surrounding the “Digital Media Revolution” during that summer fling relied on tired post-Cold War binaries, especially “authoritarian regimes vs. freedom-loving protestors.” But there are indeed some differences between the Iranian style of dissent management and our homegrown techniques:

To disband crowds, they still use clunky acoustic weapons like gunshots. We have the latest in dispersal technology: a “sound cannon” designed to scatter people via painful sonic blasts.

They still rely on a live voice delivering orders via the police megaphone. We have the Long Range Acoustic Device, whose prerecorded vocal commands sound like they were made by “Fred, the friendly fascist” (Seriously, someone’s been watching too many Philip K. Dick-inspired films).

Finally, if they rely on State-run television for informational control, we have something more insidious: State-friended social media. It is widely known that during the Iranian demonstrations a State Department rep contacted the co-founders of Twitter to reschedule a maintenance shut-down. Who needs to control communications via government ownership? Just be bros with the new media outlets! State Department, your Facebook friend request has been accepted by Twitter. (I hope they don’t get jealous that CNN’s status says that it’s “in a relationship” with Twitter).

Tweet from Tehran and you are a hero. Tweet from Pittsburgh, and you are facing serious jail time.

War and Peace

More reaction to Pres. Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

War and Peace by Alexander Cockburn, editor of Counterpunch.org

People marvel at the idiocy of these Nobel awards, but there’s method in the madness, since in the end they train people to accept without demur or protest absurdity as part and parcel of the human condition, which they should accept as representing the considered opinion of rational men, albeit Norwegian. It’s a twist on the Alger myth, inspiring to youth: you too can get to murder Filipinos, or Palestinians, or Vietnamese or Afghans and still win a Peace Prize. That’s the audacity of hope at full stretch.

It does make one remember that the Nobel family made its money by finding better ways to make dynamite and explosives.

Warmonger Wins Peace Prize by Paul Craig Roberts

It took 25 years longer than George Orwell thought for the slogans of 1984 to become reality.

“War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.”

I would add, “Lie is Truth.”

The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama, the person who started a new war in Pakistan, upped the war in Afghanistan, and continues to threaten Iran with attack unless Iran does what the US government demands and relinquishes its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty.

The Nobel committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

The WTF Prize by Dave Lindorff

If Nobel Peace prizes are being awarded to people who are simply giving the world hope, surely the judges could have found any number of worthy speechifiers. Hell, even the dictatorial leaders of China and North Korea can make flowery speeches about peace and human dignity. More to the point, the committee had under consideration at least two far more deserving nominees for the award who were actually acting at great personal risk to further peace and human rights: Chinese freedom-fighter Hu Jia and Afghani women’s rights advocate Simi Samar. It is an insult to the memory of former award winners like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jody Williams, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi the Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa, and others who put their lives and careers on the line to struggle for peace and human dignity to give this award to a man who has accomplished so little, and who, in fact, in his short time in office, has managed to expand one war, to block the international condemnation of the brutality of another, and who has done nothing to reverse his own country’s leading role as a promoter of war and international violence.

Oh, and by the way, the Democrats and their new Nobel Peace Prize winner are in the process of passing the biggest military budget in the history of the world.

Officer Cordova acted within the duties of a police officer and within the scope of his training,

This happened outside Coors Field. One unfortunate citizen decided to bicycle past the park on the way to visit his mother in a nearby hospice. Here's the video of what happened to him.

Even though the video shows the police officer grabbing Mr. Heaney by the back of his head and then slamming him face first into the ground, the officer was found in Sept to be not guilty on charges of assault.

Denver Pig Gets Let Off The Hook On Assault Charge!! from Colorado Indymedia.

"Cordova acted within the duties of a police officer and within the scope of his training,"

Well, there was a little good news for Mr. Heaney in this case. The officers involved in the video had attempted to charge Mr. Heaney with assaulting an officer. I guess its illegal to have your head in the hands of a police officer as its slammed face first into the ground. At least in the eyes of the officer. Fortunately for Mr. Heaney, the local district attorney's office decided not to press the charges against him.

"Cordova, who was hired in 2001, will be able to continue working in law enforcement."

There is still a ongoing civil action by Mr. Heaney against the Denver PD.

Nobel Prize??

Obama has been awarded the Nobel Prize? For what?

In the comments of another website, I started writing an alternative speech that Obama might give in accepting this award. Perhaps if the teleprompters slipped and he started to accidentally speak the truth, then this is what he might say.

"Thank you for awarding me this prize. It took a lot of arm twisting by my representatives. Fortunately, since this is Sweden instead of the US, you can all go see a doctor to get those sore arms examined.

We in the Obama administration are proud that we've managed to keep the war in Iraq going and nearly all of our troops in that country despite opposition to our presence both in Iraq and at home. Many told us that the 70% of the American people who oppose the war in Iraq would be an impossible obstacle to overcome. After all, what democracy could follow a policy opposed by 70% of its people year after year and through election after election? But, we are proud to say that we've kept almost all of our troops in Iraq where they can kill people. And we plan to continue to do this.

We are proud that we've successfully escalated the war in Afghanistan. We've doubled the number of US troops in that country during my time in office. And of course, this means more bombings, more 'accidental' shootings and more innocent civilians dead. We again would like to thank the Nobel committee for honoring this achievement. Soon, we will have almost as many troops in Afghanistan as in Iraq. Is it too early now to start campaigning for next year's prize to honor that as well?

We appear to be successful in expanding this war into Pakistan. We've launched countless drone strikes in that supposedly sovereign country, and we've succeeded in killing many more innocent civilians. And we've also succeeded in strong arming the weak new leaders of Pakistan into starting a proxy civil war within their nation. Again, thanks for the applause. I can't tell you how much it means to us to have you standing and applauding our new ways of killing innocent civilians.


Our plans to start a new war in Iran are proceeding. This has been a difficult task for my staff, since we ran on a campaign of talking with Iran and diplomacy. So, its been difficult for my people to continue the same war-like course with Iran as my predecessor. But, I am proud to say that my staff has performed brilliantly. When I hear people say that they can't see any difference between SOS Rice and SOS Clinton, except of course in their hair styles, we take that as a compliment. There is still opposition, but hopefully we can get this war started in the next year. And, I hate to sound like I'm campaigning already to win this prize again next year, but I hope the Noble committee will see our coming success in starting another war and will reward us appropriately with yet another prize.


We've successfully continued the US policy of using coups to overturn elected governments that don't suit us. In fact, we've pledged to be more aggressive in this area. So far, we've attempted two new coups, with one complete success story as we've returned Honduras to the control of its military and wealthy elites. There was a dangerous outbreak of democracy in that country, and we are glad to see the Noble committee applauding our successful actions in stomping that out.

Of course, our coup attempt in Iran was not as successful. But we always knew that it would be tough to convince a nation that it only a few decades past their own revolution of independence to give up that independence and to once again become a subservient client state. We were successful in causing some violence in the street, and in causing some innocent people to die. We aren't sure how close the Noble Peace Prize vote was, but if these extra deaths we caused in Iran were enough to put us over the top, then we'd like to thank the Nobel committee for paying close attention.

And of course, there is one thing that we are extremely proud of inside the White House. Not one single official from the Bush/Cheney era has been prosecuted for their crimes. Those who tortured, those who illegally kidnapped others, those who started illegal wars that have killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent civilians, all have been safe from prosecution or from even serious investigation. This has not been easy, as many American citizens still hold the belief that even those who hold great power should be prosecuted for their crimes. But we are so very, very proud to have made certain that this does not happen.

Some have said that the reason we received this award was because of our stand on nuclear weapons. Its nice to see how a speech saying we'll do something on which we'll never follow through can have such an impact. Trust me to say that we promise years of slow and fruitless negotiations with the Russians on reducing nuclear weapons. They are busy negotiating the number of flags that shall be in the negotiating room even as we speak. Of course, these negotiations will never affect American nuclear dominance over the world, which we have no intention of releasing. But, perhaps as a part of my campaign for next year's Noble prize I might give another nice speech on the topic.

Peace at home is of course difficult to obtain when we are following policies of war and economic destruction to which most of our citizens object. Our citizens don't quite seem to understand that its necessary to give all of their tax money to the Wall Street bankers. They object for some reason that maybe we should spend that money instead on creating jobs for them. What a novel concept. Unfortunately, some or our citizens who object to this actually try to go into the streets and protest. Thankfully, the US has tens of thousands of well trained storm troopers to crush any domestic dissent, and they have done their job well. I don't think any of the world's leaders who joined me in Pittsburgh had their caviar and champagne even slightly interrupted. Thanks again to those storm troopers for busting the heads and making that possible. And thanks again for the Nobel committee recognizing with this award the contribution that our head-busting storm troopers have made towards world peace by attacking protesters who are calling for peace.

Well, I can see my time for this address is running out. I'd love to be able to push my campaign for next year's peace prize by talking about all the people who are going to die and suffer because of the 'health care reform' act that we are currently working. We promise that even more money will go to helping the profits of big health care, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Again, thank your for the prize. Thanks again to my staff who worked so hard breaking arms to get me this prize. And I hope to be back next year to help celebrate more wars and more greater misery I intend to inflict upon the world to make our rich elites even richer still."

They Lie

Even after acknowledging it's false, CNN and Fox News continue to push smear of Jennings from Media Matters.

CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox News' Brian Wilson and Sean Hannity ignored their own networks' past reporting and continued to forward the discredited smear that, while working as a teacher in 1988, Department of Education official Kevin Jennings failed to report an underage student's involvement with an older man. Dobbs claimed that "Jennings admit[ed] to failing to report a sexual matter involving a minor," and Wilson claimed that Jennings admitted that "he failed to alert authorities when a 15-year-old boy told him he was involved in a sexual relationship with an older man," even though both FoxNews.com and CNN have acknowledged that the student was of legal age -- 16 years old -- at the time.

The simplest way to deal with American corporate media like CNN and Fox News is to just simply assume that everything they say is a lie. After all, haven't they all been caught doing it way too many times. Just to catch a couple of highlights, these are the people who told us all that Iraq had WMDs and that if we didn't immediately give the Wall Street banks a trillion dollars or more the economy would crash immediately.

A 'news' organization really has one thing to sell. That is its credibility. For the life of me, I don't understand why anyone watches any of these channels. They've all lied so many times and so often that its ridiculous. Most of the time, they won't even admit their lies, much less take any credible acts to make sure it doesn't happen again.

We all know that we were all massively lied to about Iraqs WMDs. And those of us who are paying attention know that it was a deliberate policy from a group that came into the White House in 2000 determined to attack Iraq. Anyone who knows anything knew Iraq didn't have WMDs. And, these so-called 'news' outlets deliberately blocked any alternative voices from being heard. There were plenty of credible people, from former weapon inspectors to university professors who were clearly pointing out the WMD lies before the Iraq war. All of these 'news' channels refused to even let them on the air. Or, if they did give them a token notice, they treated them in exactly the same way Lou Dobbs treats facts in the story above. IE, they just ignored the inconvenient truths and went on telling their lies. Like Goebbels, they seem to think that if they tell big enough lies often enough, then people will believe them. What's most disturbing is that they seem to be correct in this.

And sometimes, what you don't see is important. Ask yourself, how many major American news organization FIRED editors who made poor decisions in telling the American people lies about Iraq's WMDs. Surely this was a major mistake. A major mistake that has so far cost the lives of more Americans than who dies on 9-11. Have you seen a 9-11 scale response to the fact that these people lied and 4000 or more Americans have died because of it? And that doesn't even consider the far more massive scale of their crimes against humanity, which you realize when you face up to the fact that these lies have caused the unneccessary deaths of over a million Iraqis.

Seems like that should be enough to cost someone their job. Have you seen waves of editors and reporters who told these lies getting fired? Nope. In fact, most of the public faces associated with these lies get promoted into bigger and better assignments. Have you seen any major policy changes to try to prevent these lies in the future? For instance, are these news organizations that got caught telling big lies now restricting the use of anonymous leaks from government officials. Nope, read any story about Iran's WMDs and you see the same techniques being used again.

So, big news organizations like CNN and Faux News lied. Those lies cost more American lives than died on 9-11. No one got fired. No internal policies changed. They seem happy that they lied, and seem determined to make sure it happens again. Don't hold your breath waiting for Lou Dobbs to get fired for this lie either.

The best thing to do is to turn off these channels. Completely. Don't watch them. I've used the parental blocking features on my sat dish to block these obscenities from entering my home. And I'm much happier now that I have. I don't get worked up by their fake propaganda, and I don't get their lies into my head. Best of all is when these junk channels have been pushing some trivial story like its major news and I'm blissfully unaware. I love it when someone who does listen to this junk is trying to tell me about some missing blonde somewhere, or some string of shark attacks that are thousands of miles away, and I'm blissfully clueless about what they are talking about.

Don't know if that means I'm getting the more important information that I need. But, if I'm succeeding in not hearing trivial and worthless 'news' that's designed to mislead or distract me, or in this case tell outright lies to my face, well that's a good step in the right direction.

TURN THEM OFF!

100% Growth

I was poking around the settings in Blogger, and I noticed this blog has a new follower. Wow. That doubles the number from 1 to 2. 100% growth. I should start marketing this as the fastest growing blog on the internet! :)

If you read this blog and like it, leave a comment every once in awhile. Its kinda nice to get feedback like this that says someone is reading this. And you'll undoubtedly encourage me to write more!

Wow, if both my followers were to ever comment on the same article, we would have a discussion going!

Nuclear BS from the NY Times

Report Says Iran Has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb by William Broad and David Singer of the NY Times.

Yet another scary headline from the NY Times about some country the US has declared to be evil being close to having a nuclear weapon.

Well, it would be scary if nuclear weapons were made from exploding 'data'.

As someone with a nuclear engineering degree, I have no idea about what they mean about having enough 'data' to design a bomb.

Nuclear weapons are really rather simple devices, at least in concept. You take a critical mass worth of uranium or plutonium. You keep it in several pieces that are smaller than a critical mass, since you don't want it going off in your hands like that fourth of july firecracker did back when you were a kid. Then, when you want it to explode, you put the pieces together (quickly) to allow it to form a critical mass.

That's it. Congratulations, you too now have enough data to design and build a nuclear weapon. Welcome to the club! We have t-shirts and hats for the new club members.

There are always these stories about how some nation that we hate is close to have a nuclear weapon. With Iraq, the line of bs was along the lines of 'IF Iraq had fissionable material, they would have a bomb in 6 months.' That of course is a really big if. Its like saying 'if I had a million dollars, I'd be a millionaire in six months.' Of course I would. Now the NY Times is writing strange, misleading and scary headlines about Iran having the 'data' to build a bomb.

The key is the fissionable material. The IAEA has continually inspected Iran's facilities and found that they are not, and that there is no evidence that they ever have, produced bomb-grade uranium from their enrichment facilities. The IAEA knows about the new facility in Qom because the Iranians reported it to the IAEA exactly as required under their agreements. Inspections are being arranged, before it becomes operational, just as required by the treaty.

But the key thing to remember is this. Without that bomb-grade uranium, they ain't building a nuclear bomb. No matter how much 'data' they have. Good luck getting 'data' to explode.

The question you should be asking is this. Why is the NY Times, along with SOS Hillary and President Obama, trying to mislead and confuse you?

BTW, remember the names 'William Broad' and 'David Sanger'. They appear to be the new Judy Miller in printing outrageous propaganda at the NY Times.