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On February 12, 2008, the US Senate approved a sweeping measure that would expand the government's clandestine surveillance powers. The Senate approved the re-authorization of a law that would give the government greater powers to eavesdrop in intelligence cases without obtaining warrants from a secret court. The most important change approved by the Senate would make permanent a law approved in August 2007 that expanded the government's authority to intercept -- without a court order -- the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States communicating with others overseas.
That news and Vanunu's historic freedom of speech trial have both been ignored by corporate controlled media, as has the Vanunu-Microsoft connection:
On February 22, 2006 it was revealed in court that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu's Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained.
Vanunu: "Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details…three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated…it is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad…Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage. The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense."
Vanunu's secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for "attempting to leave the country" when he attempted to celebrate mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the confiscation of his private property by thirty IDF that stormed into his room at St. George's Cathedral in 2004, according to Vanunu have all "been done…under the false and misleading statements to the courts of 'suspicion of espionage', and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes… and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes."
Vanunu: The Elephant in the World
Vanunu reminds the world that Israel is a nuclear power and that its warheads stand ready to be fired from the Negev desert. Vanunu also reminds the world that despite America’s war on Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the USA Government continues to give their political, moral and economic support to a country that has amassed undisputed and still uninspected weapons of mass destruction in the leaking dinosaur that is the Dimona Nuclear Facility.
"The media should be a sanctuary for dissent. It is our job to go to where the silence is."-Amy Goodman
If the media had been a sanctuary of dissent Israel's WMD facility would no longer be unexplored territory by IAEA inspectors, nor would have Helen Thomas' Middle East nuclear question to President Obama been ignored!
Senator Barack Obama stated "As president, I will set a new direction in nuclear weapons policy and show the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons. I fully support reaffirming this goal, as called for by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn, as well as the specific steps they propose to move us in that direction." [3]
Obama made that promise to ACT/Arms Control Today, a leading journal devoted to nonproliferation and global security issues. ACT questioned Obama [and other presidential candidates] regarding arms control and nonproliferation; from Russia to Iran and about U.S. policy on cluster munitions and regarding a nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, created in 1968, maintains that nuclear weapons proliferation can only be curtailed if nuclear countries make moves toward disarmament and the rest of the world is allowed to access civilian nuclear technology.
If the media in America were a sanctuary for dissent every candidate for Congress and Presidential office, would be grilled on America's record regarding the NPT; and held to the fire for their silence about Israel's still un-inspected underground WMD facility and refusal to sign onto the NPT.
If we the people in the USA are suppose to be the government we must be informed and vigilant for American taxpayers provide Israel with $7-10 million per day that is consumed by the Occupation of Palestine.
2008 was the 60th anniversaries of the statehood of Israel, Nakba and the UN UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. -Article 19.
