The FBI has released their extensive files on US Senator Edward M. Kennedy to the public, covering their relationship with him between 1961 and 1985. The seven files, totaling more than 2,200 pages of documents
reveal (among other things,) the perhaps unsurprising news that the late Senator
received "scores" of
death threats from radical groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, “Minutemen” organizations, and the National Socialist White People’s Party. The release was initiated by a Freedom of Information Act Request from
Judicial Watch on May 3, 2010, (Complaint
pdf) but the FBI gave the Senator's family the
"rare opportunity" to raise objections before releasing the file.
posted by zarq
on Jun 14, 2010 -
20 comments
"What if America wasn't America?" That was the question posed by a series of ads broadcast in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ads which depicted a dystopian America bereft of liberty:
Library -
Diner -
Church. Together with more positive ads like
Remember Freedom and
I Am an American, they encouraged frightened viewers to cherish their freedoms and defend against division and prejudice in the face of terrorism (
seven years previously). The campaign was the work of the
Ad Council, a non-profit agency that employs the creative muscle of volunteer advertisers to raise awareness for social issues of national importance. Founded during WWII as the War Advertising Council, the organization has been behind
some of the most memorable public service campaigns in American history, including
Rosie the Riveter,
Smokey the Bear,
McGruff the Crime Dog, and
the Crash Test Dummies. And the Council is still at it today, producing striking, funny, and above all
effective PSAs on everything from
student invention to
global warming to
arts education to
community service.
Additional resources:
A-to-Z index of Ad Council campaigns -
Campaigns organized by category -
Award-winning campaigns -
PSA Central: A free download directory of TV, radio, and print PSAs
(registration req'd) -
An exhaustive history of the Ad Council [46-page PDF] -
YouTube channel -
Vimeo channel -
Twitter feed
posted by Rhaomi
on Sep 11, 2009 -
69 comments
The Department of Homeland Security has
expressed interest [PDFs] in forcing all commercial airline passengers to wear a taser bracelet that can be used to incapacitate anyone on an airline. This
video, from the company that will produce the bracelets, explains how the bracelet would be put on the passenger at the point that they clear security, and would not be removed until they leave secure areas. It would take the place of boarding passes, carry personal and biometric information about the passengers, track and monitor every passenger via GPS and shock the wearer on command, immobilizing him or her for several minutes. DHS official, Paul S. Ruwaldt of the Science and Technology Directorate, office of Research and Development is also excited about the possiblility of using it as an interrogation tool at airports. Ah freedom, who knew it smelled like burning flesh?
posted by dejah420
on Jul 12, 2008 -
146 comments
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has
called for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities. Now that this former rogue nation has
fallen in
line, we can turn out attention to the real terrorist threat:
Britain.
posted by thirteenkiller
on Sep 5, 2006 -
30 comments
Loose change A one hour analysis of 9/11 and how it is more likely than not that the government was actually behind the attacks. A documentary analyzing the footage and presenting an alternative view to the official version.
posted by zeerobots
on Nov 11, 2005 -
115 comments
The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf' On the day after a
survey finds upwards of 25,000 civilian deaths in the Iraq War; and days after the War on Terror arrived on
British shores, amidst the inevitable "how did we get here?" navel-gazing, Manic of the Bloggerheads weblog re-writes a
popular fable. The continued invocation of the spectres of
terrorism and the
ghost of 9/11, he argues, slowly erodes the
liberties and
freedoms of hundreds of years, while fighting a war against an unconventional enemy beyond our borders does not necessarily guarantee security.
posted by scaryduck
on Jul 20, 2005 -
11 comments
With "freedom" as a goal of US policy, what are the real benefits of democracy? In the developing world, no democracy has
ever had a famine as Nobel-winner
Amartya Sen demonstrated, and citizens of democratic nations have
equivalent economies, longer lifespans and better educations than autocracies. Unfortunately, it appears that
democracies do go to war with each other (although
less, statistically). On the other hand, high levels of political freedom
decrease terrorism and prevent
genocides. Obviously, democracies
also do bad things, but is there a better form of
government?
posted by blahblahblah
on May 30, 2005 -
29 comments
From the
Sunday NY Times comes an article detailing an unprecedented roundup of Arabic people living in the US, some as naturalized citizens, but most under varying types of visas, (oftentimes lapsed). And release bonds are but non existent The gov's strategy seems to be to try to cast a wide net and scoop up as many "likelies" to put a wrench in "The Base's" homeland terror machine.
Calling it "widescale racial profiling" like the well documented Japanese internments of WW2, defense lawyers and civil libertarians are getting constitutionally antsy about the roundup, which they say accellerated noticably after the 9/22 warnings of imminent attack. Is their alarm well founded or reflexive and hollow?
posted by BentPenguin
on Nov 4, 2001 -
24 comments
