23-02-2012 20:45 A bit of insight as to who sits at the top of the media power structure in the USA and why it matters.
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Controlled Media in the US and its Implications - Video
23-02-2012 21:45 Ex Jew Benjamin H. Freedman speaks from the grave and warns America and the World about the deception and treachery of Zionism.The Zionists are now relentlessly beating the drums of war with Iran in an effort to continue their agenda of world domination.No war with Iran!
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Zionism - Benjamin Freedman's Famous 1961 Speech - Video
One of the most interesting features of Google’s new social media service, Google+, is Google+ Hangout On Air. A group of people get onto G+ all at once, fire up their computers’ cameras, and have a conversation. Google puts whoever is speaking at the moment on the main screen. You can join a hangout if it’s public or if you have an invitation, and–coolest of all–it automatically records the conversation and throws it onto Youtube.
Right now only a few people have access to this service. I jealously watched fellow Discover blogger Phil Plait talk about exoplanets last month. (You can too.) And then I got invited to join the folks at the Singularity Hub for a hangout, too. It’s up on Youtube, and you can also see it embedded here below. We talked about all sorts of things–from mind-controlling parasites to bird flu to using viruses to cure antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the future of ebooks and much more.
I deeply crave this technology. I used to participate in a primitive forerunner of this, known as Bloggingheads. I bowed out due to editorial differences, but I still think the basic system is an exciting medium. I hope Google opens up their Hangout On Air service to more people, because it could be a whole lot of fun.
Originally posted here:
Parasite mind-control, ebooks, and killer flu: My first Google+ Hangout video | The Loom
Newt Gingrich was wrong when he accused the “elite media” of failing to ask Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign about his votes “in favor of infanticide.” In fact, there were reams of mainstream media reports about Obama’s votes as an Illinois state senator on the “born alive” legislation to which Gingrich refers.
Gingrich made his accusation during the Feb. 22 Arizona debate, trying to turn the tables on debate moderator John King’s question about the birth-control issue.
Gingrich: But I just want to point out, you did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide.
Gingrich’s claim about “legalizing infanticide” goes back to 2004, when Obama’s Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate, Alan Keyes, claimed Obama’s votes amounted to infanticide, and hence, “Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.” And some of Obama’s critics raised the issue again in his 2008 presidential run, as was well publicized.
We’ll offer our own article on the subject as Exhibit A. We noted that the issue centered on Obama’s opposition to Illinois legislation in 2001, 2002 and 2003 that would have defined any aborted fetus that showed signs of life as a “born alive infant” entitled to legal protection, even if doctors believed it could not survive.
Obama said he opposed the 2001 and 2002 “born alive” bills as backdoor attacks on a woman’s legal right to abortion. Obama also noted that Illinois law already required physicians to protect the life of a fetus when there is “a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support.”
He accused his critics of “lying” about his position, and said he would have been “fully in support” of a similar federal bill that President Bush had signed in 2002, because it contained protections for Roe v. Wade. But we found reason to question that. Our story noted that Obama had actually voted in committee against a 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported. Both contained identical clauses saying that nothing in the bills could be construed to affect legal rights of an unborn fetus, according to an undisputed summary written immediately after the committee’s 2003 mark-up session.
Whether the votes amounted to “infanticide” is a matter of interpretation. But we note that the sponsor of the “born alive” bill, former Illinois state Sen. Rick Winkel, wrote in a Chicago Tribune letter to the editor on Sept. 5, 2008, “None of those who voted against SB-1082 favored infanticide. Rather their zeal for pro-choice dogma was clearly the overriding force behind their negative votes rather than concern that my bill would protect babies who are born alive.”
Obama was confronted on the issue by the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody. His response — “people are lying” — was reported and discussed in a number of newspapers including the Washington Post and the Oregonian. And the issue of Obama’s votes was explored in detail in such newspapers as the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.
The issue also came up during one of the 2008 presidential debates, when Sen. John McCain raised it, and CBS’ Bob Schieffer, the debate moderator, asked Obama to respond. Obama said, in part, “If it sounds incredible that I would vote to withhold lifesaving treatment from an infant, that’s because it’s not true.”
The Obama campaign even addressed the issue in a campaign ad in 2008, in which the narrator says Obama’s opponents took votes out of context to accuse Obama of “letting infants die,” an accusation the narrator calls “a despicable lie.”
We take no position on whether Obama’s explanation — that his votes were based on a desire to preserve abortion rights — passes muster. But contrary to Gingrich’s blustery outburst, the issue was hardly ignored by the mainstream media.
– Robert Farley
Also Read
Originally posted here:
Did ‘Elite Media’ Ignore ‘Infanticide’?
Enlarge Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images
President George W. Bush signs the Partial Birth Abortion Bill surrounded by high ranking Republican Congressmen on Nov. 5, 2003 in Washington, DC. The bill banned "partial-birth abortions" except where it is necessary to save a woman's life.
Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images
President George W. Bush signs the Partial Birth Abortion Bill surrounded by high ranking Republican Congressmen on Nov. 5, 2003 in Washington, DC. The bill banned "partial-birth abortions" except where it is necessary to save a woman's life.
Jessica Valenti is the founder and editor of Feministing.com
Aspirins and short skirts and contraception, oh my! The last few weeks have seen a slew of Republican gaffes concerning women's sexuality. From Rick Santorum's billionaire supporter Foster Friess's waxing nostalgic about the good old days when women put aspirin "between their knees" in lieu of contraception to an online furor over whether the young conservative women at CPAC dressed too provocatively — the GOP has a major woman problem on their hands. Their fear of sex — of women's sexuality in particular — has become a major media talking point, and a source of outrage among American women. But what I don't understand is why anyone is surprised. Republicans have long based their agenda for women in a deep-rooted disdain for all things female. We've been down this road many, many times before.
When a picture of Congressman Darrell Issa's all-male panel on birth control (the make-up of which prompted several Democratic women to walk out of the hearing) hit the Internet and mainstream media — I couldn't help but be reminded of a similar picture of George W. Bush signing the "partial birth" abortion ban, surrounded by a group of smiling clapping men. All men. (Santorum was one of them.)
Dahlia Lithwick reported last week in Slate on a law that's poised to pass in Virginia that would make it legal to penetrate abortion-seeking women against their wills by requiring a medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound — a procedure that would count as rape under state law. Delegate David Englin told Lithwick that one Republican lawmaker told him that the invasive ultrasound wasn't an issue because women seeking abortions had already made the decision to be "vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant." Apparently once women have been penetrated, all other future penetrations should be no problem, consent notwithstanding.
If this attitude sounds radical, consider that up until 2008, it was the basis for Maryland rape law. If a woman initially agreed to sex, but later withdrew consent, any sex that followed wasn't rape. The justification was based on archaic legislation that said after the initial "de-flowering" of a woman, nothing could be considered rape because "the damage was done," she was no longer a virgin and couldn't be "re-flowered."
The focus on birth control is not new either. Conservatives and Republican appointees successfully held up emergency contraception for over-the-counter status for three years in the FDA, despite a recommendation from an independent joint advisory committee to the agency to make the drug available. Dr. W. David Hager — appointed by then President Bush to the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs — told the New York Times about why he voted against the drug's approval, noting, "What we heard today was frequently about individuals who did not want to take responsibility for their actions and wanted a medication to relieve those consequences." (Hager also penned a book in which he argued that prayer could cure PMS — quite the expert on women's health!)
It also came out that in an internal memo FDA medical official Janet Woodcock argued against making the contraceptive available over the counter for fear that it would cause "extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B." (The same fear-based rhetoric over young women becoming promiscuous was used when conservatives tried to hold up Gardasil, the HPV vaccine that prevents cervical cancer.)
But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this is just a problem of men attacking women's rights. Conservative women's rights groups, always eager for a patriarchal pat on the head, have long thrown other women under the bus under the guise of protecting them from their own wanton sexuality. The Independent Women's Forum — who oppose the Violence Against Women Act, Title IX and who don't believe pay inequity exists — started a campaign years ago to get the award-winning play The Vagina Monologues banned from college campuses, arguing that it's pornographic and reduces women to their body parts. (Specifically, the one they'd rather not think about.) The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, another right-wing women's organization, launched a campaign and contest in 2008 to "Bringing Back the Dowry and Hope Chest." The winner received a "cedar-lined hope chest filled with $1000 worth of dowry items" as well as $500 toward her future wedding. Retro-chic!
Given this long history of paternalism and efforts to rollback women's rights — I think the calls that the GOP is launching a "war on women" are right on, but years late.
Perhaps today, with the Internet moving information faster than ever before, Republican and conservative sexism doesn't go as easily unnoticed (just ask the folks at Komen). Perhaps the influx of young women and feminists into self-directed and social media activism has changed the course of the national debate. Or maybe women are just fed up with yet another legislator dictating how they should run their lives and use their bodies.
Whatever the reason, we need to ensure that Republicans are held accountable and don't get to brush these comments and actions off as mistakes or misunderstandings. Because they're not simple gaffes, they're a crystal clear window into the future that the GOP wants for women.
See the rest here:
The Nation: Men, All Men. And Birth Control