News (Page 2) -- March 23, 2006

Fox News: ‘It’s Too Late…We’re Already Probably At War With Iran’ - "CAVUTO: But what if I told you it is too late, that we’re already probably at war with Iran and most of us don’t even know it. Welcome everybody, I’m Neil Cavuto, and this is Your World." -- They have the video.

Propaganda and the Fear Factor(y) - "Huge public opinion and marketing machines, along with the advertising industry provide commercial forms of propaganda. Their success flows from their ability to keep people self-indulgent, to keep people consuming, to keep them on the debt treadmill, and to keep them complacent, self-absorbed, and hedonistic. If you haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for awhile, now is a good time to pick them up and re-read them. I submit that American society today seamlessly blends the self-satisfaction of Huxley’s Soma with Orwell’s ubiquitous telescreens and the thought-control they engender. When people are afraid, they need the Soma all the more: fear produces anxiety and hysteria; Soma provides the escapism. It is a powerful 1-2 punch."

Apocalyptic President - "Even some Republicans are now horrified by the influence Bush has given to the evangelical right."

Democrats Say Bush Violated Constitution - "House Democrats want President Bush to say whether he knew of what they call a "fundamental constitutional problem" with the $39 billion deficit reduction package he signed last month."

Study blasts US pro-Israel lobby - "The pro-Israel lobby in the United States has manipulated Washington's policies in the Middle East to the point where it is the US that does most of the fighting, dying and rebuilding while Israel reaps most of the security benefits, argues a new study by two US scholars."

The House has had it with the Israel Lobby - "An aide to a member of Congress told the Jewish weekly Forward that apparently the penny has finally dropped for the elected representatives of the American public. They have started to realize that the constant harassment of Arabs is liable to damage American interests in the Middle East, especially in Iraq."

Scholars' Attack on Pro-Israel Lobby Met With Silence - "In the face of one of the harshest reports on the pro-Israel lobby to emerge from academia, Jewish organizations are holding fire in order to avoid generating publicity for their critics."

It's criminal - "Impeachment is the only recourse that can bring a halt to the madness in Iraq, and the insanity being planned in Iran and elsewhere."

Death Squad Democracy - "In fact, if any of us were involved in the Pentagon's "pacification" plans we'd probably be doing the same thing. After all, the War Department is already overextended, so a plan had to be devised to divert attention from the occupation forces and get Iraqis to kill each other. The only reasonable choice is to incite "sectarian violence" and make civil war inevitable. That, of course, is the task of the American trained death squads. (The New York Times has confirmed that the Interior Ministry death squads were trained by American forces)"

BANNED FOR SPEAKING OUT - "The thought police are now turning into the music police, if a recent incident at Rutgers University in New Jersey is any indication. One of America’s brightest young entertainers was recently barred from performing on the Rutgers campus, not because of any “controversial” lyrics in his music, but simply because his Internet web site contained political commentary that some people deemed to be “offensive.”"

We Hold These Truths and These LIES to be Self Evident - "I would rather die in a prison myself than live as a willing or silent supporter- or a supporter by default as a result of my silence- of this carnage, this ugly, ugly consistency of machine like murder and torment of others for the sake of a wasteful lifestyle. ... May we never forget what our ignorance; our fear, our selfishness, our greed, our ambition and our lack of conscience has cost the world. We must never again let men and women such as this any where near the corridors of power. I oppose them with every breath in my body and I do not count the cost."

Google Caught Censoring Charlie Sheen 9/11 Story - "Google is again embroiled in a censorship scandal after being caught blocking information about Charlie Sheen's 9/11 comments, despite the fact that every other major search engine had indexed the pages."

Native American resistance - "Cecilia Fire Thunder, the new president of the Oglala Sioux tribe of South Dakota has responded forcefully to the recent South Dakota ban on almost all abortions: "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.""

What's Wrong With This Picture? - "British-led forces rescued three Christian peace activists from four months in captivity on Thursday after finding them tied up in a house in western Baghdad two weeks after an American colleague was killed.No shots were fired and the kidnappers had fled.That's odd. That sounds more like a pick-up than a rescue."

House OKs Bible study in public high schools - "A bill that allows public high schools to offer classes on the Bible sped through the House Monday, passing overwhelmingly with no debate. The legislation, which passed 151-7, would allow high schools to form elective courses on the history and literature of the Old Testament and New Testament eras. The classes would focus on the law, morals, values and culture of the eras."

Melting ice sheets could spur oceans' rise: study - "In an issue of the journal Science focusing on global warming, climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona reported that if global trends continue, Earth could ultimately see sea levels 20 feet higher than they are now. By the end of this century, Earth would be at least 4 degrees F (2.3 degrees C) warmer than now, or about as hot as it was nearly 130,000 years ago."