Washington, D.C. – The following is a statement by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research:

Now that both Turkey and Iran are on the record supporting the violation of another nation’s waters so long as the ships doing so are providing humanitarian relief, a huge impediment to two ideas of mine – the Free Turkey Movement and the Free Iran Movement – has now been lifted.

The main project of both groups would be “Free Minds Flotillas,” collections of ships loaded with sufficient servers and broadcast equipment to ensure that the citizens of Turkey and Iran have full access to Google, YouTube and Facebook.

Both countries have been running blockades of these services. Earlier this week – and with the “Freedom Flotilla” incident still fresh in our minds – Turkey banned YouTube and blocked access to more than 30 Google websites.

Iran permanently suspended Google’s email service this past February and YouTube and Facebook have frequently been filtered or blocked by the Iranian regime.

Unfettered communication between people is a basic human right and people of Turkey and Iran are crying out for the world’s help.

The “Free Minds Flotilla” can now respond now that both Turkey and Iran have given the green light for such operations.

We’ll need substantial funding for these two projects, of course, if we’re to be successful. And it is unlikely we’ll be able to count on the kind of support Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Code Pink founder Jodie Evans and Noam Chomsky provided to the Free Gaza Movement.

But plenty of support should be forthcoming…

To the executives of Google, Facebook, and YouTube: I await your calls.

Note: David A. Ridenour most recently commented on Israel, Gaza, Turkey and the Freedom Flotilla in “Turkey Responsible for Flotilla Deaths” on June 1.

Washington, D.C. – The following is a statement by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research:

The international community should be denouncing Turkey, not Israel, for the loss of life on the so-called “Freedom Flotilla.”

That’s because Turkey, the flag state of the ship, had an obligation to ensure that the ships making up the flotilla adhered to international law.

It didn’t.

Though neither Turkey nor Israel are parties to the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the treaty presumably spells out what the states ratifying the treaty believe to be acceptable rules of behavior. Many of those countries are now, rather hypocritically, denouncing Israel.

The Free Gaza Movement announced its intention to breach Israel’s barricade of Gaza – requiring it to violate Israel’s territorial waters.

Article 19 of the Law of the Sea Treaty specifies that “any act of propaganda aimed at affecting the defence or security of the coastal state” or “the loading or unloading of any commodity, currency or person contrary to the customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws or regulations of the coastal state” are deemed “prejudicial to the peace, good order or security” of that state. This flotilla – as with ones before it – would have done both if allowed to proceed.

While Article 19 only gives the coastal state the authority to act within its territorial waters, the bloodshed may well have been greater had Israel waited until then. If reports are accurate that some activists carried arms, Israeli commandos would have lost the element of surprise.

It also appears that Israel may have been within international norms in boarding the ship as all states have an obligation under Articles 109 and 110 of the treaty to stop unauthorized broadcasts (those intended for the general public, but not distress calls), including in international waters. The so-called “Freedom Flotilla” was broadcasting their voyage live.

Blood is on Turkey’s hands.

President Obama should do the right thing and recall the U.S. ambassador.

Note: David A. Ridenour is the author of “Ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty: A Not-So-Innocent Passage.“

I’m sure it began long before our obsession with self-esteem. So consumed we became with making sure our kids’ feelings were never hurt, we lost all reason and understanding and began teaching that exceptionalism wasn’t “fair”. (Oh, there’s the four-letter word that should be banned.)

Was it diversity? We were being indoctrinated that diversity was admirable, that some was good and more was better. Lost in all this was the importance of retaining identity, for without identity how can a child’s self-esteem have a foundation?

I’m afraid it all began a long time ago. Little by little we lost the focus of what made America great.

Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison and Edward Rutledge, are only a few of the exceptional people who signed our Declaration of Independence. One trait that made them exceptional was their desire for and understanding of freedom. They didn’t want to be like England or any other. They wanted to be like America.

John Adams at a very young age wrote of his dreams that someday America would be the greatest nation on earth, not to look down on others but to draw them up unto this country’s greatness. Adams’ dream came true. America did become the greatest nation on earth, doing more to help other people than any other nation. It came from liberty, the freedom to excel, the desire to be the best of the best. It was called exceptionalism. It is what made America a magnet that draws others to come here. Why do we want to extinguish the magnetism?

As I sat yesterday and watched the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderone, stand at the stage of the greatest legislative conclave on earth, the symbol of liberty and everything great, and ridicule America while members of that Congress stood in applause for such treasonous, anti-American sentiments, I wondered if the above mentioned exceptional men had been sitting in that audience, what their reaction would have been.

As President Barack Obama stood outside the White House with Calderone, in what certainly appeared to be an affirmation from our President of his hatred toward America, I pictured George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson gathered amongst the bushes of the Rose Garden, standing in utter disbelief.

Tom Remington

Read the editorial here.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

New York, NY: As terrorists continue to infiltrate America, the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation’s most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming.

Experts with The National Center for Public Policy Research are decrying this practice as a distraction from important counterterrorism duties. They further question if it a possible avenue to renew climate change subterfuge already plaguing some of these scientists.

“This is another example of President Obama not taking terrorism seriously,” said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network. “Our enemies must be laughing at the Obama Administration’s incompetence.”

A January 5 article in the New York Times reported that the White House restarted a program in which scientists are obtaining classified intelligence data from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office. Information from these secret government surveillance programs is being used to track climate change.

A similar program was discontinued by the Bush Administration in 2001. Former vice president and current climate change entrepreneur Al Gore began lobbying for its renewal in 2008. It now reportedly has the strong support of CIA Director Leon Panetta.

“Given the very real threat posed by terrorists, it is ridiculous and downright dangerous to divert any intelligence resources to monitoring polar ice,” added Project 21′s Deneen Borelli. “Its said this won’t hinder regular intelligence-gathering, but it’s also clear that agencies can’t yet share data and track a terrorism suspect who was identified by his own father. It’s unwise to further distract our intelligence network by forcing it to consult with scientists about icebergs, polar bears and sea lions. The Obama Administration appears to be putting a left-wing political agenda before the safety and security of our nation.”

Speaking on the involvement of Al Gore, Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project, noted: “If anything, Al Gore is the real national security threat. Gore’s climate change fear mongering, which lines his own pockets with cash, has stoked a war against the fossil fuels so vital to our nation’s economic prosperity and national security. His self-serving agenda is stymieing domestic energy exploration and production efforts. Now, he successfully lobbied to resurrect this diversion of our intelligence assets after the Bush Administration wisely ended it.”

The claims of some scientists are already suspect after the Climategate scandal. Tom Borelli pointed out: “We’ve already seen climate scientists discussing the idea of destroying raw data to preserve climate change models that may be seriously flawed, and then it turns out that very same sort of data was allegedly ‘lost.’ How can we trust them to not behave similarly with CIA data – such as denying the proper peer review under the guise that the data is secret? The real question is: who’s going to be watching the scientists?”

The National Center for Public Policy Research http://www.nationalcenter.org is a non-partisan educational foundation based in Washington, DC. It receives less than one percent of its funding from corporate sources.