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Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged
(Deb Riechmann, Associated, Oct 13, 2005)
It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution. . . . "This is an important time," Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. "The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you." . . . As she spoke in Washington, a live shot of 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry Division and one Iraqi soldier was beamed into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from Tikrit — the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. . . . "I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me," Barber said. . . . A brief rehearsal ensued. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: I happened to catch the rehearsal on cable and heard Ms. Barber say, "Now if he asks a question not on script, who is going to handle it?"] . . . "OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?" . . . "Captain Smith," Kennedy said. . . . "Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked. . . . "Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied. . . . And so it went. . . . "If the question comes up about partnering -- how often do we train with the Iraqi military -- who does he go to?" Barber asked. . . . "That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said. . . . "And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit -- the hometown -- and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" she asked. . . . Less than 40 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll taken in October said they approved of the way Bush was handling Iraq. Just over half of the public now say the Iraq war was a mistake. . . . White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday's event was coordinated with the Defense Department but that the troops were expressing their own thoughts. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: How does McClellan expect us to believe anything he says when this is such a bold faced lie? Just listen to the speech pattern of these officers. They sound like high school students reciting something they had barely memorized the night before.] . . . The soldiers all gave Bush an upbeat view of the situation. . . . The president also got praise from the Iraqi soldier who was part of the chat. . . . "Thank you very much for everything," he gushed. "I like you." . . . Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, denounced the event as a "carefully scripted publicity stunt." Five of the 10 U.S. troops involved were officers, he said. . . . "If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can't do it in a nationally televised teleconference," Rieckhoff said. "He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground and that's not a bunch of captains."

posted by LoZo 8:06 AM

 

AOL Time-Warner Censors Liberal Websites
(Prison Planet, October 5, 2005)
We were first alerted to this problem early this morning when several locals in Austin reported that they were unable to access Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com or Prison Planet.tv. . . . Austin Time Warner had previously shut down access to our websites on a whim, claiming they were 'hate material' but in all cases had quickly restored them after receiving complaints. . . . However, this latest attack on free speech is occurring nationwide, with Time Warner subscribers from New York to California reporting that their access to the websites is being blocked. . . . The last attempt to shut us down came shortly after the London Bombings, which saw our traffic go through the roof after we released a plethora of articles exposing government involvement. . . . The consequence of this is that Prison Planet.com alone on some days gets more hits than the Britney Spears website or Rush Limbaugh. . . . Previously we reported that UK ISPs like Tiscali were blocking their subscribers from accessing the website after the 7/7 bombings. . . . It is obvious that those in high places are showing their disapproval. This only vindicates all the information we have been putting out. . . . How can a website that merely reports and comments on mainstream media articles be described as 'hate' unless there's a different agenda afoot? How can Bill O'Reilly get on Fox News and call for assassinating Prime Ministers and Pat Robertson on the 700 Club do the same and yet we get censored for being hateful? We have never called for violence against anyone and actively encourage peaceful exchange of information. . . . This is part of a growing trend of authoritarian censorship of the Internet in preparation for the emergence of Internet 2, where only government approved websites will be allowed to exist and the old Internet will be shut down. . . . Monolithic corporations in lock-step with government are following the Chinese model, where any website mildly anti-establishment is immediately shut down and its owners arrested. The vast majority of Internet cafes in China were shut down in 2002 after the government started a fire in one Beijing cafe and then demanded all the rest be shut down for 'safety reasons'. . . . Under anti-terrorism laws in Italy, Internet cafe owners are forced to take photo ID's of all their customers and install key-logging and filter software which blocks any websites the government chooses. . . . Today's actions by Time Warner may fall into the same category. The First Amendment is continuously under siege by jack-booted totalitarians in suits that graciously lick the boots and follow the orders of the establishment lackey. . . . We are urging all our readers to boycott any Time Warner/Road Runner ISP service and cancel your subscription with them. They have proven themselves time and time again to be an anti-American freedom hating tool of the establishment. Even if this latest incident turns out to be a technical error, their past history of censorship should concern everyone.

posted by LoZo 12:02 PM