Total411.info has exposed the media fakery techniques used by NewsCorp to attack and defame Congressman Ron Paul, who is running against Sir Rudy for the GOP Presidential nomination. So this lawsuit comes as no surprise.
"Publisher Judith Regan, fired last year from News Corp.'s HarperCollins unit, claims her dismissal was part of a ``deliberate smear campaign'' aimed at protecting presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani.
Regan, former president of HarperCollins' ReganBooks division, sued her former employer for defamation in state court in New York, seeking at least $100 million in damages. She claims in her complaint that News Corp. tried to destroy her reputation because she has information about former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik that would be harmful to ex-New York Mayor Giuliani and his presidential campaign.
``The smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.'s political agenda, which has long centered on protecting Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions,'' Regan said in the complaint filed yesterday.
[...]
Kerik, who was appointed to the post by then-New York City Mayor Giuliani, was indicted Nov. 9 by a federal grand jury on charges of tax evasion, conspiracy and lying to the White House. He pleaded guilty last year to state charges that he accepted thousands of dollars in gifts while in office.
Kerik turned down a 2004 offer by President George W. Bush to run the Homeland Security Department, a post Giuliani recommended him for, after it was disclosed that Kerik failed to pay taxes for a nanny that worked for him.
Federal prosecutors accuse Kerik of receiving cash and gifts for lobbying regulators on behalf of a New Jersey construction and waste-management firm and lying to investigators -- including those who were vetting him for the cabinet-level post on behalf of Bush -- and tried to conceal his crimes, prosecutors alleged.
Regan claims News Corp. executives attempted to ``preemptively discredit her'' to protect Giuliani and because of the ``damaging information'' they believed she possessed.
``It is now widely accepted that one of Giuliani's major political vulnerabilities is his association with Bernard Kerik,'' Regan said in her suit.
``A senior executive in the News Corp. organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani's presidential campaign,'' according to the complaint. ``This executive advised Regan to lie to, and withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.'' -----
So, Sir Rudy installed an important new emergency radio system; but then made sure that it wasn't being used on 9/11. Was this radio system instead used to help disintegrate the Twin Towers? Stay tuned to total911.info our [b]real[/b]investigation continues.
"In the midst of his presidential candidacy, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani now faces a looming government investigation into his handling of the radios used by firefighters on 9/11.
The investigation, which will examine how the FDNY ended up using faulty equipment during the terrorist attacks and why Giuliani gave a no-bid contract to Motorola for that equipment, has been endorsed by New York City Councilman Eric Gioia, chair of the city's oversight and investigations committee.
"I will do everything in my power to get answers, to get the truth," said Gioia, a Democrat. "These families deserve answers and really the entire city and our country deserve answers."
Calls for an investigation were first proposed by filmmaker Robert Greenwald who has documented Giuliani's handling of 9/11 in a series of shorts for Brave New Films. In The Real Rudy: Radios, Greenwald documents how radios used by the FDNY on 9/11 were the same ones that malfunctioned during the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers. When - eight years later - Giuliani finally purchased new communications equipment for $14 million from Motorola, it was never field-tested. A week later, the equipment was recalled after a firefighter's mayday went un-heard. Giuliani reissued the old batch of radios. And on 9/11 when a police helicopter warned that the North Tower could collapse, more than 120 firefighters remained inside.
[...]"Brave New Films is thrilled with Councilman Gioia's response to our petition for a City Council investigation into Giuliani's failure to equip firefighters with the radios they needed on 9/11," Greenwald told the Huffington Post. "The groundswell of support for our petition shows the depth of Americans' desire for accountability."
"South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel has been suspended from office, following his indictment by a federal grand jury for distribution of cocaine. [...] The announcement of the indictment was made Tuesday at a 5 p.m. news conference.
The indictments accuse Ravenel, 44, and Michael Miller, 25, of distributing less than 500 grams of cocaine starting in late 2005. They're officially indicted on charges of conspiracy to possess and intent to distribute.
Officials say Ravenel bought the drugs from Miller to share with other people. U.S. Attorney Reggie Lloyd says Ravenel didn't sell any of the drugs. Lloyd says the investigation is just beginning.
Authorities say Ravenel will be allowed to turn himself in.
Lloyd says the investigation into Ravenel arose from a drug case last year in Charleston. State Law Enforcement Division Chief Robert Stewart says his agents were aware of the allegations before Ravenel was elected in November. But they didn't have enough information to pursue criminal charges until they turned the case over to the FBI in April.
Ravenel is scheduled for an arraignment in federal court on July 9.
Ravenel, a Republican, was elected state treasurer in 2006. His father, Arthur Ravenel Junior, was a powerful politician from Charleston who served eight years in the U.S. House and is a former state representative and state senator.
Thomas is also the founder of Ravenel Development Corp., a commercial real estate development company. As well, he serves as the state chairman for former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Late Tuesday, Giuliani's campaign announced he stepped down from that role.
Both men face a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
If Ravenel is convicted, and the General Assembly is out of session, the interim treasurer would serve until the General Assembly returns. The General Assembly would then elect a new treasurer who will serve until January 2011.[...]
State Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson released the following statement:
"The charges brought against State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel today are very serious. This is a personal matter that will be dealt with through appropriate legal channels. We hope this unfortunate situation is resolved quickly."
The South Carolina Democratic Party issued the following statement:
"In only a few months, Thomas Ravenel has gone from spoiled rich kid buying his way into office to common street criminal..." -----
OK, here it is. The reporter was Matt Lepacek. I apologize for the quality of the video and for the occasional botched shot of the action. Quick rundown of the three (back-to-back clips):
1) Lepacek confronts Goeas as increasingly bewildered reporters look on. Goeas walks away and is sandwiched by Rudowski. Eventually, security pulls Lepacek away and he's arrested. 2) Rudowski is yanked out of the spin room. 3) Rudowski explains what just happened.
WALLACE: Nine-eleven. No one questions your courage or your leadership in the days after 9/11, but one question has come up that I'm very curious about.
You put the emergency response command center in the World Trade Center in 1997, even though your director of emergency management suggested — recommended that you not put it there because it had been a target in 1993. Why'd you do that?
GIULIANI: My director of emergency management recommended 7 World Trade Center, and that was...
WALLACE: I have got a copy right here of Jerry Hauer's directive to you. And there were meetings in which Jerry Hauer said that it's a bad idea. And the police chief, Howard Safir, said it was a bad idea.
GIULIANI: Jerry Hauer recommended that as the prime site and the site that would make the most sense, and he recommended it because...
WALLACE: Then why did he say the building — he said it's not — the place in Brooklyn is not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan.
GIULIANI: He recommended that site as the site that would be the best site. It was largely on his recommendation that that site was selected.
And the reason that that site made sense was it was also the location of the customs service, the Secret Service and a number of the federal agencies, some of which I'm not even sure I can mention at this date, that we had to be in contact with.
And we also had backup centers at the police department. In Brooklyn, we had another backup center, and we had a virtual command center. So when that command center was inoperable, within a half hour of September 11 we were able to move — or within a half hour on September 11 we were able to move immediately to another command center.
So the way you're interpreting it, it was as if that was the one fixed command center. It was not. There were backup command centers, and it was a virtual command center, and it was selected because that's where all the federal agencies were that we would have to be in contact with, including some that would give you the intelligence that you needed during an attack.
Closet 9/11 truther Ron Paul has now challenged Rudy Giuliani to acknowledge he has committed the sin of denial to the sacred text of the 9/11 myth, the 9/11 COmmission Report. The only way Giuliani cannot apologize is to disavow the Commission report. Giuliani would thereby himself be the one opening up for re-examination the 9/11 Commission Report in the context of a Republican primary.
"Rudy Giuliani's much-publicized but misleading put-down of Ron Paul during Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate should have been tempered by a report that Saudi Arabia, the country that spawned most of the [alleged] 9/11 hijackers, has been one of Giuliani's lucrative foreign clients. However, Fox News questioners Chris Wallace and Wendell Goler did not bring it up.
Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that the same Associated Press story that named Saudi Arabia as a Giuliani client listed News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, as another Giuliani client. This AP story, which was not disputed by Giuliani or News Corporation, was carried on the Fox News website.
This writer had raised questions about Fox News' co-sponsorship of the debate, based on the fact that the company had a relationship with Giuliani when he was mayor of New York City. But now we know that the relationship has continued into the period of time that Giuliani has been planning a presidential run. It is an obvious conflict of interest.
It was during a discussion of foreign policy that Paul, a Texas congressman, identified U.S. involvement in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, as a factor in the 9/11 attacks. Giuliani pounced on that, saying the claim was worse than absurd. "Rudy's Wrath" was the headline as Fox News proclaimed Giuliani the winner of the exchange. However, the Fox News text-message poll, with 40,000 votes, gave Paul 25 percent over Giuliani's 19 percent. Mitt Romney came in first with 29 percent.
Giuliani was the first Republican candidate to come on Fox News after the debate and talk about his performance. Co-host Sean Hannity wanted to focus on Giuliani's comments on 9/11 and his attack on Paul. Later, Michael Steele, Maryland's former Lieutenant Governor, was on Fox News, declaring that Giuliani had destroyed Ron Paul. "It's done," Steele said of Paul's campaign. It wasn't mentioned that Giuliani had campaigned for Steele when he ran for a Maryland Senate seat.
The exchange with Paul over 9/11 might have been seen in a different light if Hannity had asked Giuliani about why, according to the AP report, his firm represented Saudi Arabia. But that was a taboo topic.
Equally important, it turns out that Paul's point-that the 9/11 attacks were linked to U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East-was factually correct. Osama bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" specifically mentioned the situation in Iraq, blaming the U.S. for the impact of economic sanctions on the Saddam Hussein regime. Bin Laden accused the U.S. of "aggression" against Iraq and the record shows that his anti-Americanism was motivated, at least in part, by the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia.
Yet, Giuliani claimed "I don't think I've heard that before," in reference to Paul's citation of some of these facts. One would think that "America's Mayor" and "Mr. 9/11" would understand the genesis of the attacks that took almost 3,000 American lives.
Despite the facts of the case, Fox News correspondent Steve Brown said it was a matter of "Mission Accomplished" for Giuliani because of his exchange with Paul. Of course, "Mission Accomplished" has become associated with a war in Iraq that has no end in sight. Paul has been against the Iraq War from the beginning. He made the point, as he had during the first debate on MSNBC, that the war had cost the GOP control of Congress. Senator John McCain tried to insist that Republicans had lost Congress because they had been spending too much federal money. He didn't explain why the public had replaced the Republicans with bigger spenders from the Democratic Party.
[...] Fox News seems determined to run Paul and other candidates out of the race.
Steve Doocy of Fox News called Ron Paul the "Sanjaya" of the Republican presidential debate, a reference to the American Idol contestant many believe stayed in the national competition for too long. But this is reality turned upside down. Fox News didn't want its audience to know the facts behind the exchange. Especially with his controversial Saudi and other foreign connections, Giuliani may end up looking like the real "Sanjaya" of the race. [...]
Giuliani was completely spared any tough questions about his controversial dealings with foreign clients. Neither Wallace nor Goler brought up the growing controversy over the Giuliani law firm representing a Spanish company that is privatizing a Texas road in the proposed "NAFTA Superhighway." The same firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, represents Citgo, the oil company owned by Venezuela...
Fox News had attempted to limit participation in the debate to the so-called "serious" candidates before a public outcry forced all of them to be included. That ploy was seen as an effort to cement Giuliani as the frontrunner. After the debate, Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron was again trying to limit the field, declaring that the "second-tier candidates" had slowed down the exchanges. He implied that candidates like Paul, Duncan Hunter and Mike Huckabee should be left out of future debates.
Fox News has a reputation as a conservative news channel and many Republicans rely on it for news and information. But its handling of this debate raises serious questions about the channel's commitment to being "fair and balanced." It seems to be emerging as an arm of the Giuliani-for-president campaign. Honest conservatives should demand better coverage. -----
So, Sir Rudy installed an important new emergency radio system; but then made sure that it wasn't being used on 9/11. Was this radio system instead used to help disintegrate the Twin Towers? Stay tuned to total911.info our [b]real[/b]investigation continues.
From South Carolina's WLTX 6/20/2007: 
From ccuracy in Media May 16 2007: 
FEED
TOTAL411 PODCAST
SELECTED VIDEO ]