Category — politics

firstamendmentcenter.org: news:
Residents of trailer parks set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house hurricane victims in Louisiana aren’t allowed to talk to the press without an official escort, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reported.
In one instance, a security guard ordered an Advocate reporter out of a trailer during an interview in Morgan City. Similar FEMA rules were enforced in Davant, in Plaquemines Parish.

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more erosion of rights, someone should sue.

Salon.com | News Wires:
Arrested Bush Dissenters Eye Courts- – - – - – - – - – - -By TODD DVORAK Associated Press Writer

July 22,2006 | CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — When school was canceled to accommodate a campaign visit by President Bush, the two 55-year-old teachers reckoned the time was ripe to voice their simmering discontent with the administration’s policies.

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free speech is a right isn’t it?

Valerie Plame, Husband File Suit Against Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, ‘Scooter’ Libby:
AP reports: The CIA officer whose identity was leaked to reporters sued Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide…

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it is about time.

Shutting Down Science:
In January 2001 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that reducing salt in the diet could lower blood pressure, even in people without hypertension. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the study, quickly posted a press release on its Web site announcing the findings.

The Salt Institute, an industry group, was stung by the study’s results. Unable to challenge the data on scientific grounds, the institute found another way to attack them. It filed a petition under the Data Quality Act–a law ironically intended to ensure that regulations are based on solid science–arguing that the findings did not meet the act’s standards and that the heart institute had therefore broken the law by posting them…
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this was dumb of them on both sides. one study does not a finding make and policy should not come from one finding.

Republicans Have Lost the War on Terror; Democrats Will Win It:
Listen up, lily-livered Dems. Here are the details of how to counterattack and get out of the Republican box of, “You are for the war, or you are for defeat.” None of it is complicated:

1. The Republicans have weakened the United States and made us all less safe.
2. The Republicans have done this by starting a war in Iraq.

3. We are not in “a war on terror.” We are in a war on the murderers of 9/11.

4. The murderers of 9/11 were al Qaeda and its radical Islamic sympathizers.

5. Afghanistan was a good war because that is where the murderers of 9/11 were.

6. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had no links to al Qaeda. Iraq was a nasty bad, evil regime — like many others around the globe. But attacking Iraq did not get us closer to killing or stopping al Qaeda.

7. So Iraq was an optional war. But even worse, the war in Iraq detracted our resources from the real battle — against the killers of 9/11.

8. In fact, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the consequent — and entirely predictable — dissolve into civil war and lawlessness has created in Iraq a recruiting hotbed for al Qaeda. In other words, our war in Iraq created an Iraq-based threat to America that never existed before.

9. The sectarian and ethnic division in Iraq, coupled with the warlike culture on all sides, assures that with the lid of dictatorship pulled away, there will be a long, bloody civil war. We can’t win a civil war in a strange country where not side wants us. Staying in means we lose. We can only win by pulling out.

10. In the Cold War, we defeated a much more dangerous enemy than al Qaeda. The Soviet Union was a thousand times stronger than al Qaeda is.

11. How did we win the Cold War, and how can we defeat al Qaeda? Containment. Tough, hard, patient work that takes generations. Surround the enemy, more or less, and let them see your system — for economic and democratic progress — work, so that the enemy can generate real change, that is, change from within.

12. Containment takes real tough people, strong enough to take a long view and not need to prance around the deck of an aircraft carrier. People like Eisenhower. Not impatient, unconfident bullies like W.

So no, Democrats, you are not “against the war on terror” if you vote to get out of Iraq eventually. In fact, that is a vote to start — five years too late to be sure, but better late than never — a real war on the murderers of 9/11.

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I think this misses the point of what the republicans try to do. losing the war on terror or at least entering into a state of perpetual war production is ideal for the republicans. war production economies keep the people working on the war machine, removes the radical elements from your own society, removes democratic practices in favor of heirarchical control economies and in the end produces more war. This is the fundamental structure of what Ike called the Iron Triangle. It isn’t meant to produce peace. It is meant to produce profits for certain people.

For the first time in history, there is a chance that a feminist party, with a feminist agenda, will take place in a national parliament. This is a momentous occasion. It is nothing short of a revolution. It is something that could improve the situation of women around the world in many different ways. It would prove that feminism can no longer be ignored in politics.

http://www.feministsupport.com/

feminist initiative party platform

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the feminist initiative in Sweden is running for seats in parliament. to the best of my knowledge, this is the first organized feminist party platform running for elected national office.

Busch Macht Frei:
A sign on the front of the US prison in Guantanamo Bay reads “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.”

A sign over the gate of the Fort Dix stockade, where war protesters were jailed during the Vietnam days: “Obedience to the law is freedom.”

A sign I saw in 1979 on the Grady County courthouse in Chickasha, Oklahoma: “The Safety of the State is the Highest Law.”

A sign I saw on a billboard in Franco’s Spain in 1958: “Sin orden, no hay libertad.” (Without Order, There is No Liberty.)

A sign beside the gate at Auschwitz: “Arbeit Macht Frei.” (Work Makes You Free.)

And so it goes.

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the slip and slide of doublespeak transforms the meanings of freedom into the meaning of slavery and horror. i always try to confront my students with what it could really mean to be free and equal in society and why they might not be free or equal now. if we don’t take an active stance against the reconstruction of freedom, freedom of body, freedom of conscious, freedom of community, we will never have the benefits of our world. i should say that the market does not equate with freedom, nor does laboring, nor does subservience to the state or other forms of obedience. consenting to the state is one thing, obedience is entirely different.

:: Douglas Rushkoff – Weblog :::
Faith = Illness. Why I’ve had it with religious tolerance.
4/30/2006 12:48:00 PM | Link

So what’s a nice Jewish boy like me writing such a seemingly sacreligious comic book for Vertigo? My last column in Arthur magazine may cast some light on this issue.Okay, so let’s get into this God game. I think it’s time to get serious about the role God plays in human affairs, and evaluate whether it’s appropriate to let everyone in on the bad news: God doesn’t exist, never did, and the closest thing we’ll ever see to God will emerge from our own collective efforts at making meaning. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I no longer see the real value in being tolerant of other people’s beliefs. Sure, when beliefs are relegated to the realm of pure entertainment, they pose no real danger. So, a kid believes U2 is really a supergroup on par with The Beatles or The Who. That’s *his* problem, and it doesn’t really do a lot of harm to anyone except those of us who still stop by MTV occasionally to see what might be playing.

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This is worth a read.

FOCUS ON SPY-CAM LANDLORDS By LEONARD GREENE – New York Post Online Edition: news:
y 1, 2006 –
Landlords are resorting to a new weapon in their war with tenants over rent stabilization – hidden cameras trained on an occupant’s door “The whole building is paranoid now,” said Bryan Lurie, who last week found a camera hidden inside an electrical box outside his $360-a-month West Village studio apartment. “My friends told me I should have my apartment swept for bugs.”
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the growth of surveillance culture is amazing. sure the landlord owns the building, but… does he have a right to look into your abode with a spycam?