Obama Launches Total Takeover of Media System

Posted on February 13, 2011 by abby

GLOBAL RESEARCH– Even the Washington Post describes the recent FCC approval of a presidential alert system like something out of Orwell’s 1984. Obama may soon appear on your television or call your cell phone to warn you about the next specious al-Qaeda underwear bombing event.

Commissioners voted last week to require television and radio stations, cable systems and satellite TV providers to participate in a test that would have them receive and transmit a live code that includes an alert message issued by the president. No date has been set for the test, according to the Post.

Once again, the government has imposed an unreasonable and absurd mandate on business and the American people.

“The Federal Communications Commission today took action to help pave the way for the first-ever Presidential alert to be aired across the United States on the Nation’s Emergency Alert System (EAS),” the FCC announced on February 3 in a press release. “The national test will help determine the reliability of the EAS system and its effectiveness in notifying the public of emergencies and potential danger nationwide and regionally.”

As Next Generation EAS systems become operational over the next few years, they will complement other public alert and warning systems now being developed, including FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) and the Commercial Mobile Alert System that will enable consumers to receive alerts through a variety of multi-media platforms on their smart-phones, blackberries and other mobile broadband devices.

If implemented, the president will be able to commandeer your smart phone any time he wants and for any reason the government deems necessary.

In November, communications company Alcatel-Lucent announced that it’s creating a Broadcast Message Center that will allow government agencies to send cell phone users specific information in the event of a local, state or national emergency, including those now ubiquitous government warnings about fantastic terror plots that invariably fizzle out or are run by FBI informants and agents provocateurs. It seems not a week or two passes that some gullible Muslim is duped by the agency into a fantastic terror plot (for instance, blowing up Christmas trees).

The Broadcast Message Center is designed to force mobile phone manufacturers to adopt the Federal Communication Commission’s Commercial Mobile Alert System. Under the new system, all phones would receive emergency alerts directly from government bureaucrats.

Former DHS boss Tom Ridge has admitted that the government exploits terror alerts for political gain. Ridge said he “was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.” A specific al-Qaeda terror alert hyped up prior to the election was downgraded by the DHS after Bush beat fellow bonesman Kerry in the election.

Obama’s warnings about a supposed al-Qaeda attack on targets in Europe was exaggerated for political purposes, Pakistani diplomat Shamsul Hasan said in October. “I will not deny the fact that there may be internal political dynamics, including the forthcoming midterm American elections. If the Americans have definite information about terrorists and al-Qaida people, we should be provided [with] that and we could go after them ourselves,” Hasan said.

No terror event occurred. “It was nothing specific, nothing very new,” said Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask after the official warning. “We agree that there is no indication of concrete targets, concrete dates and concrete terror groups,” added German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.

In addition to your cell phone, the government wants to take control of your internet broadband in the event another phony terror attack threatens the homeland.

Lisa Fowlkes, deputy chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau of the FCC, told FederalNewsRadio on Monday that the FCC is looking at how wireless broadband could also enhance the EAS as part of a recommendation that was in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan from last year. The idea is to hijack broadband and the internet for emergency alerting propaganda with the “Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) being developed by FEMA and the wireless industry,” according to Fowlkes.

The system would break into your computer or wireless device and broadcast presidential propaganda announcements, FEMA reports, so-called “Imminent Threat Alerts,” and AMBER Alerts.

Government has devised other creative ways to disseminate propaganda. For instance, California introduced a bill last year to commission a study on emerging electronic license plate technology and examine ways that it could introduce new ad revenue streams. In addition to ads, the technology would flash Amber Alerts and other information.

Earlier this month, DHS unveiled a new terror alert system that will hijack social networking sites as one way of informing people of terrorist threat updates. “The new, two-tiered system will provide alerts that are more specific to the threat and even recommend certain actions or suggest that people look for specific suspicious behavior, she said. They also may be limited to a particular audience — such as law enforcement — rather than broadcast to the general public, and also will have a specified end date,” reported Information Week Government.

In December, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the expansion of the Department’s national “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign to hundreds of Walmart stores across the country — launching a new partnership between DHS and Walmart to help the American public play an active role in informing on each other. Thousands of Wamart stores will have telescreens pumping out government propaganda.

FEMA is also working on a new system that would send emergency alerts as text messages to wireless phone users. The system is still about two years away from full implementation, according to the agency.

CMAS is slated to begin deployment in April 2012.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Kurt Nimmo

U.S. Can’t Link Accused Army Private to Assange

Posted on February 11, 2011 by abby

MSNBC– U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.

Assange, an Australian national, is under house arrest at a British mansion near London, facing a Swedish warrant seeking his extradition for questioning on charges of rape. Assange has denied the allegations.

WikiLeaks’ release of secret diplomatic cables last year caused a diplomatic stir and laid bare some of the most sensitive U.S. dealings with governments around the world. It also prompted an American effort to stifle WikiLeaks by pressuring financial institutions to cut off the flow of money to the organization.

Continue reading about U.S. Can’t Link Accused Army Private to Assange.

Film – The American Dream

Posted on January 28, 2011 by abby

The AMERICAN DREAM is a 30 minute animated film that shows you how you’ve been scammed by the most basic elements of our government system. All of us Americans strive for the American Dream, and this film shows you why your dream is getting farther and farther away. Do you know how your money is created? Or how banking works? Why did housing prices skyrocket and then plunge? Do you really know what the Federal Reserve System is and how it affects you every single day? THE AMERICAN DREAM takes an entertaining but hard hitting look at how the problems we have today are nothing new, and why leaders throughout our history have warned us and fought against the current type of financial system we have in America today. You will be challenged to investigate some very entrenched and powerful institutions in this nation, and hopefully encouraged to help get our nation back on track.

Learn more at http://theamericandreamfilm.com/

Photo by flickr user LateNightTaksForce

Obama Eying Internet ID for Americans

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Alicia

CBS NEWS – President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It’s “the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government” to centralize efforts toward creating an “identity ecosystem” for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil-liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.

The Obama administration is currently drafting what it’s calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months. (An early version was publicly released last summer.)

Click to continue reading on Obama’s Internet ID plan.

Article by Declan McCullagh

© COPYRIGHT CBS NEWS, 2011

Photograph by Vince Alongi

AT&T’s Man in the White House

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Alicia

SAVE THE INTERNET – When President Obama said he was going to “bring change to Washington,” no one expected William Daley to be his choice to get the job done.

Obama’s incoming chief of staff is about as corporate friendly as any Democratic insider can be, which is saying a lot.

For supporters of an open Internet, Daley’s appointment raises the prospect that the president will break all promises to defend Net Neutrality at the urging of a chief of staff determined to cozy up with industry and protect the status quo.

The outlook for any progress under Daley is dim.

Daley currently serves as a top executive at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co — concerning those who had hoped to see this president rein in a reckless financial sector.

Daley once told the New York Times that the Obama administration had “miscalculated” by moving too far to the left on health care reform — concerning those who had hoped the president would fight Republican efforts to repeal the law.

Daley served as a special counsel to President Clinton in 1993, helping the administration’s successful push to ratify NAFTA — concerning those across the labor movement, who delivered supporters to Obama by the busload.

It’s worse for advocates of open and democratic media. From 2001 through 2004, Daley led lobbying efforts for SBC Communications, Inc. His first assignment was to lock in the company’s local monopolies while allowing it to charge extortionate rates for competitors seeking to share SBC’s lines, defying a basic communications principle known as “common carriage.”

He was a top executive at SBC as the company laid the groundwork for its 2005 takeover of AT&T Corporation, after which it rebranded the merged entity as AT&T Inc. During that time, Daley worked very closely with Randall Stephenson, who has since risen through the ranks to become AT&T CEO and chairman.

He joined Stephenson and former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre in a 2002 meeting to lobby the FCC’s top brass for industry deregulation. Daley, Stephenson and Whitacre wanted the FCC to declare that high-speed Internet access would no longer be considered a “telecommunications service,” but rather an “information service.” The regulatory change would give phone and cable companies broad latitude to raise prices, stifle competition and control consumer choice on the Web.

An all-too-compliant FCC obliged later that year, removing high-speed Internet access services from regulation under common carriage. Daley supported this radical move, which reversed the long-held rule establishing nondiscriminatory communications networks as essential to economic opportunity and innovation. (Read Aparna Sridhar’s 2010 report for a good history of this deregulatory process).

In so doing, the FCC undercut its own ability to keep Internet providers from gutting Net Neutrality and interfering with our right to connect to any website, service or application on the Web.

AT&T Stakes Its Claim to the Oval Office

Now companies like Comcast and AT&T are vying to be the Internet’s new gatekeepers — creating special lanes for their own websites and services, or for those of a few big corporate partners, while leaving the rest of us on a digital dirt road.

However you look at it, there are very few degrees that separate Daley from his successor at AT&T, James Cicconi, who now leads lobbying efforts for the communications giant.

Daley’s appointment to the White House brought praise from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where Cicconi serves as a director. The Chamber marches in lockstep with AT&T in opposing Net Neutrality. Working together, the two groups have been very effective in buying up opposition to Net Neutrality among Democrats and Republicans alike.

AT&T is the largest single corporate contributor to congressional campaigns, since 1989 giving more than $45 million in donations to both Republican and Democratic candidates. It spent nearly $13 million on DC lobbyists just in 2010.

AT&T has staked out the legislative branch. With Daley to start work in days, it can now make a claim to the White House, too.

Thus far, AT&T-funded Republicans have introduced one bill, designed to strip the FCC of its power to protect the open Internet. The president was expected to veto this and other anti-Net Neutrality legislation should it make its way to his desk.

But with Daley at his side, how long will it be before Obama caves?

Article by Tim Karr of Save the Internet

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