Some of Star Trek performer George Takei’s family was forced into a Japanese internment camp on the West Coast of the United States during World War II.
In the recent Supreme Court ruling over gay marriage, Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas, who is black, wrote that “human dignity cannot be taken away by the government…” He added, “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them.”
After having spent time in a Japanese internment camp as a child, George Takei disagrees.
When people say George W. Bush “created ISIS,” they do not mean that he “created” them on a secret military base somewhere and brought them together – Alex Jones conspiracy style – in order wreak havoc. Generally, people mean that Bush “created the conditions” that allowed ISIS to happen.
In a “collapsed” dystopian post-war society with few employment opportunities and many left-over weapons, radical Islam seemed to offer a “way out” for some.
Many joined the group, and were able to gain power and influence in the chaotic situation of post-Saddam Iraq.
Recently, college student Ivy Ziedrich confronted Jeb Bush at a town hall event in Reno, Nevada, about the Iraq war, writes the British newspaper The Guardian. Ziedrich is a 19-year-old student at the University of Nevada, according to The Guardian.
She questioned Bush amid a group of reporters about his belief that the jihadist group developed because Barack Obama had overseen the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
“You stated that ISIS was created because we don’t have enough presence and we’ve been pulling out of the Middle East,” Ziedrich said, shifting blame instead on to the consequences of George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq. “The threat of ISIS was created by the Iraqi coalition authority, which ousted the entire government of Iraq.
“It was when 30,000 individuals who are part of the Iraqi military – they were forced out. They had no employment, they had no income, yet they were left with access to all the same arms and weapons. Your brother created ISIS!”
Here is a classic compilation of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech.
We are coming up on the 12th anniversary of the “Mission Accomplished” speech, which took place on May 1st, 2003, and was on board the USS Abraham Lincoln.
In his 2012 best-selling non-fiction book Killing Kennedy, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly writes on page 300 that he was about to interview a man named George de Mohrenschildt, a figure in the JFK assassination. As a “reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt’s daughter’s home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian … that reporter’s name is Bill O’Reilly,” states Media Matters.
O’Reilly repeated the tale for the Killing Kennedy audiobook. In Kennedy’s Last Days, the adaptation for younger readers, O’Reilly wrote, “As I knocked on the door, I heard a shotgun blast. He had killed himself.”
The Fox News host also repeated the tale while promoting his book and movie special on Fox News.
However, numerous pieces of evidence contradict O’Reilly’s claim that he “heard the shotgun blast” that killed de Mohrenschildt.
In comments to Media Matters, two of O’Reilly’s former colleagues at station WFAA in Dallas said that O’Reilly’s version of events is not true. “Bill O’Reilly’s a phony, there’s no other way to put it,” said Tracy Rowlett, a former WFAA reporter and anchor who worked there with O’Reilly. “He was not up on the porch when he heard the gunshots, he was in Dallas. He wasn’t traveling at that time.”
Byron Harris, a reporter at WFAA for the past 40 years, said that O’Reilly had not traveled to Florida for the story and accused him of “stealing” his reporting on de Mohrenschildt’s suicide from a newspaper. He said O’Reilly “was in Dallas. He stole that article out of the newspaper. I guarantee Channel 8 didn’t send him to Florida to do that story because it was a newspaper story, it was broken by the Dallas Morning News.”
Both Harris and Rowlett said O’Reilly never mentioned having been present for the gunshot during his time at WFAA.
“I don’t remember O’Reilly claiming that he was there. That came later, that must have been a brain surge when he was writing the book,” said Rowlett.
Harris further pointed out that WFAA “would have reported it as some kind of exclusive — and there was no exclusive — if O’Reilly had been standing outside the door.”
O’Reilly’s claim of having been present when de Mohrenschildt shot himself was also missing from his 1992 Inside Edition report on documents relating to the Kennedy assassination.
During that report, O’Reilly said, “moments before he was to be interviewed by House investigators, de Mohrenschildt blew his brains out with a 20-gauge shotgun.”
(That statement comes at roughly the 2:37 mark in the video below.)
In comments to Media Matters, Reporter and University of California (Washington Center) visiting professor Jefferson Morley said O’Reilly’s claim of being present for the gunshot is “just not true” and speculated that it was “just part of the pattern, to embellish the story and make it a sexier story.” Morley said, “It is what these guys all do, they inject themselves into a dramatic situation,” said Media Matters.
Below is a video of CNN’s Brian Stelter interviewing Morley about O’Reilly’s report on de Mohrenschildt.
According to Ring of Fire radio and RT, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro also announced in a speech on Saturday that former president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard “Dick” Cheney would not be allowed visas to enter Venezuela.
There will also be new mandatory visa requirements in general for all U.S. nationals travelling to Venezuela.
The new visa requirements were changed on March 3rd, according to TeleSUR.
Along with former president Bush and vice-president Cheney, Maduro also said that Congressional Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), Marco Rubio (FL), and Democrat Robert Menendez (NJ), and former CIA chief George Tenet would be banned from entering Venezuela as well.
Maduro also called them “terrorists,” in an interview with teleSUR Saturday.
In the interview, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez also said that the U.S. Embassy in Caracas will be ordered to reduce its diplomatic staff.
The Venezuelan government says the embassy has over 100 workers.
Rodriguez added that current United States diplomats in Venezuela will have to re-apply for visas.
Maduro said that these new visa bans target those who “violated human rights and bombed villages in Iraq, Syria, and Vietnam,” and that from now on, US diplomats “will be required to seek approval from the Foreign Ministry for meetings they conduct in Venezuela,” according to RT.
For Americans traveling to Venezuela in general, a new tourist visa fee will be implemented at a rate equal to that which “a Venezuelan pays to travel to the US,” Maduro said.
In other news, the United States declared Venezuela a national security threat on Monday and ordered sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials in the worst bilateral diplomatic dispute since socialist President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013, says Reuters.
U.S. President Barack Obama signed and issued an executive order, which senior administration officials said did not target Venezuela’s energy sector or broader economy.
But the move stokes tensions between Washington and Caracas just as U.S. relations with Cuba, a longtime U.S. foe in Latin America and key ally to Venezuela, are set to be normalized.
According to Media Matters, Bill O’Reilly has repeatedly claimed in his books and on Fox News that while he was reporting for a Dallas television station in 1977, he was directly outside the home at the moment that George de Mohrenschildt — an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald — shot himself in Florida. The police report filed at the time makes no mention of him.
Media Matters also reported that several former colleagues and journalists at the time have disputed O’Reilly’s story.
Adding to the mounting evidence against O’Reilly’s tale are tape recordings of a phone conversation between O’Reilly and a congressional reporter who was interviewing de Mohrenschildt before his death, states Media Matters.
The recording was recently released by CNN on Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter.
“On the tapes, O’Reilly can be heard asking the congressional reporter about the details of the suicide, and adding that he is not yet in Florida — a claim that is at odds with O’Reilly’s statements that he was near the home where de Mohrenschildt killed himself.” Secular Talk takes a look at it.
According to Wikipedia, “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” is the name given to the 1929 Valentine’s Day murder of six mob associates and one mechanic from the North Side Irish gang led by George “Bugs” Moran during the Prohibition Era. It was the result of a power struggle between the Irish American gang and the South Side Italian gang led by Al Capone in order to take control of organized crime in Chicago.
Former members of the Egan’s Rats gang were also suspected of having played a significant role in the incident, assisting Capone.
Al Capone sought to consolidate control by eliminating his rivals in the illegal trades of bootlegging, gambling and prostitution, according to the History channel.
Moran was one of Capone’s longtime enemies, and the gang members were shot to death by several men dressed as policemen. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it was known, was never officially linked to Capone, but he was generally considered to have been responsible for the murders, according to The History Channel.
Over the years, Capone consolidated control over most of Chicago’s crime rackets by ruthlessly gunning down his rivals. In 1924, authorities counted some 16 gang-related murders; in 1929, it reached a high of 64 murders that year. Federal authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had much less jurisdiction than they have today, and did not include Chicago’s gang-related activity.
Moran ran his bootlegging operations out of a garage on the North Side of Chicago. On February 14th, the seven members of Moran’s operation were gunned down while standing lined up, facing the wall of the garage.
Some 70 rounds of ammunition were fired. When police officers from Chicago’s 36th District arrived, they found one gang member, Frank Gusenberg, barely alive. In the few minutes before he died, they pressed him to reveal what had happened, but Gusenberg wouldn’t talk.
Police could find only a few eyewitnesses, but eventually concluded that gunmen dressed as police officers had entered the garage and pretended to be arresting the men.
Though Moran and others immediately blamed the massacre on Capone’s gang, the famous gangster himself claimed to have been at his home in Florida at the time. No one was ever brought to trial for the murders.
Capone went to prison due to income tax evasion. The U.S. Treasury Department later launched an investigation of Capone for income tax evasion. Through forensic accounting, Special Agent Frank Wilson and other members of the Intelligence Unit of the Internal Revenue Service were able to put together a case, and in June 1931 Capone was indicted for evasion of federal income tax. Convicted that October after an internationally publicized trial, Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison, first in Atlanta and later at Alcatraz.
Fox News claims that “The Obama White House has finally released the names of the fourteen Muslim ‘leaders’ who met with the President this past week.”
The article states the group included a comedian, along with a hijab-wearing basketball player and a handful of left-wing activists.
Fox states that “the White House confirmed that Azhar Azeez, President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was one of the Muslim leaders that met with President Obama.”
Fox claims that The ISNA was founded thirty-four years ago by members of Muslim Brotherhood. Oddly, Fox also states that the group was listed as an “unindicted” co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.
(“Unindicted” would mean that there was not enough evidence to bring them to trial or the government prosecutor refused to bring them to trial.)
The ISNA denounces terrorism, claiming in a statement that “(a) grave threat to all of us nowadays is the scourge of political and religious extremism that manifests itself in various forms of violence, including terrorism.”
Did President Bush ever meet with members of the Muslim community?
On November 19th, 2001, President Bush hosted an “iftar dinner” at the White House and gave remarks. Ambassadors and representatives from the Muslim world joined the president for dinner in the White House State dining room.
Whom do British politicians get their campaign money from? Russell Brand discusses British campaign financing with journalist & political activist George Monbiot about where British politicians get their money.
They also observe how enraged David Cameron becomes when challenged about it in parliament.
OK, Fine. 
