Rep. Wexler Thanks You For Your Support

Posted on Crooks and Liars:

 

By: Nicole Belle on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 7:30 PM - PST

 

The tremendous response to my call for impeachment hearings for Vice President Cheney confirms that the Bush Administration and Vice President Cheney must be held accountable. I have been overwhelmed by the netroots support for my call for impeachment hearings and for my website - WexlerWantsHearings.com. As of Monday afternoon - after only four days - over 80,000 people have signed up to show their support for impeachment hearings.

It is the constitutional duty of Congress to investigate the serious charges that have been leveled against Vice President Cheney, and I am using my position as a member of the House Judiciary Committee to see that hearings are held. Unfortunately, Congress and the national media ignore this serious issue. The outpouring of support documented at WexlerWantsHearings.com has been driven and supported entirely through the power of blogs, the Internet, and word of mouth. Websites like Crooks and Liars have taken on this important cause and have stepped up to fill the void left by the main stream media who still somehow believe that impeachment is a fringe idea and not worth coverage. In this case, the American people are way ahead of Congress and the media.

I was shocked when no newspaper would publish the op-ed I wrote with Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). It is not every day that three members of the House Judiciary Committee set out a substantive case for impeachment hearings against the sitting Vice President. Yet, the national media yawned. No matter. The people have responded. Americans from all fifty states have signed up to support my call for hearings.

Originally, my goal was to gain 50,000 online signatures on behalf of impeachment hearings. Today, our goal is 250,000 supporters.

The charges against Vice President Cheney are too serious dismiss without hearings. If we band together, we can make focus the nation’s attention on this critical issue. Let’s continue to make our voices heard.

Congressman Robert Wexler

I’ve been in communication with Rep. Wexler’s office and they are genuinely stunned by both the volume and the quality of the response they’ve received from the blogosphere.  Look at these past posts on Wexler’s petition (h/t FOIA)  I think we’re starting to pierce through the Beltway bubble and really showing the power of the netroots to come together and support those who are supporting our values.

If you haven’t done so already, please forward WexlerWantsHearings.com to your email list. Let’s show Rep. Wexler that he can get 250,000 signatures as easily as we got him 50,000.

~ Link ~

Andy McKee - Shanghai

http://guitarvideo-angello90.blogspot.com

Wexler Hits 50,000 Impeach Sigs in One Day, Going for Half-Million

by ralphlopez
17 Dec 2007

It's not being reported in the corporate media, which also refused to
publish an opinion piece penned by six-term Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), Rep.
Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). But a whopping 50,000
people responded in just one day to Rep. Wexler's call for people to sign
his on-line petition supporting an immediate start to hearings on Rep.
Dennis Kucinich's Cheney Impeachment bill (H Res 799). Among the corporate
media refusing to publish the piece by three U.S. congressmen are the NY
Times, the L.A. Times, and the Washington Post.

As of Sunday morning, 54,000 people had signed the petition at
WexlerWantsHearings.com calling for action now. Names are being added at a
rate of one every one or two seconds.

Wexler has said he wanted at least 50,000 signatures. But why stop there? If
people get behind this, and if the impeachment movement spreads the word, he
could easily get closer to 500,000 signatures over the next few days.

And if each of us were to send out a call to sign to ten of our friends,
then we'd have half a million signatures, which would be hard for Conyers
and the Democratic leadership, Speaker Nancy Pelosi included, to ignore. Go
to WexlerWantsHearings.com and sign the petition!

Kucinich's impeachment bill was filed on April 24 and has been ignored now
for almost eight shameful months. On Nov. 7, a bipartisan majority of 218
members of the House voted to send it from the floor of the House back to
the Judiciary Committee for action. Now it's sat there for over four weeks.

We need to tell Congress, and particularly the Democrats who are stalling on
this important defense of the Constitution and of democracy itself that
time's up. We the American People want action. We want impeachment hearings!

Email small-town newspapers to please cover this (forget the major media,
they do not care about their country.) Hit the street corners and shopping
malls with flyers. Once you get out there you'll realize that a tiny
fraction of the population gets it news from the progressive Internet. Most
people do not have a clue about what's going on with impeachment, BUT WILL
IMMEDIATELY AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY RESPOND! This happens fast. Remember that
in 1776 there was suddenly electricity in the air as a subjugated and
repressed people took to the streets and won their freedom!

(This diary based on a report by David Lindorff, Democrats.com)

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/12/17/152811/65

'Hollywood and the CIA: The Spook Stays In The Picture'

From Mother Jones:

13 Dec 2007

 

" ... The result of all this research vérité was a somber film reminiscent of John le Carré's George Smiley novels. "The movie itself has to be understood on a couple of layers," Bearden says. "One layer is about the origins of the cia. On another layer, it is about America Incorporated at the time: The guys who went to Yale—I went to Yale—were the sons of the guys who went to Yale who were the sons of guys who went to Yale, and they owned America." The end of the movie, he notes, re-creates a period when John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen, was head of the cia, and both of them had connections to the United Fruit Co.—the chief beneficiary of the cia's overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala. "They have cocktail parties in Georgetown, along with [the New York Times' James] Reston and [the New York Herald Tribune's Stewart] Alsop. And they all used to pop each other with wet towels in the locker room. America Incorporated created these benighted cia people." .. "

 

~ Read more... ~

 

De Burgh to be first global star to rock Iran since 1979

Robert Tait in Tehran
17 Dec 2007
The Guardian

His folksy middle-of-the-road rock and schmaltzy balladry may have opened him up to much mockery over the years. But not in Tehran. Chris de Burgh is to capitalise on his inoffensive image and not inconsiderable following in the Islamic republic by becoming the first major western artist to perform live since the 1979 revolution.

The culture and Islamic guidance ministry has relaxed its hostile policy towards western pop music by giving De Burgh, 59, permission to stage a concert in Tehran next year. He is expected to play in a 12,000-seater venue with an Iranian band, Arian, with whom he has recorded a song, A Melody For Peace.

Arian's manager, Mohsen Rajabpour, said the singer - an ambassador to the UN's anti-malnutrition programme - planned a preparatory trip to Iran before the Iranian new year next March.

Approval for the concert comes amid growing intolerance of western culture under Iran's Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. CDs by internationally popular acts have become harder to obtain while the government has pressed state broadcasters to favour Iranian over western music, some of which has been denounced as satanist.

But De Burgh's relatively uncontroversial persona has apparently persuaded the authorities to draw a distinction between him and more exotic performers. Officials were unavailable to comment yesterday on whether the lyrics to Lady in Red might be considered a bit steamy.

They may also have been persuaded by his description in 2002 of Iran as "one of those countries I would love to visit, not only for historical reasons but also for the fact that I believe that music is an international language and deserves to be heard all over the world".

Lesser known acts have already managed to play live to Iranian fans. Henrik Nagy, a Swedish-born rock musician, played at Tehran's Niavaran Palace shortly after Ahmadinejad took office in 2005.

Pop concerts are rare in Iran and have to be approved by the culture and Islamic guidance ministry, which scrutinises lyrics and musical style for "un-Islamic" influences. Many artists only perform instrumental pieces to avoid giving offence. Some bands also play illicit gigs in "underground" venues, such as car parks, an offence that can result in imprisonment.

The authorities have approved western classical musical. Last August, the Osnabruck Symphony Orchestra became the first western orchestra to play in Iran since the revolution.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2228549,00.html

Music Industry Pressures EU Politicians for Filtered Internet

7 Dec 2007

Posted by Danny OBrien

The music and film industry continues to pursue its idea of a politically "corrected" Internet - one that they imagine could protect their old business models without requiring any extra costs on their part.

This time, the fix is Internet-wide filtering. In a memo to European policy-makers, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries has called upon ISPs in Europe to filter the content sent across their networks, block protocols used by their customers, and cut off access to persistently infringing sites from the Net (you can read their full memo here). Left unsaid in it was the obvious implication: if ISPs aren't willing to comply, EU regulators should force the ISP's hand.

Disturbingly, European politicians seem open to the idea of ISPs policing and interfering with their customers' communications on behalf of rightsholders. Last month, the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) tabled an amendment to a Parliamentary report that changed an innocuous request to "rethink the critical issue of intellectual property", into a call for "internet service providers to apply filtering measures to prevent copyright infringements".

This week, EFF Europe sent a letter to the members of the Culture and Education Committee, whose original report the ITRE Commitee was amending. We pointed out that some of the groups hardest hit by blanket filtering measures Internet would be artists and teachers themselves. Pre-emptive blocking and filtering by machines could make no evaluation of whether the transmitted content is permitted by the limitations and exceptions carved out for those groups in copyright law. IFPI says that all "unlicensed" files should be blocked: in other words, researchers using the quotation exception, teachers using education exceptions, or artists using their rights to parody or pastiche, would have to beg for a license or find their conversations banned from the Net.

Building such filtering and censorship tools is not just bad for creators and education, though; it's bad for society. Any country that has a centralized system in place to pry into all its citizen's private communications, and then pre-emptively sever those which it deems "unsuitable", creates both a very disturbing precedent, and a dangerously powerful tool vulnerable to misuse. Perhaps the music industry's European lobbyists have lost sight of the serious collateral damage their proposals would cause, but European citizens and their elected policy-makers should not.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/music-industry-europe-filter-pressure

sand dancer

'It is one of the things that makes me think Dr Kelly was murdered'

Police could not find any fingerprints on Dr Kelly's 'suicide' knife

14 Oct 2007

 

Fresh doubts were raised over the suicide of Dr David Kelly after it emerged that no fingerprints were found on the knife he supposedly used to kill himself.

The Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Ministry of Defence weapons expert ruled that he slashed one of his wrists with a blunt garden knife and took an overdose of pills.

But the campaigning Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has carried out his own investigation after forensic experts questioned the official version of events.

He has called for the case to be re-opened after Thames Valley Police revealed that no fingerprints were found on the knife.

The Lewes MP made the discovery after submitting a Freedom of Information request to the force.

The lack of fingerprints is especially strange as police records also revealed the germ warfare expert was not wearing any gloves when he died – nor were any found at the scene of his death.

Mr Baker said: 'It is one of the things that makes me think Dr Kelly was murdered.

'The angle you pick up a knife to kill yourself – there would be fingerprints. Someone who wanted to kill himself wouldn't go to the lengths of wiping the knife clean of fingerprints.

'And wearing gloves would seem very odd when you are about to cut your own wrists. It is very strange.'

Mr Baker is also suspicious about the cut to Dr Kelly's wrist.

It completely severed a tiny blood vessel called the ulnar artery, which is deep in the wrist and protected by nerves and tendons.

It is highly unlikely anyone without a blood-clotting defect would bleed to death from a single cut to this artery.

It would have required unusual force to cut through the tendons, particularly with a blunt gardening knife, and it would have been very painful.

To ascertain just how unusual the injury was, Mr Baker asked the Office of National Statistics how many people in the UK died in 2003 from a cut to the ulnar artery.

He was told that Dr Kelly was the only one. The scientist was found dead in woodland near his home in Southmoor, Oxfordshire, in July 2003 after becoming trapped at the centre of a vicious war of words between the Government and the BBC.

His death came days after he was unmasked as the source of a Today programme report alleging Labour had 'sexed up' a dossier outlining the case for war in Iraq.

The document had famously claimed that Saddam Hussein could launch a nuclear or biological weapons strike on Britain within 45 minutes.

Dr Kelly, a father of three, was grilled on TV by MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

His widow, Janice, claimed her husband had been put under 'intolerable pressure'.

But Lord Hutton exonerated the Government and ruled that Dr Kelly's death was a suicide – leading to accusations that the inquiry had been a whitewash.

Independent doctors have pointed to discrepancies in the post-mortem examination results.

They say neither the cut to Dr Kelly's wrist nor the drugs he took were enough to kill him.

Friends and relatives said the doctor had shown no suicidal tendencies, and had been looking forward to his daughter's wedding.

However, Mrs Kelly remains convinced that her husband killed himself and refused to comment on the latest development.

A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: 'It has been confirmed that there were no fingerprints on the knife whatsoever. This however does not change the official explanation of his death.'

~ Link ~