Posts Tagged Politics
Published 1, December 2, 2010
By Jonathan Turley
One of the little reported details from the latest batch of Wikileaks material are cables showing that the Obama Administration worked hard behind the scenes not only to prevent any investigation of torture in the United States but shutdown efforts abroad to enforce the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. This includes threatening the Spanish that, if they did not derail a judicial investigation, it would have serious consequences in bilateral relations. I discussed these cables on Countdown.
For two years, President Obama has worked to block the investigation of torture under the Bush Administration — even as both Dick Cheney and George Bush publicly admit to ordering waterboarding of suspects.
David Corn in Mother Jones has an interesting posting today on the issue.
A “confidential” April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department discloses how the Administration discarded any respect for the independence of the judiciary in Spain and pressured the government to derail the prosecution of Bush officials. Human rights groups around the world had called for such enforcement in light of Obama promise that no torturers would be prosecuted and Holder’s blocking of any investigation into war crimes.
See full post at Jonathan Turley’s Blog
So this is how it is going to be:
“After putting controversial cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table in negotiations with congressional Republicans over a plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, President Obama still doesn’t have a deal in the works.” Chris Moody, Yahoo News, July 7
Who told President Obama to put “controversial cuts on Social Security and Medicare on the table”? Hasn’t the president seen his public opinion polling numbers lately? He is consistently at or below 50% job approval. (Image)
Didn’t he pay attention to the special congressional election in the highly conservative, long-time Republican upstate New York district that elected a Democrat for the first time in years?
Isn’t the President Obama aware that there’s an election coming up; that many of the people he is so willingly and openly betraying rely on Social Security to live and Medicare to stay alive?
What planet does he live on? (Unless this is what he truly desires.)
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A Weiner in Hand
Jun 10
Michael Collins
If you’re in the retail business, it’s all about packaging. If you’re in wholesale, it’s about volume. If you’re Congressman Anthony Weiner, it’s about the double game of liberal packaging without the throw weight to justify the image.
I managed to get through the last few days without much information on Weiner’s Tweets. etc. As I exited the corporate media’s fantasy land a few days ago, I saw a clip ofWeiner with a shit eating grin on his face. He was trying to act like an “adult” (i.e., a pol like Cheney who lies without blinking).
Weiner asked that people not make more out if his situation than was actually there. I thought he’s lying as I left the virtual world for some pressing business. Upon my return, I saw just enough to let me know that the congressman was the subject of the much discussed underwear shot heard round the world.
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Both political parties are manifestly hostile to citizens. This hostility reduces electoral participation to just over 50% of the voting age population for presidential elections and less than 40% for off-year congressional elections. The absence of 50% to 60% of those eligible to vote creates minority rule and threatens the legitimacy of any ruling party. Truly, every election ratifies the rejection of both parties.
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Michael Collins
“The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.” G2geek, January 10, 2011
Daily Kos diarist G2geek published an essay on January 10 that deserves attention and further analysis. He argued that rash media figures activate lone wolf types through “emotional rhetoric.” When the lone wolves commit an assassination, bombing, etc., the emotional rhetoric of media personalities makes them stochastic terrorists. Why? The volume and intensity of their rhetoric will inevitably launch a lone wolf terrorist on the unsuspecting target for assassination. G2geek says that the theory does not yet apply to the Giffords assassination due to limited information on the assassin. However, the author provides examples of previous political murders used to support his argument and theory.
Definition: Stochastic: 1) RANDOM, specifically: involving a random variable; 2) involving chance or probability; PROBABILISTIC. Miriam Webster
The theory (heuristic, at this point) is worth considering on its own merits. In addition, it is important to examine the author’s link between the claimed stochastic terrorism of bin Laden and the domestic process that he describes. (“That’s stochastic terrorism as surely as when Bin Laden does it.”)
“The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.”
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