Timothy V. Gatto
Information Clearing House
September 18, 2008

I think I can speak for many Americans when I say that our government has been less than responsive as far as ending militarism and holding our civil liberties sacrosanct. In fact, less than responsive is being generous, as we have seen this nation totally scrap the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, station troops in bases world-wide in over 130 different nations, and wage aggressive war on three nations, become complicit with another nation to wage war (Georgia) and institute trade sanctions (another Act of War by International law) on Iran. Read the rest of this entry »

The riveting excerpts below are from the revealing accounts of 20 award-winning journalists in the highly acclaimed book Into the Buzzsaw. These courageous writers were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major news stories. Some were even fired or laid off. They have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. Join in building a better world by helping to spread this news across the land.

Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report [on hormones in milk], Fox fired the general manager [of our station]. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes that the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination in 48 hours. We pleaded with [him] to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” [After we refused] Fox’s GM presented us an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000, but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. [After declining] we were fired. (click for more)

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Daily Newscaster

September 4th, 2008

By: D. H. Williams @ 7:29 PM - EST

Today at the Republican National Convention, as the Ron Paul Delegates were taking a picture in front of the model White House inside the Convention Center, they were surrounded by Secret Service which proceeded to search the bags of all the delegates. They took any and everything related to Ron Paul including signs, buttons, videos, slim jims, cards, even books.

Alternate Delegate Dennis Rothacker from Florida said “We were done taking the picture when Secret Service started walking into the room and surrounded us. There were about 30 of them. When they searched my bags they took my Ron Paul sign and turned a deaf ear to my complains, they just walked away.”

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By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted September 3, 2008.

“It’s like we don’t have rights. Like we don’t even live here.”

Sitting outside the Black Dog cafe in lower St. Paul late Tuesday morning, a lanky kid in dreadlocks and a black Bob Marley T-shirt stopped, asked me for a light, and sat down next to me. It was drizzly and gray, and eerily quiet. The night before, nearly 300 people had been arrested by Minnesota police in a sweeping display of brute force. Among them were journalist Amy Goodman and two Democracy Now! producers, both of whom were physically assaulted. With helicopters overheard and the National Guard out, it felt like a city under siege.
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Infowars
September 2, 2008

These two NOLA residents made the mistake of carrying weapons for protection in the government lock down zone.

Those who dared disobey the government decreed “mandatory hurricane evacuation” in New Orleans will be arrested and sent to jail if they wander “outside their properties during a dusk-to-dawn curfew,” according to the AFP. “Those persons who remain within the City of New Orleans do so at their own risk and are subject to arrest if they are outside the boundaries of their own property,” said Lord Nagin, Surpeme Commander of New Orleans. “Nagin warned Sunday that looters would be arrested and sent directly to prison.”

“What, no trial? I mean, I realize ‘legal niceties’ simply get in the way of maintaining recht und ordnung… um, sorry, law and order … but this is a nifty approach. Get arrested, go straight to the big house, no muss, no fuss, only the ease of legal administration,” writes Charles Featherstone for the LRC blog.

“You know, prisoners sitting in cells are so, well, economically unproductive. Wouldn’t it simply be easier if in the future, the kinds of people who refuse to obey gummint orders, would simply get whisked away to special camps, I mean detention centers, where they can spend their days laboring for the good of society? You know, felling trees and quarrying rocks and digging canals?”

William Cormier
OpEdNews
September 1, 2008

Blackwater International is running a full page on their website attempting to compile “a list of qualified security personnel for possible deployment into areas affected by Hurricane Gustav.” This is a task that has historically been undertaken by our various state National Guard Units.

CNN is reporting that President Bush and Vice-President Darth Cheney will not attend the RNC because of Hurricane Gustav. Some believe it’s nothing more than a PR stunt, however, as we look behind the scenes, it is possible that something far more sinister is behind Bush and Cheney’s decision to forgo the Republican National Convention:

Bush tells Gulf Coast residents to flee ‘dangerous’ storm

“This storm is dangerous,” he warned, urging residents to heed calls to evacuate.

After a briefing at FEMA headquarters, Bush said he would forgo an appearance at the GOP National Convention on Monday and will be in Texas instead.

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TheUptake.comSat. Aug 30, 2008. Saint Paul, MN Police Department raids a home at 951 Iglehart Avenue at gunpoint. The journalists include a contributing photojournalist with “Democracy Now”, whose host Amy Goodman appears in this clip jumping a fence to question police officers.This is part of a series of police actions on the eve of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.After several hours, all those detained were released. No arrests. No property was seized as result of the search warrant. The clip ends with an interview with homeowner Mike Whalen. At the start of the clip, a neighbor shouts to the media and onlookers that we could all come into her backyard to see the detained people held in the adjacent backyard.Video by Chuck Tomlinson

 Salon.com
Glenn Greenwald

Sunday Aug. 31, 2008 11:46 EDT

As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue — see this video of the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice, seizing the bus and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway — it appears increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that “the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Today’s Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically “aided by informants planted in protest groups.” Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force — an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI — was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate “vegan groups” and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.
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http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/01/fascism-is-over-if-we-want-it.html
Many times, when I explain to people what’s going on in our country today, they at first argue that things aren’t really that bad, and that America could never go fascist.  After a couple of examples about what’s been happening recently, and a brief overview of what fascism actually means, they get it.But then they shrug their shoulders and say “there’s nothing I can do”, hoping that that’s the end of discussion.Are they right? Is there nothing we can do about fascism? Should we just hunker down and try to survive it?Well, first of all, there is something we can do to break free of the fascist concrete which has been poured over America, before it really hardens.Here is just one example:Ukranian people stood up to tyranny and won. The East German people stood up to tyranny and won. The people of the Philippines, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, Indonesia and other countries around the world have won against tyranny whenever ordinary people have poured into the streets in massive numbers and demanded freedom.And here in the U.S., even though Nixon said he didn’t care what the American people thought, he backed off on dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam when hundreds of thousands of people turned out to protest an escalation of the war.But, but . . . Read the rest of this entry »

By Kim Zetter | Wired.com
Privacy International, a UK privacy group, and the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center have put together a world map of surveillance societies, rating various nations for their civil liberties records.Both the U.S. and the UK are colored black for “endemic surveillance,” as are Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, China and Malaysia.The 2007 International Privacy Ranking
Among the trends that the two organizations have tracked:
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At the Oriental Theater in Denver, CO. Elizabeth Kucinich spoke with WeAreChangeColorado.org on issues that matter to patriots. The Fed, 2nd Amendment, War in Iraq, National Sovereignty and Health Care.

James Madison
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

No endorsement should be implied, but Ron Paul discusses some of the issues addressed on our website. Apologies for the shaky camera, I forgot my tripod.