One of the reasons that a new design has not been implemented yet is that I have been spending some time developing a philosophy based on my online experiences that will best serve users.

Anyway, I need to ask a favor. Believe it or not, I don’t actually have copies of any of my videos. I have started a YouTube account and want to post my entire catalogue to it. So if you happen to have a high quality version, please feel free to email it to me. I would very much appreciate it.

PS: Does anyone know how to go about implementing a graphic on YouTube pages to personalize them? Leave tips in the comments if you could.

From the BBC…

“The lower house of the US Congress has voted down a $700bn (£380bn) plan aimed at bailing out Wall Street.

The rescue plan, a result of tense talks between the government and lawmakers, was rejected by 228 to 205 votes in the House of Representatives.

About two-thirds of Republican lawmakers refused to back the rescue package, as well as 95 Democrats.

Shares on Wall Street plunged within seconds of the announcement, after earlier falls on global markets.

A White House spokesman said that President George W Bush was “very disappointed” by the result.

He would meet members of his team in the coming days to “determine next steps”, spokesman Tony Fratto said.

The vote followed a day of turmoil in the financial sector.”

[…]

“So grave are the consequences of this decision, reports the BBC’s Kevin Connolly from Washington, that the speaker of the house paused for several long minutes after the vote was taken before declaring it official.
The no vote plunged the world of Washington politics into turmoil and the markets into deep and instant chaos with rapid falls on Wall Street, our correspondent says.”

A comment left by a reader from Baltimore summed it up…

“I am glad the bailout bill failed. I work five days a week, save cash and pay my bills. I did not want to pay for Corporate America’s greed”.

Global Impact

» Wachovia, the fourth-largest US bank, was bought by larger rival Citigroup in a rescue deal backed by US authorities.

» Benelux banking giant Fortis was partially nationalised by the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg governments to ensure its survival.

» The UK government announced it was nationalising the Bradford & Bingley bank.

» Global shares fell sharply - France’s key index lost 5%, Germany’s main market dropped 4% while US shares plunged after the vote result was announced.

Update

I’m not one to happily use Lou Dobbs to demonstrate a point, but in this instance it’s pretty relevant (tip: satchboogieca)….

As most of you know, I’m not one for publicly patting myself on the back when it comes to those causes that I involve myself with. I have always believed that if you decide to involve yourself in the promotion of a cause that you do so because it’s the right thing to do, not because of the press that it will get you. That said; this year I was the recipient of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Health Voices Award for British Columbia, which is presented to an individual or group that has played a role in bringing attention to mental health issues. Last spring I filmed a short segment with them that they showed throughout the Province, one which I hadn’t seen until today.

My purpose for posting the following video is not to shower praise on myself, but rather because of the content that it contains regarding addressing mental illness and breaking down those barriers that many feel exist that stop them from seeking help. There is also a correction that must also be pointed out with regards to the video. I suffer from Type 2 Bipolarity, not Type 1.

Anthropologist, Dr. Michael Wesch, makes plain the power of not your computer, but the social media device that you’re currently sitting in front and using…

Though very early on in his presentation, pause the video and seriously take a moment and think about the statistics that he provides regarding ABC as compared to YouTube.

First, a video by the always-impeccable Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip…

Second, from North Carolina’s The News & Observer…

“Some conservative groups are urging parents to keep children home from school today if their fellow students will be taking part in the annual Day of Silence observation.
Thousands of middle- and high-school students across the nation, including some in the Triangle, plan to take a vow of silence today to bring attention to the bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students.

Participation and support for the event, now in its 12th year, varies by school. It has long proved controversial among those opposed to homosexuality.

But this year, a network of local and national conservative groups is calling for a boycott. They claim that allowing some students to be silent in class will not only promote homosexuality, it also will disrupt education.”

Take note of one particular passage - “will not only promote homosexuality”.

How does one ‘promote’ something that is, whether conservative morons like it or not, not the choice of an individual but rather something they are born to be?

This ridiculous position that gay people are somehow ‘morally corrupted’, that they consciously make the decision to be gay one day as if they were merely deciding between a pair of shoes at a store, has to be one of the most mind numbing fallacies of our time.

If you’re against the ‘homosexual lifestyle’, which is actually not a ‘lifestyle’ at all but simply an ordinary life not unlike any other, ask yourself a simple question – how many gay people do you know? How much time have you spent conversing with them, getting to know them, and in doing so approach it from the standpoint that you are speaking with a human being of equal worth and not someone that you have prejudged?

If anyone out there wants to speak for God on the matter, remember that, in the context of your faith, God is the judge, not you. And if there is truly some sort of judgment after this life, then you will certainly not be present at the judgment of others, and therefore have absolutely no right to conduct yourself in this life as if you will be. Nor, dare I say, do you have the right to corrupt your children, to limit their social scope to something so narrow as to deny them the right to freely, and in good faith, meet their fellow man without having their hearts and minds corrupted beforehand.

To be honest, this sort of thing doesn’t just apply to the gay community, but to all communities. Ignorance is represented in our species by the reality that even though we all share the same emotionality, its usurpation by small-minded individuals limits our ability to view one another as one in the same. Thus, if there is anything out there to be mindful of, it is those that would promote division for their own ends, and, having realized that, wonder why the alternative is such a scary proposition to them.

Yesterday’s Congressional testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller was one of the most blatant examples of doubletalk that you will ever come across. During his testimony, Mueller verified that numerous FBI agents had complained about the conduct of CIA interrogators and their use of harsh techniques. Given that, according to Mueller’s testimony, when questioned by Rep. Robert Wexler…

Interestingly, when asked by Rep. Stephen Cohen about informing others about the conduct witnessed by FBI agents, Mueller had this to say…

“But if you find out that other agencies may engage in torture, that you believe is illegal — does your protocol include informing those agencies that you believe their actions are illegal?”

“Yes,” Mueller answered.

“Who did you inform?” Cohen asked.

“At points in time, we have reached out to DoD, DoJ, in terms of activity that we were concerned might not be appropriate, let me put it that way,” Mueller said.”

Now, going back to Mueller’s responses to Wexler on the exact same subject…

You’ll notice that Mueller did not mention that the FBI had reached out to the Department of Defense regarding the matter, as he did in response to the same question by Cohen, only that he repeatedly stated that the FBI had not violated its protocols.

In essence, the FBI, having been confronted by the reality that the CIA was using illegal interrogation techniques, did what any agency would do within the landscape of the US federal system – they made sure to cover their own ass while not pissing in the CIA or the Department of Defense’s Cornflakes. Of course, given who was the head of the Justice Department at the time, it’s not a stretch to believe that if the FBI had approached the Department of Justice regarding the matter that they may have been told to simply mind their own business, which would, of course, lead them to actively ensure that they were protected were any of it to be revealed. And that, it seems, is precisely what has occurred.

I also want to make a quick point regarding the Central Intelligence Agency. For those of you that are unaware, the CIA’s mandate forbids domestic operations, which means that all domestic operations, including anti-terrorism initiatives, fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI within the United States. Obviously, the occurrences being discussed occurred outside of the United States, which would make them the province of the CIA as well as any other agency attached to the matter. The FBI’s involvement in such matters has primarily to do with two things: the discovery of current threats within the United States and the discovery of information directly related to 9/11.

After the initial invasion of Afghanistan, numerous individuals were detained by the FBI in correlation to what was, at the time, a domestic investigation into the September 11th attacks. Interestingly, if you do some research into the period shortly following the invasion, you will discover that the CIA all but showed up and took over the handling of detainees. Numerous individuals, some since retired, have since commented on the timing of the CIA’s intervention at that stage, and how the FBI was summarily cut out of the loop. That is not to say that the FBI has not since been present at various locations, such as jails in Ethiopia, where off the books detainees have been held and interrogated, something that contradicts Mueller’s testimony yesterday.

Rep. Wexler’s questioning of Mueller can be viewed below…

A reader, Kevin Mejlholm, recommended the following lecture (*See update below) by David Ray Griffin regarding 9/11. I am posting this not to promote the ideas presented by Griffin, but rather to simply present information that I think should be presented. Therefore, if you want to spend the time watching this lecture, which is one hour and thirty-eight minutes in length, I would be interested to hear your views in the comments as an exercise in open public debate.

The video is too large to post directly on this page, meaning that its frame width is large, so please visit the YouTube page directly.

In the past I have not truly delved into my own personal beliefs regarding the events of September 11th as they relate to the need for such a catastrophic event to occur to support the birth of an American hegemonic era. The roots of the Bush Doctrine, when objectively examined, provide insight into a much deeper American global agenda. That, in itself, could be taken as a ridiculous notion, but the reality remains that a post Cold War preemptive and unilateralist foreign policy platform was first outlined in 1992 by then members of the United States government, individuals that would, during the Clinton era, cultivate and refine their beliefs. After 9/11, some of the same individuals involved in the initial creation and subsequent refinement of that policy were, and are, members of government, among them Paul Wolfowitz, who, at the time, held the position of Deputy Secretary Of Defense. It was Wolfowitz’s Defense Planning Guidance, written at the instruction of then Secretary Of Defense Dick Cheney that initially outlined the initiatives required to exploit US global military and economic dominance in the post Cold War world.

By saying this I am not going to take the position that 9/11 was orchestrated, but I do firmly believe that it was used as a catalyst with which to indoctrinate the Western public and therefore allow for the implementation of a hegemonic reality that, since 9/11, has been proven by US operations and initiatives abroad.

If you can actually believe it, there are those that still cling to the belief that the regime of Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda and was complicit in the attacks of September 11th. That should come as no surprise given how forcefully the Bush administration, with the help of much of the American media, promoted that falsehood. And even though a Pentagon sponsored study that reviewed more than 600,000 documents captured after the 2003 invasion has found absolutely no link, not a single realistic measure has been taken to hold the administration accountable for repeatedly promoting that entirely baseless connection in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

While sitting in the airport in San Francisco yesterday, I sat and watched CNN’s coverage of the democratic primary. There were televisions throughout the terminal, and most waiting for the flight to board were watching them. At one point in the broadcast, even though Wolf Blitzer was talking about something completely different, the bottom of the screen was suddenly filled with - Terrorists Support Obama Campaign, or something to that effect. And you know, in today’s split-second world of information, that’s all it takes - one simple little blurb at the bottom of a television screen.

I sat in my seat in that terminal in utter amazement, looking around in an attempt to gauge the reaction of those close to me. All of them were passive, as if they were being presented hard, cold fact. And then, probably out of frustration, I blurted out – “where’s Edward Murrow when you need him?”. A few people turned and looked at me. Most didn’t.

Every time I’m down here the detritus that is American mainstream media always astounds me. The fact that individuals such as Glen Beck and Sean Hannity are actually taken seriously, that any of them are actually considered journalists, completely shocks me.

At the end of the day, no matter how free you believe a society to be, propaganda is propaganda. And in a country in which journalism has, in many ways, been transformed into something akin to the Jerry Springer show, it’s not difficult to see how, in the quest for ratings, the fourth estate can be so utterly abused to the point that it is no longer serves its base purpose, but rather a purpose that is wholly dedicated to protecting its own interests by placating government and corporate entities to ensure financial growth.

Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of journalists in the United States, primarily in print media, that still believe in the unspotted purpose of the fourth estate. But over the last seven years their voices have been pushed to the periphery of the medium, making it more difficult for average Americans to access information and views that aren’t restricted by corporate media interests. And that is a very dangerous reality to confront, especially in a nation at war, especially in post 9/11 America.

I have said it before and I will say it again. On that September morning in 2001 the gravity of history, its complexities, and the importance of questioning the motives of government were rendered moot in many ways. And even though conservative voices in American media still defer to it as an example of why, for example, it’s acceptable for the administration to abuse the Constitution, or for the United States to employ torture or hold individuals in legal limbo, it shouldn’t be overlooked that what happened that day was responsible for spring boarding many of their careers.

Drive

Some hold that the best way to affect change, to confront an injustice, is to employ force. Of course, I disagree with that entirely. As Wajeha Huwaider has demonstrated in a video posted to YouTube, sometimes the first step is as simple as getting behind the wheel of a car…

“Saudi women’s rights activists have posted on the web a video of a woman at the wheel of her car, in protest at the ban on female drivers in the kingdom.
Wajeha Huwaider talks of the injustice of the ban and calls for its abolition as she drives calmly along a highway.

She says the film was posted to mark International Women’s Day. Thousands have viewed it on the YouTube website.

The last such public show of dissent was in 1990 when dozens of women were arrested for circling Riyadh in cars.

Last year, Ms Huwaider and other activists circulated a petition which was sent to King Abdullah urging him to lift the ban.

In the three-minute clip, she at first drives around a residential compound where she notes that women are allowed to drive because it is not a public road.

But about halfway through, without comment, she executes a left turn onto the main highway and proceeds to drive along it in defiance of Saudi law.

“Many women in this society are able to drive cars, and many of our male relatives don’t mind us driving,” she says in Arabic.

“I hope that by next year’s International Woman’s Day, this ban on us will be lifted,” she concludes.

In February, two leading Islamic scholars said there was no reason to continue the ban.”

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

I have some experience in this field, so I feel for that little guy. I really do.