Dear Kitty. Some blog

This is an Australian parody video about Internet censorships plans there.

The German parliament has passed a law using child pornography as a pretext to censure the Internet: here.

Innocents accused of net piracy: here.

This is a video from the USA about the promotion by Sean Hannity of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News of an anti-Semite.

From Think Progress in the USA:

FBI Arrests White Supremacist Blogger Hal Turner For Threatening To Kill Federal Judges

FBI agents went to the New Jersey home of white supremacist blogger/radio host Hal Turner and arrested him “on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb,” according to a statement released by the Justice Department. …

Turner’s posts also “referred to the murder of the mother and husband of Chicago-based federal Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow in February 2005,” saying, “Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed.” …

As the Nation has pointed out, Turner has ties to Fox News’ Sean Hannity. In fact, Hannity has “offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner’s occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants.” Hannity would also reportedly offer Turner “encouragement” to overcome his cocaine habit and “homosexual leanings.”

Turner’s arrest comes after two major tragedies put the spotlight on the dangers of right-wing extremism: the Holocaust Museum shooting by white supremacist James von Brunn and the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

Explanation of this video about Iran and United States media is here.

From Iranian blogger Homeyra (with some hyperlinks added by me, as I often do on this blog):

What does the coverage tell?

I am not a TV fan and frankly I didn’t have a clear idea on how the recent events in Iran are represented in the international MSM.

It was quite an experience for me to spend the most part of yesterday at a friend’s in front of the TV. We watched mainly CNN where the Iran coverage constituted almost 70% of the program.

Various far-from-interesting-guests-and-experts would explain in length their difficulties to get information out of the country and what were the limitations imposed recently on foreign journalists. Footage of Iran consisted mainly of whatever they found on the net and guests would explain that they weren’t sure of the date and location. You had those who thought that President Obama was doing the “right thing” etc. My friend and I laughed at the “art” of talking and talking and not having much to say.

In short the only thing we learned about this lengthy Iran program with not much substance was the following: CNN was willing to invest a lot of its valuable air time to Iran despite the lack of facts, figures or in depth analysis.

No need to say that all my sympathies are toward the brave Iranians in the streets. Still this program was sort of ridiculous if you think that the Afghan, Iraqi or Palestinian people are systematically deprived of such an interest.

The line of the Nation magazine on the events in Iran is indistinguishable from that of the American political establishment. The background of its principal correspondent on the Iranian events, Robert Dreyfuss, deserves careful examination: here.

Nokia Siemens Networks under scrutiny for role in creating Iran’s system for internet snooping: here.

For a socialist, not a “color” revolution in Iran: here.

This video from the USA says about itself:

EFF designer Hugh D’Andrade creates a fanciful mural-sized political cartoon depicting how the NSA’s illegal spying program operates inside AT&T’s San Francisco facility.

For more information:
http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

Music:
“Master of Skandal’!” by Skandalo Publico
http://www.skandalopublico.free.fr/

By Tom Eley in the USA:

NSA monitors millions of American e-mails

19 June 2009

Several current and former agents within the National Security Agency (NSA), speaking on condition of anonymity, have told the New York Times that the spy agency likely monitors millions of e-mail communications and telephone calls made by Americans. The new revelations follow the disclosure in April that the NSA’s monitoring of domestic e-mail traffic broke the law in 2008 and 2009.

Last year, Congress passed legislation providing the NSA greater latitude to spy on the communications of Americans, so long as it resulted inadvertently from the agency’s efforts to spy on foreigners or those it “reasonably believed” to be outside US borders.

From British daily The Guardian:

MP expenses claim details censored as they go online

The Commons authorities today published 1m expenses claims and receipts covering the past four years but have censored some of the most damaging information.

The online publication excludes all rejected claims and all addresses, disguising the extent to which politicians used the “flipping” tactic to redesignate their second homes so they maximised their income.

Freedom of information campaigners have criticised the blacking-out of key details in MPs’ expenses claim forms which were released today: here.

PM [Gordon Brown] forced to sack junior Treasury minister in face of evidence she ‘flipped’ homes for month to avoid tax: here.

Scotland Yard could begin full criminal investigations into a handful of MPs over their expenses within weeks: here.

More than 30 MPs claimed the maximum £400 allowance for food every month last year, with many billing the taxpayer for meals when the Commons was not sitting: here.

This is a video about prime minister Mossadeq of Iran, deposed by CIA coup d’etat.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

Obama: US “meddling” in Iran should not be seen

18 June 2009

Amid rhetoric about his commitment to the “universal values” of democratic processes and free speech, US President Barack Obama made one unintentionally revealing statement on Iran Tuesday. “It’s not productive, given the history of the US-Iranian relationship, to be seen as meddling,” he said.

The statement was meant as an explanation of the Obama administration’s failure to join the Iranian opposition led by the defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in explicitly denouncing last Friday’s presidential election as a “fraud” and as a defense against criticism from the Republican right in the US.

Before Obama made the statement, his Republican opponent in the 2008 election, Arizona Senator John McCain

McCain and his cronies have a history both of economical links to the Teheran regime (as war on Iran propagandist Dick Cheney had as well), and of singing “Bomb bomb Iran.”

condemned the administration’s reticence, declaring that Obama “should speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed sham of an election and that the Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.”

Obama’s choice of words, however, spoke volumes. The US should not “be seen as meddling”; as for the meddling itself, that is clearly another matter.

The president’s reference to “the history of the US-Iranian relationship” refers to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that overthrew the country’s nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who two years earlier had begun to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, until then controlled by Britain.

The coup ushered in the 26-year, US-backed rule of the Shah and SAVAK, his brutal secret police, which ended only with the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Nearly one year after the coup, in August 1954, the New York Times published an editorial succinctly explaining the motives behind the CIA action: “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism,” the paper editorialized. “It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rest of Mossadeqs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and far-seeing leaders.”

“More reasonable and far-seeing” pro Washington dictators, like the Shah; Suharto in Indonesia; Mobutu in Congo; Pinochet in Chile; etc. etc.

The obvious question is: what fundamentally has changed in “the US-Iranian relationship” since those days? Washington—under Obama as under Bush—is continuing two colonial-style wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, i.e., on Iran’s western and eastern borders,

The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan might be interpreted as a pincer movement against Iran. However, they were also tacit collaboration between at least some elements of the Bush and Teheran regimes. As Bush’s wars removed two enemies of Teheran: Saddam Hussein, whom they hated for secularism; and the Afghan Taliban, whom they hated for being Sunni and more extremely “fundamentalist” than themselves.

that have claimed the lives of over one million people. The aim of these wars is the same as the objective of the coup of 1953—control of “rich resources” and the pipeline routes for extracting them from the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

Letters on the elections in Iran: here.

The Iranian working class and the revolt: here.

How Iran’s Internet works: here.

Britain’s communists have called for the immediate release of arrested protesters and leaders of the trade union and women’s movements in Iran: here.

With an uncompromising speech at Friday’s prayers, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has set the stage for a potentially bloody confrontation with opposition leaders demanding a re-run of last week’s presidential election: here.

From British daily The Independent:

Scientologists wanted me out, claims journalist sacked by Fox

Travolta and Cruise deny pushing for the dismissal of entertainment reporter

By Guy Adams in Los Angeles

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

In a conspiracy as contorted as the plot of one of their action movies, Tom Cruise and John Travolta have been accused of persuading Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News to sack an influential entertainment journalist who had a history of criticising the Church of Scientology.

Roger Friedman, who was dismissed in April after a decade covering the TV channel’s Hollywood beat, announced yesterday that he intended to sue his former employer for wrongful termination, claiming that they fired him so that Cruise and Travolta would sign on to future Fox movie projects.

The lawsuit, which Friedman bullishly described as a “slam-dunk,” promises to shed light on the close ties between powerful Scientologists and film studios that rely on their co-operation to get expensive movies off the ground. It is due to be filed in Manhattan later this week.

Cruise and Travolta have formally denied any connection to the sacking and Fox insists that the journalist was dismissed for writing a column on his “411″ blog which encouraged readers to download an illegally pirated version of the 20th Century Fox blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

In an interview with the New York Daily News, Friedman, who was a regular talking head on Fox News and wrote a blog on its website that was read by more than 50 million people, claimed that the official grounds were an elaborate cover story.

Though he was formally given the heave-ho for “promoting piracy” the journalist claims he was actually sacked to help Fox build stronger links with the Church of Scientology, of whom he had been a longstanding critic.

At the time of Friedman’s dismissal, Fox was involved in protracted (and subsequently successful) negotiations to hire Cruise to appear in the forthcoming romantic comedy Wichita, alongside Cameron Diaz.

Friedman, now at The Hollywood Reporter, also claimed that Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston, had earlier attempted to get him fired last August after they became involved in a heated argument at the funeral of a mutual friend, the late actor and soul singer Isaac Hayes. After bumping into Preston (who, like Hayes and her husband, is a fervent Scientologist) Friedman said he was loudly berated for criticising Scientology in his column. “She called me a religious bigot,” Friedman says.

Later, Friedman alleges, Preston orchestrated a meeting between senior Fox executives Roger Ailes and John Moody and the communications department of the Church of Scientology in an effort to have his longstanding criticisms of the church and its most prominent members reined in.

Though Friedman has yet to produce any factual evidence beyond his own recollection to back up his version of his sacking in April, he does appear to have been hard done by. The column for which he was sacked was read and approved by at least four of his superiors.

“It’s outrageous that Rupert Murdoch made a decision to fire Roger after four of Roger’s editors and superiors reviewed his column and found it very good,” said Friedman’s attorney, Martin Garbus.

“In falsely claiming Roger engaged in piracy, they attempted to destroy the reputation of a fine journalist. I’ve seen how Scientology intimidates even the most powerful media. That seems to be what happened here.”

Asked about the specifics of Friedman’s allegations, Fox News declined to comment, while an attorney for Cruise said it was “utterly false” that the actor had sought his dismissal.

…

Friedman on Scientology: ‘Believing in this means believing in aliens‘

* “One possible theory for why the careers of Scientologists tend to go south is that the famous actors, such as Jenna Elfman or Juliette Lewis, ‘get so involved in thinking only they can save the world’ that the sect overwhelms them … John Travolta has headlined a series of flops.”

* “[Tom Cruise] is so consumed by Scientology at this point that he seems to have no awareness of the ridicule he’s subject to … Cruise is totally subsumed into the Hubbard world.”

* “To believe in this religion means also subscribing to a belief in aliens, for one thing. And by aliens I mean creatures from other planets and galaxies … [Looking at] the history of Scientology inventor L Ron Hubbard, one can only conclude that Cruise and Travolta share these same ideals.”

* “Katie Holmes’ parents must be beside themselves since their daughter joined the group.”

* “Scientology is notable for recruiting stars at low points in their careers or personal lives, preying on uncertainty, instability or just plain fear by promising to fix life issues.”

The leader of the Church of Scientology struck his subordinates numerous times and set an example for physical violence among the tightly controlled religion’s management team, four former high-ranking executives told a newspaper for a story published Sunday: here.

Scientology leader David Miscavige ‘physically attacked staff’: here.

Murdoch´s MySpace, here.

Bloggers don’t go to jail, Murdoch CEO laments: here.

Fox: New 9/11 Needed for U.S. to Become Violent Enough: here.

Scientology and Belgian Vlaams Belang racists: here.

From BirdLife:

Free tools for conservation - Everyone loves free stuff and this is equally true for conservation biologists, especially if it is easily downloadable from the internet! Xeno-canto is a platform for birders, biologists and conservationists to share knowledge and recordings of the world’s birds. Visitors can search through sounds in many different ways, make maps showing locations of recordings, and use simple song characteristics to try and identify unknown songs heard in the field. Xeno-canto provides access to its collections to anyone in the world. The recordings are shared under a Creative Commons license, allowing unlimited (non-commercial) distribution and copying. The final region (Australasia) has recently come online. Check it out at www.xeno-canto.org.

Listen to the amazing call of the Critically Endangered Stresemann’s Bristlefront Merulaxis stresemanni (XC22834) coutresy [sic] of Xeno Canto.

This video from the USA says about itself:

Fox News’s Shepard Smith may be in the process of losing his job. Fox’s coverage of the terrorist act by James Von Brunn at the DC Holocaust Museum on 6/10/09 was outstanding.

While gathering information for the live report on the shooting, Smith directly addressed the rise of right-wing terrorism in America. Referring to “the crazies” who refuse to believe Obama is a U.S. citizen, militia groups, and those who screamed about the recent Homeland Security Report …etc.

Smith also interviews the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich. I wonder if he realizes he works for the main propaganda stream for these so-called “crazies”?

From Daily Kos in the USA:

Holocaust Museum shooter may have ties to hate groups

by BarbinMD

Wed Jun 10, 2009 at 12:06:32 PM PDT

Via MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - A gunman exchanged fire with security guards inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday. One security guard and the gunman were taken to a hospital.

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as James Wenneker von Brunn, born in 1920, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, NBC News reported. NBC said he may have had connections to hate groups or anti-government groups.

With the second rightwing political shooting in as many weeks, will the conservative media apologize for their “outrage” at the Department of Homeland Security report on “rightwing extremism”?

For more discussion, see maryschoyc’s diary.

Update: Think Progress is reporting that it appears that von Brunn:

… has been approvingly cited on Stormfront, a national white supremacist website. He is apparently the author of a tract called, “Kill the Best Gentiles,” which his website describes as “a new, hard-hitting exposé of the JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool.” Brunn, a WWII veteran, also wrote a screed on President Obama’s citizenship that was re-posted to popular right-wing blog Free Republic.

Also from Daily Kos:

SPLC: Shooter had deep ties to far-right extremists

by Jed Lewison

Wed Jun 10, 2009 at 12:38:26 PM PDT

Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center says the SPLC had been tracking James von Brunn’s involvement with right-wing extremists, including neo-Nazis and white supremacists, since the 1970s. (Update: Here’s SPLC’s blog post on von Brunn. –Jed) …

Update: CNN is reporting that a guard at the museum has died. No further details. - BarbinMD

Update: the museum guard murdered by terrorist nazi Von Brunn was Stephen Tyrone Johns.

See also here. And here. And here.

Angered By His Holocaust Museum Shooting Coverage, The Far Right Goes After Shepard Smith: here.

This video from the USA is called Dr. Warren Hern Speaks about the Murder of Colleague and Friend Dr. George Tiller.

By David Edwards and Muriel Kane in the USA:

Doctor: We don’t need to invade countries to find terrorists

Published: June 1, 2009
Updated 2 hours ago

Following the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion extremist, his friend, Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, CO, may be the only doctor left in the United States who performs late-term abortions.

Hern told MSNBC on Monday, “This was not the act of a lone, deranged gunman. This is a result of thirty-five years of relentless and merciless anti-abortion harassment and violence and intimidation. … This is the absolutely predictable consequence of that kind of mindless harassment and fanaticism. … The anti-abortion people will stop at nothing, including assassination, to impose their will on other people.”

With his voice choking up, Hern said of Tiller, “He was a wonderful person who was very dedicated and this shouldn’t happen. … Dr. Tiller’s crime was that he helped women, and the man who killed him tried to kill an idea. The idea is freedom.”

“We don’t have to invade other countries to find the terrorists,” Hern concluded. “They’re here killing doctors who do abortions. The main difference between the American anti-abortion movement and the Taliban is about 8000 miles.”

Hern’s depiction of Tiller’s murder as domestic terrorism may draw fresh attention to a controversial Department of Homeland Security report (pdf) issued in April. That report offended many conservatives by suggesting that political positions such as opposition to abortion had historically been exploited by white supremacists and militia groups as a mean of recruiting members and promoting violent acts.

…

Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly — who has himself spent the last four years singling Tiller out as a “baby killer” — was similarly indignant.

By Cristina Page, Author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America:

For those who would like to think today’s murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, is an isolated incident, here’s the horrifying news: You are wrong. The pattern is clear and frightening.

In March 1993, three months into the administration of our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was murdered in Pensacola, Florida. That was the beginning of what would become a five-fold increase in violence against abortion providers throughout the Clinton years.

From the blog of Shannyn Moore in the USA:

Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism

Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism.

It’s shocking to write. But it’s time to start calling it what it is.

When Jim D. Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church with 76 rounds and a shot-gun, he killed 2 people and was charged with murder. His motive was “he hated the liberal movement” and was upset with “liberals in general as well as gays.” He should have been charged with terrorism.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today condemned the “heinous murder” of George Tiller, who was one of only three US doctors carrying out late-term abortions: here.

Slam Bill O’Reilly for His Jihad Against Dr. George Tiller: here.

Beware ‘Lone Nut’ Theory in Tiller’s Murder: here.

The assassination of Dr. George Tiller by a right-wing anti-abortion fanatic is an attack on basic democratic rights that exposes the pathological state of political life in America: here.

Operation Rescue Assisted Roeder In Tracking Tiller’s Court Hearings: here.

Calling Abortion Murder Invites Violence: here.

Following the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, the slain doctor’s family has announced that the Women’s Health Care Services clinic will not be reopened: here.

Obama taps anti-abortion activist to faith-based health post: here.

Anti-Abortion Blogger Admits Hoax: here.

Baby Blog Hoaxer Explains Her ‘Lie’: here.

A recent survey shows that the United States may be becoming both less religious generally and less Christian specifically: here.