Blogger’s rights
New federal campaign finance rules for the Internet have freed bloggers and almost all other citizen-initiated political advocacy on the Internet from any regulation. You can be a part of the online revolution in politics, help reinvent and reinvigorate our democracy, and transform political discourse.
It’s a good idea to have a basic understanding of the new rules.
Read more.
http://www.netdemocracyguide.org/about/
From:
http://www.netdemocracyguide.org/
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Union-Busters EXPOSED
Recently it seems like there has been more anti-union, anti-worker slime than usual oozing out of familiar corporate mouthpieces such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Such groups are also likely among the multimillion dollar backers of the egregiously misnamed Center for Union Facts, launched in February by sleaze propagandist Richard Berman. Among Berman’s list of hatchet jobs is a PR campaign to slam Mothers Against Drunk Driving on behalf of the alcohol industry and another literally toxic campaign for the tuna industry encouraging pregnant women to eat tuna—never mind the mercury.
Today, the workers’ rights organization American Rights at Work launched a great new Web-based resource tool that counters the anti-worker lies and twisted information. The Anti-Union Network offers profiles of anti-union organizations with details on their lobbying, litigation and media outreach, as well as their connections to each other.
The site launched with a feature of Berman’s operations and highlights a diagram of Berman’s extensive money trail.
In addition to being a great resource tool that includes background on union-busting and union-buster techniques, Anti-Union Network offers an up-to-date news feed and an e-mail sign-up.
Visit the Anti-Union Network directly at:
Beware, though. The site isn’t for the faint-hearted: It includes mugs of Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, Jesse Helms and others who spend their time slamming the interests of America’s workers.
by Tula Connell
At:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/13/union-busters-exposed/
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On MSBNC, Fund falsely suggested British, French, and German “intelligence agencies all agree[d]” that “Saddam Hussein was involved with 9-11″
On MSNBC’s Hardball, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund falsely suggested that “the British, the French, the German, and the American intelligence agencies all agree[d]” that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; in fact, according to various news reports, British, French, and German intelligence all agreed that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Read more
http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200609130005?src=other
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Snow, like Bush, Cheney, and Condi This week, Ignores Intel Report, Claims There Was A Relationship Between Saddam And Al Qaeda
At:
His reasoning: Moussaoui had been in Iraq. By that logic, the U.S. trained the 9-11 hijackers, had more of a relationship with Al-Qaeda than Iraq.
From: Poacnewsletter
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#2 of 17 rules to bring you up to speed on what you need to believe to be a Republican.
Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.
Complete article at:
http://sr4001.com/2006/09/04/believe-republican/
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#2 of Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007
#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
Source:
Global Research.ca, August 5, 2005
Title: “Halliburton Secretly Doing Business With Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team”
Author: Jason Leopold
Faculty Evaluator: Catherine Nelson
Student Researchers: Kristine Medeiros and Pla Herr
According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources at former Cheney company Halliburton allege that, as recently as January of 2005, Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear reactor to an Iranian oil development company. Leopold says his Halliburton sources have intimate knowledge of the business dealings of both Halliburton and Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran’s largest private oil companies.
Additionally, throughout 2004 and 2005, Halliburton worked closely with Cyrus Nasseri, the vice chairman of the board of directors of Iran-based Oriental Oil Kish, to develop oil projects in Iran. Nasseri is also a key member of Iran’s nuclear development team. Nasseri was interrogated by Iranian authorities in late July 2005 for allegedly providing Halliburton with Iran’s nuclear secrets. Iranian government officials charged Nasseri with accepting as much as $1 million in bribes from Halliburton for this information.
Oriental Oil Kish dealings with Halliburton first became public knowledge in January 2005 when the company announced that it had subcontracted parts of the South Pars gas-drilling project to Halliburton Products and Services, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Halliburton that is registered to the Cayman Islands. Following the announcement, Halliburton claimed that the South Pars gas field project in Tehran would be its last project in Iran. According to a BBC report, Halliburton, which took thirty to forty million dollars from its Iranian operations in 2003, “was winding down its work due to a poor business environment.”
However, Halliburton has a long history of doing business in Iran, starting as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney was chief executive of the company. Leopold quotes a February 2001 report published in the Wall Street Journal, “Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., works behind an unmarked door on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. A brochure declares that the company was registered in 1975 in the Cayman Islands, is based in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is “non-American.” But like the sign over the receptionist’s head, the brochure bears the company’s name and red emblem, and offers services from Halliburton units around the world.” Moreover mail sent to the company’s offices in Tehran and the Cayman Islands is forwarded directly to its Dallas headquarters.
In an attempt to curtail Halliburton and other U.S. companies from engaging in business dealings with rogue nations such as Libya, Iran, and Syria, an amendment was approved in the Senate on July 26, 2005. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Susan Collins R-Maine, would penalize companies that continue to skirt U.S. law by setting up offshore subsidiaries as a way to legally conduct and avoid U.S. sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
A letter, drafted by trade groups representing corporate executives, vehemently objected to the amendment, saying it would lead to further hatred and perhaps incite terrorist attacks on the U.S. and “greatly strain relations with the United States primary trading partners.” The letter warned that, “Foreign governments view U.S. efforts to dictate their foreign and commercial policy as violations of sovereignty often leading them to adopt retaliatory measures more at odds with U.S. goals.”
Collins supports the legislation, stating, “It prevents U.S. corporations from creating a shell company somewhere else in order to do business with rogue, terror-sponsoring nations such as Syria and Iran. The bottom line is that if a U.S. company is evading sanctions to do business with one of these countries, they are helping to prop up countries that support terrorism—most often aimed against America.
UPDATE BY JASON LEOPOLD
During a trip to the Middle East in March 1996, Vice President Dick Cheney told a group of mostly U.S. businessmen that Congress should ease sanctions in Iran and Libya to foster better relationships, a statement that, in hindsight, is completely hypocritical considering the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
“Let me make a generalized statement about a trend I see in the U.S. Congress that I find disturbing, that applies not only with respect to the Iranian situation but a number of others as well,” Cheney said. “I think we Americans sometimes make mistakes . . . There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what’s best for everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like.”
Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton Corporation at the time he uttered those words. It was Cheney who directed Halliburton toward aggressive business dealings with Iran—in violation of U.S. law—in the mid-1990s, which continued through 2005 and is the reason Iran has the capability to enrich weapons-grade uranium. It was Halliburton’s secret sale of centrifuges to Iran that helped get the uranium enrichment program off the ground, according to a three-year investigation that includes interviews conducted with more than a dozen current and former Halliburton employees.
If the U.S. ends up engaged in a war with Iran in the future, Cheney and Halliburton will bear the brunt of the blame. But this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who has been following Halliburton’s business activities over the past decade. The company has a long, documented history of violating U.S. sanctions and conducting business with so-called rogue nations.
No, what’s disturbing about these facts is how little attention it has received from the mainstream media. But the public record speaks for itself, as do the thousands of pages of documents obtained by various federal agencies that show how Halliburton’s business dealings in Iran helped fund terrorist activities there—including the country’s nuclear enrichment program.
When I asked Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, a couple of years ago if Halliburton would stop doing business with Iran because of concerns that the company helped fund terrorism she said, “No.” “We believe that decisions as to the nature of such governments and their actions are better made by governmental authorities and international entities such as the United Nations as opposed to individual persons or companies,” Hall said. “Putting politics aside, we and our affiliates operate in countries to the extent it is legally permissible, where our customers are active as they expect us to provide oilfield services support to their international operations. “We do not always agree with policies or actions of governments in every place that we do business and make no excuses for their behaviors. Due to the long-term nature of our business and the inevitability of political and social change, it is neither prudent nor appropriate for our company to establish our own country-by-country foreign policy.”
Halliburton first started doing business in Iran as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney was chief executive of the company and in possible violation of U.S. sanctions.
An executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in March 1995 prohibits “new investments (in Iran) by U.S. persons, including commitment of funds or other assets.” It also bars U.S. companies from performing services “that would benefit the Iranian oil industry” and provide Iran with the financial means to engage in terrorist activity. When Bush and Cheney came into office in 2001, their administration decided it would not punish foreign oil and gas companies that invest in those countries. The sanctions imposed on countries like Iran and Libya before Bush became president were blasted by Cheney, who gave frequent speeches on the need for U.S. companies to compete with their foreign competitors, despite claims that those countries may have ties to terrorism.
“I think we’d be better off if we, in fact, backed off those sanctions (on Iran), didn’t try to impose secondary boycotts on companies . . . trying to do business over there . . . and instead started to rebuild those relationships,” Cheney said during a 1998 business trip to Sydney, Australia, according to Australia’s Illawarra Mercury newspaper.
Complete article at:
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm
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“THE BEST WAR EVER” — WATCH THE WEB MOVIE, READ THE BOOK, LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ
by John Stauber
The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq is the new Sheldon Rampton / John Stauber book on sale everywhere September 14. You can preorder it and view a powerful web movie based on the book
at
The book explains how the propaganda that misled America into war is leading to defeat. The Best War Ever is a follow-up to Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, published in July 2003. That was the first book to expose the deceptions that sold the war. Although Weapons of Mass Deception was a New York Times bestseller, the same mainstream media who behaved like a government propaganda arm to cheerlead America into war largely ignored it. To bypass such censorship, this time the authors asked filmmaker Matt Thompson to produce a web movie based on the new book.
It’s viewable at
Check it out. You can watch the short film, order the new book, and even sign the Voters For Peace Pledge to only support politicians who make peace their priority.
For the rest of this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5164
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SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY WITH THE BIG LIE
Robert Scheer, AlterNet
Bush was right on Monday when he said that ‘our nation is being tested.’ Unfortunately, it’s his administration that’s testing us.
At:
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/41583/
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Borowitz Report – Whitney Bin Laden Shocker
Bin Laden Celebrates Whitney Houston’s Divorce By Cancelling Jihad
Vows to ‘Pick Up the Pieces’ With Platinum-Selling Diva
Osama bin Laden, whose alleged crush on singer Whitney Houston has fueled media speculation in recent weeks, reacted to the news of Ms. Houston’s split from her husband Bobby Brown by calling off his worldwide jihad.
Just hours after news outlets reported that Ms. Houston had filed for divorce from the headline-grabbing Mr. Brown, the al-Qaeda terror mastermind appeared on the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera network to profess his love for her and to cancel his struggle against the infidels.
Addressing Ms. Houston directly, the world’s most wanted man said that he was giving up his battle with the West “to pick up the pieces” after her split with Bobby Brown.
Saying that he would not rest until the singer was known as ““Whitney bin Laden,” the al-Qaeda madman painted a picture of domestic life together in his cave in the mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“I want to have a family with you, Whitney,” he said on the chilling videotape. “I believe that children are our future.”
In Washington, President Bush responded to Mr. Bin Laden’s video, using a nationally televised address to call Whitney Houston the new front in the war on terror.
“If we allow the terrorists to win Whitney Houston, that will be sending them a very dangerous message,” Mr. Bush said. “And then it will only be a matter of time before they try to marry Mariah Carey.”
Elsewhere, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was looking forward to leaving office so he could spend more “alone time” with President Bush.
http://www.borowitzreport.com/
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three to see
David Horsey: nothing to campaign on but fear itself
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20060914/cartoon20060914.jpg
Monte Wolverton: Iran Nukes
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/23651/
Sandy Huffaker: if you think he’s scary…