The Truth Or The Fight

By Michael Smith

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.:Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers.Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

‘Blatant Disregard’

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history — a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June. Six Juarez police officers were slaughtered by automatic weapons fire in a midday ambush in April.

Rondolfo Torre, the leading candidate for governor in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down yesterday, less than a week before elections in which violence related to drug trafficking was a central issue.

45,000 Troops

Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed to crush the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006, and he’s since deployed 45,000 troops to fight the cartels. They’ve had little success.

Among the dead are police, soldiers, journalists and ordinary citizens. The U.S. has pledged Mexico $1.1 billion in the past two years to aid in the fight against narcotics cartels.

In May, President Barack Obama said he’d send 1,200 National Guard troops, adding to the 17,400 agents on the U.S. side of the border to help stem drug traffic and illegal immigration.

Behind the carnage in Mexico is an industry that supplies hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines to Americans. The cartels have built a network of dealers in 231 U.S. cities from coast to coast, taking in about $39 billion in sales annually, according to the Justice Department.

‘You’re Missing the Point’

Twenty million people in the U.S. regularly use illegal drugs, spurring street crime and wrecking families. Narcotics cost the U.S. economy $215 billion a year — enough to cover health care for 30.9 million Americans — in overburdened courts, prisons and hospitals and lost productivity, the department says.

“It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia’s branch network.

“If you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point,” Woods says.

Cleansing Dirty Cash

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“Insane… Insane… Insane. Obama is showing his true tyrant colors. Never thought Obama would be as bad as he has been. He’s a little tyrant slob parasite. Impeach this mad man.”

-Fred Face 6/30/10

Campaign for Liberty
June 30, 2010

Dear Liberty Activist,

The FEC has launched a pair of investigations on Campaign for Liberty.

Both are meritless, but could seriously disrupt our growing program.

Please read Campaign for Liberty President John Tate’s letter below and stand with us.

This is exactly the type of government action to quell liberty that I have spent my life opposing.

Sincerely,
Congressman Ron Paul

—

Dear Friend of Liberty,

The best way to know you are succeeding in changing Washington is when you get attacked by the FEC.

And attack us they have!

I’m writing you this letter today not to scare you or to cry wolf.  I’m writing to let you know that our success has its price, and that price right now is the wrath of the Obama Administration and its attack dogs at the Federal Election Commission.

I urge you to read this message and then sign the Declaration of Support (in which I ask for your advice on a critical legal and moral question), as we are forced into battle with federal agencies and courts.

You see, this isn’t theoretical.  They’ve already come after us in multiple cases, alleging that Campaign for Liberty has acted illegally merely by putting the candidates on the record and reporting their positions.

My attorneys tell me we are under a gag rule and cannot go in to too many details or even tell you with what we have been charged and where the charges originated.

But I can say there have been at least two complaints filed in two different states against our issue discussion activities.

They claim we are in violation of various FEC rules and laws.

Their allegations are completely false.  And we must fight back now, or they will win and be able to silence our movement.

You see, the Washington, D.C., establishment doesn’t like to be challenged.  They hate it when we fight back.

They are absolutely BESIDE themselves when we are winning.

In less than 2 years, your Campaign for Liberty has become a major force on the American political landscape.

I can give you a list of our accomplishments, talk about our growth (we are approaching half a million members), and show you press coverage from across the nation on our efforts.

But nothing shows our success more than how our enemies react when challenged.

When that happens, they do what they do best: use the power of the federal government to attack us.

They want to do one of two things: shut us up, or shut us down.

This battle is over a very fundamental idea – that Campaign for Liberty and our members should have a voice in lobbying their legislators and exposing the radical views of candidates for office.

Exposing what they’re up to – that’s what the powers that be can’t stand.  That’s because they don’t want Americans to know:

** Congress is spending at a record pace and has now left us over 13 TRILLION dollars in debt, with no end in sight.

** The out of control FED has not accounted for nearly 2 trillion dollars and has doubled our monetary base, risking our entire economy.

** The federal government has imposed a mandate that every American either purchase a health care product the Feds approve of, costing tens of thousands of dollars, or risk fines and jail time.

** The federal government has attempted to take away your 1st, 2nd and 4th Amendment rights, all in the past year, with more certainly to come.

We’re exposing them – and holding them accountable as they come back home to seek reelection.

Of course, this may not sound like the end of the world.  But just think: the FEC has an ARMY of lawyers and a budget of nearly $70 MILLION dollars.

That’s a lot of lawyers.

And add to it the fact that this group of people is adamantly against free speech under the First Amendment, and well, you have a recipe for trouble.

Subpeonas.  Depositions.  Fishing expeditions that cover tens of thousands of documents.

Legal fees just to defend our right to free speech.

Thousands of hours of staff time to comply with their demands.

You can see where this is going.

If FEC radicals succeed, I will not even be allowed to tell you and your neighbors how candidates for the House and Senate (or for President in the future) have voted on Liberty issues, so you can put the heat on them when they are most likely to listen.

Let me explain that a bit more.

For the first time ever, there is a nationwide group that is dedicated to holding politicians accountable for their votes on Liberty issues.

It’s Campaign for Liberty, and our over 450,000 members are doing battle across the country to hold the politicians’ feet to the fire.

Whether it is getting more than 300 sponsors for Audit the Fed, or lobbying to stop Cap and Tax and Real ID schemes, Campaign for Liberty is making a difference.

And we’re prepared to make an even bigger difference this fall, as the time comes to inform the people where their candidates stand.

So the statists in Washington are out to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Their main weapon is the Federal Election Commission.

The FEC has always been against free speech and a tool of the powerful elite in Washington, who desperately seek to hang on to power.

But as bad as the FEC has been since its inception, with the Obama Administration in power, you and I face even more aggressive assaults on our free speech.

My attorneys have warned me that the puppets at the Federal Election Commission are ordering me to stop mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Americans against power grabs in Congress.

In doing so, they are trying to cripple our ability to stop dangerous legislation in Congress.  If we continue to oppose these Liberty-stealing bills as we have in the past, I face the danger of multimillion-dollar fines and even a jail term!

In fact, I may even be questioned in court for writing this letter tonight.

I must make a decision soon.  Should I allow the Federal Election Commission to tie my hands during this crucial election year?

Or should I defy their gag-rule regulations . . . and face prosecution from the out of control federal authorities for exercising our right to political speech?

Please give me your answer by filling out the Declaration of Support.

If you and other members want me to proceed with our efforts to inform the public of the positions of your candidates on Liberty issues, and to oppose legislation in the Congress (and I hope you do), I will also need your financial help.

So please consider making a generous contribution of 10, 20 or even 40 for this battle, if you can.

The fact is the enemies of Liberty are preparing for a political attack far more serious than their election power grab of 2008, in which they put in power some of the biggest enemies of freedom and promoters of Big Government in a generation.

Our program to stop more statist takeovers in Congress is simple.  By mobilizing our grassroots army, we can put a lot of heat on individual Congressmen and Senators.

The FEC insists we can’t do that during election years.

They say by telling you where your Congressman and Senators stand, I may influence your vote.  The FEC election regulators contend that’s illegal electioneering.

Basically, government bureaucrats and their out of control regulations insist I dismantle our lobbying operation during election years — precisely at the time it would have its greatest impact.

Top legal experts tell me that this harassment by the FEC and any attempts to shut down our program violate several decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and are flatly unconstitutional.

But they also warn me that if I challenge the FEC ruling, I may face a huge, tax-funded lawsuit which could stretch on for decades and cost us as much as a million dollars.

In addition to potential million-dollar fines and legal penalties, I also face an enormous funding challenge.

Our program to fight back in Congress will require at least $3.2 million.

So there are a lot of decisions to make, and I wanted to be sure I have your support as we move forward.

If I am to proceed with this effort (which I am hoping you will allow), I will need more than just your authorization.  I will need your financial support as well.

I’m hoping you will be able to help with a special contribution of 10, 20 or 40.  But perhaps you could afford even more.

Every dollar, every quarter, every dime will be used to defeat dangerous Liberty-stealing schemes in Congress and in all 50 states.

George, please respond soon.

This is one of the most far-reaching questions I have ever had to pose to you.  The future of Campaign for Liberty is at stake.

If our people are heard, I am sure Liberty will once again thrive in our country.  And we are making great strides in even just the past year.

So please, act today.  If you believe our voices should be heard, and that the federal government CANNOT be allowed to silence them, it’s vital you answer today.

Please fill out your Declaration of Support, and consider making a generous contribution of 10, 20, or even 40 today.

Thank you for all you do for Liberty.
In Liberty,

John Tate

President

PS: Your Declaration of Support and your maximum possible contribution today will ensure Campaign for Liberty will be able to keep fighting this election year.

Just like in 2008, the establishment and statists are desperate to shut us up or shut us down.  They don’t want to have their records exposed.

You and I cannot give them the playing field.  We must fight back today.

http://www.infowars.com/fec-attempts-to-shut-down-campaign-for-liberty/

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Learn your history before it repeats on you.

By New World Order
12-3-7

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“Ya.. Obama’s not blocking press or CONGRESSMEN from viewing the spill. They aren’t purposely stalling the clean up, so, shut the fuck up about it and don’t you dare look towards our federal beaches… slaves.”

-Fred Face 6/30/10

Rep. Steve Scalise holds an Associated Press photo taken by Charlie Riedel of an oil-covered pelican, the state bird of Louisiana, as he questions BP CEO Tony Hayward during a congressional hearing June 17, 2010.

By JAKE SHERMAN

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) wanted to fly 10 lawmakers down to the Gulf of Mexico to see the damage caused by BP’s gigantic oil spill first hand.

House Democrats said no.

Scalise’s trip was rejected for a variety of bureaucratic and logistical reasons, but it has also opened a new vein of partisan squabbling over who should be allowed to arrange a trip to view the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Republicans want to be able to take trips using their office spending allowance. But Democrats have heard from the Department of Homeland Security, which has asked that Congress organize trips through committees of jurisdiction, to avoid having to cater to a ton of individual lawmakers in a disaster zone, Democratic aides say. GOP leaders say they’ve heard nothing of this.

The squabbling over who gets to travel to the Gulf on whose dime is the latest sign that congressional oversight of the oil spill oversight from Capitol Hill has been bogged down by partisanship. Congress has held upwards of 20 hearings on the disaster, often duplicative ones each week, as lawmakers struggle to grasp and fully realize the scope of BP’s giant oil spill.

Scalise, who has already been to the Gulf on another codel, wants to organize a trip so lawmakers can fully grasp the impact before they vote on oil drilling regulations. And he doesn’t want to do it through a committee, because the members don’t fit neatly into specific panels — they stretch across committee, and even partisan, lines.

About two weeks ago, Scalise requested to be able to use his Members Representational Allowance – a fund typically reserved for office expenses and travel back to the district – to go to the Gulf with a group of about 10 other lawmakers.

He sought permission from the House Administration committee, which regulates office account spending and would have to approve the trip. After a few weeks, Scalise was ping-ponged between several committees. Eventually, John Lawrence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) chief of staff, told Scalise’s chief that “it was unlikely that the request would be granted” by the House Administration Committee.

Republicans, however, say Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.), who chairs the committee, has approved at least a dozen such trips in 2009 alone – something Democrats don’t deny.

“Unless there is some extraordinary reason to prohibit this trip – which has yet to be communicated to us – this is an unacceptable departure from past practices,” said Rep, Dan Lungren of California, the top Republican on the administration committee. “This is an educational trip for members using their own representational budgets to see, first-hand, the devastating impact of the Gulf spill. Our travel regulations permit this type of travel in support of our official representational duties, and unfortunately, this disaster is already having environmental and economical implications for the entire country – not just those districts represented by Members sitting on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.”

Republicans say that Democrats are just trying to shield lawmakers from going to see the damage in the Gulf.

“Every Member should see the result of eight years of failed Bush-Cheney energy policies that have done nothing to secure our energy future,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

So for now, the Scalise visit remains unscheduled.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39225.html

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By CCHR International

A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect “brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk”  in infants just a few weeks old.   We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or  brain abnormality to start with.  There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one.   So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the “associated with schizophrenia risk” amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.

For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease.   But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory.  One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains.   They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science.   As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)

The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and “the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research” really after?  What is their goal?

As we have exposed in the article “Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global” there is a concerted push being headed by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and other pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists for the global implementation of a new mental health paradigm; preventativemental health, i.e., pre-diagnosing (diagnosing children before they develop a “mental disorder”) and pre-drugging children ( before they show “signs” of the mental disorder).   There is an obvious push for the same pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda with this latest study, which claims ”major cases of schizophrenia are usually not diagnosed until a person begins witnessing its related symptoms like delusions and hallucinations as a teenager or adult . However, by that time, the disease [notice the term disease despite no medical evidence of disease] crosses the stage of preliminary treatment and is difficult to treat.”   In other words, if we wait to administer drugs to them it may be too late.  That along with Gilmore’s statement,  “It allows us to start thinking about how we can identify kids at risk for schizophrenia very early and whether there are things that we can do very early on to lessen the risk.” This is the pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging agenda being pushed and the new “preventative” model of mental health that is more akin to a Brave New World than anything previously witnessed.  And this latest “study” tells us infants are also on the agenda.

And finally,  to psychiatrist and lead study author John H. Gilmore, we think you should take a lesson from the former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Chief of the Center for Studies in Schizophrenia, the late Loren R. Mosher, M.D. who stated in his letter of resignation to the American Psychiatric Association, “The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant.  What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support my membership…After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this is my belief I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association.  Luckily, the organization’s true identify requires no change in the acronym…”

To read more from Loren Mosher, including his two-year outcome study treating patients diagnosed “schizophrenic” without the use of drugs, his vehement stance against the biological psychiatric model of “disease” and more,  click here.

To read the latest bogus psychiatric study, click here.

http://www.cchrint.org/2010/06/23/pre-crime-try-pre-diagnose-and-pre-drug-psychiatrists-target-infants-as-mental-patients/

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“People need to start asking themselves some serious fuckin’ questions about their role in the world today. Whether you want to be part of the solution (or) whether you want to be part of the problem. Work it out.”

-Fred Face 6/30/10

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Party Time!!!

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“What did we crazy conspiracy theorist tell ya…”

-F.F.

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Full body scanners at airports could increase your risk of skin cancer, experts warn.

The X-ray machines have been brought in at Manchester, Gatwick and Heathrow.

But scientists say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children.

They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.

Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s centre for radiological research, said although the danger posed to the individual passenger is ‘very low’, he is urging researchers to carry out more  tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation.

He says children and passengers with gene mutations – around one in 20 of the population – are more at risk as they are less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA.

Dr Brenner, who is originally from Liverpool but now works at the New York university, said: ‘The individual risks associated with X-ray backscatter scanners are probably extremely small.

‘If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with  X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of  screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk. The  population risk has the potential to be significant.’

Following trials, the airport scanners were officially introduced at Manchester Airport in January, at Heathrow Terminal 4 in February and at Gatwick in May this year.

The most likely risk from the airport scanners is a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma, according to the academic.

The cancer is usually curable and often occurs in the head and neck of  people aged between 50 and 70. He points out it would be difficult to hide a weapon on the head or neck so proposes missing out that part of the body from the scanning process.

‘If there are increases in cancers as a result of irradiation of children,  they would most likely appear some decades in the future. It would be prudent  not to scan the head and neck,’ he added.

He recently aired his concerns to  the Congressional Biomedical Caucus in the US – members of Congress who meet to  exchange ideas on medical research.

Dr Brenner urged them to look at his  concerns but said it was important to balance any health issues against  passengers’ safety when flying.

He said: ‘There really is no other technology around where we’re planning  to X-ray such an enormous number of individuals. It’s really unprecedented in  the radiation world.’

The Civil Aviation Authority, Department for Transport and Health Protection Agency insist that the technology is safe and say their tests show it  would take 5,000 trips through the scanner to equal the dose of a single chest X-ray.

They said in the climate of high security, it is essential that security staff use ‘all means possible’ to minimise risks to airline  security.

The CAA said: ‘The device has been approved for use within the UK by the Department for Transport and has been subjected to risk  assessments from the Health Protection Agency.

‘To put the issue in perspective, the radiation received from the scanning process is the equivalent to two minutes radiation received on a Transatlantic flight.

‘Recent press publications have been a little alarmist and may have heightened concern in frequent travellers who may worry about their repeated exposure.

‘Under current regulations, up to 5,000 scans per person per year can be  conducted safely.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1290527/Airport-body-scanners-deliver-radiation-dose-20-times-higher-thought.html

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“Nice little nugget of information here…”

-F.F.

Why would Homeland Security hire former Stasi chief Markus Wolfe and former head of the KGB General Yevgeni Primakov?

Is this part of the Bush anti-terror strategy? After all, Wolfe is the man who is credited with building up the feared East German secret police that was responsible for the disappearance and deaths of thousands of citizens. And, Primakov�s record is not any better. As skipper of the KGB he was driving force behind the machinery of state terror; a legacy that still has a chilling affect on many Russians.

Now, apparently, they�ve found a new place to hang their hats at Homeland Security. Or have they? Perhaps, the numerous stories on the internet are just fabrications intended to mislead independent research. That�s certainly one possibility. But, consider this; for those who have followed the activities of the current administration (the torture, the deception, the death squads, the destruction of Falluja) stories like this are difficult to discount. As a matter of fact, the hiring of Primakov and Wolfe seems fairly consistent with the long-term goals of the Bush team.

We already know that there�s a power struggle within the government from the number of top agents who have been jettisoned at the CIA. Why not develop a new Security apparatus under the auspices of a proven loyalist like Michael Chertoff? (the new appointee at Homeland Security) That would require the expertise of a couple of old pros who can help-out with the basics and get the machinery of state repression clanking along?

The move is not unprecedented either. As Noam Chomsky points out, in SS officer Klaus Barbie, �The Butcher of Lyon� was employed by the US Army after WW2 to �spy on the French.� [2] Col. Eugene Kolb of Army counterintelligence later admitted that Barbie�s �skills were badly needed�His activities had been directed against the underground French Communist party and the resistance� who were targeted for repression by the American liberators�. (�What Uncle Sam Really Wants�) Other Nazi leaders were also used in counterintelligence operations in Italy. They were regarded as �specialists in anti-resistance activities.�

Primakov has allegedly been hired to oversee the issuing of federal IDs. Now that the new Intelligence Reform Act has passed, (uniform) federal standards will be required for licenses within two years. All the citizens personal, credit and biometric history will be stored on one small document. No one will drive a car or get on a plane without one. Don�t leave home without it, or else.

The new federal ID will be required in all financial transactions. Details will be electronically transferred to Office of Internal Security (which falls under the authority of Homeland Security), which will keep �threat files� on each citizen. Ultimately, the ID will be used as an �internal passport� (Primakov�s words) so the government can keep tabs on the movements of every citizen; to keep us safe, of course.

Sound Orwellian? This is what our �freedom loving� Congressmen and Senators overwhelmingly supported in the Intelligence Reform Act. Most of its provisions were written nearly a full year earlier as part of Patriot Act 2. It slipped by the media without a whimper of dissent. There�s also plenty of �enhanced powers� for the President; like the ability to incarcerate suspects indefinitely without charges. But, then, George would never abuse that authority, would he?

Apparently, there�s a Patriot Act 3 in the hopper, too. Investigative journalist Al Martin believes that this new addition will be intended to �establish the internal mechanism to coordinate, as an official function of state, a system of informants.�

�System of informants�?  The land of the free and the home of the snitches.

This must be where a man with Markus Wolfe�s unique talents fits in. As Stasi king-pin he reportedly groomed an impressive network of moles, finks and stool-pigeons. His professional know-how will probably be soothing balm to the quick-learners at Homeland Security. It�s bon voyage to the enemies of the State.

Of course, all of this could just be more paranoid, conspiratorial claptrap?

After sitting through 45 minutes of President Windy�s delusional ramblings of �global liberation�, that seems rather unlikely. Our national nightmare is grounded in some very real changes in the law, and we already know how far these people will go.

The political remedies to the Bush onslaught are diminishing by the day and the observations of Texas congressman Ron Paul are looking increasingly more prophetic. Paul said, �Those who believe a police-state can�t happen here are poor students of history. Every government, democratic or not, is capable of tyranny. We must understand this if we hope to remain a free people.�

http://dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Whitney0121.htm

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“The Powers-That-Be Are Terrified of the Mass Awakening Taking Place Worldwide”

“They should be… they’re everything that personifies the evil of man.”

-F.F.

Article HERE

by Andrew Gavin Marshall

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By Daniel Tencer

UPDATE: TORONTO — More than 500 people have been arrested in Toronto after a night of rioting that saw police cars burned in the financial district and storefront windows broken as leaders of the world’s largest economies gathered in the city for the G20 summit.

As clashes between police and protesters moved into their second day, there were more reports of journalists and peaceful protesters being arrested. TheNational Post reported that two of its photographers were arrested, and a Post blogger says a cyclist was arrested after accidentally bumping into a police officer.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Guardian confirmed earlier reports that one of its freelance journalists, Jesse Rosenfeld, was beaten and arrested at a protest Saturday night (see below).

The arrested protesters are being held in cages at a converted film studio on the city’s downtown east side. News reports indicate that, so far, none of the arrested have been let go. The Globe and Mail reports that about 100 peaceful protesters converged on the facility Sunday, chanting “let them go.”

As they stood outside the gate to the facility, at least two vans pulled up. Officers in plain clothes jumped out of the van and arrested a few protesters. Others began fighting back. A tense stand-off ensued as a bus with officers in riot gear pulled up to the scene.

Police grabbed some protesters out of the crowd, throwing them to the ground and dragging them away. Others streamed away from the area, crying. Three stood nearby consoling each other and hugging.

A woman who said she was arrested while peacefully protesting yesterday described the conditions inside the detention facility to CTV. She said protesters were housed in cages, some without benches.

A video posted to YouTube shows police in riot gear attempting disperse a non-violent protesters at Queen’s Park, next to the provincial legislature, on Saturday. Officers can be seen grabbing protesters out of the crowd and assaulting them.

ORIGINAL STORY FOLLOWS BELOW VIDEO

The following video was posted to YouTube by user forzaferrarif1fan.

TORONTO — Reporters covering the G20 summit in Toronto say they were the target of police violence overnight, as riots blamed on anarchist groups left four police cars burning in the financial district and resulted in the arrests of some 150 people.

“A newspaper photographer was shot with a plastic bullet in the backside, while another had an officer point a gun in his face despite identifying himself as a member of the media,” reportedthe Canadian Press news agency. The agency did not say if it was its own reporters who were targeted.

Previously: Toronto gets ‘secret’ arrest powers ahead of G20 protests

In a remarkable series of Tweets early Sunday morning, journalist Steve Paikin of public broadcaster TV Ontario said he witnessed “police brutality” against a reporter and the arrests of peaceful demonstrators.

“I saw police brutality tonight. It was unnecessary. They asked me to leave the site or they would arrest me. I told them I was doing my job,” he Tweeted.

“As I was escorted away from the demonstration, I saw two officers hold a journalist. The journalist identified himself as working for ‘the Guardian.’ He talked too much and pissed the police off. Two officers held him a third punched him in the stomach. Totally unnecessary. The man collapsed. Then the third officer drove his elbow into the man’s back. No cameras recorded the assault. And it was an assault.”

Paikin had been at a demonstration in Toronto’s Esplanade neighborhood, a densely-populated area near the waterfront. He said police moved in on a crowd of peaceful, “middle class” protesters and began arresting them.

“Police on one side screamed at the crowd to leave one way. Then police on the other side said leave the other way. There was no way out,” he Tweeted. “So the police just started arresting people. I stress, this was a peaceful, middle class, diverse crowd. No anarchists. Literally more than 100 officers with guns pointing at the crowd. Rubber bullets and smoke bombs ready to be fired. Rubber bullets fired.”

Paikin, a respected journalist who has hosted national election debates in Canada, said he was “escorted” away by police before he could see how many people were arrested, “but it must have been dozens.”

“I have lived in Toronto for 32 years. Have never seen a day like this. Shame on the vandals and shame on those that ordered peaceful protesters attacked and arrested.”

Earlier in the day, police told media that a small group of “Black bloc” demonstrators broke off from a protest of 10,000 people and began smashing storefront windows along the city’s trendy Queen Street.

The CBC News Network reported that protesters smashed in the windows of an American Apparel outlet, pulled out the mannequins and spread feces on the floor. The storefronts of McDonald’s and Starbucks locations were also damaged, as were numerous bank branches.

Police shut down all public transit in the city center, including subway and streetcar lines. They also shut down a large downtown shopping complex after reports of looting. AFP reported that some 200 people were trapped inside, unable to leave after the mall was put into lockdown.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0627/police-arrest-peaceful-protesters-g20/

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On The Ground

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On Thursday, Congressman Paul appeared on Fox News’ Your World w/ Neil Cavuto concerning presidential power and BP.

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Photos HERE

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“Awesome, thanks Congress! This is an act of war basically. Your government wants to start WWIII.”

-F.F.

(Editing by Deborah Charles and Xavier Briand)

(Reuters) – Congress on Thursday approved tough new unilateral sanctions aimed at squeezing Iran’s energy and banking sectors, which could also hurt companies from other countries doing business with Tehran.

POLITICS

The House of Representatives passed the bill 408-8 and sent it to President Barack Obama for signing into law. The Senate had approved it 99-0 earlier in the day.

Congress wants to pressure Tehran into curbing its nuclear program, which Washington suspects is aimed at making a bomb.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have been pushing for months to tighten U.S. sanctions on Iran. At the Obama administration’s request, they held off until the U.N. Security Council and the European Union agreed on new multilateral sanctions. But the lawmakers then declared that still tougher measures were needed.

“The U.N. sanctions, though a good first step, are quite tepid. And they are tepid because there are other members of the Security Council who want to keep doing that business with Iran. … The United States … has to pass these unilateral sanctions,” Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski said.

The bill penalizes companies supplying Iran with gasoline as well as international banking institutions involved with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its nuclear program or what Washington calls its support for terrorist activity.

It would effectively deprive foreign banks of access to the U.S. financial system if they do business with key Iranian banks or the Revolutionary Guards.

Such banks would be “shut out of the U.S. financial system,” said the bill’s House author, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman. He is a Democrat.

Global suppliers of gasoline to Iran could also face bans on access to the U.S. banking system, property transactions and foreign exchange in the United States. Iran depends on gasoline imports because it has insufficient refining capacity.

POSING A CHOICE

“Because of this legislation, we will be posing a choice to companies around the world. Do you want to do business with Iran, or do you want to do business with the United States?” Republican Senator John McCain said during Senate debate.

U.S. companies are already prohibited from doing business with Iran. Foreign companies with big investments in Iran’s energy sector also can be sanctioned under current U.S. law. But many U.S. lawmakers say this has not been enforced.

Some companies worldwide, such as Italy’s oil and gas company Eni and French energy giant Total have been backing away from business with Tehran amid the U.S. drive to isolate Iran.

But other companies are still in business with Iran or considering it. Russia’s Gazprom says it is interested in developing the Azar oil field, and industry sources say China has been selling gasoline to Iran.

PRESIDENTIAL WAIVER

The Obama administration failed to get U.S. lawmakers to make blanket exemptions for countries that are cooperating with multilateral efforts to isolate Iran.

The legislation only allows the president to waive the new sanctions on companies from “cooperating” countries on a case-by-case basis, for 12 months.

But even this waiver was too lenient for some House Republicans, who worried Obama will use it.

“The many companies from China and elsewhere, rapidly building Iran’s energy facilities today, will be surely exempted from these sanctions,” said Representative Ed Royce. He said he would nonetheless vote for the bill.

Russia and China, which have strong economic ties with Tehran and have at times resisted sanctions, supported recent U.N. sanctions. But they fought U.S. efforts to approve tougher measures targeting Iran’s energy sector.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65N6RZ20100625

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“Welcome to your future… (If you do nothing about it).”

-F.F.

By Daniel Tencer

TORONTO — A government changes a law to allow police to arrest people without probable cause. It does so without any legislative debate. Then it keeps the change a virtual secret, until someone is arrested under those new powers.

The Soviet Union circa 1950? Nope. Try Canada, June 2010.

Civil liberties advocates and political activists are up in arms after it emerged Friday that police in Toronto have been given special powers to arrest anyone near the site of the G20 summit if they fail to identify themselves.

What’s more, the government of the province of Ontario, which green-lit the new powers, didn’t tell anyone about it until after someone was arrested under the new powers.

Thirty-one-year-old Dave Vasey was arrested near the G20 perimeter security fence in downtown Toronto Thursday afternoon after refusing to identify himself to a police officer.

“The officer told me, ‘I am going to have to place you under arrest if you don’t show your identification,’ and I replied ‘I’m not comfortable with that,’” Vasey said, as quoted at theToronto Star.

With Vasey’s arrest, it emerged that Ontario secretly changed its Public Works Protection Act to allow police officers unprecedented powers of arrest. That law allowed police to arrest people if they fail to identify themselves to a police officer when inside a government building or near a “public works” project. It has now been expanded to include the area around the G20 summit, meaning a significant portion of downtown Toronto.

The Toronto Star reports:

The regulation kicked in Monday and will expire June 28, the day after the summit ends. While the new regulation appeared without notice on the province’s e-Laws online database last week, it won’t be officially published in The Ontario Gazette until July 3 — one week after the regulation expires.

According to the new regulation, “guards” appointed under the act can arrest anyone who, in specific areas, comes within five metres of the security zone.

Within those areas, police can demand identification from anyone coming within five metres of the fence perimeter and search them. If they refuse, they face arrest. Anyone convicted under the regulation could also face up to two months in jail or a $500 maximum fine.

Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair, who reportedly requested the arrest powers, denied Friday that it had been done in secret.

“We haven’t changed the rules,” he said, as quoted at the National Post. “We have put up a fence. We have told people very very clearly that we will not be allowing the public access into that area. … Our authority comes primarily comes from common law, but also by the regulation that has been passed by the province of Ontario.”

But the assertion that the change wasn’t secret was immediately challenged by reporters covering the G20 summit.

“Funny,” writes Adam Radwanski at the Globe and Mail, “I asked two different spokespeople for the integrated G20 police unit — at least one of whom was from the Toronto force — about the legal justification for the measures being taken around the perimeter. Neither breathed a word about anything about the Public Works Protection Act, let alone any recent cabinet decisions that affected it.”

“It’s just unbelievable you would have this kind of abuse of power where the cabinet can create this offense without having it debated in the legislature,” Vasey’s lawyer, Howard Morton, told the Star.

Activist groups say that keeping the new police powers a secret means they have been giving G20 protesters inaccurate advice about how to deal with police confrontations. Vasey himself refused to show identification to police because he was following the advice laid out by theToronto Community Mobilization Network, which is organizing some G20 protest activities.

“This act values public property over the freedom of people and prevents community members from walking freely through the streets without questioning from authorities,” the group said on its Web site Friday. “We will not be made examples of, but rather, we will publicly denounce oppressive activities of the state and highlight the solidarity in our communities.”

Vasey is scheduled to appear in court on July 28.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0625/toronto-arrest-powers-g20-protests/

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“Not even John Yoo claimed that the President possessed the power Obama is claiming.”

“(Not to give John Yoo a shred of credibility… he’s a little pig fucker, but it is quite disturbing to hear that he is shocked by Obama).”

-F.F.

BY GLENN GREENWALD

When The Washington Post’s Dana Priest first revealed (in passing) back in January that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens targeted for assassination, she wrote that “as of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens.”  In April, both the Post and the NYTconfirmed that the administration had specifically authorized the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki.  Today, The Washington Times‘ Eli Lake has an interview with Obama’s top Terrorism adviser John Brennan in which Brennan strongly suggests that the number of U.S. citizens targeted for assassination could actually be “dozens”:

Dozens of Americans have joined terrorist groups and are posing a threat to the United States and its interests abroad, the president’s most senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security said Thursday. . . . “There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us,” said John O. Brennan, deputy White House national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism. . . .

“If a person is a U.S. citizen, and he is on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to attack our troops, he will face the full brunt of the U.S. military response,” Mr. Brennan said. “If an American person or citizen is in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place, and they are trying to carry out attacks against U.S. interests, they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response. And it can take many forms.”

Nobody — or at least not me — disputes the right of the U.S. or any other country to kill someone on an actual battlefield during war without due process.  That’s just obvious, but that’s not remotely what Brennan is talking about, and it’s not remotely what this assassination program is about.  Indeed, Brennan explicitly identified two indistinguishable groups of American citizens who “will face the full brunt of a U.S. response”:  (1) those “on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq”; and (2) those “in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place.”  In other words, the entire world is a “battlefield” — countries where there is a war and countries where there isn’t — and the President’s “battlefield” powers, which are unlimited, extend everywhere.  That theory – the whole world is a battlefield, even the U.S. — was the core premise that spawned 8 years of Bush/Cheney radicalism, and it has been adopted in full by the Obama administration (indeed, it was that “whole-world-is-a-battlefield” theory which Elena Kagan explicitly endorsed during her confirmation hearing for Solicitor General).

Anyone who doubts that the Obama administration has adopted the core Terrorism policies of Bush/Cheney should listen to the concession — or boast — which Brennan himself made in his interview with Lake:

Mr. Brennan toward the end of the interview acknowledged that, despite some differences, there is considerable continuity between the counterterrorism policies of President Bush and President Obama.

“There has been a lot of continuity of effort here from the previous administration to this one,” he said. “There are some important distinctions, but sometimes there is too much made of those distinctions. We are building upon some of the good foundational work that has been done.”

I would really like never to hear again the complaint that comparing Bush and Obama’s Terrorism and civil liberties policies is unfair, invalid or hyperbolic given that Obama’s top Terrorism adviser himself touts that comparison.  And that’s anything but a surprise, given that Brennan was a Bush-era CIA official who defended many of the most controversial Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies.

I’ve written at length about the reasons why targeting American citizens for assassination who are far away from a “battlefield” is so odious and tyrannical, and I won’t repeat those arguments here.  Suffice to say — and I’m asking this literally — if you’re someone who believes, or are at least willing to acquiesce to the claim, that the U.S. President has the power to target your fellow citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process, what unchecked presidential powers wouldn’t you support or acquiesce to?  I’d really like to hear an answer to that.  That’s the question Al Gore asked about George Bush in a 2006 speech condemning Bush’s claimed powers merely toeavesdrop on and imprison American citizens without charges, let alone assassinate them:  “If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? . . . If the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can’t he do?”  Can anyone defending this Obama policy answer that question?

One other thing that is truly amazing:  the U.S. tried to import this same due-process-free policy to Afghanistan.  There, the U.S. last year compiled a “hit list” of 50 Afghan citizens whose assassination it authorized on the alleged ground (never charged or convicted) that they were drug “kingpins” or funding the Talbian.  You know what happened?  This:

A U.S. military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops. . . .

Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts . . . said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial . . . “They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes,” Daud . “We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own” . . . .

The U.S. military and NATO officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of NATO’s new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban.. . . . “There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty,” [Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister] said. “If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?”

In other words, Afghans — the people we’re occupying in order to teach about Freedom and Democracy — are far more protective of due process and the rule of law for their own citizens than Americans are who meekly submit to Obama’s identical policy of assassination for their fellow citizens.  It might make more sense for Afghanistan to invade and occupy the U.S. in order to spread the rule of law and constitutional values here.

What makes all this most remarkable is the level of screeching protests Democrats engaged in when Bush merely wanted to eavesdrop on and detain Americans without any judicial oversight or due process.  Remember all that?  Click here and here for a quick refresher.  Yet here is Barack Obama doing far worse to them than that without any due process or judicial oversight — he’s targeting them for assassination — and there is barely a peep of protest from the same Party that spent years depicting “mere” warrantless eavesdropping and due-process-free detention to be the acts of a savage, lawless tyrant.  And, of course, Obama himself back then joined in those orgies of condemnation, as reflected by this December, 2008, answer he gave to Charlie Savage, then ofThe Boston Globe, regarding his views of executive power:

5. Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?

[Obama]: No. I reject the Bush Administration’s claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

So back then, Obama said the President lacks the power merely to detain U.S. citizens without charges; indeed, when asked if “the Constitution permit[s]” that, he responded:  ”no.”  Yet now, as President, he claims the power to assassinate them without charges.  Could even his hardest-core loyalists try to reconcile that with a straight face?  As Spencer Ackerman documented in April, not even John Yoo claimed that the President possessed the power Obama is claiming here.  Given Brennan’s strong suggestion that there are not merely three but “dozens” of Americans who are being targeted or at least could be (“they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response”) — and given the huge number of times the Government has falsely accused individuals of Terrorismand its demonstrated willingness to imprison knowingly innocent detainees — is it time yet to have a debate about whether we think the President should be able to exercise a power like this?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/25/assassinations

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Cassandra Anderson
Infowars.com
June 25, 2010

The true facts of life are that the globalist control freaks have caused environmental disasters in order to implement their solutions, which are even worse. And they get public support through lies, government regulations and our tax dollars. UN Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is the overarching blueprint for depopulation and control using the environment as the excuse.

Last month the UN announced that they were shifting their focus from global warming (which has been thoroughly discredited) to biodiversity, which is really a way to steal land by way of the Endangered Species Act. In fact, a new UN agency has been created to monitor biodiversity (Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services or IPBES), and is based on the UN’s fraudulent IPCC. The new fear that is being created is the destruction of habitats and species resulting from human activity.(1)

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“Time to evolve people… war turns men into animals. The men who send these troops into war should be blamed for twisting soldiers minds into complete and absolute madness. War is hell and the tables should be turned and the malthusian men & women, who are our, (by fraud), elected leaders & the round table of elite globalist scum who really control things… need to experience their destiny… hell. It can be done if Americans drop their apathy weights off their broken backs.”

-Fred Face 6/24/10

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Alok Jha

A cocktail of chemicals from pesticides could be damaging the brains of British bees, according to scientists about to embark on a study into why the populations of the insects have dropped so rapidly in recent decades. By affecting the way bees’ brains work, the pesticides might be affecting the ability of bees to find food or communicate with others in their colonies.

Neuroscientists at Dundee University, Royal Holloway and University College London will investigate the hypothesis as part of a £10m research programme launched today aimed at finding ways to stop the decline in the numbers of bees and other insect pollinators in the UK.

Insects such as bees, moths and hoverflies pollinate around a third of the agricultural crops grown around the world. If all of the UK’s insect pollinators were wiped out, the drop in crop production would cost the UK economy up to £440m a year, equivalent to around 13% of the UK’s income from farming.

Pollinators are also crucial for the quality of fruits and vegetables. Perfectly shaped strawberries, for example, are created only if every single ovary has been pollinated by an insect. And the number of seeds in a pumpkin depends on the number of species of insects that have pollinated the plants. “If you’ve got 10 pollinators, you’ll get more seeds in the pumpkin than you would have got if you’ve just got one pollinator,” said Giles Budge of the Food and Environment Research Agency. “It is important to have that diversity in a pollinating population.”

According to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, three of the 25 British species of bumblebees are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70%, since around the 1970s. In addition, around 75% of all butterfly species in the UK have been shown to be in decline. The new £10m Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI), the largest programme to date of its kind, will look at the multiple reasons thought to be behind this devastation in insect population.

Chris Connolly of Dundee University’s Centre for Neuroscience has been awarded £1.5m to lead the work on whether pesticides are having an affect on the brains of bees. Pesticides could be blocking the electrical and chemical signals between neurons, he said, and only subtle changes may be required to produce serious brain disorders. These problems might stop bees identifying the best sources of nectar, or it might affect their ability to navigate to nearby food source and back home again.

Brain disorders in bees might also interfere with their ability to communicate with nest-mates using the “waggle dance”, where bees come back to their hive and spread information about the food sources they have found.

The IPI will bring together ecologists, molecular biologists, mathematicians and computer experts to study the decline of honeybees and other insect pollinators from a range of different angles.

“The landscape has changed considerably over the last 30-40 years, we’ve seen well-documented changes in our birds, our flora and also in some of our insects but now there’s a growing concern that our insect pollinators are also in decline, whether that’s in terms of the number of honeybees, number of bumblebee species, butterflies and hoverflies,” said Andrew Watkinson, director of the Living with Environmental Change programme, which is part of the IPI.

Jane Memmott of the University of Bristol has been awarded a £1.2m grant to identify the hotspots of insect biodiversity in Bristol, Reading, Leeds and Edinburgh. “We’re divvying the cities up not just into gardens – we’ll look at bits of wasteland, industrial estates, shopping malls – to ask where there are the little oases for plant pollinators. We’ll ask what we can do in cities to make them more pollinator-friendly?”

Claire Carvell of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology will use her £500,000 award to analyse DNA from live wild bees to track how far and wide queen bees fly to start new nests and how far worker bees fly to look for food. “Bumblebees live in colonies of a few hundred workers and a queen. If we want to conserve their populations, we need to think about the number of nests and not just the number of individual bees. But we’re faced with a challenge – it’s almost impossible to find bumblebee nests in the wild.”

The IPI has been funded by the Natural and Environmental Research Council (Nerc), the UK government’s department for environment, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Scottish Government and the Wellcome Trust. Alan Thorpe, chief executive of Nerc, said: “We can take for granted the variety of vegetables, fruits and flowers that we can enjoy every day but some of the insect pollinators on which they rely are in serious decline. Understanding the complexities of environmental ecosystems is a priority that will help to ensure the survival of pollinators and the benefits they provide.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/22/chemicals-bees-decline-major-study

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Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 22, 2010

The farce that is the war in Afghanistan is coming apart at the seams. General Stanley McChrystal’s sharp comments about Obama, Biden, and the administration published by Rolling Stone are not so much about disrespect, as the script-reading corporate media talking heads would have it, but rather about a policy in disarray in Afghanistan.

Obama the wunderbar teleprompter reader (and little else) is instructed to push the completely untenable prospect that the United States can win the so-called war in Afghanistan, a country often referred to as the graveyard of empires. The British, the Russians, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan either fell to the Afghans or made painful concessions. The British suffered one of their greatest military defeats in the Khyber. 16,500 British soldiers and civilians, retreating after defeat in Kabul, were slaughtered by the Afghans. One person was spared to tell the story.

The establishment knows it cannot “win” in Afghanistan and the claim the U.S. military is there to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda is nothing but transparent propaganda.

Afghanistan is a black hole sucking up men and machinery for the sake of death merchant profiteers. It is valuable real estate to be held — not conquered — real estate where opium grows for the sake of CIA off-the-books operating capital funding covert wars against enemies of the global elite. The fantastic profits earned from opium also flood the coffers of the masters of the casino economy on Wall Street. As Catherine Austin Fiits has documented, without this influx of laundered underground and illicit money Wall Street would have collapsed long ago.

After the so-called Afghanistan assessment was supposedly leaked to the CIA’s favorite newspaper last year — the report recommended in Pentagon-speak securing the population, aiding in providing good governance, building and mentoring the Afghan security forces — McChrystal threatened to resign if he was not provided with resources to accomplish the mission.

In other words, McChrystal said he needs more troops, something our rulers will not do. Not because it is politically unpopular, but because the mission in Afghanistan is not to win. The unstated mission is to chew up men, resources, and a lot of money loaned out by international banksters. The mission is to keep an unwinnable conflict on low heat indefinitely, or at least until the United States collapses from the crushing debt burden.

McChrystal made his opinion about the corporatization of the “war” known in April when he criticized the use of private-sector contractors. “I actually think we would be better to reduce the number of contractors involved.” He suggested increasing the number of troops “if necessary,” or “using a greater number of Afghan contractors, or Afghans to help with the mission,” according to the Boston Globe.

Instead of acting as the CEO of a floundering occupation designed to last forever, McChrystal hinted he would resign. “Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he’d stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy,” it was reported last September.

Now McChrystal and his boys are making sarcastic and derogatory — even adolescent — remarks about Obama and Biden in the presence of Rolling Stone journalists. McChrystal realizes this behavior will likely result in his forced resignation. He has obviously arrived at a decision to publicly express his contempt for Obama and the administration.

Contempt for the Chicago Mafia errand boy and accomplished teleprompter reader is now a popular sport not only in Washington but around the country. He will likely go down as the most reviled puppet of the ruling elite in modern history.

Another marionette awaits behind the curtain.

http://www.infowars.com/general-mcchrystals-burning-contempt-for-the-puppet-obama/

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Arseniy A. Kozlov
Infowars.com
June 22, 2010

If you haven’t, I urge you to do so. Observe the sky for couple of weeks and see if you notice something different, something strange there.

What am I talking about?

Long white trails emitted by the commercial aircrafts and other high flying aerial vehicles. Since the utilization of jet engines, we became accustomed to the sight of pencil-thin and short contrails that the airplanes leave behind. However, within the last 15 years the appearance of contrails has changed dramatically. Those who are a bit older might remember that condensation trails used to disappear within minutes and that was the case up until mid 1990s. Now the new types of contrails persist for a longer period of time and do not dissipate. Eventually they spread out and form eggshell color blankets, which will hang in the sky for several hours. Occasionally a careful observer will notice that the sky is being crisscrossed by the airplane condensation trails and thereby forming checkerboard patterns.

Consequently, the skies above us become hazy or mushy. There are many other various patterns, colors and forms that contrails create. Unfortunately the lack of official public explanations created a breeding ground for speculation on the nature of these changes. Nevertheless, a flotilla of evidence regarding the new strange occurrences described above could be found in the scientific and government sources that are seldom looked at by the general public.

First of all, the new development in the sky must be identified and the difference between an ordinary and a more recent phenomenon of contrails has to be understood. Ordinary condensation trails from the jet airplanes are produced when the exhaust water vapor condenses on dust particles at high altitudes then turns into ice crystals and dissipates within 20 minutes. However, the new phenomenon of contrails has a vast visual difference and longevity. The term chemtrails was coined to explain the condensation trails which persist in the sky for hours, spread wider than in the past and eventually multiple chemtrails form milky veils or create cloud like formations. Various unusual chemtrail patterns can be observed daily in many parts of the North America. They appear to be denser, have an off white color and different hues can be created when the sunlight goes through one of the chemtrails. Furthermore, there is evidence pointing to the fact that the new type of contrails has a different chemical composition and no longer consists of a mere water vapor.

Sometimes chemtrails could be seen slowly falling toward the ground and samples can be collected. Dr. Len Horowitz has submitted chemtrail samples to the EPA but they refused to analyze them. Nevertheless, concerned citizens provided samples to the several independent laboratories which have conducted tests and the particulates of Aluminum oxide, Barium, Magnesium were detected in them.

Equipped with test results the concerned members of the public requested various government agencies to produce a reasonable explanation for this new strange phenomenon, but to no avail.

Why are the earth-based chemicals being delivered into the atmosphere by airplanes? The only rational answer to this mind-boggling question came forward from the global warming activists, who call it a Geoengineering option.

In the last couple of years the leading voices in the climate change awareness movement began to discuss more openly an emergency strategy to combat global warming. This scenario is now called the Geoengineering, and it is primarily based on the chemical sprayings of the atmosphere via high altitude aerial vehicles. According to the climate change leaders the geoengineering option will be carried out when all other attempts to reduce CO2 gases in the atmosphere have failed and the planet was at the brink of an environmental catastrophe.

For instance, Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet, introduced a geoengineering idea on the TedTalks in February 2010. After his speech a question was raised regarding the implementation of the “emergency measures” when all other programs to reduce the CO2 gases in the atmosphere have failed. Bill Gates answered and spoke of geoengineering as the last option on the table to delay the heating of the planet.

Geoengineering is an artificial way to alter the global atmospheric chemistry under the pretext of curbing global warming. It will be accomplished via cloud seeding with aerosolized sulfites, chemical sprayings of the jet stream and deflecting sun’s rays with a variety of means. This option was announced by experts and promulgated by philanthropists who deemed it to be the “emergency strategy” and a last resort against global warming. Geoengineering is part and parcel of climate control technologies, various weather modification schemes and weather warfare techniques.

The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2007 issue, published an eye opening article with a headline “The Climate Engineers” pertaining to the large-scale weather modification experiments which are being carried out under the banner of geoengineering. The author presents an analytical summation of the scientific research on the weather control technologies, the rainmaking capabilities, the diversion of weather storms and the relevant applications thereof in the civilian and military fields. The article traces a number of scientific attempts to control the weather from the American Civil War to the present day propositions of the National Academy of Sciences on the artificial alteration of the climate. The experts from the various fields and disciplines made striking propositions and received an adequate government funding for geoengineering options. The options consist of cloud seeding with silver iodide, launching huge mirrors into the Earth’s orbit to deflect sun’s rays, for B-747s to deliver different chemical compounds into the upper atmosphere and to make clouds thicker by pumping whipped ocean water into them.

After the severity of global warming was exacerbated by a number of White House reports, the scientists began their search for a “technological quick fix” to the problem of climate change.

The physicist Lowell Wood, who among other things worked for Pentagon as a chief weapons designer and threat analyst, made a peculiar declaration at one of the NASA’s conference. Wood offered an idea of creating a “global thermostat” to control earth’s climate. In order to achieve that he proposed to use large cannons to shoot highly reflective sulfate aerosols and “specially engineered nanoparticles” into the Arctic stratosphere. Supposedly the result of such geoengineering measures would be an “instant climatic gratification”.

Since World War II the enthusiastic scientists were experimenting with the cloud seeding techniques by dropping dry ice and other chemicals from airplanes into the clouds to cause or enhance precipitation. During the Vietnam War the US Military, with a full support of both presidents Johnson and Nixon, conducted a covert operation under the name POPEYE. The Air Force delivered cloud seeding particulates over the Ho Chi Minh Trail with a purpose of reducing enemy’s traffic ability.

Thus, the geoengineering stems largely from the research on the weather warfare technologies.

James R. Fleming, the author of “The Climate Engineers”, makes frequent references to the government and university documents and a UN publication to validate the point of how serious is the discussion on the weather control. The summarized scientific papers and White House proposals have many common aspects, including cloud seeding and the sprayings of the jet stream with various chemical compounds. The rationale behind the schemes of geoengineers is to overcome the potentially disastrous consequences from the uncontrolled climatic changes on the planet.

The schemes listed above fit exactly with what we are witnessing in the skies, when chemtrails spread out, become cloud like and either create of enhance weather storms. The chemtrails tend to whiten the sky and create haze, which persists for hours and then transforms into clouds. After four to five days of continuous chemical sprayings, dark clouds begin to gather together and precipitation follows.

The Foreign Affairs periodical, a literary arm of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, carried a revealing essay in its March/April 2009 issue entitled “The Geoengineering Option”. A panel of professors and University directors described the possibility of utilizing the climate modifying technologies to reduce the harmful impact of carbon dioxide gases on the earth’s atmosphere. The authors introduce the topic of geoengineering through a standard climate change experts’ argument. The rapid and severe climate change will produce catastrophic consequences, the greenhouse gases are not being reduced fast enough, and therefore the governments all over the world will be forced to undertake emergency strategies for curbing the effects of global warming.

The first presidential report on the dangers of global warming was made in 1965 and the geoengineering was prescribed to be the only remedy. Henceforth, the geoengineering on the planetary scale is presented to be the only feasible solution for the world in the state of environmental crisis.

In the years after WWII the US and USSR developed an intense interest in the weather warfare, and the geoengineering schemes emerged mainly from the research on the weather control techniques. For example, the US military proposed to use nuclear explosions to create a “nuclear winter” which could considerably cool down the planet. The rest of the elaborate strategies against global warming were based on the “cloud seeding” to reflect sunlight or to thicken the clouds.

“So far, launching reflective materials into the upper stratosphere seems to be the easiest and most cost-effective option. This could be accomplished by using high-flying aircraft, naval guns, or giant balloons. The appropriate materials could include sulfate aerosols (which would be created by releasing sulfur dioxide gas), aluminum oxide dust, or even self-levitating and self-orienting designer particles engineered to migrate to the Polar Regions and remain in place for long periods.” (p. 69)

The above proposals were based on the observations of volcanoes, which after eruption and the release of soot and other chemicals were known to produce a cooling effect all over the globe. According to geoengineers the creation of the “chemical shield” around the planet is bound to create a similar volcano-like effect. Another scheme involves launching huge clouds of “thin refracting discs” into the earth’s orbit to deflect sunlight in order to considerably slow down the global warming effect on the planet.

Just to add to these horrific scenarios, the last section of “The Geoengineering Option” essay is headlined “Brave New World”, alluding to the Aldous Huxley’s dystopic novel published in 1932.

The literature summarized above has some common threads. The articles lead the reader to believe that such radical options were seriously discussed by scientists, but never came into fruition and the geoengineering remains a mere consideration in the array of possible solutions to the looming climate change.

Nevertheless, Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming, a 1991 publication that was released by the National Academy of Sciences and is referred to as a “global warming Bible”, dedicated an entire chapter to the large-scale geoengineering projects and the current implementation thereof.

“It is important to recognize that we are at present involved in a large project of inadvertent “geoengineering” by altering atmospheric chemistry, and it does not seem inappropriate to inquire if there are countermeasures that might be implemented to address the adverse impacts.” (p. 433)

Therefore, the combination of the personal observations of the skies and the authorized literature on the geoengineering/weather modification programs raises the unequivocal conclusion that the chemical sprayings of the atmosphere began in ’90s and continue to this day.

Can there be unintended and catastrophic consequences due to tampering with the earth’s extremely complex climate system? What are the detrimental effects of chemical sprayings in the atmosphere upon human physiological and psychological states? Is it known to produce respiratory problems, create new forms of allergies and cause other ailments? Why do jet planes deliver the earth-based chemicals into the atmosphere in the first place? These are the pertinent questions which are not properly addressed in the above publications.

We need to become fully aware of the grand experiments under which we are being subjected. We must demand answers and the public forum has to be opened to discuss any “emergency measures” against global warming.

Similar experimentations took place in 1940s trough 1970s in England by the Ministry of Defense (“Millions were in germ war tests”, The Observer). Dangerous chemicals and biological agents were sprayed in the populated areas of the country, resulting in the massive health problems and fatalities. Also look at “French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment”, Telegraph.

We cannot let this happen again and become the next group of guinea pigs for the curious scientists.

http://www.infowars.com/have-you-looked-at-the-skies-lately/

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“Jesus… what is the hiring policy of cops these days… anyone of the street?”

-F.F.

The Dallas Police Department has released what could be one of the most embarrassing videos from the organization in recent memory. A police officer is on leave after firing her gun into a squad car floor when colleagues tried to drive her home from a bar where she’d drank too much while off duty.

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“Anyone still clinging on to the idea that the US government doesn’t stage events to push agendas. Reintroduce yourselves with the Carbon Tax Bill Americans & don’t think about that war thats about to start in Iran… be preoccupied with those creepy looking pelicans.”

-Fred Face 6/21/10

By Daniel Tencer

Does a company that both builds oil rigs and cleans up oil spills have any motivation to prevent oil rig disasters?

That’s the question some people in business and politics are asking themselves after Halliburton’s purchase of an oil clean-up company 10 days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and launched the worst oil spill in US history.

Some observers see a conspiracy in the actions of the company once headed by Dick Cheney. Halliburton, which built the cement casing for the Deepwater Horizon’s drill, announced its purchase of Houston-based oilfield services company Boots and Coots for $240 million on April 9, just 11 days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

According to a report at the Christian Science Monitor Friday, Boots and Coots is now under contract with BP to help with the oil spill. The company “focuses on oil spill prevention and blowout response,” CSM reports. Halliburton’s purchase is not yet a done deal — it’s still awaiting regulatory approval, though few observers think the purchase won’t pass muster.

“[Mergers and acquisitions] in the industrial and oil services sectors is totally normal,” writes David Anderson at The Inspired Economist, “but the timing in this case, is not. Boots & Coots sure seems like the perfect company to own if it would soon become necessary to get more involved with some oil disaster.

“Does this strike readers as a coincidence? If so, it’s a pretty lucky one for Halliburton.”

But could Halliburton have known that an oil disaster was on the horizon, and planned in advance to profit from it? News reports indicate they could have.

The New York Times reported in May that BP was concerned about the rig’s well casing — which Halliburton worked on — as early as June of 2009. The Times also reported that a Halliburton employee warned BP three weeks before the explosion that BP’s use of cement for the well casing was “against [Halliburton's] best practices.”

But even if the company’s purchase of Boots and Coots was just a “lucky coincidence,” there is still plenty about it to alarm observers. According to CSM, analysts are worried that a company like Halliburton will grow “complacent” in preventing disasters, because there is money to be made from cleaning up the mess — and then rebuilding the oil rig.

“Working on both sides of the fence” is common in the oil industry, University of Louisiana professor Robert Gramling told CSM, but “it makes for a very complex decision-making environment that can become problematic.”

At the very least, Halliburton’s purchase should give the company a revenue boost. While Halliburton has been reporting plummeting revenue in recent quarters, Boots and Coots has been a business success story, with its revenue jumping from $11 million in 2000 to $209 million in 2008, before dropping slightly in 2009.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0618/halliburton-making-money-oil-spill/

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“This is why some people, (like me), say you live under a scientific dictatorship… because it’s true…”

-Fred Face 6/21/10

The bio-tech company Monsanto can sell genetically modified seeds before safety tests on them are completed, the US Supreme Court has ruled.

A lower court had barred the sale of the modified alfalfa seeds until an environmental impact study could be carried out.

But seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices decided that ruling was unconstitutional.

The seed is modified to be resistant to Monsanto’s brand of weedkiller.

The US is the world’s largest producer of alfalfa, a grass-like plant used as animal feed.

It is the fourth most valuable crop grown in the country.

Environmentalists had argued that there might be a risk of cross-pollination between genetically modified plants and neighbouring crops.

They also argued over-use of the company’s weedkiller Roundup, the chemical treatment the alfalfa is modified to be resistant to, could cause pollution of ground water and lead to resistant “super-weeds”.

But Monsanto says claims its products were dangerous amounted to “bad science fiction with no support on the record”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10371831.stm

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“Any people that used violence or threats against these workers are idiots. Anybody not cooperating with these useful idiot census workers are spot on. What did they expect… people would be happy with their criminal government?”

-F.F.

By Carol Morello

This is the scary season for the nation’s census takers.

Since they began making follow-up house calls in early May, census takers have encountered vitriol, menace and flashes of violence. They have been shot at with pellet guns and hit by baseball bats. They have been confronted with pickaxes, crossbows and hammers. They’ve had lawn mowers pushed menacingly toward them and patio tables thrown their way. They have been nibbled by ducks, bitten by pit bulls and chased by packs of snarling dogs.

Some days, being cursed at seems part of the job description.

So far, the Census Bureau has tallied 379 incidents involving assaults or threats on the nation’s 635,000 census workers, more than double the 181 recorded during the 2000 census. Weapons were used or threatened in a third of the cases.

Now, with just three weeks to go in the door-knocking phase of the count, the number of census takers has dwindled, and the remaining households are the toughest.

While most homeowners have received census takers graciously, some say they have been surprised at the degree of anger exhibited by Americans who consider them the embodiment of intrusive government.

“I came across loads of hostility,” said Douglas McDonald, who summoned police in Deltona, Fla., after a tug-of-war with an irate homeowner over a census form. The homeowner threw his ripped half in the toilet.

McDonald, 70, a District native who retired from the Labor Department after 30 years as an investigator, said he wasn’t prepared for the level of anti-government fervor he encountered.

“There’s so much anger and bitterness, with people losing their homes and their jobs,” said McDonald, who eventually quit. “They’re not too fond of the government. They don’t want to talk to you.”

Sherri Chesney, 46, said she was cursed and spat at during follow-up visits in Houston. One day, she encountered a woman working in her garden. Chesney showed her census badge, she said, prompting the woman to launch into a tirade: “I don’t need the blankety-blank government snooping in my business.” Then she threw a metal patio table at Chesney, who escaped injury by ducking.

“I was stunned, I really was, that America is so mad at the government,” said Chesney, who no longer works for the census. “People don’t know what it’s like out there. It’s scary and dangerous, and it’s not worth my life.”

Census officials say they do not consider anti-government sentiment more widespread than usual this year. But Fernando Armstrong, the Philadelphia regional census director responsible for Maryland and the District, said it seems to be more vociferous.

“It’s the degree of passion they have,” he said. “When they don’t want to participate, they really don’t want to participate.”

In the Washington area, the threats made to census takers have been infrequent, and no one has been harmed.

Some of the attacks elsewhere represent random violence, such as a robbery at knifepoint in Richmond, Va., and a carjacking in Connecticut. In some situations, the job turned unexpectedly dangerous, as for the Baltimore crew leader who was fatally shot seven times while sitting in his car and the Wisconsin census taker who knocked on the door of a man who tried to drag her into his apartment.

Other workers were beset by mean-tempered animals. Wendy Soto, who was knocking on doors in California, still can’t move two fingers after being attacked by a pit bull that pushed open a security door.

Among the more troubling were incidents that arose from residents’ seething resentment that anyone from the government would seek their personal information.

Some people pointedly mentioned President Obama.

While conducting follow-ups in an upscale Seattle neighborhood, Grover Ellis said he came across a woman who considered him an agent of Obama, not the U.S. government.

“The idea of the census just enraged her,” said Ellis, 64, stressing that the overwhelming majority of people he met were welcoming and responsive. “The way she saw the census, she was required to help Obama. And she wasn’t going to do anything to help out Obama.”

Police have been dispatched after confrontations between census takers and property owners who posted No Trespassing signs. As federal government employees, the census takers are not breaking the law by disregarding the signs.

But try telling that to a homeowner with a crossbow.

In a rural part of California’s Nevada County northeast of Sacramento, two census workers told authorities that a man ordered them off his land. He mentioned his submachine gun, then followed them down the drive with a crossbow in hand. No charges were brought against the resident, the sheriff’s department said.

A homeowner in Marion, Ohio, called police, saying he had just used his baseball bat against a stranger on his property. The perceived interloper was a census taker who told police the resident flew off the handle as soon as he mentioned the word census. The census taker was struck in the forearm, warding off blows from the aluminum bat. The resident was charged with felonious assault.

Dallas regional director Gabriel Sanchez said occasional encounters with dogs and protective property owners are par for the course in any census.

“It’s not that people are waiting to gun down a government worker or waiting to assault a census worker,” he said. “Some people have a strong need for privacy and being left alone. I’m sure they would treat the FedEx man the same way.”

Soto, the pit bull victim, says census takers should be permitted to carry weapons, such as pepper spray, to ward off harm.

“If I’d had pepper spray in my pocket, I probably would have had a good chance of not losing my hand,” said Soto, 38, who was earning $15 an hour and saving for a vacation with her children and a used car.

The dog bit Soto in the stomach, leg and hand. The census is paying for her doctor’s bills, medication and replacement clothing. She doesn’t know when she will be physically able to return to her regular job as a special-education teacher’s aide.

Steven Jost, a spokesman for the Census Bureau, said it is unlikely that the policy prohibiting census workers from carrying weapons will be rescinded. After the 2010 census is completed, officials will examine all incidents to determine whether changes are needed to reduce risks, for both workers and the public. The number of verified incidents might go down after analysis.

Chesney, for one, won’t be back for another census unless she’s offered an office position.

“I want to help my country,” she said. “I want us to have funding for schools, and all the things that are involved with the census. But I’m not putting my life at risk.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/19/AR2010061901896_pf.html

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by Tom Engelhardt

Mark it on your calendar.  It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.

You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave.  But who gives it a second thought today?  Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes referred to as “the second superpower.”  In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States — the “sole superpower,” even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth — surprised but triumphant.

The USSR had been heading for the exits for quite a while, not that official Washington had a clue.  At the moment it happened, Soviet “experts” like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (then director of the CIA) still expected the Cold War to go on and on.  In Washington, eyes were trained on the might of the Soviet military, which the Soviet leadership had never stopped feeding, even as its sclerotic bureaucracy was rotting, its economy (which had ceased to grow in the late 1970s) was tanking, budget deficits were soaring, indebtedness to other countries was growing, and social welfare payments were eating into what funds remained.  Not even a vigorous, reformist leader like Mikhail Gorbachev could staunch the rot, especially when, in the late 1980s, the price of Russian oil fell drastically.

Looking back, the most distinctive feature of the last years of the Soviet Union may have been the way it continued to pour money into its military — and its military adventure in Afghanistan — when it was already going bankrupt and the society it had built was beginning to collapse around it.  In the end, its aging leaders made a devastating miscalculation.  They mistook military power for power on this planet.  Armed to the teeth and possessing a nuclear force capable of destroying the Earth many times over, the Soviets nonetheless remained the vastly poorer, weaker, and (except when it came to the arms race) far less technologically innovative of the two superpowers.

In December 1979, perhaps taking the bait of the Carter administration whose national security advisor was eager to see the Soviets bloodied by a “Vietnam” of their own, the Red Army invaded Afghanistan to support a weak communist government in Kabul.  When resistance in the countryside, led by Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas and backed by the other superpower, only grew, the Soviets sent in more troops, launched major offensives, called in air power, and fought on brutally and futilely for a decade until, in 1989, long after they had been whipped, they withdrew in defeat.

Gorbachev had dubbed Afghanistan “the bleeding wound,” and when the wounded Red Army finally limped home, it was to a country that would soon cease to exist.  For the Soviet Union, Afghanistan had literally proven “the graveyard of empires.”  If, at the end, its military remained standing, the empire didn’t.  (And if you don’t already find this description just a tad eerie, given the present moment in the U.S., you should.)

In Washington, the Bush administration — G.H.W.’s, not G.W.’s — declared victory and then left the much ballyhooed “peace dividend” in the nearest ditch.  Caught off guard by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington’s consensus policymakers drew no meaningful lessons from it (just as they had drawn few that mattered from their Vietnam defeat 16 years earlier).

Quite the opposite, successive American administrations would blindly head down the very path that had led the Soviets to ruin.  They would serially agree that, in a world without significant enemies, the key to U.S. global power still was the care and feeding of the American military and the military-industrial complex that went with it.  As the years passed, that military would be sent ever more regularly into the far reaches of the planet to fight frontier wars, establish military bases, and finally impose a global Pax Americana on the planet.

This urge, delusional in retrospect, seemed to reach its ultimate expression in the second Bush administration, whose infamous “unilateralism” rested on a belief that no country or even bloc of countries should ever again be allowed to come close to matching U.S. military power.  (As its National Security Strategy of 2002 put the matter — and it couldn’t have been blunter on the subject — the U.S. was to “build and maintain” its military power “beyond challenge.”)  Bush’s military fundamentalists firmly believed that, in the face of the most technologically advanced, bulked-up, destructive force around, hostile states would be “shocked and awed” by a simple demonstration of its power and friendly ones would have little choice but to come to heel as well.  After all, as the president said in front of a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in 2007, the U.S. military was “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.”

In this way, far more than the Soviets, the top officials of the Bush administration mistook military power for power, a gargantuan misreading of the U.S. economic position in the world and of their moment.

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By Daniel Tencer

The Pentagon’s spy unit has quietly begun to rebuild a database for tracking potential terrorist threats that was shut down after it emerged that it had been collecting information on American anti-war activists.

The Defense Intelligence Agency filed notice this week that it plans to create a new section called Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records, whose purpose will be to “document intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism and counternarcotic operations relating to the protection of national security.”

But while the unit’s name refers to “foreign intelligence,” civil liberties advocates and the Pentagon’s own description of the program suggest that Americans will likely be included in the new database.

FICOR replaces a program called Talon, which the DIA created in 2002 under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as part of the counterterrorism efforts following the 9/11 attacks. It was disbanded in 2007 after it emerged that Talon had retained information on anti-war protesters, including Quakers, even after it was determined they posed no threat to national security.

DIA spokesman Donald Black told Newsweek that the new database would not include the more controversial elements of the old Talon program. But Jeff Stein at the Washington Postreports that the new program will evidently inherit the old Talon database.

“Why the new depository would want such records while its parent agency no longer has a law enforcement function could not be learned,” Stein reports. “Nor could it be learned whether the repository will include intelligence reports on protest groups gathered by its predecessor.”

The Pentagon’s notice states that the database will collect “identifying information such as name, Social Security Number (SSN), address, citizenship documentation, biometric data, passport number, vehicle identification number and vehicle/vessel license data.” As only US residents have Social Security Numbers, it appears the program is being designed at least partly to contain domestic information.

Newsweek cites two unnamed US officials as suggesting that the new program essentially echoes the old one. When CIFA, the DIA division running Talon, was disbanded in 2008, “many of its personnel and some of its functions were transferred” to the new DIA unit running the new database program. The new program will be housed “in the same office space that CIFA once occupied, in a complex near suburban Washington’s Reagan National Airport.”

Mike German, a former FBI agent now working with the ACLU, says “Americans should be just as concerned” about the new database as the previous one under the Bush administration.

“It’s a little hard to tell what this is exactly, but we do know that DIA took over ‘offensive counterintelligence’ for the DoD once CIFA was abandoned,” he told the Post’s Stein. “It therefore makes sense that this new DIA database would be collecting the same types of information that CIFA collected improperly.”

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0619/pentagon-revives-domestic-spying-unit/

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Kelly William Cobb

This Thursday, the FCC opens up comments on its proposal regulate the Internet.  While no one is quite sure all that it will contain, Scott Cleland (a long-time telecom policy expert and insider) has pieced together recent FCC filings from Google to outline how Net Neutrality regulations could be part of a grand plan to control how virtually all media enters your home.  Here’s a brief summary:

Under the guise of “Net Neutrality” and “consumer protection” the FCC would begin regulating Internet access for the first time under a completely new regulatory scheme (even though they lack the authority to create it).  Meanwhile, the FCC would push regulations – cloaked in the heart-warming language of competition and innovation – mandating that your cable box (known as a set-top box) become a “broadband gateway device” controlling access to your Internet, TV, and phone.  The FCC has already started looking at set-top box regulations in their National Broadband Plan.

The FCC would then begin setting rates for the total cost of all three services.  Chairman Genachowski said he does not intend to set prices for Internet access.  However, the legal maneuvering is so tenuous and the desire from left-wing groups so strong that a mere promise to “forbear” from rate setting is certainly no guarantee.  On top of this, it would open the door for the FCC to begin monitoring or censoring content on the Internet (in addition to your TV), something Free Press and other progressives, as well as the White House regulatory czar advocate.  The Songwriters Guild of America has a great op-ed on why government censorship is entirely possible if the Internet becomes regulated.

This plan outlines a dark hypothetical world that would effectively destroy any future competition for services and turn our nation’s networks into “dumb pipes” under government centralized control.  Everyone will buy an Internet/TV/Phone connectivity box that the government approves.  Everyone will pay rates for service that the government sets.  And everything passing through your Internet, TV, or phone would become subject to the FCC’s consistent regulatory whim.

Worst of all, this extreme case of political favoritism for Google’s business model (which is developing set-top boxes and carrying all content to users for “free”) is not out of the realm of possibility.  Both Google and the socialist organization Free Press have long pushed for such regulations and both are arguably the closest groups to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.  They are also strong supporters of President Obama who are calling for their payoff.  The former head of Google’s policy shop is now Chief Technology Officer at the White House and Free Press’s former press director is the FCC’s spokesperson.

There are a lot of hurdles for the FCC should they choose this horrendously anti-free market route to take over the nation’s Internet networks and control the flow of media.  Already facing severe bipartisan opposition from Congress and the court, the FCC would certainly invite another legal challenge.  But if it works, Internet, phone, and TV service will simply become Google Chrome, Android/Google-Voice, and Google TV.

http://atr.org/fccs-grand-plan-control-internet-tv-a5081#

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By Glenn Greenwald

June 18, 2010 “Salon” –  On June 6, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he “boasted” in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records.”  Lamo, who holds himself out as a “journalist” and told Manning he was one, acted instead as government informant, notifying federal authorities of what Manning allegedly told him, and then proceeded to question Manning for days as he met with federal agents, leading to Manning’s detention.

On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous “American officials” to announce that ”Pentagon investigators” were trying “to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security.”  Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a “Pentagon manhunt” underway for Assange — as though he’s some sort of dangerous fugitive.

From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons.  In an attempt to obtain greater clarity about what really happened here, I’ve spent the last week reviewing everything I could related to this case and speaking with several of the key participants (including Lamo, with whom I had a one-hour interview last night that can be heard on the recorder below, and Poulsen, with whom I had a lengthy email exchange, which is published in full here).  A definitive understanding of what really happened is virtually impossible to acquire, largely because almost everything that is known comes from a single, extremely untrustworthy source:  Lamo himself.  Compounding that is the fact that most of what came from Lamo has been filtered through a single journalist — Poulsen — who has a long and strange history with Lamo, who continues to possess but not disclose key evidence, and who has been only marginally transparent about what actually happened here (I say that as someone who admires Poulsen’s work as Editor of Wired’s Threat Level blog).

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“Man… this “gal” be a demon beast.”

-F.F.

Associated Press