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Hawaii Lawmaker Acknowledges Defeat On Bill To Monitor All Web Users

Plans to resurrect legislation in 2013

Steve Watson Infowars.com

February 1, 2012

A Hawaii politician who proposed legislation requiring Internet providers to keep records of every website their customers visit has finally acknowledged that the bill is dead in the water.

State Representative John Mizuno says he has conceded to an "incredible" national backlash against H.B. 2288 (PDF) a bill that would have required the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents.

The legislation called for "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address to be saved by providers for two years. The records would have also included a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited.

"It's generated a lot of national attention," Mizuno, a Democrat from Oahu, told CNET's Declan McCullagh, who first exposed the proposed bill.

"I've taken into consideration the thousands of e-mails (which were often) colorful and passionate, which is absolutely fine... This bill just isn't ready. It needs a lot of work." Mizuno added

Although Mizuno said that he had now recommended "that we kill this bill," he plans to return to it in 2013.

The justification behind the legislation was to provide police with a record of pedophiles "going after the kids, trolling for the kids," according to Mizuno.

Daniel Leuck, a software design expert told CNet "While I respect Rep. Mizuno's attempt to assist law enforcement in catching dangerous criminals, his approach is dangerously flawed."

"There is no question that having two years of browsing history for every resident would make it easier for law enforcement. So would warrantless searches of people's homes." Leuck explained.

Mizuno's bill had absolutely no privacy restrictions written into it to specify exactly what internet providers would be capable of doing with customer information. Encryption of data for security was not considered, and neither was requiring police to obtain a court order before viewing the information.

Had the bill passed, it would have set a huge precedent for national internet legislation, given that the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record origin IP address, and not destination IP addresses.

Behind the Deepening Crisis with Iran: the Real Story Versus the Cover Story

by Mark H. Gaffney

January 31, 2012

Recently, President Obama imposed new sanctions on Iran which according to reports have been very effective, causing a sudden major devaluation of Iran's currency. The Iranians correctly understand that they are under attack, and have threatened to respond by closing the strait of Hormuz, through which a large percentage of oil from the Mideast flows to the global economy.

If the crisis deepens and Iran makes good on its threat to close Hormuz, there is little doubt that the US will intervene to reopen the strait. This will lead to a shooting war for which Iran will be blamed, even though the recent US sanctions were tantamount to overt aggression.

I believe the US will exploit the situation to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. But, even more importantly, the US will target Iran's conventional missiles. Indeed, I believe this is the real reason for US sanctions in the first place, and for the buildup of tensions in recent days. Despite public perceptions, and all the rhetoric about nukes, the present crisis has nothing to do with Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. In my opinion, that is just a cover story.

The real issue is the fact that Iran has upgraded its medium range conventionally-armed missiles with GPS technology, making its missiles much more accurate. This means Iran can now target Israel's own nuclear, bio and chemical weapons stockpiles, located inside Israel, as well as the Dimona nuclear reactor.

In short, Iran has achieved a conventional deterrent to Israel. Therefore, statements by Iranian officials that Iran has no nuclear weapons program are in my view probably correct. Presently, Iran does not need nukes to deter Israel. It can do so with its GPS-guided medium range missiles. The Israelis are no doubt gnashing their teeth over this, because they now find themselves threatened by their own WMD stockpiles, and by their own nuclear reactors, especially Dimona, all of which have become targets.

A few direct hits by Iran could cause a toxic plume, killing thousands of Israelis. A worst case might signal the end of the Jewish state.

It is important to realize that Iran would never launch a pre-emptive strike on Israel because the Iranians know that the US/Israeli response would be devastating. However, if Iran comes under attack first, all bets are off. Iran will defend itself. A counter attack on Israel cannot be ruled out because Iranian leaders understand clearly (even if the American people do not) that the crisis has been manufactured, on Israel's behalf.

From the Israeli standpoint, the present Iranian deterrent (though conventional) is simply unacceptable. Israel's military strategists have always insisted on total freedom of movement. This is why Israel refused a US offer many years ago to sign a defense pact with the US. Such a treaty would have limited Israel's freedom of movement, and this was unacceptable. Israel's leaders preferred to remain independent. Israel has always insisted on the "freedom" to intimidate its neighbors, whenever and howsoever it chooses. Iran's conventional missiles now curtail that "freedom." Israeli officials probably worry, for example, that Iran's conventional missiles would limit its freedom to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, in a future conflict. Hezbollah is closely allied with Tehran.

I believe the present crisis has been manufactured to create the pretext for a US air campaign to take out Iran's conventional missile sites. The US will also target Iran's nuclear facilities, but the primary target will be Iran's conventional missiles. The US will be doing Israel's bidding. The Zionist tail will be wagging the servile US dog.

Obviously, you can't generate public support for such a bombing campaign, on Israel's behalf. Hence the cover story about nukes and the alleged Iranian threat to wipe Israel off the map, all of which is untrue but very effective propaganda nonetheless.

The problem for the US is that depriving Iran of its conventional deterrent will not be easy to accomplish. Indeed, it will be even more difficult than taking out all of Iran's nuclear facilities. Iran's conventional missiles are probably dispersed widely. If they come under attack, the purpose of the air campaign will be transparently obvious to the Iranian leadership. Faced with the prospect of losing their deterrent, the Mullahs may well decide to fire their conventional missiles. If they do and manage some direct hits on Israel's nuclear-bio-and chemical weapons stockpiles, the ensuing disaster will prompt an Israeli response. Israel may even resort to the Samson Option, and attack Iran with nukes. Words cannot describe the horrific scale of such an outcome. Unfortunately, it is all too possible.

Early in the war, US naval forces in the Gulf will also come under attack. No mistake, Iran has enough anti-ship cruise missiles to pose a grave threat to the US naval presence in the Gulf. Thousands of US sailors are now in harm's way, and at risk.

We must rally to prevent such a war. Peace activists must now marshal every asset for peace that we possess. The American people need to know the truth. This is a phony crisis. Yet the danger is very real. Now is the time to speak out with all of our strength. Tomorrow could come too late.

The Corporate Usurpation of the Internet

January 27, 2012

By Nile Bowie BlacklistedNews.com

In the wake of a public outcry against internet regulation bills such as SOPA and PIPA, representatives of the EU have signed a new and far more threatening legislation yesterday in Tokyo. Spearheaded by the governments of the United States and Japan and constructed largely in the absence of public awareness, the measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) dramatically alter current international legal framework, while introducing the first substantial processes of global internet governance. With complete contempt towards the democratic process, the negotiations of the treaty were exclusively held between industry representatives and government officials, while excluding elected representatives and members of the press from their hearings.

Under the guise of protecting intellectual property rights, the treaty introduces measures that would allow the private sector to enforce sweeping central authority over internet content. The ACTA abolishes all legal oversight involving the removal of content and allows copyright holders to force ISPs to remove material from the internet, something that presently requires a court order. ISPs would then be faced with legal liabilities if they chose not to remove content. Theoretically, personal blogs can be removed for using company logos without permission or simply linking to copy written material; users could be criminalized, barred from accessing the internet and even imprisoned for sharing copyrighted material. Ultimately, these implications would be starkly detrimental toward the internet as a medium for free speech.

The Obama Administration subverted the legal necessity of allowing to US Senate to ratify the treaty by unconstitutionally declaring it an "executive agreement" before the President promptly signed it on October 1st, 2011. As a touted constitutional lawyer, Barack Obama is fully aware that Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, mandates Congress in dealing with issues of intellectual property, thus voiding the capacity for the President to issue an executive agreement. The White House refused to even disclose details about the legislation to elected officials and civil libertarians over concern that doing so may incur "damage to the national security." While some may hang off every word of his sorely insincere speeches and still be fixated by the promises of hope offered by brand-Obama, his administration has trampled the constitution and introduced the most comprehensive authoritarian legislation in America's history.

In addition to imposing loosely defined criminal sanctions to average web users, the ACTA treaty will also obligate ISPs to disclose personal user information to copyright holders. The measures introduce legislative processes that contradict the legal framework of participant countries and allows immigration authorities to search laptops, external hard drives and Internet-capable devices at airports and border checkpoints. The treaty is not limited solely to internet-related matters,

ACTA would prohibit the production of generic pharmaceuticals and outlaw the use of certain seeds for crops through patents, furthering the corporate cartelization of the food and drug supply.

ACTA would allow companies from any participating country (which include EU member states, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Morocco) to shut down websites without any explanation. Hypothetically, nothing could prevent private Singaporean companies from promptly taking down American websites that oppose the Singapore Air Force conducting war games on US soil, such as those conducted in December 2011. By operating outside normal judicial framework, exporting US copyright law to the rest of the world and mandating private corporations to conduct surveillance on their users, all prerequisites of democracy, transparency and self-expression are an afterthought.

The further monopolization of the existing resources of communication, exchange and expression is ever present in the form of deceptive new articles of legislation that unanimously call for the implementation of the same austere censorship measures. Even if the ACTA treaty is not implemented, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP) between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Vietnam and the United States offers more extensive intellectual property regulations. Leaked documents prepared by the U.S. Business Coalition (which have been reportedly drafted by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Motion Picture Association of America) report that in addition to ACTA-style legislation, the TTP will impose fines on non-compliant entities and work to extend the general period of copy write terms on individual products.

Under the sweeping regulations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, individual infringers will be criminalized and sentenced with the same severity as large-scale offenders. Within the United States, the recently announced Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) H.R. 3782 regulation seeks to install policies largely identical to SOPA and PIPA. The Obama administration is also working towards an Internet ID program, which may be mandatory for American citizens and required when renewing passports, obtaining federal licenses, or applying for social security. Spreading these dangerous measures to other countries participating in these treaties would necessitate a binding obligation on the US to retain these policies, averting any chance of reform.

The ACTA will become law once it is formally ratified and cleared by the European Parliament in June. By petitioning members of the European parliament and educating others about the potential dangers imposed by this legislation, there is a chance of the treaty being rejected. Upon closer examination of the human condition with all of its inequalities, food insecurity and dire social issues, our governments have lost their legitimacy for giving such unwarranted priority to fighting copyright infringement on behalf of lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries. The existence of ACTA is a clear statement that surveillance, regulations and securing further corporate centralization dwarfs any constructive shift towards stimulating human innovation and self-sufficient technologies.

When former US National Security Advisor and Trilateral Commission co-founder, Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010, he warned of a global political awakening beginning to take place. Technology such as file sharing, blogging, and open source software has the potential to undermine the oligarchical governing interests seeking to centrally control our society and enforce the population into being entirely dependent on their commodities. The following excerpt from Brzezinski's book Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, provides invaluable insight into the world being brought in; "The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."

ACTA has same dangers as PIPA and SOPA

By Leonardo Castaneda,

26 January 2012.

If you thought the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act were scary, imagine this: There is an international treaty with the same goals and civil rights infringements as its American cousins, crafted in secrecy outside any existing trade organization with the help of industry giants such as the Motion Picture Association of America.

The treaty's goal is to ban counterfeit goods and online piracy by requiring Internet Protocol servers and individual websites to monitor and prosecute suspected copyright infringements. But the goal comes packaged with some collateral damage: infringements on individual's civil rights and the creation of a system responsible for widespread, international online censorship.

This nightmare treaty is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. It has most of the same goals, supporters and privacy abuses of SOPA and PIPA. What it didn't have was the kind of public outcry led by websites such as Reddit and Wikipedia when it was signed by the U.S. The treaty now awaits ratification by the European Union before it goes into full force.

ACTA's scope is far wider than SOPA or PIPA. It aims to stop the "proliferation of counterfeit and pirated goods, as well as of services that share infringing material." This includes knockoff Louis Vuitton purses and cheap counterfeit medicine in developing nations. It also means any website or program that could potentially be used to infringe copyrighted material, from sites with links for music downloads to music-burning software, would be automatically outlawed.

The dangers of governmental control of the Internet under the auspices of copyright protection are difficult to overstate. The Internet is a breeding ground for innovation, where crowd sourcing can turn a beta program full of bugs into the hottest new piece of software. But it has now also become a forum for the free exchange of ideas and information across international and cultural boundaries. It is this freedom from government control that has given the Internet so much power.

When individuals are free to use the Internet freely, as they did in Tunisia, they can use it to oust deeply entrenched dictators. When a government is able to stop the free flow of information and spy on the online activity of its citizens, it can kill democracy the way Iran did during the failed Green Revolution in 2009. From Occupy Wall Street in the U.S. to the Indignados in Spain, the Internet has allowed pro-democracy protesters to exchange ideas, tools and advice.

Online freedom has been widely acknowledged as vital for democracy. When Egypt tried to shut off the Internet to quell protests against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, world leaders, led by President Barack Obama, stood in outrage. Now these same leaders, once more led by Obama, are working to quietly build the infrastructure to control the Internet.

Of course, no one says ACTA's goal is to censor the Internet. The stated goal of the treaty is to protect the copyrights of business and artists. The scenario supporters of ACTA - and SOPA and PIPA - point to is that a website such as The Pirate Bay, built for the express purpose of allowing people to illegally download copyrighted music, movies and software, would be shut down. The nightmare scenario opponents of ACTA fear is an individual posting a link to or citing a news article critical of the government could be shut down for not having explicit permission to use that content.

The question is whether the damage being done to the industries ACTA aims to protect is grave enough to warrant stepping on the edge of the slippery slope of Internet censorship. Organizations such as the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America argue it is. Both the MPAA and the RIAA argue online piracy is killing creativity and destroying entertainment industries that employ thousands of people.

However, comparing some quick industry statistics from 2000 - the year Napster was shut down - to 2010, proves these claims are patently wrong. In 2000, 506 movies were released with a total worldwide gross of more than $7.7 billion. In 2010, 883 movies were released with a total gross of more than $10.2 billion. Clearly the birth of file-sharing programs like BitTorrent has done little to stymie the creativity of filmmakers.

We cannot risk allowing the governments of not just the U.S., but also the 27 members of the European Union, Japan and Mexico, among others, to create a system for online censorship to stop a nonexistent threat to intellectual property.

The only way to prevent it is with the kind of backlash and social outcry that put a stop to SOPA and PIPA in Congress. This outcry proved once more the Internet can be an unparalleled tool for democracy and government accountability. Now is the time to use it once more to ensure the government won't take it away the day we need it most.

A Zionist plot to stop Ron Paul?

Christopher Bollyn

January 25, 2012

"Adelson uses his money to abuse or anoint Israeli prime ministers and American presidents (Gingrich versus Obama)."

Source - "Is Gingrich's Hard Line on Palestine Paid for by Sheldon Adelson?"

Ron Paul, a popular Southern conservative who supports states' rights, supposedly came in fourth place in the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday, January 21. The winner, according to the tally produced by the privately-owned voting machine company ES&S, was Newt Gingrich. Gingrich is supported by Sheldon Adelson, the Zionist casino billionaire who supports the most extreme hard-liners in the right-wing Likud in Israel. The Gingrich campaign received a $5 million donation from Sheldon Adelson the week before he "won" the South Carolina primary. Gingrich calls the indigenous Palestinian population an "invented" people and supports Israel's right to attack Iran as "self defense". Gingrich told CNN he would help Israel attack Iran and would move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem on his first day in office by executive order. These are the hard-line positions Adelson is paying Gingrich to espouse.

THE ZIONIST PLOT TO STOP RON PAUL

Mitt Romney is supported by the Crown family of Chicago, a Zionist family that is closely connected to Israeli military intelligence. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, is supported by Sheldon Adelson, a Zionist billionaire who works closely with the same people. Are these different factions or is this a Zionist plot that has the same goal?

The Zionist strategy is to stop the very popular conservative Ron Paul. Because there is obviously no candidate that can beat Paul in popularity or on the issues, the Zionists are supporting a slew of venal candidates in order to steal as many votes as possible from Paul. These candidates are essentially a gang of Zionist-funded candidates who form the anti-Paul coalition. Using privately-owned and controlled electronic voting systems like ES&S, the South Carolina primary shows how the Zionists plan to block Ron Paul from being the Republican nominee ...

From this event, one can state as fact - not theory, that Israel and its supporters in the US are actively working to derail Ron Paul's race towards the GOP nomination, and the Presidency. This fact alone, should be cause for alarm from even the most moderate of public corridors. Should a foreign country, in this case Israel, be allowed to buy a significant influence through the media in American democratic elections? Should candidates be allowed to accept donations - even indirectly, from foreign interest PACs or agents thereof, thus creating a serious conflict of interest, and threat to national security?

- "Israeli Lobby launch new Super PAC effort to bring down Ron Paul" , by Patrick Henningsen, Global Research, 21 January 2012
WHO STOLE THE IOWA CAUCUS?

After two weeks, the Republican Party of Iowa released its certified tally of the January 3 caucus. The certified final tally released on January 18 indicates that Mitt Romney did not win the Iowa caucus and that the results had been manipulated to give Romney the important first victory. The scale of the fraud in the Iowa caucus is so large that it suggests that there was a hidden hand manipulating the data from across the state as it was sent to party headquarters to give the victory to Romney. This suggests that the people behind Romney are likely to be the people behind the vote fraud, i.e. Lester Crown, Israeli intelligence, and the Zionist Fifth Column in the United States.

I spoke to Ryan Gough, the 24-year-old Organization Director for the Republican Party of Iowa on January 20. I asked him how there could be so many mistakes in so many precincts. The Des Moines Register, for example, reported that "typographical errors in tabulations" for two Fayette County precincts resulted in an inflated vote for Romney, who was initially reported to have carried the county by 67 votes. The final count showed Santorum carrying the county by 36 votes. Romney was reported to have won the caucus by only 8 votes on January 3. This was false.

There were similar problems in 131 precincts with double-digit errors in 51 precincts. In spite of the wrong candidate having been declared the winner, Gough defended the caucus, which he called a "volunteer-driven process" in which typographical errors had occurred across the state to benefit Mitt Romney. I don't buy it.

I reminded Gough that we had spoken a week before the primary and that he had told me that the way in which that precincts would communicate the results to caucus headquarters in Des Moines was being kept secret for security purposes. Now that the caucus was over, I asked, could he tell me how this was done. Gough said that a phone and computer system had been used but he had not gone into detail. When I asked if the telephonic system had been voice-to-voice, he said it was.

MYSTERY TELECOM

I then asked Gough if any outside agency had been involved in the tally of the results on January 3. He asked me what I meant and I told him that the Democratic Party of Iowa had used a telephonic tally system based in Florida called Voxeo in 2004 and 2008. I had been told by Nicole Sizemore of the GOP of Iowa that no outside agency would be involved in the tally, I told Gough.

Yes, Gough said, there was an outside "telecom" involved in the tally, although he said he could not reveal the name of the company. This "telecom" is the most likely culprit behind the fraudulent tally in the Iowa caucus. I am seeking information from people who were involved in the caucus to find the identity of this mysterious "telecom" that gave Romney the first, but fraudulent victory on January 3. As the rest of the primaries will use even less verifiable electronic voting machine systems, solving what happened in the Iowa caucus is important because it could expose the criminals who steal our elections.

THE IOWA CAUCUS WAS STOLEN - ROMNEY DID NOT WIN

GOP officials discovered double-digit errors in 51 of those certified precincts when they compared what was reported on caucus night with the official Form E documents signed by precinct volunteers. Eleven precincts had errors of 50 or more votes.

- Des Moines Register, 19 January 2012
"The one thing that we can't say is, we can't certify every precinct in the state."

- Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn, 19 January 2012
When I began writing this article, just after Christmas, I was simply going to predict that Mitt Romney would win the Iowa primary by vote fraud, just like Obama and John Kerry had won the Democratic state polls of 2008 and 2004. My dire and pessimistic prediction was based solely on the fact that Romney was being supported by the high-level Zionist family of Lester Crown of Chicago. These are people who steal elections, I thought, and they will find a way for Romney to win the crucial first caucus - one way or another.

I repeatedly queried three different people at the Republican Party of Iowa about how the results would be tallied and after hearing that they would not use an outside contractor to count the votes, decided to qualify my dismal prediction by giving them the benefit of the doubt. I didn't want to be a bearer of bad news so I wrote this (in the article below):

Mitt Romney would most likely win the caucus if the Republican Party of Iowa were to tally the caucus results using the dodgy telephonic tally system (Voxeo) used by the Iowa Democrats in 2004 and 2008. But after having intensively queried the Republican Party of Iowa about how the results will be tallied it seems to me that the Republican Party of Iowa will be tallying the results themselves in Des Moines... Let's hope Ron Paul wins Iowa in a truly honest and transparent caucus on January 3. We certainly don't need anymore illegal Zionist wars for profit and the people of Iowa know that as well as anyone.

Today, two weeks and three days after Romney was declared the winner in Iowa, the certified final tally from the Republican Party of Iowa shows that he did NOT win the caucus at all. The caucus process and tally were completely messed up and, according to the final, but still seriously flawed results, Rick Santorum reportedly won the caucus. There is now very clear evidence of serious vote fraud in the Iowa caucus. This cannot be simply dismissed as human error. This was criminal vote fraud that cheated the entire nation. The people involved in this case of egregious vote fraud must be investigated and prosecuted.

VOTE FRAUD IN AT LEAST 131 PRECINCTS

Here are the key extracts from the Washington Post article of 19 January 2012:

Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses Thursday - 16 days after the last vote was cast - when the state Republican Party said a final count showed him 34 votes ahead of Mitt Romney.

Santorum's strange, belated victory also served to embarrass the Iowa GOP - which had to admit that it had misallocated some votes, and simply lost some others, in a razor's-edge election where every vote mattered.

It also cast an unflattering light on the old-fashioned and convoluted system that the party uses to collect and count caucus votes.

"It should be like a fine Swiss watch," said Iowa State political science professor Steffen Schmidt. "It's really more like a sundial." He said the system used by Iowa Democrats was not significantly better.

In fact, Iowa Republican leaders seemed to cast doubt on their own results, saying Thursday that it was hard to declare a "winner" without knowing what happened in those eight precincts.

Thursday's final count came from these forms, which had to be submitted by Wednesday evening. The Des Moines Register, citing unidentified officials in the Iowa GOP, reported that in 131 precincts, the forms showed numbers different than those reported on caucus night.

But some Form E's didn't show up at all.

The state party found that it was missing results from eight precincts, spread across five counties.

Source: "Santorum finished 34 votes ahead of Romney in new Iowa tally; votes from 8 precincts missing", by David A. Fahrenthold and Debbi Wilgoren, Washington Post, 19 January 2012

SOPA and PIPA Fully Alive - And a New Bill Joins Them

January 24, 2012

By Heather Callaghan Activist Post

Many of us breathed a sigh of relief when an overwhelming amount of Americans banned together and voiced their opposition to Congress over both the Stop Online Piracy Act, and Protect Intellectual Property Act.

Sites that dimmed the screen for a day or two have gone back to normal - Facebook users have swapped their anti-SOPA images for their previous profile pictures.

We may have even believed that the postponement of the vote originally scheduled for January 24th was some sort of white flag of capitulation. But that is certainly not the MO of most lawmakers.

While the outcry did get the attention of Congress, they are simply returning unflinchingly back to the drawing board to wait out our attention spans. Articles whirled that SOPA was dead and the bill was pulled when the bill's sponsor Lamar Smith said in a statement that there would be no further action "until there is wider agreement on a solution."

Lamar isn't really listening. "It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products."

Actually, SOPA is set to be reformulated in February. PIPA will be revisited with possible amendments in the coming weeks. Case in point, all is still open and possible - nothing is dead, pulled, or cancelled. If that wasn't enough to keep us on our toes, a new, similar bill has surfaced.

Déjà Vu in the form of OPEN - The New Anti-Piracy Bill

As an alternative to SOPA-PIPA, Representative Darrell Issa (CA-R), and 24 co-sponsors introduced the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) H.R. 3782 on Wednesday, during the Internet blackout.

From PCWorld:

OPEN would give oversight to the International Trade Commission (ITC) instead of the Justice Department, focuses on foreign-based websites, includes an appeals process, and would apply only to websites that "willfully" promote copyright violation.

The bill pretends to only target foreign websites, while keeping Americans free to surf and post, but the bill's wording is wide open to pursue American sites. Just one example: when describing aninfringing site, it starts with those "that are accessed through a non-domestic domain name," but continues in section (8)(A)(ii) for any site that "conducts business directed to residents of the United States."

It sounds like, "in general," copyright holders will be the ones filing complaints to the Commission, but the writing leaves it open for any complainant to file. The ITC would still have the ability to coerce payment processors and ad networks to cease funding and linking the accused in question. Who could determine "willful" infringement?

Also, none of these bills had been decided before the U.S. Government took down New Zealand owned Megaupload.com during the commotion. To which, Anonymous responded by shutting down the websites of the U.S. Department of Justice, Universal Music, Recording Industry Association of America, the U.S. Copyright Office, Broadcast Music Inc. and the Motion Picture Association of America.

"The [DOJ's] action ‘demonstrates why we don't need SOPA in the first place,' points out PCWorld's Tony Bradley." The government was enforcing a previous anti-piracy law called PRO-IPsigned by Bush in 2008.

OPEN is gaining support from groups like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Consumer Electronics Association and more.

While it seems admirable that the bill is transparent and open for public comment, most laws of this nature are broad and allow for bigger, no-common sense crackdowns later. Plus, there might only be a couple concessions and the pacifying effects of "being heard."

One commenter of the bill aptly noted:

‘Reasonable belief' and ‘credible evidence' are too vague and have the appearance of inviting highly subjective interpretation with the option for the commission and/or the provider to exercise sweeping powers with impunity.

Whenever any group is appeased after a battle, it cannot be emphasized enough - the lawmakers' modus operandi will be: aim high, brace for the outcry, make a couple alterations and sneak the bill back in when no one's looking. Keep it going and going. Call it by a different name. Haggle. It appears there is compromise and reasoning now, but once the bill passes into law, reason goes out the window, and we are the only ones compromised.

Theft is a reality - although not one that has seriously damaged the growing entertainment industry, or caused massive death and devastation. If Hollywood, pitching the biggest fit, were actually going down, why should we go down with it?

It is more unfortunate that Americans must be so tirelessly vigilant to protect their online activities from the same lawmakers who are tanking the country in so many other truly devastating ways.

The dismantling of Internet freedom will not stop here. Let's borrow an MO and not let up.

To SOPA - Say NOPA!

To PIPA - Pipe down!

To OPEN - Shut it!

NDAA Is Washington's Totalitarian Response To Political Dissent And Economic Collapse

Saman Mohammadi

Prisonplanet.comJanuary 21, 2012

"In 1789, France entered a period of revolutionary change which was to see the complete restructuring of the state, the collapse of the monarchy, and its replacement by a republic. By 1793, France was riven by civil war and factional struggles and had also opened hostilities upon several neighbouring states. At home, political dissent and economic collapse were repressed by the use of political terror. For many contemporaries, as for later historians, the connection between these events and the Enlightenment was highly problematic. How could an era which had seen so much struggle for the rational reform of society, government and the individual have ended with such turmoil and violence?" - Dorinda Outram. The Enlightenment. 1995. Cambridge University Press. Pg. 126.

"All we have to do is remember who we are. We are not Germans. We're not peasants in China. We're not peasants in Russia. We have a legacy and a history of fighting for liberty. Americans have always fought for liberty. And we will fight again. So we will not be the Fourth Reich. We will not let that happen. Not without a fight." - Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, speaking on the Alex Jones show on January 12, 2012.

"I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have "disappeared" into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism." - Chris Hedges, "Why I'm Suing Barack Obama,"Truthdig, January 16, 2012.

An analysis of the passage of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) must start from the premise that since September 11, 2001, the hijacked U.S. government has been at war with America.

As they say, it's nothing personal, it's just business.

The American people are a big liability for the political and corporate elite who are openly hostile towards the U.S. constitution and Bill of Rights. America is dead to them because the reality is that America and all nation states no longer matter.

Western elites favour technocratic regional unions, a world fascist economy, and authoritarian policing. Towards the fulfillment of their "new world order," they have destroyed democracy, social welfare programs, free market competition, and civil liberties.

The treasonous hijackers in Washington gained their war footing against the American people in the 1980s and 1990s, two decades which saw the privatization of the prison system, the militarization of the police, the betrayal of the American middle class, and the consolidation of the American media.

The ideological build-up of "domestic terrorism" and "international terrorism," was also necessary to the process of the centralization of power and destruction of the U.S. constitution by Washington's secret rulers. The false flag terror attacks in Oklahoma City and New York City were instrumental in pushing this process over legal obstacles as well as public, congressional, and bureaucratic resistance.

It can be argued that Oklahoma and New York - two cities which are poles apart from each other - were chosen by the state terrorists to emphasize that Middle America and the heart of the empire both share a deep sense of vulnerability and insecurity. It was psychological warfare at its finest. The enemy of "terrorism," which is a total invention, was solidified as a real threat in the minds of the American people through recurrent acts of state terrorism.

The political and moral bankruptcy of Washington's counter-terrorism policies are further unmasked when it is revealed, as the NDAA plainly does, that American citizens are the targets of counter-terrorism laws and the counter-terrorism bureaucracy.

Michel Chossudovsky, a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, wrote about the anti-dissent nature of Washington's counter-terrorism agenda in his article on January 1, 2012 called, THE INAUGURATION OF POLICE STATE USA 2012. Obama Signs the "National Defense Authorization Act":

"Obama justifies the signing of the NDAA as a means to combating terrorism, as part of a "counter-terrorism" agenda. But in substance, any American opposed to the policies of the US government can -under the provisions of the NDAA- be labelled a "suspected terrorist" and arrested under military detention. Already in 2004, Homeland Security defined several categories of potential "conspirators" or "suspected terrorists" including "foreign [Islamic] terrorists", "domestic radical groups", [antiwar and civil rights groups], "disgruntled employees" [labor and union activists] and "state sponsored adversaries" ["rogue states", "unstable nations"]. The unspoken objective in an era of war and social crisis is to repress all forms of domestic protest and dissent.

The "National Defense Authorization Act " (H.R. 1540) repeals the US Constitution. While the facade of democracy prevails, supported by media propaganda, the American republic is fractured. The tendency is towards the establishment of a totalitarian State, a military government dressed in civilian clothes.

The passage of NDAA is intimately related to Washington's global military agenda. The military pursuit of Worldwide hegemony also requires the "Militarization of the Homeland", namely the demise of the American Republic."

The ramifications of the NDAA won't be known until the global economy collapses and political dissent in America reaches a crisis point. American citizens will indeed be put away in secret prisons by the thieves and traitors in Washington. So far, they have not been held accountable for their crimes against America, crimes against the Constitution, and crimes against humanity.

Americans, Canadians, and everybody else should psychologically prepare for future false flag attacks which will be blamed on political opposition groups and pro-democracy activists in the West. Western elites are fearful that a global public consensus will emerge around basic issues of freedom and safety, and that the world's people will challenge the international counter-terrorism strategy, the destruction of the rule of law, and the emerging global fascist state.

As stated by the creators of the Psywar documentary, the battlefield is your mind and soul. It is there that freedom, truth, peace, and justice will be won. It is there that mankind will take one final stand against political evil and economic fraud. It is there that fear and terror will be conquered.

Vote On PIPA Internet Censorship Bill Postponed

Key victory for free internet but effort to implement government control continues

Steve Watson Infowars.com

January 20, 2012

Following the announcement by the Department of Justice that it had shuttered file sharing website Megaupload last night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today declared that the Senate vote on the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), scheduled for Tuesday, has now been postponed indefinitely.

"In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act," Reid said in a statement, referring to this week's "blackout" protest against PIPA and the House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Just two days ago, Reid had been adamant that the vote would go ahead in the Senate next week.

The two contrasting events highlight the ferocity of the battle that is currently raging over internet freedom in the US and the wider world.

Although forced to sideline the decision on PIPA indefinitely, Reid acknowledged the fact that the battle over the internet legislation is far from over.

"We made good progress through the discussions we've held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks," Reid said.

"There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved," he added. "Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices." Reid's statement continued.

"I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans' intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet." the statement read.

Following Wednesday's protest, several lawmakers who had previously supported the legislation began to backtrack away and reverse their stances.

In the House, the Judiciary Committee postponed a decision on SOPA earlier in the month, but is expected to bring it up again in February. House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday that "it's pretty clear to many of us that there is a lack of consensus at this point."

As we have repeatedly pointed out, and as proven by the seizure of Megaupload yesterday, the bills are not legislating for anything that isn't already being carried out by the federal government, which routinely seizes and blacklists any website it wishes.

Furthermore, major online corporations like Google are already following government mandated procedures and even using SOPA-like censorship.

Although the backlash against PIPA/SOPA and the resulting postponement of the bills represents a key victory for the free internet, it is clear that the establishment war against the web will remain in full force

SOPA - Don't Just Protest - Get Even

January 19, 2012

Tony Cartalucci Land Destroyer Report

The entire reason why SOPA's authors and supporters have the money, influence, and power to put draconian bills like it forward in the first place is because of our daily patronizing of their corporations and the goods and services they provide.

SOPA supporters include the US Chamber of Commerce, the MPAA, and many of the mega-corporations Americans, and indeed people around the world, support on a daily basis. The key to stopping SOPA and the watered down feigned "concession" that will surely follow it is to undermine the unwarranted power and influence of the corporations and financiers backing it in the first place. If Americans withdrew their support from these corporations, if theaters were left empty, if Pepsi and Coke were left collecting dust on the shelves of an empty Walmart, bills like SOPA would not exist, let alone have a chance to be passed into law.

Below is just one letter signed by just one group of these corporations and organizations. Boycott, put out out of business, and replace these corporations with local alternatives.

Sponsors of this letter in support of "rouge sites legislation" include:

3M

Alliance of Automobile Manufactures

American Apparel and Footwear Associations

Autodesk Inc.

Bose Corporation

Broadcast Music Inc (BMI)

Caterpillar

CBS

Council of Fashion Designers of America

Electronic Arts (EA)

Ford Motor Company

GlaxoSmith Kline

Harley-Davidson Motor Company

Johnson & Johnson

L'Oreal

Macmillian

Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)

National Basketball Association (NBA)

National Football League (NFL)

NBC Universal

News Corporation (Fox News)

NHL

Nike

Nintendo of America

Oakley

Pfizer

PGA of America

Philip Morris International

Reebok

Rite Aid

Rolex

Rosetta Stone

Software & Information Industry Association

Sony

Dow Chemical

McGraw-Hill

Timberland

Walt Disney

Tiffany & Co.

Time Warner

Toshiba

US Chamber of Commerce

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

Universal Music Group

Viacom

Wal-Mart

Warner Music Group

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

Xerox Corporation

Zippo Manufacturing

If you can't live without the endless crass torrent of "bread and circus" as well as trinkets provided by the above mentioned supporters of this corporate-fascist agenda - the literal crafting and backing of legislation of, by, and for corporations -you don't deserve the freedom you believe yourself entitled to.

There is not one corporation listed above that society could not live without and in many cases replace with decentralized, superior local alternatives. Freedom is not simply voicing your opposition or choosing representatives to do so on your behalf. Freedom is also about the responsibility to keep in check the creation of unwarranted power and influence garnered from your daily payments in attention, money, time, and energy to corporations that would seek to impose their will upon society using the very mechanisms of governance designed solely for the people's benefit.

Identity the source of power behind bills like SOPA, and indeed many of the government policies wrecking our society, miring us in endless war, and leaving us in economic destitution.Boycott them, and replace them. We cannot be blamed for the greed and depravity of the global corporate-financier elite, but we can be blamed for fueling their megalomania on a daily basis.

SOPA/PIPA Battle Rages: Tell Congress We Will Not Accept Censorship

Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com

January 18, 2012

The underhanded effort to fundamentally alter the internet under the guise of protecting the copyrights of Hollywood and its transnational "entertainment" corporations was delivered a distinct set-back a few days ago when Congress retreated on its full-steam ahead effort to ram SOPA down our throats.

Faced with massive outrage and a political backlash, the Obama administration threatened a veto of the SOPA legislation and in response Congress shelved it.

Equally important is the battle to defeat PIPA, the Protect IP Act, which will soon be up for a vote. Congress needs to be told it must reject this legislation as well.

Even though the shelving of SOPA appears to be a victory, we cannot trust the government to not reintroduce the bill after sprucing it up as a kinder and gentler effort to rob of us our ability to freely disseminate information and speak our minds on the internet without fear of the censor's truncheon crashing down. After all, in 2010 the government shut down 73,000 web sites under the cover of fighting copyright infringement.

We must continue to let our "representatives" in Congress know that in no uncertain terms will we accept any modification of the internet at the behest of large corporations and the globalists who intend by hook or by crook to neuter the only free communication medium left to the people.

Use the links below to contact Congress now and speak your mind:

Congress:

http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

http://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Senate:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

STOP AMERICAN CENSORSHIP:

http://americancensorship.org/

Read the bills in full here:

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act):

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3261

PIPA (Protect IP Act):

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-968

YOU are the resistance.

EXCLUSIVE: Jailed Ed / Elaine Brown Supporter Danny Riley Stabbed in Prison

January 13, 2012 by Jack Blood

I just received this up date from one of our people close to the Browns and those Jailed via the Plainfield NH standoff in 2007

NEVER FORGET THE SACRIFICE MADE BY THESE BRAVE ACTIVISTS!!!

this is a relay from Donna......

I want to let everyone know that Danny Riley was attacked recently, he is being held prisoner at the Terre Haute FCI here in Indiana. I have a feeling the CO's may had something to do with this. I was asked recently to come up and help him more closely with filings and so forth, which is what I believed they may have had him in the hole to begin with.... Here is an email sent to his brother. Thoughts, prayers and meditations are definitely needed more than ever. Danny is an incarcerated Ed and Elaine Brown Supporter whom was given 36 years.

Dan is in grave danger, prayers requested!

From Dan:

I rec'd Sven's letter, good to go. I thank you Sven, for doing the right thing, for the truth, I know how difficult it was for you, again i deeply appreciate it. I just wish it could have been sooner as you told me, because now i have to supplement my 2255 since it's already been typed and sent.
Furthermore. on Friday Jan 6th 2 11:57am, i was ambushed attacked(unprovoked). Stabbed 4 times ( 3 in back, 1 in throat), both eyesblack, gash over right eye. I will be all right though. i just got out of the hole (5 days).
The attacker was a mexican mob affiliated type

from california (HITMAN?). Luckily for me, the poinard failed in it's design, meaning the dagger part broke.
WE WILL UPDATE AS WE GET MORE INFO....

COMMENT FROM SUPER MARIO:

One thing to keep in mind is that once inside the prison system, it can mean anything; the hit can be called by different prison gangs. In this case, however, the prison is in Indiana, which is Latin Kings territory (because it's near Chicago). We know that Chicago and the Latin kings are, for the most part, controlled by Sinaloa. In fact, DEA-CIA-Sinaloa operative Vinny Zambada is currently serving time in Chicago. If Zambada is there, then so are his Sinaloa-CIA handlers. The CIA might've issued the order to Sinaloa to find a hitman; Sinaloa then goes to the Latin Kings (or the Mexican Mafia if this was a west coast hitman that might've recently been transferred to Indiana). The prison gangs receive the order for the hit from high above, and they carry it out without questions.

These types of hits happen a lot in state prisons; they don't happen as often in federal prisons. Since this is a federal prison, you can bet your bottom federal reserve note that this was a professional hit... and who stands to gain from this? The government, of course! It would be very convenient for a dissident like Danny to suddenly die in prison in the hands of a violent thug. We're just fortunate that nothing like this happened to Cele (Our friend and DEA / Iran Contra whistle-Blower Cele Castillo was a major target in Federal Prison. He was just released early, but is likely still in danger.)

There is no doubt that the federal government wants this issue -the Browns Tax Protest- dead and buried (no pun intended). They do not want any other Americans to stand up and follow the Brown's footsteps, especially when they're contemplating the idea of raising our taxes as they spend us into oblivion. They are already demonizing and dismissing Ed Brown as a lunatic that ‘psychologically abused his wife.' Of course, he and his wife cannot defend themselves because they're in prison. It now looks like they may be going after their supporters. They DO NOT want any of their supporters, like Danny, to finish their time in prison because they will be viewed as heroes in the patriot community, and they may start a new tax revolt as the s**t hits the fan this year.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Danny, the Browns, and all the rest of the activists doing time in prison for simply asking the proverbial question: "Where is the law that says we need to pay income taxes?" We hope Danny recovers soon. Hang in there, Danny! We will do everything in our power to expose those responsible for this crime. When we find them, we will make them pay!!!

-Mario

NDAA Protests End In Ironic Swarm Of Arrests

January 11, 2012

Brandon Smith  Alt Market

The absurdity of America today never ceases to amaze. In fact, it has become so elaborate that one might even suggest it has reached a kind of poetic symmetry. When a protest group is willing to stick their necks out to expose the horror of the National Defense Authorization Act and its open door strategy for unconstitutional arrest and indefinite detainment of American citizens, I have to stand up and applaud. This is the kind of protest we need to see all over the country. Of course, any establishment system which is willing to dissolve the inherent liberties of its citizens certainly isn't going to stand by quietly while they blatantly point out the injustice. The Grand Central Terminal action is a perfect example of the swift and immediate stifling of peaceful dissent by an increasingly totalitarian government:

Responses to the event vary. Most people who have actually been exposed to the facts on the NDAA have expressed utter disgust and fury. Rightly so. Some, however, have taken the old elitist mantra, perpetuated effectively by the Neo-Cons in their heyday, that if you are not for the system, then you are a danger to society. Not surprisingly, there are still plenty of useful idiots out there buzzing about like parasites in search of blood.

For those who would applaud these arrests, and suggest that they are well deserved, I would have to ask very pointedly; why?

Is it right to crush free speech as long as the message is offensive to you personally? Do peaceful protestors really present a legitimate threat to our national stability? Are they truly more dangerous than a corrupt government hellbent on assassinating the legal protections of our natural rights which have existed for centuries? Would any supporter of the jackboot methodology like to explain to me in a coherent manner why they believe their skewed world view should be shielded from sincere questions? Please, I can't wait to witness the kind of ridiculous mental gymnastics required to make such arguments palatable. If this kind of ignorance wasn't so destructive, it might actually be entertaining.

The bottom line is, it doesn't matter if these activists were in Grand Central Terminal, on the streets, or busting through the doors of the Oval Office. While New York authorities will attempt to argue property loopholes in free speech protections for Grand Central, or national security because of the vulnerability of the terminal, really, this has nothing to do with either. This is about the removal of American voices from a room, and nothing more. If the message is going to be suppressed by the mainstream media, and shrugged off by representatives, then protesters must go to where the people are, and make the truth heard by whatever means necessary.

Ultimately, activism is about disturbing people's normal mundane routines and shocking them out of their pop-culture stupor, even if for a moment. If we aren't allowed to do that without constant police intervention, then the First Amendment is not being served, and then, my friends, we have a problem, a problem which should be forced down the throat of government with even more public action

Another Tyrannical Success for Lieberman: Enemy Expatriation Act Now Law Under NDAA

Eric Blair: Activist Post

1-6-2012

Last January, four-term senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) announced that he would not seek reelection in the upcoming 2012 elections. This seems to have relieved any pressure of facing his constituency for approval, allowing him to push for some of the most draconian legislation in the history of the United States. Or, perhaps, he is just auditioning for a more powerful position like Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the DHS.

Besides his renewed pressure on Google and Twitter to openly censor the Internet, Lieberman's desire to crush all dissent against the war machine has manifested in bills like his Enemy Belligerent Act, his Internet Kill Switch bill, and the recently introduced Enemy Expatriation Act.

Unfortunately, the most egregious parts of the above mentioned bills already found their way into law under the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which seemingly renders any further discussion of these bills as somewhat redundant, but they certainly won't be critically discussed in the corporate media.

The Enemy Belligerent Act grants "the president the power to order the arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment of anyone -- including a U.S. citizen -- indefinitely, on the sole suspicion that he or she is affiliated with terrorism, and on the president's sole authority as commander in chief."

The Internet Kill Switch bill, officially called the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, gives the President the authority to police, censor and shut down parts of the Internet under a cyber emergency. While promoting the bill, Lieberman openly called for the U.S. to have the same ability to censor the Internet as China.

The Enemy Expatriation Act aimed to remove the rights protected by U.S. citizenship from those who "support hostilities against the United States." This act was in response to Obama's assassination of a U.S. citizen without formal charges or due process to, in effect, legalize such action by removing Constitutional protections of those suspected of supporting hostilities.

The NDAA, which has declared American soil part of the formal battlefield, permits the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain U.S. citizens on the suspicion of supporting or sympathizing with broadly defined terrorists -- thus effectively rendering their rights as citizens obsolete -- expatriation in practice but not in name.

The NDAA also includes authorization to go after those who engage in a "belligerent act" including protests and speech, thus fulfilling the intent of the Enemy Belligerent Act. Shahid Buttar points out on FireDogLake:

If Occupy and Tea Party groups are treated as terrorists, does that render them among the 'associated forces' of groups 'engaged in hostilities against the United States' for whom the NDAA authorizes military detention without trial? Just to be clear: no one has a good answer here, which is precisely the problem.
Even within the four corners of the NDAA itself (here's the full text of the bill), section 1031(b)(2) includes among 'covered persons' subject to potential military detention 'any person who has committed a belligerent act....' What, exactly, is a belligerent act? 'Hostile' and 'aggressive' are synonyms, and while the term has an established (though not entirely defined) meaning in the context of international war, its precise meaning in the context of the NDAA remains unspecified.
And finally, the NDAA declares the Internet an "operation domain" in the war on terror allowing for the Pentagon, "upon direction by the President may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace." The authority goes even further than passive Internet censorship. The Pentagon also claims the authority to use military force as a response to serious cyber attacks. The Pentagon announced their efforts (PDF) to recruit and train an army of cyber soldiers as funded by the NDAA.

How bad each of these bills are separately only reflects the magnitude of what Lieberman and his hawkish ilk were able to accomplish in the NDAA. No other elected official can claim the success of Lieberman in terms of ramming through increasingly tyrannical legislation. But nearly all elected officials are responsible for passing the NDAA and its predecessor the USA PATRIOT Act.

So, protest of these individual bills are futile, much like the overwhelming public opposition to the bank bailouts was futile in swaying the "deciders." As Lieberman departs the Senate in a blaze of tyranny, Americans will most certainly continue to be burned unless the people wake up.

Obama Crowned Himself on New Year's Eve

by David Swanson

Global Research, January 1, 2012

warisacrime.org

These were among the complaints registered the last time this nation had a king:

"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

"He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

"He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

"For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

"For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

"For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."

To prevent the U.S. government from behaving like a king, the drafters of the U.S. Constitution empowered an elected legislature to write every law, to declare every war, and to remove its executive from office. To further prevent the abuse of individuals' rights, those authors wrote into the Constitution, even prior to the Bill of Rights, the right to habeas corpus and the right never to be punished for treason unless convicted in an open court on the testimony of at least two witnesses to an overt act of war or assistance of an enemy.

President Barack Obama waited until New Year's Eve to take an action that I suspect he wanted his willfully deluded followers to have a good excuse not to notice. On that day, Obama issued an unconstitutional signing statement rewriting a law as he signed it into law, a practice that candidate Obama had rightly condemned. The law that Obama was signing was the most direct assault yet seen on the basic structure of self-governance and human rights that once made all the endless U.S. shouting of "We're number one!" significantly less ludicrous. The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police-and-war state.

President Obama has claimed the power to imprison people without a trial since his earliest months in office. He spoke in front of the Constitution in the National Archives while gutting our founding document in 2009. President Obama has claimed the power to torture "if needed," issued an executive order claiming the power of imprisonment without trial, exercised that power on a massive scale at Bagram, and claimed and exercised the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. Obama routinely kills people with unmanned drones.

The bill just signed into law, as sent to the President, said this:

"Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

In other words, Congress was giving its stamp of approval to the unconstitutional outrages already claimed by the President. But then, why create a new law at all? Well, because some outrages are more equal than others, and Congress had chosen to specify some of those and in fact to expand some of them. For example:

"Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war."

And this:

"The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following: (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

Jon Stewart explained when those detained without trial under the law might be released: "So when the war on terror ends, and terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion, you are free to go."

An exception for U.S. legal residents and citizens was kept out of the bill at President Obama's request.

So why did Obama threaten to veto the bill initially and again after it passed the Senate? Well, one change made by the conference committee was this (note the crossed-through text):

"The Secretary of Defense President may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary President submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States."

The reference here is to military tribunals. The President - that is, the current one and future ones - need not hand someone over even to a military tribunal if . . . well, if he (or she) chooses not to.

That was the most power Obama could have transferred to the White House in this bill. But it was not absolute power, and was therefore not good enough. Hence the signing statement, the relevant portion of which begins:

"Moving forward, my Administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded."

This is Bush-Cheneyspeak for "I will not comply with the following sections of this law despite signing it into law."

After having persuaded the Congress to remove an exception for U.S. legal residents, Obama has the nerve in the signing statement to assert, not that the law makes any such exception, but that he personally will choose to do so, at least for U.S. citizens. Future presidents may lock U.S. citizens up without trials, but Obama won't do so. He promises:

"I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law."

The first two sentences above are highly unusual if not unprecedented. Most, if not all, of Bush and Obama's law-altering signing statements up to this point have not sought to clarify what a particular administration would choose to do. Rather, they have focused on declaring parts of the laws invalid. Usually this is done in a manner misleadingly similar to the third sentence above. By claiming the power to interpret a law in line with the Constitution, Bush and Obama have each on numerous occasions asserted the view that the Constitution grants presidents far-reaching powers that cannot be restricted by legislation. If Obama had wanted to deny that this law could be applied to U.S. citizens (or legal residents), the above paragraph would look very different, although equally unusual in that it would then be rejecting power rather than claiming it.

Also note, as Marcy Wheeler has already pointed out, Section 1021 applies to any detention, and Obama promises only not to subject U.S. citizens to indefinite military detention. While locked away forever without a trial you'll be able to take comfort that yours is a non-military imprisonment.

Also, remember that Obama claims and exercises the power to kill U.S. citizens or anyone else (arguably at least as serious a violation of rights as imprisonment!), and for that he will use the military if he sees fit, or even allow the military to operate freely.

Also notice that legal residents are not included in the category of citizens.

Next, Obama declares Section 1022 on military custody "ill-conceived." His personal right to a waiver, won through the conference committee, was not enough. Obama insists on also erasing this section of law: "I reject," he writes,

"any approach that would mandate military custody where law enforcement provides the best method of incapacitating a terrorist threat. While section 1022 is unnecessary and has the potential to create uncertainty, I have signed the bill because I believe that this section can be interpreted and applied in a manner that avoids undue harm to our current operations. I have concluded that section 1022 provides the minimally acceptable amount of flexibility to protect national security. Specifically, I have signed this bill on the understanding that section 1022 provides the executive branch with broad authority to determine how best to implement it, and with the full and unencumbered ability to waive any military custody requirement, including the option of waiving appropriate categories of cases when doing so is in the national security interests of the United States. ... I will therefore interpret and implement section 1022 in the manner that best preserves the same flexible approach that has served us so well for the past 3 years and that protects the ability of law enforcement professionals to obtain the evidence and cooperation they need to protect the Nation."

Obama goes on to reject several other sections of the law, including restrictions on his unlimited power to rendition prisoners to other countries. Among the notable rejections is this:

"Sections 1023-1025 needlessly interfere with the executive branch's processes for reviewing the status of detainees. Going forward, consistent with congressional intent as detailed in the Conference Report, my Administration will interpret section 1024 as granting the Secretary of Defense broad discretion to determine what detainee status determinations in Afghanistan are subject to the requirements of this section."

In other words, U.S. prisoners held in Afghanistan will not be given even any formal pretense of a legalistic review of their status unless Obama and his Secretary of "Defense" see fit.

I've just been editing a forthcoming book in which one of the contributors writes:

"In 1971, Congress passed the Anti-Detention Act, 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a), which states that "no person shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." Fred Koramatsu, who had brought the unsuccessful case before the Supreme Court, was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor. Congress apologized and provided for limited reparations for this heinous act."

The author is referring to the unconstitutional indefinite detention of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. This type of criminal abuse for which Congress had to apologize and pay reparations, and for which there is a misleadingly pro-war-looking memorial hidden between the U.S. Capitol and Union Station, has now been effectively sanctioned by our Constitutional Scholar in Chief.

My chief regret is that we have not seen the major resistance we could have, and without any doubt would have, seen to this if only Obama were a Republican

The Tide Is Turning Against SOPA ... And We Might Actually Succeed In Stopping It

December 28, 2011

Washington's Blog

While a short week ago the Internet censorship bill - SOPA - looked certain to pass, the tide appears to be quickly turning.

Politico notes today:

The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress's Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.

"If either the U.S. Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist," wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.

"Some good news on the SOPA front: Its corporate base of supporters is starting to crumble," David Dayden wrote at Firedoglake. "GoDaddy is not alone. Scores of law firms are requesting their names be removed from the Judiciary Committee's official list of SOPA supporters."

In the blogosphere, the trajectory of the bill seemed set - that it is destined for failure if the pressure of the online community is kept up.

"The dynamic is clear. Once SOPA - and its Senate counterpart, Protecting IP Act, or PIPA - became high-profile among the Internet community, the lazy endorsements from companies and various hangers-on became toxic. And now, those supporters are scrambling, hollowing out the actual support for the bill. Suddenly, a bill with ‘widespread' corporate support doesn't have much support at all," Dayden said.

Conservatives took a slightly different tact, though with similar disdain for the anti-piracy measures.

Indeed, blogger Erick Erickson said that he would encourage a primary for any Republican who supports the bill.

"I love Marsha Blackburn. She is a delightful lady and a solidly conservative member of Congress. And I am pledging right now that I will do everything in my power to defeat her in her 2012 reelection bid" due to her co-sponsorship for SOPA, Erickson wrote at RedState. "Congress has proven it does not understand the Internet. Perhaps they will understand brute strength against them at the ballot box. If members of Congress do not pull their name from co-sponsorship of SOPA, the left and right should pledge to defeat each and every one of them."

Digital Journal reports:

The legislation, which many are suggesting is nothing less than censorship of Internet content and an assault on free speech, has brought many disparate groups together for the first time, such as ... the Heritage Foundation and Beregrond, a Libertarian website.

Several Washington D.C. law firms and lobbying groups were added to a list of corporate supporters by mistake and those who were willing to speak on the record were decidedly unhappy with the House Judiciary Committee. "It's just incorrect. The firm has no position on SOPA," Davis Wright Tremaine LLP spokesman Mark Usellis stated to Politico.

Even the White House is looking toward opposing the bill, with a petition on the White House website to veto the bill if passed by Congress. The petition needed 25,000 signatures and so far it has 43,351.

Time to redouble our efforts ... the tide may be turning, and we have a chance of winning.

Exclusive: Military to Designate U.S. Citizens as Enemy During Collapse

FEMA Continuity of Government Plans Prep Total Takeover of Society, Dispatching Military Domestically Under Economic Collapse Emergency

Aaron Dykes Infowars.com

December 21, 2011

UPDATE: Government censors document revealing plans to wage war on Americans. READ HERE.

NOTE: Within an hour of posting this article and linking to the pertinent document, the feds at FBO.gov have pulled the link and implied that it was a classified posting. We believe this was public and of interest to American citizens, taxpayers and peoples of the world and are in the process re-establishing an archive link of the material. Obviously, however, this information is revealing and certain parties do not wish it to be widely known. If you believe this material is important, please archive it and share it with your contacts. Infowars has discovered new FEMA documents that confirm information received from DoD sources that show military involvement in a FEMA-led takeover within the United States under partially-classified Continuity of Government (COG) plans. It involves not only operations for the relocation of COG personnel and key officials, population management, emergency communications and alerts but the designation of the American people as ‘enemies' under a live military tracking system known as Blue Force Situational Awareness (BFSA).

Further, this Nov. 18, 2011 FEMA-released plan National Continuity Programs (NCP) Program and Mission Support Services (PAMSS) [PDF] linked at the FedBizOpps.gov website outlines a scenario that overlays with eerie accuracy the bigger picture sketched out by concurrent calls for troops to keep order in the streets of places like New Orleans, as well as other bombshell documents like those released from KBR seeking to activate contracted staff for emergency detention centers and for services like fencing and barricades, as well as numerous agencies and think tanks who've prepared for civil unrest and economic breakdown in America.

Hold onto your seats. The plan for the takeover of the United States has not only been drafted, but activated. Our sources and independent research make this abundantly clear. Martial law scenarios preparing for a breakdown of order under the ongoing economic collapse are underway, even as pretexts for control are initiated in locales across the country. Bold individuals like Ron Paul have warned that dangerous legislation like the NDAA designate the American population as potential enemies. Now, there is more evidence this targeting of the people is sadly taking place.

A laundry list of operations organized under FEMA's National Continuity Programs (NCP) provides a base of technical support for the deployment of national emergency plans and the logistical tracking of all personnel incorporated under what Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano has lovingly termed the big "federal family."

"Friendly" military and FEMA personnnel, along with their contracted employees and those of other federal agencies, will carry transponder ID badges, like those described here, to designate their "blue" inclusive status. As our military sources have confirmed, under the Blue Force Situational Awareness (BFSA) all other American citizens and civilians are designated under the "red" category and treated as an enemy or potential unfriendly. Throughout his past investigative work including witnessing numerous military drills, Alex Jones has also witnessed the technology and the use of this alarming code branding ordinary Americans as battlefield enemies. The plan includes drone and other high-tech tools to monitor and target individuals designated under the "enemy" status.

The military's blue force tracking technology has been adopted since 2003 in Iraq and used in theaters like Afghanistan to quickly distinguish "Blue" friendlies (including U.S. forces and allies like tribal forces) from "Red" enemies. However, on the U.S. homeland battlefield, it is the American people who will be designated under "red," whereas cleared occupying personnel are tracked as "blue" friendlies by their ID transponder badges. The designation was set-up to reduce "friendly fire" incidents.

Blue Force and other related programs like Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), Continuity Analysis and the Command, Control, Communications and Computing (C4) operations named in the document electronically track and verify the location and clearance of COG-related personnel, the usage of emergency shelter facilities and their components as well as the military's friendly/enemy designations- creating a matrix for live monitoring and control coordinating with FEMA databases during martial law or national emergency scenarios.

For instance, FEMA acknowledges in its documents the use of Blue Force tracking systems and other geospatial information systems to monitor the capacity and usage of its facilities under the National Shelter System and other programs. Preparations for the orderly control of the masses have already been put into place.

In particular, the Mt. Weather Emergency Operations Center outside Washington, D.C. is empowered to "coordinate, track, and synchronize the relocation of key leadership and staff from the DHS and FEMA Emergency Relocation Groups (ERG) members to perform their essential functions" during a declared national emergency using the Blue Force and other related tracking programs managed under the established joint relocation operations control center and emergency relocation programs referenced in the document. Section 1.3.4 further details the minimum ID requirements for contractor employee identification and verification.

The FEMA National Shelter System (NSS) is a comprehensive, Web-based database created to support Federal, State and local government agencies and voluntary organizations responsible for Mass Care and Emergency Assistance. The FEMA NSS allows users to identify, track, analyze, and report on data for virtually any facility associated with the congregate care of people and/or household pets following a disaster.

FEMA has also outlined detailed support for its vast Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), proscribed under Executive Order 13407 for the federal takeover of communications. It details the continuity of emergency communications and the issuance of warnings to the public, including public-private partnerships concerned with issuing alert messages through cellular providers- a program that only recently caused panic when it was publicly tested without forewarning in New Jersey. It is designated in the document under the Commercial Mobile Alerting System (CMAS).

As we have mentioned here and detailed in the past, this is part of larger COG government takeover- not part of any ordinary natural disaster response as the media has been told. The elite have initiated worldwide economic collapse and prepared their power-grabbing response as currencies and markets fall across the globe. All the experts we've talked to over the years concur with this basic analysis.

To put it simply: once the economic depression has sunken in completely, the population will willingly head in droves to government centers for basic requirements like food. As Henry Kissinger bluntly quipped, "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." FEMA's response will in hinge, in part, on just that- encouraging people sign up for their own enslavement.

First Amendment Under Attack: 18 Examples Of How They Are Coming For Our Free Speech

by Michael Snyder  Informaion Liberation

In the United States today, the First Amendment is under attack like never before. Technological innovations such as the Internet have made it possible for average Americans to communicate directly with one another in ways that completely bypass the mainstream media, and this is making the elite very uncomfortable. They have decided that they better come after our free speech before it is too late. Right now, free speech in America is being chipped away at it in thousands of different ways. On the one hand, you have the disciples of "political correctness" that want to make all forms of speech that are "offensive" to anyone against the law. On the other hand, you have those that are obsessed with "national security" that want to ban all speech that is critical of the U.S. government or the U.S. military. These twin forces are constantly seeking to push the First Amendment into a smaller and smaller box. If you say the wrong thing in America today, your website might be shut down, you could be suspended from school, you may find yourself out of a job and there is now even a possibility that you could be arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without a trial.

Usually those that are targeted for their speech are those that the "establishment" does not like. That would include free thinkers, political activists, libertarians, true conservatives and Christians.

Instead of seeing the value in allowing everyone to say what they think, we are being taught in America today that there is speech that is "acceptable" and speech that is "not acceptable".

If we allow this attack on the First Amendment to continue, eventually we will wake up in a country where our freedom of speech is totally gone.

The following are 18 examples of how the elite are coming for our free speech....

#1 Two bills currently going through Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, would give the U.S. government the ability to shut down literally millions of websites.

These bills are incredibly dangerous and if they are passed they could change the way that the Internet operates forever.

The following is from a piece that Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently authored about these new bills....

"Imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress -- SOPA and PIPA -- give the U.S. government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial)"
Any website that posts "infringing material" could be instantly shut down under these news laws. For example, if one "infringing video" was posted on YouTube, the entire site could be taken down forever and permanently erased from Google in a matter of days. That is how serious these new bills are as Brin noted later on in his piece....

"While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don't believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world."
Can you imagine a world where there is no more YouTube, no more Facebook and no more Twitter?

That is what we could be looking at.

Sadly, many in the U.S. Congress seem absolutely obsessed with censoring the Internet.

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd once said the following....

"When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn't do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites"
U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman has gone even farther. Just check out what he once said....

"Right now, China -- the government -- can disconnect parts of its internet in a case of war. We need to have that here too"
Not only that, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman also recently asked Google to install a "terrorist button" on all Blogger.com blogs so that readers can easily flag "terrorist content" for authorities.

The Internet is under attack from Washington D.C., and if you love the Internet you need to say something while you still can.

Please contact your representatives in Congress and tell them that they must vote against these bills.

#2 Politicians all over the United States are using law enforcement authorities to shut down free speech that they do not like. For example, during a recent meeting of the Pensacola City Council, a priest was nearly arrested after he calmly said some things that members of the city council did not like. If you have not seen this video of the incident yet, you should really check it out.

#3 The First Amendment is especially under attack in our public schools. For example, one group of high school athletes was recently suspended for "Tebowing" in the hallways of their school.

#4 The U.S. government is now encouraging children to spy on their parents as part of the "war on terror". If a school official hears that a parent has said the "wrong thing" at home, that parent could potentially get labeled as a "potential terrorist".

#5 Even though tens of millions of Americans have found the information and products sold by Kevin Trudeau to be incredibly helpful, the FTC has mercilessly gone after him. They have done everything that they can to shut him up and now he is being ordered to pay a ridiculous financial penalty of 37.6 million dollars.

#6 Hillary Clinton recently said that certain "political, cultural, and religious beliefs" are obstacles to promoting alternative lifestyles around the world and therefore must not be tolerated....

"Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs"
#7 Some U.S. courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to use the name of "Jesus Christ" during any official government meeting. The following comes from a recent WorldNetDaily article....

But the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are standing by their victory in a U.S. circuit court decision that states even "a solitary reference to Jesus Christ" in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners' meetings could do "violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values that are a defining feature of American public life."
#8 In North Carolina last year, a pastor was dismissed from his chaplain duties for praying in the name of Jesus.

#9 Down in Texas, the Department of Veteran Affairs actually tried to ban prayers that include the words "God" or "Jesus" during funeral services for veterans.

#10 Being able to engage in peaceful protests is one of the most important rights that the First Amendment protects. But in recent years that right has been under attack like never before. In a recent article I detailed some of the violence that law enforcement authorities have used against protesters in 2011....

In recent weeks, we have seen law enforcement authorities brutally dragging female protesters to the ground by their hair. We have also seen them use pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang stun grenades against protesters. If this is how protesters are going to be dealt with from now in America, then we have completely lost the moral high ground. How will we ever get other nations to take us seriously when we criticize their brutality against protesters when we are so brutal ourselves?
#11 As I have written about previously, the FBI is now systematically recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. This is going to cause many Internet talk radio hosts to watch what they are saying. After all, who wants a visit from the FBI? The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....

If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.

The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.

The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.
#12 In Wichita, Kansas last year, a Christian minister was handcuffed and hauled off to jail by police for sharing the gospel and handing out tracts to Muslims on a public sidewalk.

#13 On June 18, 2010 two Christians decided that they would peacefully pass out copies of the gospel of John on a public sidewalk outside a public Islamic festival in Dearborn, Michigan and within three minutes 8 police officers surrounded them and placed them under arrest.

#14 As I have written about previously, a very revealing document obtained by Oath Keepers shows that the FBI is actually instructing store owners to report many new forms of "suspicious activity" to them. Apparently the FBI now believes that the definition of "suspicious activity" includes "radical theology" and making "extreme religious statements".

#15 Last year, a high school student in Southern California was suspended for two days because he had private conversations with his classmates during which he discussed Christianity. He was also banned from bringing his Bible to school ever again.

#16 A Christian consultant was recently fired by Bank of America and by Cisco because they discovered a book that he had written that expressed Christian viewpoints about social issues.

#17 Members of the U.S. Congress have been banned from saying "Merry Christmas" in any piece of congressional mail that is paid for by U.S. tax dollars. Even if you do not celebrate that holiday, you should still be outraged at that infringement of free speech.

#18 Barack Obama recently signed a new law that officially designates the United States as part of the "battleground" on the war on terror. This new law allows the U.S. military to arrest American citizens if they are suspected of being "potential terrorists" and to detain them indefinitely without trial. So if the U.S. military comes and grabs your neighbor and ships him off to Guantanamo Bay, then this new law is probably to blame.

This new law is also going to have a huge chilling effect on free speech in America.

I have personally been contacted by several people that I know in recent weeks that are changing their behavior because of laws that have recently been passed.

It is not enough for the elite that they control Wall Street, most of the big corporations and the U.S. government.

They also want to shut all the rest of us up and keep us from complaining about it.

The elite literally want to control what we think and what we say.

We live in a country where political correctness is way out of control and where bureaucrats are constantly trying to push our free speech into a smaller and smaller box.

They are coming for our free speech my friends.

If you love free speech, and if you love the Internet as it currently exists, then you need to stand up and say something right now.

If we do not respond to these constant attacks on the First Amendment, then eventually we are going to lose it for good

Military Contractors Funded Detention Bill

December 18, 2011

Source: Voice Of Detroit

NDAA 2012 codifies Commander in Chief President Obama, DHS, military police waging war against American internet users, independent reporters, whistleblowers of high-level corruption

The National Defense Authorization Bill 2012 (NDAA FY2012) passed in the House yesterday, contains language allowing the Pentagon to wage cyberwar on domestic enemies of the state, a human and civil rights violation of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, as reported by MSNBC Wednesday, potentially impacting both Occupy movement and Tea Party participants plus independent news reporters and whistleblowers exposing government corruption. President Obama will have the bill to sign this week according to Government Executive, as ACLU and David Swanson urgently call Americans to action to thwart the signing of the bill into law.

It is "astonishing and disappointing" that the bill's language has been approved by Congress and President Obama said Jameel Jaffer of National Security division of ACLU in his interview by Rachel Maddow in her MSNBC show Wedneday, "Suspicion Accomplished."

The NDAA FY2012 includes the following language in its final "reconciled" bill now in the Senate and then traveling to President Barack Obama to be signed into law, despite earlier assertions he would veto the human rights violating legislation:

"Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the capability, and upon direction by the President may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our Nation, Allies and interests, subject to-

(1) the policy principles and legal regimes that the Department follows for kinetic capabilities, including the law of armed conflict; and

(2) the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1541 et seq.)"

As part of Full Spectrum Dominance, the Pentagon's cybersecurity plan released in July declared the internet a domain of war, claiming hostile parties "are working to exploit DOD unclassified and classified networks, and some foreign intelligence organizations have already acquired the capacity to disrupt elements of DOD's information infrastructure."

According to the Pentagon, "non-state actors increasingly threaten to penetrate and disrupt DOD networks and systems."

The term "non-state actors" is addressed by Brent Jessop who writes that a problem with the current internet is the "potential for the dissemination of ideas and information not consistent with US government themes and messages, commonly known as free speech."

NDAA FY2012 thus directly threatens safety of whistleblowers and independent reporters.

Kurt Nimmo of InfoWars reports Thursday, "After the NDAA is signed into law by Obama, he will have the authority to wage war against "domestic terrorists," defined by the Department of Homeland Security as "rightwing extremists" and other anti-government types.

As already observed in DHS coordinated organized attacks on the Occupy movement human rights defenders, NDAA 2012 codifies the DHS to "direct the work" against enemies of the state.

"DHS will work with the Pentagon to militarily neutralize the threat posed by activists and the alternative media," says Nimmo.

This author reported in November, "U.S. soldiers are trained to use non-lethal force as much as possible according to the DoD that added, ‘But until recently, not every soldier had ‘the right mix' of tools and capabilities to meet those goals, an officer said during exercises in 2008.'

"Now, ‘the right mix' has been passed to the Department of Justice, to local police, since a quiet agreement was made as the DoD states on its website answering question, ‘Q7: What organizations are involved?'"

"In November, the DHS practiced its work by coordinating a nationwide police crackdown on the OWS movement," says Nimmo.

"In the not too distant future, it may be using the Pentagon - now that Posse Comitatus is a dead letter - in its ongoing efforts to wage war on political opposition to the establishment."

From Forbes to statesmen to Anonymous and hactivists, NDAA FY2012 war on Americans is far from over

On December 5, Forbes reported, "If Obama does one thing for the remainder of his presidency let it be a veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, a law that "would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists."

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said about NDAA FY2012 that it "denigrates the very foundations of this country."

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has repeatedly said that NDAA FY2012 "puts every single American citizen at risk."

Representative Dennis Kucinich stated Wednesday, "Our children deserve a world where they know the government will protect them, that it is not going to rule over them by invading their very thoughts."

The internet war is now involves a battle with Anonymous.

Wednesday, "Internet hacktivists gathered on the Web to find a way to take on the lawmakers, who have allowed for this detrimental legislation to make it all the way to the Oval Office desk," according to Russia Today.

"Upon discussion of routes to take to show their opposition to the overwhelming number of politicians who voted in favor of NDAA, Anonymous members agreed to begin with Senator Robert J Portman, a Republican lawmaker from the state of Ohio.

By Thursday morning, an Anonymous operative released personal information pertaining to the lawmaker, and revealed that not only was Sen. Portman among the politicians to vote "aye" on the legislation, but it has also been revealed that the senator had good reason to do so.

"According to a OpenCongress.org, Sen. Portman received $272,853 from special interest groups that have shown support for NDAA."

"Robert J. Portman, we plan to make an example of you," writes an Anonymous operative. The hacktivist has also released personal data including the senator's home address, phone number and social networking accounts in an attempt to further an infiltration from the Internet to show the opposition to the bill that colossally impacts the constitutional rights of Americans.

According to the information posted by the operative, the nearly $300,000 in special interest monies lobbied at Portman could have helped him purchase around $1.7 million in real estate in Ohio.

RT reports, "Among the supporters of NDAA are California-based manufacturer Surefire, L.L.C., who won a $23 million contract from the Department of Defense three months ago.

"Also contributing to the cause (and the lawmakers who voted ‘yes') are Honeywell (who secured a $93 million deal with the Pentagon last May and a $24 million contract this year) and Bluewater Defense, a longtime DoD-ally that produces, among other garments, fire resistant combat uniforms."

"When the military storms down your door for suspicion of ‘belligerent' acts, you can thank Bluewater and Senator Portman for the lovely flame-proof attire the soldiers will be donned in as they haul you off to Gitmo."

Instead of protecting Americans by abiding by the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Human Rights, President Obama is due to sign the NDAA 2012 into law according to a White House announcement Wednesday.

According to ACLU's Jaffer, NDAA 2012 is likely to end up in court.

ACLU and War Is A Crime head David Swanson have released calls to action to thwart the NDAA in the eleventh hour, before the president codifies martial law.

The NDAA bill, that must pass the Senate, would also include bringing overall spending authorization to $554 billion for bases and $115.5 billion for overseas expenditures, including the war in Afghanistan, according to The Hill.

The Obama administration has now said President Barack Obama supports NDAA 2012 according to Government Executive.

The bill could come before the Senate as early as week's end.

Nationwide protests of NDAA 2012 and what rights defenders say is treasonous of congresspersons who voted for it, are being held today, Bill Of Rights Day.

Business Insider reports Thursday, "If you're not completely disgusted by what Congress has done, it's time to lower your dose of Zoloft and ask your doctor if the Bill of Rights is right for you."

The end of America: House and Senate pass final version of NDAA

December 16, 2011  By Madison Ruppert

Today the Unite States House of Representatives and Senate both passed their final versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012, or H.R. 1540.

This represents the complete destruction of everything that America is supposed to stand for, the most essential of rights have been stripped away and we are left wondering what the traitors in Washington will do next.

It has become painfully clear that the true terrorists are not hiding in caves in Afghanistan shooting at NATO troops with rusted second-hand assault rifles, but instead wear $5,000 suits and stroll happily through the halls of power in the United States.

The House passed their final version of the NDAA with a massive majority of 283 to 136 and the Senate passed it with a vote of 86 to 13, once again proving that our so-called Representatives do not represent us in any way and in fact are traitorous criminals and enemies of freedom.

No longer do we need to fear our country being attacked by foreign forces hell bent on destroying the American way of life, as these forces can be found calling themselves our "Representatives" while living large on the backs of the American people.

The signing of the NDAA with the detention provisions - that is, sections 1031 and 1032 most importantly - intact represents the final nail in the coffin of our once Constitutional Republic.

I can honestly say that I previously thought that the PATRIOT Act would be the worst legislation I would ever see in my lifetime and quite unfortunately, I was wrong. Dead wrong.

As I said when first covering S.1253, the precursor to S.1867 which the Senate passed with a 93% majority, this legislation makes the PATRIOT Act look like the Bill of Rights, and that is not in any way hyperbolic.

I previously exposed the fact that the claim that Obama would veto the NDAA was wholly without merit, and unfortunately I have been proven right once again when the White House withdrew the veto threat completely.

With the detention provisions intact, and thus the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial on nothing more than suspicion, the NDAA is the most dangerous legislation to come before the President in recent history.

Some have attempted to amend the NDAA to explicitly protect American citizens and lawful permanent residents from being targeted, but to no avail.

This is the most major problem with so many proponents' arguments: if they did not intend to leverage this against the American people, especially dissidents who are standing up to the rampant corruption and pervasive police state measures, why wouldn't they pass such an amendment?

The answer is quite obvious, really. They have every intention of using this against so-called "belligerents" which could be anyone who refuses to bow down to the megalomaniacal ruling class, including people like myself who explicitly reject any and all forms of violence.

When the NDAA is signed by the President - which is all but ironclad at this point - it will only be a short time until the military can begin rounding up American citizens and the FEMA camps could be activated and utilized thanks to KBR's National Quick Response Teams.

Yet there is indeed a silver lining to this nightmarish cloud, although I'm still holding back from jumping for joy at this point.

This last bastion of hope is known as the "Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011" which was proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.

The bill is intended, "To clarify that an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States".

The bill is intended to amend Section 4001 of title 18, United States Code, known as the "Limitation on detention; control of prisons".

The bill would insert the following after subsection (a), "(b)(1) An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, unless an Act of Congress expressly authorizes such detention.

"(2) Paragraph (1) applies to an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority enacted before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2001."

Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, there are still a few glaring problems, the most major of which is that this only applies to American citizens and lawful permanent residents who are apprehended within the United States.

Furthermore, it only protects us so long as an Act of Congress does not expressly authorize such detention.

Given the fact that the Congress has already betrayed us in passing the NDAA, can we really rely on hoping that they wouldn't pass an Act nullifying the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011, if it indeed passes?

I think such a hope would not only be misguided and naïve but indeed ignorant and divorced from the reality which has presented itself to us in the past months.

Moreover, we are relying on what is arguably an equally nonsensical hope: that the Senate - which voted with a massive majority in favor of the NDAA both times - would actually vote for the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011.

I, for one, am not going to hold my breath in hopes that they will come through and do the right thing as they have proven that they are some of the most untrustworthy, despicable individuals all too well as of late.

Another major problem for me is that Feinstein, who unfortunately is one of my so-called Representatives, actually voted for the NDAA as you can see in the Senate's roll call for today's vote.

She also voted in favor of S.1867, the Senate's version of the NDAA. Can we really expect her to pass something that will protect us after actively working against us in such a blatant manner?

I think not, and unless there is a massive change in how our government views the American people I do not expect to see positive events unfold as a result.

However, the future is ours to determine at this point and the situation could unfold in any number of ways.

Either we could see the most hellish police state imaginable with Americans being arrested and detained indefinitely by the military for any reason or no reason at all, or we could see the military step up and honor their oaths and refuse unlawful orders and arrest those who issued them, or we could see a second American revolution.

It is impossible to say which we will see, but I hope that the military will pause and remember their sworn oaths and who the real enemies are.

"We the People" are not the enemies of the Constitution; instead it is those traitors in Washington who would love to see nothing other than all of our most essential liberties stripped away in the name of fighting the fraudulent war on terror.

Hopefully the military would realize this and act accordingly, or else the situation would likely be one in which the vast majority of people in the United States would suffer for an unimaginable length of time.

Editor's Note: People Of the United States, Your government has declared war on you! Every Senator and Congressman that voted for this bill and President Obama MUST be held accountable for this treasonous act of war they have committed against us. Let's make certain they are all removed from office.

-Col. South

Say NO to the Use of the Military against Peaceful Protest in the United States

Will the Military be used against the Occupy Movement?

by Kevin Zeese

Global Research, December 13, 2011

The Congress is rushing through S. 1867, the Defense Authorization Bill. It contains a radical change in law - allowing the use of the military inside the United States, against U.S. citizens and residents, allowing their indefinite military detention based merely on suspicion of being engaged in hostilities against the U.S. This amendment, sponsored by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, was added in the senate after a closed door hearing and has received bi-partisan support on the Senate floor, with very little debate.

At the request of the White House language that exempted American citizens and legal residents from indefinite military detention was removed from the bill passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, as Senator Levin said on the senate floor.

This is a major shift from a country that forbids the use of the military domestically under the Posse Comitatus Act passed in 1878 during the Reconstruction Era. There have been holes in the domestic use of the military primarily in drug enforcement. Indeed, I worked on one case involving Esequiel Hernandez, an 18 year old high school student killed on the Texas-Mexican border by Marines on drug patrol in 1997. The Hernandez killing shows why the U.S. military is the wrong tool for enforcement inside the United States and raises questions for young soldiers ordered to turn their weapons on Americans.

On Friday Occupy Washington, DC on Freedom Plaza had a discussion on the Department of Justice's responsibility to uphold the rule of law when it comes to abuses of the military and CIA regarding human rights abuses like torture and the killing of civilians. During that discussion Ray McGovern, a retired 27 year veteran of the CIA, who provided the morning intelligence briefing to multiple presidents and security advisers, said that he thought the provisions allowing domestic use of the military and military detention were being added because of fear of civil unrest at home.

The Tea Party and Occupy Movement are signs of an American revolt - a revolt against a corrupt government that funnels wealth to the top 1% while leaving Americans economically insecure. When I asked McGovern about this he said he could not see any reason for the domestic use of the military except for the fear of the elites:

"I think it may be fear. They worry that the DC police, Park Police, even Capitol Police will be subverted into seeing that they are really part of the 99%; that when push comes to shove (literally) they cannot be relied upon to carry out mass arrests/imprisonments; that the powers-that-be need to be able to call on the Army, which can be more dependably relied upon to carry out whatever bloody orders may be required at the time."

In fact, there have been examples of police criticizing and not participating in efforts to arrest or remove occupiers. In Albany, NY police refused to arrest occupiers saying they were not causing any trouble. In Baltimore, the police union endorsed the occupy and urged the mayor to let them stay. Retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis went to Zucotti Park to urge police to join the occupiers. When a police commander in New York pepper sprayed arrested women, you can hear another police officer saying on the video tape, "I can't believe he just pepper sprayed her." Oakland police officer Fred Shavies who had gone undercover against the Occupy Movement now says he supports it and knows police are part of the 99%. From the beginning at Freedom Plaza we have described the police as part of the 99%

. Police have mostly treated us with respect; some have even made financial donations to our effort. Those police who abuse their power will create more divides among police and pull more to our side because most know we only seek fairness, justice and participatory democracy.

But, will the military obey orders to shoot Americans or make mass arrests of non-violent civilian protesters? That is an open question. There is dissent in the military as well. United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY told New York City policy, in a widely watched, now iconic video, there is no heroism in attacking unarmed civilians. No doubt many who have volunteered to serve in the military feel the same way as Sgt. Thomas.

The the vague language of the amendment allows the military to be used against protesters. In subsection A of Section 1032 it states that the military can be used against people (including U.S. citizens) that "are substantially supporting, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or (B) have engaged in hostilities or have directly supported hostilities in aid of a nation, organization, or person described in subparagraph (A). The key, vague words are "substantially supporting" "associated forces" "engaged in hostilities" "in aid of a . . . organization or person." There is a lot of flexibility in those words and when they apply - no need for probable cause, a trial, jury verdict or sentencing - just on suspicion you get indefinite military detention.

The military's role in the United States has been growing. In 2002 President Bush established NorthCom, a military command inside the United States based in Colorado with additional bases in Alaska, Florida, Texas, Virginia and the DC area. On October 1, 2008, the 3rd Infantry Division (United States)'s 1st Brigade Combat Team was assigned to U.S. Northern Command, marking the first time an active unit had been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. In 2008 The Pentagon announced plans to deploy 20,000 troops inside the United States, set to be trained by 2011. The change in law in the new Defense Authorization comes at a time of rapidly creeping domestic military expansion.

Could the elites actually see protesters seeking a participatory democracy who challenge concentrated wealth as terrorists? Well, in a December 2, 2011 document issued by City of London police entitled a "Terrorism/extremism Update" given to London businesses, the police defined Occupy London as a terrorist group. In the section on domestic terrorism the Occupy Movement and other critics of capitalism were singled out as terrorists. As the Guardian reported the document said: "As the worldwide Occupy movement shows no sign of abating, it is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism." The document went on to say that police had "received a number of hostile reconnaissance reports concerning individuals who would fit the anti-capitalist profile," and asked businesses to be "vigilant for further sign of occupation activity."

When the Guardian asked the police about the document rather than apologizing, they defended it saying the "City of London police works with the community to deter and detect terrorist activity and crime in the City in a way that has been identified nationally as good practice . . . We've seen crime linked to protests in recent weeks, notably around groups entering office buildings, and with that in mind we continue to brief key trusted partners on activity linked to protests." While the terrorist label has not been applied to U.S. occupiers, the counterterrorism unit of the NYPD has been used at Zucotti Park.

The Occupy Movement is in its infancy, less than three months old, and already it has the elites petrified. As a top Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, told a Republican Governors meeting last week, I'm "scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death." The Tea Party, which has its roots in similar economic insecurity and economic unfairness has for the most part been co-opted by the Republican Party and lost its energy, but the Occupy Movement has resisted co-option by the Democratic Party and its operatives.

The Occupy Movement, despite more than 5,100 arrests and aggressive police actions across the country, is not going anywhere. In fact, it strives to become an even bigger movement and more powerful political force. Plans are being made to bring occupiers from across the country to Washington, DC for an American Spring. If the elites are scared now, what will it be like when this movement grows and matures?

This is all occurring when economic insecurity is getting worse. The economy is not done collapsing, critical resources are getting more limited and hence more expensive, the greed of the elites seems unquenchable, the global economy means that the middle class will have a hard time getting decent paying jobs as more jobs are shipped to less expensive labor markets and the very limited social safety net is under attack while poverty rises. The elites know they are not solving critical problems, are incapable of doing so because of their own corruption and that the political system cannot respond. As economic insecurity gets worse, the economic unfairness becomes more evident resulting in growing anger and action.

It is not that the economic problems are unsolvable. When Occupy Washington, DC held its own Occupied Super Committee hearings and asked experts to put forward evidence-based solutions to the economic mess, they did so. By facing up to the 1% and the military industrial complex, we achieved the super committee's deficit reduction targets in two years, created millions of jobs, forgave student debt, restored the housing market and began to democratize the economy. Knowing solutions exist, but the dysfunctional government cannot implement them will lead to more Americans joining the Occupy Movement.

One of the gravest grievances described in the Declaration of Independence was the misuse of standing armies against the colonialists. Numerous state constitutions declared standing armies a threat to liberty and the U.S. Constitution showed antipathy to militarism. Now, the Congress and President Obama are prepared to turn the military against Americans and allow indefinite military detention without any finding of guilt. If the elites think military force against Americans will quell the revolt of the people they are wrong; it will have the opposite effect and fuel the revolt against the elites.

Wednesday, December 14th is a national day of action against the use of the military in the United States

Demise of the Euro: Part of a Long-term Plan for a Global "Super-currency" controlled by the Banksters

by Adrian Salbuchi

Global Research, December 9, 2011

Efforts by European leaders to shoe-horn a range of diverse countries into a rigid financial cage are doomed to fail. But that's all part of a long-term plan for a global super-currency which can only bring more hardship to ordinary working people.

A question that more and more people are asking nowadays is, "What on Earth were the Europeans thinking when they agreed to have just one currency for all of Europe?"

In Greek mythology, Procrustes was the son of Poseidon, God of the deep blue seas. He built an iron bed of a size that suited him, and then forced everybody who passed by his abode to lie on it. If the passerby was shorter than his bed, then Procrustes would stretch him, breaking bones, tendons and sinews until the victim fitted; if he was taller, then Procrustes would chop off feet and limbs until the victim was the "right" size...

This ancient story of "one size fits all" seems to have made its 21st Century comeback when Europeans were coaxed into imposing upon themselves an oxymoron; a blatant and conceptual contradiction they call "the euro".

This common supranational currency invented by the French and Germans, boycotted by the UK, ignored by the Swiss, managed by the Germans and accepted by the rest of Europe in blissful ignorance, has finally dropped its mask to reveal its ugly face: an impossible mechanism that only serves the elite bankers but not the working people.

It masked gross contradictions as large, far-reaching and varied as the relative sizes, strengths, profiles, styles, histories, econometrics, labor policies, pension plans, industries, and human and natural resources of the 17 Eurozone nations, ranging from Germany and France at one end of the scale, to Greece, Portugal and Ireland at the other.

As we said in a recent article, the euro carries an expiry date; perhaps the eurocrats who were its midwives a decade ago expected that it would live a little longer, maybe even come of age... But they certainly knew that, sooner or later, the euro would die; that it was meant to die.

Because the euro is not an end in itself, but rather a transition, a bridge, an experiment in supranational currency earmarked for replacement by a far more ambitious and powerful global currency issued by a global central bank, controlled by a cabal of global private bankers, obeying a New World Order blueprint emanating from a private Global Power Elite.

The problem today is that what impacted Europe as a financial ripple effect in 2008 has now grown into a veritable financial tsunami threatening to swamp the whole euro system... And more big trouble lies ahead!

In fact, today's euro-troubles are nothing more than one of many variations of sovereignty-troubles. Because when a country's leaders irresponsibly cede a part or all of its sovereignty - whether monetary, political, financial, economic, judicial or military - it had better take a really good look at what it is doing and what the implications are for the medium and long term.

Ceding national sovereignty means that somebody else, somewhere else, will be taking decisions based on other people's interests. Now, as long as everyone's interests coincide, then we are OK. But as soon as the different parties' interests diverge, then you are confronted with a power struggle. And power struggles have one simple thing in common: the more powerful win; the weaker lose.

Now, we have a huge power struggle inside the eurozone. Who do you think will win? Who will impose new policies - Germany or Greece? France or Portugal? Britain or Spain? Germany or Italy?

And that is just on the public scene. You also need to look at the more subtle, less media-highlighted private scene, which is where the real global power decisions are made.

Will the new Italian PM, Mario Monti, cater for the needs of the Italian people or for the mega-bankers' lodge sitting on the powerful Trilateral Commission of which he himself is European chairman? The same question goes for Greek president Lucas Papademos, also a Trilateral member. The same question goes for all the governments of the EU member states where the real power brokers are the major bankers, industrialists and media moguls sitting on the Trilateral, Bilderberg, World Economic Forum and Chatham House think-tanks and private lobbies.

Global elites will do everything to keep the euro on its transitional path towards a global currency that will eventually replace both the euro and the US dollar. This entails engineering the controlled collapse of both currencies, whilst preparing the yellow brick road for a "Global Dollar" or some such new oxymoron.

The US dollar will be easy to collapse: all that is needed is for the mainstream media to yell, "The dollar is hyper-inflated!!" and the Naked Emperor Dollar will fall swiftly. The euro, in turn, will simply break up as its member nations revert to the old days of pesetas, lire, francs, escudos and drachmas...

Is the time ripe for that? Maybe not... yet. So, no doubt we will still see more "emergency treatment," more "financial chemotherapy" to "bail out the euro" just as we've seen them "bail out the banks," even though most banks and the Oxymoron Euro cannot be salvaged but just kept artificially alive, like the "Living Dead..."

So, here's a question for Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Irish, even the French and Germans: will you accept the invitation by your Procrustean Leaders in Brussels to lie down on their bed?

U.S. one bill away from totalitarian rule

December 8, 2011

By Sherwood Ross BlacklistedNews.com

The grim face of totalitarianism is emerging in the National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA) now before Congress.

This bill is the last mile post on America's sad, well-traveled road to the butcher shop of dictatorship. We have been headed that way for some time and, with a little help from Congress, we'll arrive there shortly, putting an ugly end to the American experiment. The Senate December 1st passed the bill by a vote of 93-7.

In the name of "defense," NDAA underwrites $662-billion for continued U.S. aggression in our many foreign wars while, on the domestic front, it incinerates the last surviving shreds of the Bill of Rights. According to the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU), it authorizes presidents "to order the military to pick up and imprison people, including U.S. citizens, without charging them or putting them on trial." (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) So much for Amendment VI to our Constitution that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial."

Just destroying your protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment means the bill's authors Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and John McCain of Arizona don't have to bother with junking anything else. Once you're imprisoned you won't need any other "stinkin' rights."

The ACLU charges the provisions of NDAA "were negotiated by a small group of members of Congress, in secret, and without proper congressional review (and), are inconsistent with fundamental American values embodied in the Constitution....(our) fundamental freedoms are on the line."

A few years back, President Carter denounced the Patriot Act for authorizing federal agents "to search people's homes and businesses secretly, to confiscate property without any deadline or without giving notice that the intrusion had taken place, and to collect without notice personal information on American citizens including their medical histories, books checked out of libraries, and goods they purchase." The NDAA is far worse than that.

According to Noam Chomsky, the arbitrary arrest philosophy in this country dates back to the Bush regime. "The current (Bush) government," he writes in "Imperial Ambitions"(Metropolitan Books, 2005), "has claimed rights that go beyond any precedents, including even the right to arrest citizens, hold them in detention without access to their family or lawyers, and do so indefinitely, without charges."

"What the American People are witnessing now with this new legislation is the further development of an American Police State into a Military Dictatorship, a process that was started by the so-called USA Patriot Act in 2001," says Professor Francis Boyle, the constitutional law authority at the University of Illinois, Champaign.

"If it is enacted into law, America will lose all pretense of having our Military subjected to the control of democratically elected civilian leaders as originally envisioned and required by the Constitution. Our experiment in 1776 will have failed," adds Boyle, author of "Tackling America's Toughest Questions"(Clarity Press.)

President Obama is already exercising his kingly right to rain Hellfire missiles from drone assault planes down on any human being anywhere on the planet without a legal authorization. This is called assassination as it is utterly devoid of any semblance of rudimentary justice. Unfortunately, the president appears to have no qualms about his actions. Will such a man hesitate to arrest Americans on suspicion and imprison them for years, or worse, without trial?

Adds the prescient Paul Craig Roberts, "The (Obama) regime's objection to (the) military detention (provision in NDAA) is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war...(and) detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime's ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas."

Perhaps this is a good time to remind swindled American taxpayers that totalitarianism is what comes of funding a perpetual warfare state that spies on all global communications, builds the greatest military in human history, assassinates foreign leaders, overthrows elected governments, invades small nations based on lies to seize their natural resources, and threatens the world from its 800 military bases.

The NDAA perpetuates all this and now endows the criminal leadership in Congress and the White House with the weapons to turn upon their own.

The only senators with guts to oppose the bill were Democrats Tom Harkin of Iowa; Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon; Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky; and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. As Sen. Paul asked during the debate, "Under the provisions, wouldn't it be possible, then, that an American citizen could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely?"

If you don't call your congressperson today to stop the NDAA, you are not likely to enjoy the blessings of liberty tomorrow. The light in the torch of the Statue of Liberty has already been snuffed out by our illegal foreign wars. The final disgrace will be to imprison the beautiful lady behind the barbed wire of the NDAA.

‘Indefinite Detention' Bill Passes Senate 93-7

Americans completely stripped of all rights under Section 1031

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com

December 2, 2011

The Senate last night codified into law the power of the U.S. military to indefinitely detain an American citizen with no charge, no trial and no oversight whatsoever with the passage of S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act.

One amendment that would have specifically blocked the measures from being used against U.S. citizens was voted down and the final bill was passed 93-7.

Another amendment introduced by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein that attempted to bar the provision from being used on American soil, an effort to ensure "the military won't be roaming our streets looking for suspected terrorists," also failed, although Feinstein voted in favor of the bill anyway.

Feinstein was able to include a largely symbolic amendment which states that "nothing in the bill changes current law relating to the detention of U.S. citizens and legal aliens," but this measure is meaningless according to Republican Congressman Justin Amash, a fierce critic of the bill.

"Some have asserted that Sen. Feinstein's amendment, S Amdt 1456, protects the rights of American citizens and preserves constitutional due process. Unfortunately, it does not. It's just more cleverly worded nonsense," Amash wrote on his Facebook page.

Though the White House has threatened to veto the bill, the fact that Obama administration lawyers yesterday reaffirmed their backing for state sponsored assassination of U.S. citizens would suggest otherwise. Not voting for the bill, or in other words upholding the oath to protect the Constitution, has been described over and over again as "political suicide".

"The bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial," said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

As Spencer Ackerman highlights, the bill completely violates the sixth amendment in that it allows American citizens to be locked up indefinitely, including in a foreign detention center, without any burden of proof whatsoever. An American merely has to be declared a terrorist and they can be abducted off the streets and never seen again.

"The detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn't limited to foreigners. It's confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas' Robert Chesney - a nonpartisan authority on military detention - "U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority," writes Ackerman.

Do not be deceived: S. 1867 is the most dangerous bill since the PATRIOT Act

November 30, 2011

By Maddison Ruppert

Recently I reported on the highly controversial bill S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year of 2012 which was introduced back in June.

This bill was replaced by the one introduced on the 15th of November, S. 1867. Today Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Senator John McCain of Arizona faced off on the floor of the Senate over a proposed amendment to S. 1867.

The minimal coverage this bill is getting in the corporate-controlled establishment media, especially when it comes to the massive danger it poses to everything America was built upon, is nothing short of deplorable.

This amendment would, according to Senator Paul, put "every single American citizen at risk." Paul rightly pointed out that if the amendment were to pass, "the terrorists have won."

I couldn't agree more and this is the major fact that McCain and far too many others in Washington seem to miss. Or, equally likely, McCain and others are well aware of the erosion of civil liberties and have no interest in stopping it.

After all, it isn't the sycophantic corrupt politicians in Washington that have to endure being groped by TSA goons or surreptitiously blasted with X-Rays by a passing DHS van; it is the everyday Americans like you and me that are subjected to such absurd "counterterrorism" measures.

John McCain is a man who revels in death and suffering in true sociopathic style: joking about bombing Iran, calling for military operations in Syria, and supporting the murderous and thoroughly racist al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels.

McCain is the epitome of Washington doublethink: in Libya, al Qaeda is good. Yet, al Qaeda is still the biggest threat to humanity, so much so that it justifies turning the entire world into a theater of war in which all rights are suspended in the name of the war on terror?

Senator Paul argued against the amendment to S. 1867 that McCain co-sponsored by saying, "Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well then the terrorists have won. [D]etaining American citizens without a court trial is not American."

Unfortunately, the PATRIOT Act has already removed "some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism," but there are very few politicians who will put their careers on their line in saying this fact.

McCain quickly attempted to defend the amendment he's been peddling on the Senate floor by saying, "Facts are stubborn things. If the senator from Kentucky wants to have a situation prevail where people who are released go back in to the fight to kill Americans, he is entitled to his opinion."

This is the typical, "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists," fallacious logic employed by those in Washington who will take every opportunity to exploit the non-threat of terrorism as a method of control and erosion of civil liberties.

McCain, who is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a member of the camp of individuals who either lie on a regular basis while knowing the facts or are so deluded and removed from reality that they actually fear the al Qaeda boogeyman.

Senator McCain, just like the non-profit groups that are directly linked to the Department of Homeland Security, promotes a fear of terrorism that is completely at odds with the facts, using this climate of fear and paranoia to justify otherwise unacceptable legislation like S. 1867 and the PATRIOT Act.

McCain's proposed amendment would allow the executive branch, which has already murdered American citizens abroad without so much as a single charge, to have power over if a suspect was put through the civilian court system or through the military tribunal system.

Military tribunals are the complete antithesis of the civilian justice system and putting American citizens through such a system would signal the death of everything the American justice system was built upon.

The most dangerous aspect of S. 1867 is not only that it could subject American citizens to military tribunals and detention, but also that individuals could be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial.

Even if this was not used on American citizens, it represents a deplorable move that would only make the rest of the world hate us that much more, knowing that it is explicitly allowed for the American government to snatch up people and detain them forever without charge or trial.

If any other government were to even consider engaging in such behavior, people like Hillary Clinton who laughably claim to support human rights, would likely decry such moves.

Yet, the nonsensical logic of American exceptionalism makes people like McCain think that America has the right to operate outside of the rule of law (not to mention common decency and respect for other human beings) at home and abroad, so long as it is supposedly to combat terrorism.

Senator Paul countered McCain's absurd assertion by saying, "I don't think it necessarily follows I am arguing of the release of prisoners. I am simply arguing that particularly American citizens should not be sent to a foreign prison without due process."

It amazes me that any such thing would have to even be argued. The Constitution is supposed to protect us from such egregious breaches of our inalienable rights and our so-called representatives take an oath to protect the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic.

It is now clear that the true enemies of the Constitution, the ones that truly put our liberties in danger, are domestic.

They wear expensive suits and happily stroll through the halls of power in Washington, seemingly confident that they will not be treated as the traitorous criminals that they are.

McCain is one of these traitors who are launching an all-out assault on our way of life and our civil rights, S. 1867 is just the most recent, and most virulent, manifestation of this.

"An individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat," McCain said in defense of his attack on our rights.

"We need to take every stop necessary to prevent that from happening, that's for the safety and security of the men and women who are out there risking their lives ... in our armed services," McCain added.

The real people who put the men and women in our armed services at risk are warmongers like McCain who happily put Americans in the line of fire in order to keep their war profiteering cronies satisfied.

44 Republican Senators and 15 Democrats along with one Independent voted to keep the new detainee provisions in the NDAA, with Senator Paul and Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois being among the few Republicans who broke party ranks and sided with a majority of Democrats who voted to block the new provisions.

Paul argued, "If these provisions pass, we could see American citizens being sent to Guantanamo Bay," while Republican Senator Lindsey Graham countered, "To be clear: These provisions do not apply to U.S. citizens."

Did that stop the American government from murdering a citizen of the United States in Yemen in a drone attack?

No, in fact, the National Security Council's secret death panel makes these decisions outside of all legislation and accountability, so Graham's claim that it wouldn't apply to American citizens is hollow, at best.

A couple of days ago Glenn Greenwald, a journalist for Salon and a former Constitutional and civil rights lawyer tweeted a very similar sentiment:

"With very few exceptions, the McCain-Levin bill, awful though it is, doesn't create any powers beyond what the O[bama] Admin[istration] thinks it now has."

The problem is that this bill would make it explicitly legal for the United States to conduct the horrific operations they have already been carrying out.

If this were to pass, there would be absolutely nothing standing in the way of the government rounding up dissidents who they could easily label terrorists or individuals planning/supporting terrorism (given the absurdly broad definition used).

They could then imprison them without charge or trial for however long they please, and if they have their way, they would be able to openly torture them, not just the torture deceptively labeled "enhanced interrogation" but torture that can go by no other name.

Of course, that is not to diminish the fact that the tactics now employed by the CIA and others are indeed torture. Just ask people like conservative radio host Mancow who was waterboarded and came to the conclusion that it is indeed torture after having held the complete opposite opinion previously.

Or if that isn't enough proof, take the Vanity Fair article written by Christopher Hitchens in which he describes his experience being waterboarded which brought him to the exact same conclusion: waterboarding is torture.

Even Bahrain ostensibly has more democratic accountability for torture, although I think we all know that is about as legitimate as calling waterboarding "enhanced interrogation."

McCain laughably claimed that the changes would "help defend our nation against the threat posed by al Qaeda while upholding our values and honoring our Constitution."

This is especially hilarious given that McCain said that the al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels "inspired the world" in carrying out their bloody revolution.

Does McCain actually believe that he has the power to pick and choose when individuals and groups directly linked to al Qaeda are good or bad?

How can they actually reconcile such absurdist moral relativism? Personally, I don't think that McCain can actually believe the things he says unless he has actually been able to eliminate every bit of sense and logic that is innate in human beings.

To the many people commenting and emailing me claiming that this is overblown and it will not apply to American citizens, you might want to listen to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's own words on the Senate floor.

"In summary here, [section] 1032, the military custody provision, which has waivers and a lot of flexibility doesn't apply to American citizens. [Section] 1031, the statement of authority to detain does apply to American citizens, and it designates the world as the battlefield including the homeland," Graham said.

Is there really anything even remotely unclear here? Our government is making the final strides towards turning the brutal military apparatus that has slaughtered so many people abroad in the name of "freedom" back to our own people.

What we are witnessing now is truly historic, the American government is trying to explicitly codify the ability to detain Americans without trial or charge in a military facility under military rule with military tribunals.

While I argue that we already live in a police state, based on the citizen spying programs, ludicrous amounts of domestic surveillance, collection and storage of massive amounts of biometric information, and the Department of Homeland Security's invisible surveillance state (just to mention a few) the passage of this bill would bring about a new dangerous paradigm in America.

Even if it was sold as something that wouldn't apply to American citizens, like the PATRIOT Act was sold as a counterterrorism bill, it would undoubtedly be used against us regardless of these claims, just as the PATRIOT Act has been utilized in cases wholly unrelated to terrorism.

Even the officials from the Department of Justice readily admit that the PATRIOT Act is being used against non-terrorist American citizens.

As you will see in the above video, they admit that the PATRIOT Act is used in cases completely unrelated to terrorism.

Is anyone really naïve enough to believe that the government will actually restrict the usage of S. 1867 to terrorists and not Americans who stand up to their corrupt, out of control, and wholly illegitimate criminal government?

To make matters even worse, the usage of drones in the United States is being considered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the FAA plans to propose new rules this coming January, which would give free license to police departments and other domestic agencies to use them in the United States.

Yet, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have been used by law enforcement in the United States for some time now.

In fact, The Washington Post reported on the usage of aerial drones domestically in January of this year along with Homeland Security News Wire.

Currently, law enforcement agencies supposedly have to seek out emergency authorization from the FAA to use drones, which, according to The Washington Post is "only occasionally" granted.

The new FAA regulations coupled with turning the United States into a battlefield in which all Americans could be enemy combatants is dangerous, to say the least.

Given the fact that our current administration under the traitorous warmonger Barack Obama has no problem killing children with drones abroad, do we really think that they wouldn't conduct such operations at home?

To an administration that commits extrajudicial executions of American citizens - and their 16-year-old child who was born in Denver, Colorado - is anything off the table?

The unfortunate and thoroughly disturbing reality is that our government has no problem carrying out such operations and S. 1867 would just make it that much easier by codifying it and creating an explicit legal apparatus through which they can operate.

I highly recommend that you explore at least some of the 344 proposed amendments for S. 1867 in the Library of Congress' Thomas system which can be found here.

You can track all of the updates on the act with the amendments organized by date on this Library of Congress page.

As you can tell, the 28th was by far the busiest day so far in the life of S. 1867 with over 100 amendments considered in that single day, although this very well might be beat in coming days when our so-called representatives continue to debate turning the United States into a giant battlefield.

UPDATE: If the ridiculous assault on our inalienable rights embodied by S. 1867 wasn't enough, the Senate is also considering repealing the anti-torture measures currently in place (lax though they may be).

This flies in the face of the fact that torture does not provide actionable intelligence or anything even remotely reliable unless you're looking for a false confession to anything from terrorism to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

This bill must be stopped if we want to preserve anything that America is supposed to stand for. The PATRIOT Act was a crippling blow to the Constitution but S. 1867 would be the death of every last bastion of hope and freedom that was left after the vicious attacks on our civil liberties that have brought us to this point.

Senate Rejects Effort To Strip Detainee Provision In Defense Authorization Bill

Tuesday, 29 November 2011

Huffington Post

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Tuesday rejected an effort to strip divisive provisions from a defense bill that deal with the capture and handling of suspected terrorists, setting up a showdown with the White House.

The resounding 61-37 vote sent a strong message to the Obama administration, which has threatened a veto of the bill over the requirement of military custody for captured terror suspects and limitations on the ability to transfer detainees from the naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The clash underscores the ongoing dispute between the executive branch and some in Congress over whether to treat suspected terrorists as prisoners of war or criminals.

It also exposed deep divisions within Senate Democratic ranks.

"The provisions would dramatically change broad counterterrorism efforts by requiring law enforcement officials to step aside and ask the Department of Defense to take on a new role they are not fully equipped for and do not want," said Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who added that the legislation would make the military "police, judge and jailer."

His amendment would have taken out the sections on detainees and instead called for congressional hearings with Pentagon and administration officials on the issue.

Defending the provisions, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin argued that they contain a national security waiver for the administration. The issue has pitted Levin against other senior Democratic senators, including the chairmen of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

"Should somebody when it's been determined ... to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? And the answer is yes," said Levin, D-Mich.

The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States.

"We're fighting a war, not a crime," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller have spelled out their opposition in letters to lawmakers. Mueller said Monday that because the legislation applies to people detained in the United States, it could disrupt ongoing international terrorism investigations and make it difficult for the FBI to work with a grand jury or obtain subpoenas.

Mueller also described the waiver as too cumbersome, requiring that it be obtained from the defense secretary in consultation with the secretary of state and the director of National Intelligence with a certification to Congress.

The vote came shortly after the weekly Republican and Democratic policy luncheons. A guest at the Republican session was former Vice President Dick Cheney, an advocate for harsh interrogation tactics against suspected U.S. enemies during his two terms in office. Republicans said he was a guest and did not make remarks at the session despite an intense discussion within GOP ranks about the detainee provisions.

The sweeping defense bill would authorize $662 billion for military personnel, weapons systems, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and national security programs in the Energy Department. Reflecting a period of austerity and deficit-driven cuts in military spending, the bill is $27 billion less than what Obama requested for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 of this year. The Senate hopes to complete the legislation by week's end.

30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison

November 29, 2011

By Michael Snyder BlacklistedNews

If you live in the United States of America, you live in a giant prison where liberty and freedom are slowly being strangled to death. In this country, the control freaks that run things are obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that we do. Nothing is private anymore. Everything that you do on the Internet is being monitored. All of your phone calls are being monitored. In fact, if law enforcement authorities suspect that you have done something wrong, they will use your cell phone microphone to listen to you even when you think your cell phone is turned off. In many areas of the country, when you get into your car automated license plate readers track you wherever you go, and in many major cities when you are walking on the streets a vast network of security cameras and "smart street lights" are constantly watching you and listening to whatever you say. The TSA is setting up "internal checkpoints" all over the nation, Homeland Security is encouraging all of us to report any "suspicious activity" that our neighbors are involved in and the federal government is rapidly developing "pre-crime" technology that will flag us as "potential terrorists" if we display any signs of nervousness. If you are flagged as a "potential terrorist", the U.S. military can arrest you and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything. Yes, the United States of America is rapidly being turned into a "Big Brother" prison grid, and most Americans are happily going along with it.

The sad thing is that this used to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

So what in the world happened?

A fundamental shift in our culture has taken place. The American people have eagerly given up huge chunks of liberty and freedom in exchange for vague promises of increased security.

Our country is now run by total control freaks and paranoia has become standard operating procedure.

We were told that the terrorists hate our liberties and our freedoms, and that we needed to fight the terrorists so that we could keep our liberties and our freedoms.

But instead, the government keeps taking away all of our liberties and our freedoms.

How in the world does that make any sense?

Have the terrorists won?

As a country, we have moved so far in the direction of communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany that it is almost impossible to believe.

Yes, turning the United States of America into a giant prison may make us all slightly safer, but what kind of life is this?

Do we want to be dead while we are still alive?

Is this the price that we want to pay in order to feel slightly safer?

Where are the millions of Americans that still yearn to breathe free air?

America is supposed to be a land teeming with people thirsting for independence. For example, "Live Free or Die" is supposedly the official motto of the state of New Hampshire.

But instead, the motto of most Americans seems to be "live scared and die cowering".

We don't have to live like this.

Yes, bad things are always going to happen. No amount of security is ever going to be able to keep us 100% safe.

We need to remember that a very high price was paid for our liberty and we should not give it up so easily.

As one very famous American once said, when we give up liberty for security we deserve neither.

The following are 30 signs that the United States of America is being turned into a giant prison....

#1 A new bill that is going through the U.S. Senate would allow the U.S. military to arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without trial. This new law was recently discussed in an article posted on the website of the New American....

In what may be a tale too bizarre to be believed by millions of Americans, the U.S. Senate appears ready to pass a bill that will designate the entire earth, including the United States and its territories, one all-encompassing "battlefield" in the global "war on terror" and authorize the detention of Americans suspected of terrorist ties indefinitely and without trial or even charges being filed that would necessitate a trial.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is a big supporter of the bill, and he says that it would "basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield".

According to the PPJ Gazette, the following are three things that this new law would do....

1) Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;

(2) Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and

(3) Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.

#2 U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman is asking Google to install a "terrorist button" on all Blogger.com blogs so that readers can easily flag "terrorist content" for authorities.

#3 Most Americans have no idea how sophisticated the "Big Brother" prison grid has become. For example, in Washington D.C. the movements of every single car are tracked using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The following comes from a recent Washington Post article....

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

#4 In some American schools, RFID chips are now being used to monitor the attendance and movements of children while they are at school. The following is how one article recently described a program that has just been instituted at a preschool in California....

Upon arriving in the morning, according to the Associated Press, each student at the CCC-George Miller preschool will don a jersey with a stitched in RFID chip. As the kids go about the business of learning, sensors in the school will record their movements, collecting attendance for both classes and meals. Officials from the school have claimed they're only recording information they're required to provide while receiving federal funds for their Headstart program.

#5 Increasingly, incidents of misbehavior at many U.S. schools are being treated as very serious crimes. For example, when a little girl kissed a little boy at one Florida elementary school recently, it was considered to be a "possible sex crime" and the police were called out.

#6 But what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California earlier this year was even worse....

Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

#7 In the United States today, police are trained to respond to even the smallest crimes with extreme physical force. For example, one grandfather in Arizona was recently filmed laying unconscious in a pool of his own blood after police rammed his head into the flood inside a Wal-Mart on Black Friday night. It was thought that he was shoplifting, but it turns out that he says that he was just trying to tuck a video game away so other crazed shoppers would not grab it out of his hands.

#8 Did you know that the government actually sets up fake cell phone towers that can intercept your cell phone calls? The following is how a recent Wired articledescribed these "stingrays"....

You make a call on your cellphone thinking the only thing standing between you and the recipient of your call is your carrier's cellphone tower. In fact, that tower your phone is connecting to just might be a boobytrap set up by law enforcement to ensnare your phone signals and maybe even the content of your calls.

So-called stingrays are one of the new high-tech tools that authorities are using to track and identify you. The devices, about the size of a suitcase, spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower.

The government maintains that the stingrays don't violate Fourth Amendment rights, since Americans don't have a legitimate expectation of privacy for data sent from their mobile phones and other wireless devices to a cell tower.

#9 U.S. border agents are allowed by law to search any laptop being brought into the United States without even needing any reason to do so.

#10 In the United States of America, everyone is a "potential terrorist". According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, "homegrown terrorists" represent as big a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.

#11 Most Americans are not that concerned about the Patriot Act, but that might change if they understood that the federal government has a "secret interpretation" of what the Patriot Act really means. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden says that the U.S. government interprets the Patriot Act much more "broadly" than the general public does....

"We're getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says."

#12 The FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....

If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.

The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.

The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.

#13 The federal government has decided that what you and I share with one another on Facebook and on Twitter could be a threat to national security. According to a recent Associated Press article, the Department of Homeland Security will soon be "gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes".

#14 What you say on your cell phone is never private. The truth is that that the FBI can demand to see your cell phone data whenever it wants. In addition, according to CNET News the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your cell phone and listen to whatever you are saying....

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

#15 In some areas of the country, law enforcement authorities are pulling data out of cell phones for no reason whatsoever. According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are now using "extraction devices" to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over. This is taking place even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.

The following is how a recent article on CNET News described the capabilities of these "extraction devices"....

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

#16 The federal government has become so paranoid that they have been putting GPS tracking devices on the vehicles of thousands of people that have not even been charged with committing any crimes. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Wired magazine article about this issue....

The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man's girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.

Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.

The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.

The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with "great frequency,"and GPS retailers have told Wired that they've sold thousands of the devices to the feds.

#17 New high-tech street lights that are being funded by the federal government and that are being installed all over the nation can also be used as surveillance cameras, can be used by the DHS to make "security announcements" and can even be used to record personal conversations. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com....

Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making "security announcements" and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of "recording conversations," bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets' to a whole new level.

#18 If you choose to protest in the streets of America today, there is a good chance that you will be brutalized. All over the United States law enforcement authorities have been spraying pepper spray directly into the faces of unarmed protesters in recent weeks.

#19 In many areas of the United States today, you will be arrested if you do not produce proper identification for the police. In the old days, "your papers please" was a phrase that was used to use to mock the tyranny of Nazi Germany. But now all of us are being required to be able to produce "our papers" for law enforcement authorities at any time. For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.

#20 According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate "in monthly anti-terrorism drills". The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends....

Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.

So who in the world ever decided that it would be a good idea for 1st grade students to endure "lockdown" and "active shooter" drills?

To get an idea of what these kinds of drills are like, just check out this video.

#21 With all of the other problems that we are having all over the nation, you would think that authorities would not be too concerned about little kids that are trying to sell cups of lemonade. But sadly, over the past year police have been sent in to shut down lemonade stands run by children all over the United States.

#22 The federal government has decided to invest a significant amount of time, money and energy raiding organic farms. The following example comes from Natural News....

It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special "farm to fork" picnic dinner put on for guests - and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasture-based meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach.

#23 It is an absolute disgrace that all of us (including grandmothers and young children) must either go through body scanners that reveal the intimate details of our naked bodies or endure "enhanced pat-downs" during which our genitals will be touched before we are allowed to get on an airplane.

It is also an absolute disgrace that the American people are putting up with this.

#24 Invasive TSA security techniques are not just for airports anymore. Now, TSA "VIPR teams" are actively conducting random inspections at bus stations and on interstate highways all over the United States. For example, the following comes from a local news report down in Tennessee....

You're probably used to seeing TSA's signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

TSA "VIPR teams" now conduct approximately 8,000 "unannounced security screenings" a year at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.

#25 More than a million hotel television sets all over America are now broadcasting propaganda messages from the Department of Homeland Security promoting the "See Something, Say Something" campaign. In essence, the federal government wants all of us to become "informants" and to start spying on one another constantly. The following comes from an article posted by USA Today....

Starting today, the welcome screens on 1.2 million hotel television sets in Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotels in the USA will show a short public service announcement from DHS. The 15-second spot encourages viewers to be vigilant and call law enforcement if they witness something suspicious during their travels.

#26 Certain "types" of American citizens are being labeled as potential threats in official U.S. government documents. An unclassified Department of Homeland Security report published a couple years ago entitled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" claims that a belief in Bible prophecy "could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition and weapons." The report goes on to state that such people are potentially dangerous.

#27 Back on February 20, 2009, the State of Missouri issued a report entitled "MIAC Strategic Report: The Modern Militia Movement". That report warned that the following types of people may be potential terrorists....

*anti-abortion activists

*those that are against illegal immigration

*those that consider "the New World Order" to be a threat

*those that have a negative view of the United Nations

#28 As I have written about previously, a very disturbing document that Oath Keepers has obtained shows that the FBI is now instructing store owners to report many new forms of "suspicious activity" to them. According to the document, "suspicious activity" now includes the following....

*paying with cash

*missing a hand or fingers

*"strange odors"

*making "extreme religious statements"

*"radical theology"

*purchasing weatherproofed ammunition or match containers

*purchasing meals ready to eat

*purchasing night vision devices, night flashlights or gas masks

Do any of those "signs of suspicious activity" apply to you?

#29 Soon you may get labeled as a "potential terrorist" if you are just feeling a little nervous. A new "pre-crime" technology system that is currently being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will soon be in use all over the nation. It is called "Future Attribute Screening Technology" (FAST), and it is very frightening. The following description of this new program comes from an articlein the London Telegraph....

Using cameras and sensors the "pre-crime" system measures and tracks changes in a person's body movements, the pitch of their voice and the rhythm of their speech.

It also monitors breathing patterns, eye movements, blink rate and alterations in body heat, which are used to assess an individual's likelihood to commit a crime.

The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) programme is already being tested on a group of government employees who volunteered to act as guinea pigs.

#30 The truth is that nobody puts more people into prison than America does. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and thelargest total prison population on the entire globe.

To read about some of the crazy things that the control freaks running things have planned for the future, just check out this article by Natural News: "10 outlandish things the ‘scientific' controllers have in mind for you in the near future".

Once again, despite all of this outrageous "security", it is inevitable that a lot of really bad things are going to happen in the United States in the years ahead.

When there are incidents of violence, it is also inevitable that there will be calls for even more "Big Brother" security measures.

We are going to be caught in a never ending spiral of tyranny where the "solution" is always even tighter security.

Eventually, we will have lost all of our liberties and freedoms, and we will probably be even less safe than we are today.

Do not be deceived. We could put a soldier on every corner, a video camera in every room of every home and an RFID chip in every citizen but that would not make us "safe".

Every single lawmaker that is backing these laws which strip our liberties and freedoms away deserves to be voted out of office.

If you love the United States of America, please stand up and say something while you still can.

Please use this article and other articles like it as tools. Share them with your friends and your family. If we can get enough people to wake up, perhaps there is still enough time to turn the direction of this country around.

Will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be mentioned in the same breath as communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany, or will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be the greatest chapters of all?

The choice, America, is up to you.

Neocons Planned Regime Change Throughout the Middle East and North Africa 20 Years Ago

WashingtonsBlog

Monday, November 28, 2011

I've repeatedly documented that the Neocons planned regime change in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria and a host of other countries right after 9/11 ... if not before.

And that Obama is implementing these same plans - just with a "kindler, gentler" face.

Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11:

General Wesley Clark ... said the aim of this plot [to "destroy the governments in ...Iraq, ... Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran"] was this: "They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control." He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz - back in 1991 - in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: "But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region - in the Middle East - and the Soviets won't stop us. And we've got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes - Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq - before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz's desires because, as Clark put it: "the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It's not to deter conflicts?"

[I]n the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya ... with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six - count ‘em: six - different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it's worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam's rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz ... put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions:

As far as I can tell, there's barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars.

The neocon end as Clark reported them - regime change in those seven countries - seems as vibrant as ever. It's just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with regard to those precise countries.

Note: The so-called "war on terror" has also weakened our national security and created many more terrorists than it has killed, imprisoned or otherwise stopped. It is also destroying our economy.

Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial

NDAA detention provision would turn America into a "battlefield"

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Senate is set to vote on a bill next week that would define the whole of the United States as a "battlefield" and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.

"The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president-and every future president - the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself," writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial' provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor Monday, the legislation will "basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

"I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect," Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a speech last week. One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil. Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved."

This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash, and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.

"American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?" asks Anders.

The ACLU is urging citizens to call their Senator and demand that the Udall Amendment be added to the bill, a change that would at least act as a check to prevent Americans being snatched off the streets without some form of Congressional oversight.

We have been warning for over a decade that Americans would become the target of laws supposedly aimed at terrorists and enemy combatants. Alex Jones personally documented how U.S. troops were being trained to arrest U.S. citizens in the event of martial law during urban warfare training drills back in the 90′s. Under the the National Defense Authorization Act bill, no declaration of martial law is necessary since Americans would now be subject to the same treatment as suspected insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you thought that the executive assassination of American citizens abroad was bad enough, now similar powers will be extended to the "homeland," in other words, your town, your community, your back yard.

Occupy The Fed Kicks Off Tuesday November 22

Col. South www.riotusa.org

11-21-2011

The people have taken back the movement from the provacateures that started it and we have made it our own. We have transformed into Occupy The Fed and come up with our own list of demands. It will be held in 14 cities that have a Federal Reserve branch and we are working in solidarity with the our local Occupy movements. This is the defining moment and movement of our time. The cities participating are Houston, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington DC.

More info on our movemsnt below:

OccupyTheFED

This is in solidarity with the #OccupyWallSt, and #OccupyDc, #oct6th Movements as well as Occupations beginning around the world!!!

Our initial demands include:

Immediate passage of the following:

H.R. 2768 (Cancelation of Public Debt to Federal Reserve)
H.R. 1496 (Federal Reserve Transparancy Act)
H.R. 1095 (Freedom to Bank Act)
H.R. 1094 (Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act)
H.R. 459 (Federal Reserve Transparancy)
S 202 (Senate Federal Reserve Transpanancy Act)
H.R. 1098 (Free Competition in Currency Act)
Immediate resignation of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

A timely & specific end date, set by Congress to end the Federal Reserve System

There is very much a possibility of an economic collapse due in majority to the actions of the Federal Reserve. However, we encourage all Americans to be prepared at all times by storing food, water, gold, silver, seeds etc. and by taking action now to end the Federal Reserve system by joining or supporting an occupation at your nearest Federal Reserve building.

This is about peaceful and non-violent resistance. We are calling for the blockade of entrances to the Federal Reserve offices by occupation. Remain peaceful, read from the constitution, meditate, lay down, etc!!!

"Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine." - Henry David Thoreau

This is an information war, and FREE THINKERS are Dangerous. LIVE FREE. THINK FREE.

We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.

Congress Prepares to Censor the Internet

November 16, 2011

By Nathaniel Botwinick

The House of Representatives is currently considering the bill "Stop Online Piracy Act," (SOPA) which would infringe upon the freedom we currently enjoy on the Internet.

SOPA is so controversial - EFF calls it "disastrous" - because it would force changes to the Domain Name System and effectively create a blacklist of Internet domains suspected of intellectual property violations

Those against SOPA include Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and hundreds of Internet start-up companies. Those opposed to the bill have described it in dark terms:

SOPA is an "Internet blacklist bill" that "would allow corporations, organizations, or the government to order an internet service provider to block an entire website simply due to an allegation that the site posted infringing content."

The House is also attempting to silence criticism of the bill by presenting a skewed hearing:

Rep. Lofgren from California said during this morning's hearing that it was a mistake for SOPA's backers to dismiss criticism from people and companies who would be affected by it.

"It hasn't generally been the policy of this committee to dismiss the views of the industries that we're going to regulate," Lofgren said. "I understand why cosponsors of this legislation aren't happy about widespread criticism of this bill," but attacking the messenger isn't the answer.

Lofgren also accused Smith, the panel's chairman, of deliberately stacking the composition of the panel in favor of SOPA. Of the six witnesses invited, "five are in favor and one is against," she said. "That's not a balanced panel

JP Morgan Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD On Eve Of Protests

October 18th, 2011 GREANVILLEPOST

by Jacob Sloan

Wondering how much it costs to buy off the police department? JP Morgan Chase just gave the New York City Police Foundation the largest donation in its history. How the police show their gratitude will presumably determine whether they receive similar donations from companies in the future. Via Naked Capitalism:

No matter how you look at this development, it does not smell right. From JP Morgan's website, hat tip Lisa Epstein:

JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD's main data center.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing "profound gratitude" for the company's donation.

"These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe," Dimon said. "We're incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work."

Now readers can point out that this gift is bupkis relative to the budget of the police department, which is close to $4 billion. But looking at it on a mathematical basis likely misses the incentives at work. Dimon is one of the most powerful and connected corporate leaders in Gotham City. If he thinks the police donation was worthwhile, he might encourage other bank and big company CEOs to make large donations.

And what sort of benefits might JPM get? The police might be extra protective of your interests. Today, OccupyWallStreet decided to march across the Brooklyn Bridge (a proud New York tradition) to Chase Manhattan Plaza in Brooklyn. Reports in the media indicate that the police at first seemed to be encouraging the protestors not only to cross the bridge, but were walking in front of the crowd, seemingly escorting them across. Over 700 of the marchers were arrested, and the media has a rather amusing "he said, she said" account, with OccupyWallStreet claiming entrapment and the cops batting their baby blues and trying to look innocent.

We simply don't know whether the police would have behaved one iota differently in the absence of the JP Morgan donation. But it raises the troubling perspective that they might have.

Homeland Security Coordinated 18-City Police Crackdown on Occupy Protest

November 16, 2011

Source: Washington's Blog

National Coordination Goes Against Protection of Local Accountability

According to Oakland Mayor Jean said that 18 cities coordinated police crack downs on Occupy protests.

Wonkette reports that Homeland Security likely organized the crack downs:

Remember when people were freaking out over the Patriot Act and Homeland Security and all this other conveniently ready-to-go post-9/11 police state stuff, because it would obviously be just a matter of time before the whole apparatus was turned against non-Muslim Americans when they started getting complain-y about the social injustice and economic injustice and income inequality and endless recession and permanent unemployment? That day is now, and has been for some time. But it's also now confirmedthat it's now, as some Justice Department official screwed up and admitted that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated the riot-cop raids on a dozen major #Occupy Wall Street demonstration camps nationwide yesterday and today. (Oh, and tonight, too: Seattle is being busted up by the riot cops right now, so be careful out there.)

Rick Ellis of the Minneapolis edition of Examiner.com has this, based on a "background conversation" he had with a Justice Department official on Monday night:

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict "Occupy" protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night's move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

(And for those who are understandably doubtful about Examiner.com as a news source,here's an AP story from a couple hours ago that verifies everything except the specific mention of DHS coordination.)

Yves Smith notes:

The 18 police action was a national, coordinated effort. This is a more serious development that one might imagine. Reader Richard Kline has pointed out that one of the de facto protections of American freedoms is that policing is local, accountable to elected officials at a level of government where voters matter. National coordination vitiates the notion that policing is responsive to and accountable to the governed.

FOIA lawsuit reveals FBI collecting biometric information for massive interagency database

November 11, 2011 By Madison Ruppert

BlacklistedNews.com

Big Brother is on the march in the United States and as I have previously shown, once one delves into the depths of this system it is nothing short of astounding to the point where Orwell wouldn't even believe it was possible.

Previously my articles have focused mostly on the Department of Homeland Security's role in this and how their programs are criminalizing Americans who have done absolutely nothing wrong while eroding our freedoms and liberties to a dangerous degree.

However, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights along with the National Day Labor Organizing Network and the Benjamin Cardozo Immigrant Justice Clinic, it has now emerged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an equally large player in the high-tech police state in which we find ourselves.

An article by Sunita Patel and Scott Paltrowitz on CommonDreams points out, "Big Brother is already upon us." This is a point that I attempt to make at every possible juncture as it is crucial for Americans to realize that an Orwellian high-tech police state is not something on the distant horizon but something in which we already live.

The documents obtained reveal that the FBI "views massive biometric information collection as a goal in itself" as a part of the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system.

The NGI system aims to collect fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, identifying marks, scars, tattoos, facial characteristics and voice recognition.

These are not necessarily collected from arrested suspects but also from mobile biometric scanning devices and fingerprints left anywhere and everywhere.

This biometric information can then be used in conjunction with facial recognition technology and threat assessment algorithms that can be deployed in an airport or even on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), better known as a drone.

These drones can then track you, record your movements, who you meet with, and just about anything else. Tie this in with the Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) being tested by the Department of Homeland Security and you have a record of not only incredibly detailed biometric information but also social habits, daily schedules, etc.

All of this can be conducted without the subject's knowledge or consent which makes this technology even more powerful as intelligence agencies can conduct surveillance on many individuals without any need to worry about being detected.

The most important aspect for anyone to grasp about these issues is that all of this technology can easily be tied together and collected in a centralized database in which astounding amounts of information from a variety of sources can be collated and analyzed.

The highly personal information stored in the NGI system is already accessible by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, U.S. Coast Guard, and through the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division (CJIS) more than 75 potential foreign nations.

The CJIS has already carried out a test on latent finger and palm prints in which they collected more than one million palm prints from crime scenes or literally any other location in which palm prints could be recovered.

They have also scheduled a pilot program for iris scanning and developed plans for deployment of biometric collection equipment across the nation to collect scars, marks, tattoos and facial measurements for facial recognition.

The NGI program will utilize so-called "FBI Mobile," a type of technology first deployed by the military in warzones that is used to collect biometric information in the field without even having to arrest the subject.

The precursor to the NGI program was called Secure Communities (S-Comm) which was launched in 2008.

S-Comm links the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) databases with the FBI's criminal database.

With this system, any time a local, state, or tribal law enforcement officer carries out a routine criminal background check, the subject of the background check's information is transferred to the DHS database.

S-Comm was implemented in a highly deceptive manner, at first offering an opt out policy which would allow local agencies to opt out of receiving information while still requiring to send all information. Later, the FBI decided that S-Comm participation was mandatory, while waiting to disclose this fact to states and the public.

Furthermore, the FBI and DHS have both prevented states and local agencies from imposing limits on how the FBI uses the data they gather.

In a somewhat disturbing statement, senior ICE official Gary Mead told local advocates at a New York debate that governors did not have the right to restrict information sharing because letting the FBI share the information is the "price of admission" for joining "the FBI club."

In a fact sheet published on the NGI and S-Comm, the following disturbing fact is highlighted: "Many details about the scope, impact and process of the NGI and the legal basis for the FBI's policies are still unknown and have not been scrutinized by the media or the public."

It also reveals that one of the major driving forces, like most of the government's actions, is profit. Specifically, a billion dollar contract with Lockheed Martin issued in 2008 to work on the NGI with the FBI.

This is the same Lockheed Martin which represents part of the 0.01% of America that are acting in an even more parasitic manner than the 1% - the war profiteers that rake in record profits while killing Americans and innocent people abroad.

It might seem alarmist or sensationalist, but when the authors of the CommonDreams piece say, "This ubiquitous world-wide surveillance of anyone and everyone should serve as a wake up call (sic) for what the future may hold" they are simply reflecting reality.

They point out that we are being brought "closer to an extensive and inescapable surveillance state, where we blindly place our hands on electronic devices that capture our digital prints, stare into iris scanning devices that record the details of our eyes, and have pictures taken of different angles of our faces so that the FBI and other federal agencies can store and use such information."

Of course these images taken at different angles can be compiled into a 3-Dimensional model of the face which can then be used for faster, more accurate facial recognition, even by drones flying at an altitude at which they are essentially invisible to the unsuspecting individual on the ground.

There is another major consideration ignored by the FBI and DHS: the fact that major mistakes are made by federal agencies.

One apt example is American citizen Mark Lyttle, a man who was deported and transferred to five different countries in four months when an administrator incorrectly typed "Mexico" as Lyttle's place of birth.

Lyttle, who suffers from mental disabilities which made him unable to understand the criminal proceedings and following deportation, spent months living on the streets, in shelters, and in prisons in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, all because an administrator typed the wrong birthplace.

Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took up the case and filed lawsuits in federal courts in Georgia and North Carolina on behalf of Lyttle.

Or there is the case of American born lawyer and former Army lieutenant Brandon Mayfield who was erroneously accused of the 2004 train bombing in Madrid after which he was held by police for two weeks.

All of this was based on a supposed match between Mayfield's fingerprints and latent prints found at the scene, of course this match was later found to be inaccurate.

The entire fiasco lasted two and a half years and in 2006 the Oregon lawyer was awarded $2 million by the U.S. government along with a formal apology to him and his family.

Then there is the case of a Massachusetts man, John Gass, who had his driver's license revoked because a facial recognition system found that his authentic license was fraudulent.

These types of egregious and hardly negligible mistakes are only going to become more prevalent as the FBI employs new facial recognition and biometric technology.

This was shown by a study published by the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response at New York University entitled, "Facial Recognition Technology: A Survey of Policy and Implementation Issues" by Lucas D. Introna and Helen Nissenbaum.

The study found that when facial recognition technology is used among large populations, like the massive federal database, incorrect identifications will indeed occur due to the lack of variation among faces.

The Gass case proves that this is already a problem and the database is in a relatively infant stage compared to how massive the NGI collection of data will be once information on every American has been gathered.

This is especially true when one considers that since sharing information is "the price of admission" into the "FBI club" many foreign governments and federal agencies will be handing over sensitive personal information of their citizens.

George Orwell couldn't have possibly imagined the scope and pervasiveness of the invisible surveillance state we currently find ourselves in, though his infamous 1984 gives a glimpse of what a much more low-tech version of today's world would look like.

The technology is growing to the point where many people do not even know it exists or how they are being tracked and monitored.

Hopefully by spreading information like this far and wide we can actively combat the Big Brother surveillance state before it grows to the point that there is no possible way to turn back.

If you care about the future of America and the world, I beg of you, spread this information far and wide as bringing massive awareness to this subject is the only way to halt the growth and hopefully reverse the trend.

Only by bringing this real Big Brother technology out into the mainstream can we wake up the majority of the populace to the fact that these are not silly conspiracy theories but indeed heavily documented and irrefutable facts.

UK Foreign Office: Israel Expected To Attack Iran Next Month

‘Sooner rather than later'

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as next month, according to a British Foreign Office official quoted by the Daily Mail newspaper, raising the prospect of a new crisis in the region before Christmas.

"We're expecting something as early as Christmas, or very early in the new year," the source is quoted as saying, adding that the Israelis will attack Iran's nuclear sites "sooner rather than later".

The source ruled out UK involvement, suggesting that even if Iran acquired the bomb it would not dare use it, adding, "The bigger concern is it will be impossible to stop Saudi Arabia and Turkey from developing their own weapons."

The revelation came one week after British chief of staff, Gen. Sir David Richards paid a secret visit to Israel which was followed the next day by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visiting London for talks with British military chiefs.

While some news outlets noted that the Mail's links with intelligence circles gave the source some credibility, others like YNet, the website for Israel's most widely read newspaper, largely dismissed the claim as "questionable".

As we previously reported, the window of opportunity for an attack before Iran moves the bulk of its nuclear processing equipment underground is quickly evaporating.

Although NATO powers, along with President Obama, have reacted with less enthusiasm about the possibility of an attack, the prospect of Israel going it alone for the duration of a bombing campaign is seen as unlikely. The intelligence source quoted by the Mail says the U.S. will provide "logistical" support along similar lines to America's involvement in Libya.

As we previously highlighted, even if the United States does not become embroiled in the military campaign from the outset, reprisal attacks by Iran and its offshoots will be used as the pretext for American involvement.

"Since this attack would almost certainly bring forth reprisals from Tehran and its allies, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami, it would almost certainly expand into a wider Middle East conflict, thus also broadening US and West European military intervention," reports DebkaFile.

In a related development, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that any attack on Iran would be met with an "iron fist".

"Our enemies, particularly the Zionist regime (Israel), America and its allies, should know that any kind of threat and attack or even thinking about any (military) action will be firmly responded to," Khamenei told state television.

Libya: The Globalist Attack on National Sovereignty

November 4, 2011

By Ethan Jacobs, J.D. - Activist Post

Video and photographic evidence obtained by Global Post demonstrates that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was literally sodomized before being murdered by NATO/U.S.-backed Al-Qaeda rebel forces.

An analysis of video obtained by Global Post from a rebel fighter who recorded the moment when Col. Muammar Gaddafi was first captured confirms that another rebel fighter, whose identity is unknown, sodomized the former leader as he was being dragged from the drainpipe where he had taken cover.

The footage reveals the mindset of the NATO backed forces, violent thugs that U.S. taxpayers are funding as their homes are foreclosed. It is a mindset that clearly knows no bounds and has been unleashed on sovereign nations worldwide.

Just weeks ago it was believed that the first act of Al-Qaeda's new "democratic" Libyan government was shooting Gaddafi in the head at close range without due process or formerly charging him with any crime. No, the first act was sodomy with a foreign object on a wounded man.

Of course, the Al-Qaeda backed rebels would not have been successful in capturing Libya and murdering Gaddafi absent massive NATO air bombardment of Tripoli, which resulted in thousands of civilian casualties. Shortly after the start of the conflict in March, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the leader of the anti-Gaddafi rebel army, admitted that the rebel ranks include Al-Qaeda terrorists who have killed U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This all makes sense when you realize that Al-Qaeda is run by the Pentagon and is used as a tool of regional destabilization against governments like Gaddafi's that oppose globalist objectives.

While Gaddafi may have been a tyrant and dictator, he was also an eccentric nationalist that opposed Western colonization of resource-rich Libya.

On gaining power he immediately ordered the shutdown of American and British military bases, including Wheelus Air Base. He told Western officials that he would expel their companies from Libya's oil fields unless they shared more revenue. In his warning, he alluded to consultation with Nasser. The oil companies complied with the demand, increasing Libya's share from 50 to 79 percent.

Under Gaddafi, Libya exported as much oil per capita as Saudi Arabia, and through various social programs Libya achieved the highest living standards in Africa. Libya also remained debt free, with no loan whatsoever from the IMF, World Bank or any other source of western financial enslavement.

Gaddafi also planned to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency made from gold. This would have allowed Libya and African countries to do business without using the worthless fiat U.S. dollar, which is continuously devalued by the private Federal Reserve printing excess money out of nothing and giving it to their bankster friends.

The Gaddafi government also funded the Great Man-Made River, a network of pipes that supplies water from the Sahara Desert in Libya, from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer. It is the world's largest underground network of pipes (2820 km) and aqueducts in the world. The project consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 500m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m3 of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere. Gaddafi described it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World."

The globalists decided that nationalist Gaddafi had to go before he inspired other world leaders to protect national sovereignty and interests. Libyans must now live under a brutal terrorist regime, whose members will be handsomely rewarded when Fortune 500 companies arrive to exploit Libya's natural resources while enslaving the population in debt.

Libya's rebel militants recently named a new puppet "prime minister" this week, Abdurrahim el-Keib. El-Keib has spent decades in the United States and is former employee of the Petroleum Institute, which is sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France's Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. El-Keib is listed as a "Professor and Chairman" in his Petroleum Institute profile which also describes extensive research conducted by him sponsored by various US government agencies and departments over the years. Therefore, el-Keib, like his predecessor Jalil, is Libyan in name only and has been working for Western corporations, governments, and institutions for decades.

The Western-sponsored coup of Libya also demonstrates that the globalists are now focused on seizing control of the world's natural resources just as Zbigniew Brzezinski's outlined in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. They also have Syria and Iran on the menu of destruction as they rush to complete their one world fascist government.

In all the violence and chaos, one thing is crystal-clear: unless people refuse to participate in wars of conquest and diligently boycott corporate sponsors of the Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institution, Gaddafi and Libyans won't be the last ones to get sodomized by the New World Order.

Globalists Using London Cyberspace Summit to Push for Global Internet Treaty

November 1, 2011

By Eric Blair - Activist Post

For the next two days, leaders from around the globe will collude with tech giants to discuss how to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the Internet. Translation: they'll be negotiating a global Internet treaty.

It's reported that officials from 60 countries will join Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Tudou.com (Chinese video sharing site), as well as cyber crime agencies, and computer security firms at the London Conference on Cyberspace.

The London summit is hosted by Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who said the purpose is to "discuss ideas and expected behaviour in cyberspace".

To which he claims the goal is bring together major players to determine how "collectively, we should respond to the challenges and opportunities which the development of cyberspace presents."

A few days before the conference, Council on Foreign Relations members Adam Segal and Matthew Waxman wrote that the conference presents those calling for a global Internet treaty with "a step in that direction."

They also pointed out that NATO allies have already essentially agreed to a treaty; "June 2011, NATO defense ministers agreed to a collective vision of cyber defense, and the United States and Australia recently announced that their mutual defense treaty extends to cyberspace."

Meanwhile, in September of this year, an alliance between Russia, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan collaborated on cybersecurity by introducing The International Code of Conduct for Information Security to the U.N. Secretary General.

This alliance views "information security" to mean combating the dissemination of certain types of information which "undermines other countries' political, economic and social stability, as well as their spiritual and cultural environment." In other words, if passed, political dissent on the Internet would be censored by U.N. decree.

Analysts explained the power struggle to be that Western states want to protect their networks from cyber attacks, while China and Russia seek security of information, which means controlling content.

Western powers will preach Internet freedom to their counterparts at this conference, yet they themselves have engaged in draconian measures like arbitrarily seizing websites for merely linking to copyrighted material and ordering politically "harmful" material removed from websites like YouTube. Also, in a blatant act of censorship, they infamously colluded with Amazon to drop hosting service to WikiLeaks.

What's more, multiple bills are floating in the U.S. Congress that seek further control over the Internet like the recent "rogue websites" bill which one Representative called the "end of the Internet." At the same time, the new net neutrality rules initiated without Congress, rather by the FCC with a 3-2 vote (where one commissioner was rewarded with a cushy job at Comcast), go into effect on November 20th.

So, while they talk a good game about protecting free speech, the U.S. and other Western powers seem to have similar ambitions to censor the Internet as China and Russia do, each already using private Internet cartels to do their dirty work. Therefore, they're likely not as far off from agreeing on a treaty as the mainstream press is letting on.

Where they may not agree, however, is how to respond to potential cyber crimes and suspected threats.

China, while strongly denying any government involvement, has been blamed for many recent cyber attacks. Therefore, China, and most others, tend to take the approach of prosecuting cyber crimes through a legal process.

The Pentagon, on the other hand, in their recently released cybersecurity strategy, said the military would be "prepared to respond to hostile acts in cyberspace."

"The United States reserves the right, under the laws of armed conflict, to respond to serious cyber attacks with a proportional and justified military response at the time and place of our choosing," said Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn at a speech announcing the new strategy.

Most nations want to legally separate cybersecurity from traditional security concerns. So, if only America can convince other attendees to police the Internet with predator drones, they may actually agree to a global Internet treaty.

E-PARASITE Bill: 'The End Of The Internet As We Know It'

Blacklisted News

10-29-2011

from the this-gets-worse-and-worse dept

We already wrote about the ridiculously bad E-PARASITE bill (the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act), but having now had a chance go to through the full bill a few more times, there are even more bad things in there that I missed on the first read-through. Now I understand why Rep. Zoe Lofgren's first reaction to this bill was to say that "this would mean the end of the Internet as we know it."

She's right. The more you look at the details, the more you realize how this bill is an astounding wishlist of everything that the legacy entertainment gatekeepers have wanted in the law for decades and were unable to get. It effectively dismantles the DMCA's safe harbors, what's left of the Sony Betamax decision, puts massive liability on tons of US-based websites, and will lead to widespread blocking of websites and services based solely on accusations of some infringement. It's hard to overstate just how bad this bill is.

And, while its mechanisms are similar to the way China's Great Firewall works (by putting liability on service providers if they fail to block sites), it's even worse than that. At least the Chinese Great Firewall is determined by government talking points. The E-PARASITE bill allows for a massive private right of action that effectively lets any copyright holder take action against sites they don't like. (Oh, and the bill is being called both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and E-PARASITE (which covers the PROTECT IP-like parts of the bill, SOPA refers to the larger bill that also includes the felony streaming part).

Some of the key problems with the bill, beyond what we discussed yesterday:

While supporters of the bill still continue to insist that this bill is only targeted at foreign infringers, that's false. Part of the bill focuses on foreign infringers -- the part that allows the Attorney General to kill websites. But the private right of action section has no such restriction. Instead, it allows copyright holders to effectively kill any site they'd like. You have to dig down into the details to see this, but let's pull out the key sections to see. The act, in section 104, defines sites that are "dedicated to the theft of US property" as including any "US-directed site" that:is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code;
If that sounds massively confusing, you're right. But what it's saying, in the most twisted language possible, is that if it's probable that a site used in the US (note no restriction to just foreign sites here) can be used to infringe, and that site fails to take some sort of action against the "high probability" that the site can be used to infringe, then it can be declared dedicated to the theft of US property. This turns both the DMCA safe harbors and the Supreme Court's Sony Betamax ruling completely on their heads. In effect, it appears to be saying that if you choose not to self-police your site for infringement -- i.e., putting up filters, or proactively monitoring content for infringement -- you can be declared in violation of the law... at which point a court can order all ad networks and payment processors to automatically stop doing business with you.

Think of all the sites this could effect. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, SoundCloud, Ebay, Flickr, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Wordpress -- basically any site that has any user-generated content. If they don't proactively filter or monitor their content, they could be at risk of a claim that they took "deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" that their sites could be used to infringe... and thus they could be subject to an action by a private party that strips them of both ad revenue and the ability to process any payments.

Remember how Monster Cable -- massive supporters of this bill -- declared both Craigslist and eBay as being dedicated to infringement? Under this bill, a company like Monster could take action against those sites, putting a tremendous burden on them.

The definitional problems don't stop there. Separate from the ridiculous definition above, this act would also declare a site "dedicated to theft of U.S. property," if it is "primarily designed" in a way that "engages in, enables, or facilitates" a violation of copyright law. Those last two points are ridiculously broad. "Enables" infringement? "Facilitates"? That's practically the entire internet. The primary design of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. all "enable" or "facilitate" infringement.

While some reporters claimed that the "private right of action" was taken out of this bill, or even "softened," nothing could be further from the truth. The details show that the private right of action is significantly worse in this bill. What changed is that in PROTECT IP, private copyright holders could go to court to force payment processors and ad networks to stop dealing with sites they accuse. Under E-PARASITE, before they go to court, they first have to send a notification, very similar to a DMCA takedown notice. But, of course, as we've seen with the DMCA, while it's "voluntary" to comply, if you don't comply you lose safe harbors -- so nearly everyone complies. That means this private right of action almost certainly will lead to ad networks and payment processors cutting off any site they receive a notification on -- no matter how legitimate. And, while the bill does allow for a counternotification process, unlike the DMCA, there is no requirement that the payment processors and ad networks restore service to anyone who files a counternotice, after a given period of time (absent a lawsuit). In other words: a copyright holder could issue a bogus claim that a site is dedicated to infringement, and the payment processor and ad network could pull the plug on the site... and even if a counternotice is filed, those services have no obligation to bring back service.

Again, using our Monster Cable example, it could force all payment processors to no longer allow payments on Craigslist or eBay, and even if those sites filed counternotices, the service providers would be under no obligation to turn those things back on. And just think of the massive, irreparable harm if legitimate sites lose both the ability to accept payments and to have ads for just a few days? And while there is liability for those who file false notices, as we've seen with the DMCA, such provisions are rarely, if ever, enforced -- and generally are interpreted to only apply in cases of extreme misrepresentation.

As noted above, the private right of action establishes an astoundingly broad new standard for what's considered infringing. Beyond user-generated content sites, pretty much any cloud computing service can be deemed "dedicated to the theft of US property," if they choose not to filter and monitor the content being sent through the cloud. Any of the online locker services are in serious trouble if this bill becomes law. Amazon's and Google's music services would have to monitor your uploads and try to stop infringement to avoid liability. Box.net and Dropbox would likely have to monitor what files you're storing to avoid liability. It's honestly that insane.

Supporters of the bill, beyond falsely claiming that it's just focused on foreign sites, are also claiming that this bill does not target such sites. An aide to the House Judiciary Committee, who supports the bill, claimed, "Sites that host user content -- like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter -- have nothing to be concerned about under this bill." But that's demonstrably false. Perhaps this aide is unaware that Viacom is still in the middle of a $1 billion lawsuit claiming that YouTube was dedicated to infringement. Under the definitions in this bill, YouTube would absolutely have been liable, and likely would have been shut down years ago. In fact, Viacom never would have had to sue. It would have just made use of the notification process, and kept any and all advertising and payment processing from the site... and voila, dead YouTube, without the benefit of a judge reviewing the case (and, need we remind the House Judiciary Committee, that so far the judge has sided with YouTube?).

The bill would be red meat to any foreign government that censors its internet. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia are going to love this. The mechanisms for censorship are quite similar. Under E-PARASITE, service providers have to proactively block to prevent liability. China's Great Firewall works the exact same way: by threatening ISPs with liability if they don't block content harmful to Chinese citizens. Replace harmful to Chinese citizens with "a high probability" of being used for infringement... and you've got E-PARASITE.

Another change between this bill and the Senate's PROTECT IP is that this bill calls out "search engines" more directly, rather than "information location tools," as in the Senate bill. While that may seem to be narrower, the definition of a search engine is ridiculously broad (of course).

The term ‘‘Internet search engine'' means a service made available via the Internet that searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet and on the basis of a user query or selection that consists of terms, concepts, categories, questions, or other data returns to the user a means, such as a hyperlinked list of Uniform Resource Locators, of locating, viewing, or downloading such information or data available on the Internet relating to such query or selection.
Under this definition, Techdirt could be declared a search engine under this law. After all, we take "questions" and queries from readers, and often return stories that link elsewhere on the internet. Yikes!

As highlighted above, there are all sorts of definitional problems with the bill. And you can tell how insane things get with definitions when the authors of this bill even go so far as to define the word "including." I'm not joking:
INCLUDING.--The term "including" means including, but not limited to.
This is the kind of mess we're dealing with.

About the only good thing is that the insanity and out-and-out censorship and hindering of the internet that this bill provides appears to have scared off co-sponsors of the bill. Despite a massive lobbying effort from the US Chamber of Commerce and the MPAA (among some others), Rep. Lamar Smith was only able to wrangle up eleven co-sponsors. For a bill of this nature, this is woefully low. Even more surprising is that they couldn't even get Rep. Mel Watt to co-sponsor the bill, despite being the ranking Democrat on the IP subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Instead, they had to settle for Howard Berman, the Representative from Disney. In other words, it appears that many Congressional reps have heard the massive concerns of the public, technologists, entrepreneurs, investors, artists, human rights activists, and many others who are quite afraid of how this bill will break the internet. And that means that it can only help to continue to speak out and reach out to your representatives about how awful this bill is, and how much harm it would do.

Robin Hood Tax: Occupy Movement now marching straight into the globalist trap

Patrick Henningsen

October 25, 2011

It was inevitable that a movement which has struggled to agree on a manifesto, would in the end, do the bidding of the very elite globalist powers that they are demonstrating against to begin with.

The Robin Hood Tax is an identical transaction-tax scam to the one proposed by globalists at the 2009 UN COP15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen.

Instead of achieving freedom from Central Bank debt enslavement, naive Occupiers appear to have taken the bait, pulling the mob towards endorsing a global taxation system, and one to be administered... by a brand new global government body.

As the Occupy Movement sets its sights on the upcoming G20 Summit in France on November 3-4, its globalist handlers behind the scenes have succeeded in carefully directing its crowds towards the Holy Grail of all socialist super-states - the celebrity supported, trendy "Robin Hood Tax", also known as a Tobin Tax, a financial transaction tax levied on all transactions involving shares, bonds and derivatives. It's likely that such a blanket tax will eventually end up on the end of things like cash withdrawls and the like.

The resulting funds, they claim, counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year, would go toward popular Bono-led liberal heart-string fantasy causes like ‘reducing poverty in the third world', social programs and surprise, surprise... "combating climate change" and perhaps even saving polar bears - a move that would surely please desperate men like Al Gore (but a complete waste of money seeing that man-made global warming has already been thoroughly discredited).

The rallying cry for this globalist wet dream is coming directly from the supposed brain-child of the Occupy Movement, the globalist foundation-funded organization, Ad Busters, quietly shepherding its flock towards one of the biggest revenue spinning and control scams ever conceived.

Reuters reported yesterday:

"Canada-based Adbusters wants the Occupy Wall Street protest movement against economic inequality to take to the streets to call for a 1 percent tax on such deals ahead of a November 3-4 summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in France.

"Let's send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3 trillion easy money that's sloshing around the global casino each day - enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world," the activist group said on its website, www.adbusters.org.

Adbusters put out the initial call for Occupy Wall Street and since protesters set up camp in a park in New York City's financial district on September 17, they have inspired solidarity demonstrations and so-called occupations around the world."

In many ways, the Robin Hood Tax is an identical transaction-tax scam to the one proposed by globalists at the 2009 UN COP15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen, where a number of new taxes on financial transactions and new carbon taxes would be put into a giant "slush fund" to be handled by none other than the World Bank.

Ultimately, any Robin Hood Tax will most likely end up in a giant fund to "ensure that banks are adequately capitalized", and one which will be used to bailout, or insure big bank losses and trillions in gambling derivative bets gone bad.

In reality, a Robin Hood Tax does just the opposite of what its name represents. Rather than stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, it is designed to steal more money through taxation from working people- money which will end up directly in the hands of institutions like the US Federal Reserve and its cartel of Wall Street banks.

OWS losing the plot

It's very easy for the throngs of young protesters to fall into an obvious socialist, or collectivist trap, as many naive young Americans are unable, or unwilling, to liberate themselves from the Hegelian dialectic which tells them that the government must raise taxes and spending in order to achieve any social progress.

It's obvious that the number one and two problems in America are a lack of jobs and creeping inflation, a duel plague which is fueling poverty- and ultimately dissent in the US. Occupiers are not asking why their government allowed US corporations to ship millions of American jobs off shore, and why it never bothered to offer incentives to foreign corporations to relocate in the US. Likewise Occupiers have not identified that their own Federal Reserve is robbing them every day by creating artificial scarcity, driving the kind of boom and bust cycles which ultimately rob Americans of their life saving and assets.

Rather than demand an additional new monster system of taxation, Occupiers should first be asking if any government can be trusted to spend their tax revenue responsibly. Certainly today it seems that pork rules in Washington and Obama's Administration is presiding over the biggest budget deficit in the history of the US. This should be cause for alarm, yet, it's hardly mentioned by the Occupy crowd.

They might also consider asking their beloved government in Washington - and elsewhere around the globe too, where all their tax revenue actually goes right now. If they understood that at present, their Federal Income Tax(in some cases, collected at gunpoint by the IRS) goes directly to paying off the debt which their government owes on each and every dollar printed by the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank... then Occupiers would surely be wary of allowing a Federal or global government to erect a new massive taxation system.

The OWS has, to their credit, urged protesters to close their bank accounts and transfer their money to credit unions with a bank transfer day on November 5th, certainly a step in a positive direction. But is it enough?

Disengage with the financial system

OWS protesters should be talking about taking steps to completely disengage from the system that enslaves them- this might include removing their hard-earned liquidity from the system by canceling all credit cards, not taking out student loans, or pointless car and electronic loans.

Another obvious trap of the Robin Hood Tax is that it would target all transactions - including pension funds. Occupiers should instead consider not paying in their pensions and 401K's into stock market-indexed retirement funds. For older protesters, it might be a case of shifting their IRAs into gold and silver-backed retirement funds, disallowing the speculators and gamblers on Wall Street to decimate their life savings any further.

Has their been any call for a mass protest against the IRS, who continue to defy the US Constitution by robbing each and every working American of their labor and property in order to service their national debt to the Federal Reserve cartel? Certainly this would rock the establishment overnight. The Occupy Movement would have struck the most serious- and the most obvious blow imaginable, one which would finally call into question the legitimacy of a national income tax.

Or even better, Occupiers might consider taking the total expenditure of the US military- domestically and overseas , and divide by the number of working Americans, giving them an individual figure of money which each protester will refuse to hand over to the Federal government- a peace protest combined with an intelligent liberty move by free men and women.

Sadly, none of these kind of truly revolutionary ideas have come out of the Liberty Square protests. Instead, all they could manage in the end up with is to latch on to one of the most misleading and tyrannical ponzi schemes, the Robin Hood Tax, where the 99% end up giving the 1% even more of their hard earned cash over to the banks. Ironic, but this is the current direction which the angry, but naive mob is being led.

If any of the 99% truly believe that the top tier banks would happily give away trillions per year to the new Robin Hood Taxman, then think again. Their new tax will likely be imposed most stringently on small to medium size institutions and fund managers in an effort to drive out any competition to the mega banks- who already enjoy cuts to corporate income tax, and in some cases, pay no tax at all. Big banks are safe, but smaller competition will surely be hit hard by a Robin Hood Tax- ensuring the current hierarchy stays exactly as it is. This has always been the way when blanket government regulations and punitive taxes come into play.

In typically disingenuous fashion, when a mob has no clear objective it normally plays follow the leader. In this case, the leader is foundation-funded Ad Busters, who have supplied the directionless, vague OWS movement with the master plan to its own demise.

Vatican Calls for "Central World Bank"

Kurt Nimmo

Infowars.com October 24, 2011

The Vatican has called for a "global public authority" and a world central bank to rule over financial affairs in the wake of the engineered economic collapse.

A document released by the Vatican's Justice and Peace department "should be music to the ears of the ‘Occupy Wall Street' demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn," according to CNBC.

Condemning the "idolatry of the market," the document states that the "economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence."

The planned implosion of the global economy "has revealed behaviors like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale."

The 18-page document, entitled "Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," declares global economics needs an "ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.

"If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid," it said.

In response, the Vatican is calling for "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions. The authority will be run by the United Nations, according to the document.

It will take time to replace economic policies and in the process destroy national sovereignty, according to the Vatican.

"Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalizes world."

"Manufacturing Dissent": the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites

The People's Movement has been Hijacked

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, September 20, 2010

"Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as "making the World safe for capitalism", reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))

"By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, ... and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions" (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

"Under the New World Order, the ritual of inviting "civil society" leaders into the inner circles of power --while simultaneously repressing the rank and file-- serves several important functions. First, it says to the World that the critics of globalization "must make concessions" to earn the right to mingle. Second, it conveys the illusion that while the global elites should --under what is euphemistically called democracy-- be subject to criticism, they nonetheless rule legitimately. And third, it says "there is no alternative" to globalization: fundamental change is not possible and the most we can hope is to engage with these rulers in an ineffective "give and take".

While the "Globalizers" may adopt a few progressive phrases to demonstrate they have good intentions, their fundamental goals are not challenged. And what this "civil society mingling" does is to reinforce the clutch of the corporate establishment while weakening and dividing the protest movement. An understanding of this process of co-optation is important, because tens of thousands of the most principled young people in Seattle, Prague and Quebec City [1999-2001] are involved in the anti-globalization protests because they reject the notion that money is everything, because they reject the impoverishment of millions and the destruction of fragile Earth so that a few may get richer.

This rank and file and some of their leaders as well, are to be applauded. But we need to go further. We need to challenge the right of the "Globalizers" to rule. This requires that we rethink the strategy of protest. Can we move to a higher plane, by launching mass movements in our respective countries, movements that bring the message of what globalization is doing, to ordinary people? For they are the force that must be mobilized to challenge those who plunder the Globe." (Michel Chossudovsky, The Quebec Wall , April 2001)

The term "manufacturing consent" was initially coined by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky.

"Manufacturing consent" describes a propaganda model used by the corporate media to sway public opinion and "inculcate individuals with values and beliefs...":

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. (Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky)

"Manufacturing consent" implies manipulating and shaping public opinion. It establishes conformity and acceptance to authority and social hierarchy. It seeks compliance to an established social order. "Manufacturing consent" describes the submission of public opinion to the mainstream media narrative, to its lies and fabrications.

"Manufacturing dissent"

In this article, we focus on a related concept, namely the subtle process of "manufacturing dissent" (rather than "consent"), which plays a decisive role in serving the interests of the ruling class.

Under contemporary capitalism, the illusion of democracy must prevail. It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent.

To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition, with a view to preventing the development of radical forms of protest, which might shake the very foundations and institutions of global capitalism. In other words, "manufacturing dissent" acts as a "safety valve", which protects and sustains the New World Order.

To be effective, however, the process of "manufacturing dissent" must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement.

"Funding Dissent"

How is the process of manufacturing dissent achieved?

Essentially by "funding dissent", namely by channelling financial resources from those who are the object of the protest movement to those who are involved in organizing the protest movement.

Co-optation is not limited to buying the favors of politicians. The economic elites --which control major foundations-- also oversee the funding of numerous NGOs and civil society organizations, which historically have been involved in the protest movement against the established economic and social order. The programs of many NGOs and people's movements rely heavily on funding from both public as well as private foundations including the Ford, Rockefeller, McCarthy foundations, among others.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of "manufacturing dissent" require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement.

Whereas the mainstream media "manufactures consent", the complex network of NGOs (including segments of the alternative media) are used by the corporate elites to mould and manipulate the protest movement.

Following the deregulation of the global financial system in the 1990s and the rapid enrichment of the financial establishment, funding through foundations and charities has skyrocketed.

In a bitter irony, part of the fraudulent financial gains on Wall Street in recent years have been recycled to the elites' tax exempt foundations and charities. These windfall financial gains have not only been used to buy out politicians, they have also been channelled to NGOs, research institutes, community centres, church groups, environmentalists, alternative media, human rights groups, etc. "Manufactured dissent" also applies to the "corporate left" and "progressive" media, funded by NGOs or directly by the foundations.

The inner objective is to "manufacture dissent" and establish the boundaries of a "politically correct" opposition. In turn, many NGOs are infiltrated by informants often acting on behalf of western intelligence agencies. Moreover, an increasingly large segment of the progressive alternative news media on the internet has become dependent on funding from corporate foundations and charities.

Piecemeal Activism

The objective of the corporate elites has been to fragment the people's movement into a vast "do it yourself" mosaic. War and globalization are no longer in the forefront of civil society activism. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement. The economic crisis is not seen as having a relationship to the US led war.

Dissent has been compartmentalized. Separate "issue oriented" protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women's rights, climate change) are encouraged and generously funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement. This mosaic was already prevalent in the counter G7 summits and People's Summits of the 1990s.

The Anti-Globalization Movement

The Seattle 1999 counter-summit is invariably upheld as a triumph for the anti-globalization movement: "a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anti-corporate movement." (See Naomi Klein, Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up, The Nation, November 13, 2009).

Seattle was an indeed an important crossroads in the history of the mass movement. Over 50,000 people from diverse backgrounds, civil society organizations, human rights, labor unions, environmentalists had come together in a common pursuit. Their goal was to forecefully dismantle the neoliberal agenda including its institutional base.

But Seattle also marked a major reversal. With mounting dissent from all sectors of society, the official WTO Summit desperately needed the token participation of civil society leaders "on the inside", to give the appearance of being "democratic" "on the outside".

While thousands of people had converged on Seattle, what occurred behind the scenes was a de facto victory for neoliberalism. A handful of civil society organizations, formally opposed the WTO had contributed to legitimizing the WTO's global trading architecture. Instead of challenging the WTO as an an illegal intergovernmental body, they agreed to a pre-summit dialogue with the WTO and Western governments. "Accredited NGO participants were invited to mingle in a friendly environment with ambassadors, trade ministers and Wall Street tycoons at several of the official events including the numerous cocktail parties and receptions." (Michel Chossudovsky, Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order , Covert Action Quarterly, November 1999, See Ten Years Ago: "Manufacturing Dissent" in Seattle).

The hidden agenda was to weaken and divide the protest movement and orient the anti-globalization movement into areas that would not directly threaten the interests of the business establishment.

Funded by private foundations (including Ford, Rockefeller, Rockefeller Brothers, Charles Stewart Mott, The Foundation for Deep Ecology), these "accredited" civil society organizations had positioned themselves as lobby groups, acting formally on behalf of the people's movement. Led by prominent and committed activists, their hands were tied. They ultimately contributed (unwittingly) to weakening the anti-globalization movement by accepting the legitimacy of what was essentially an illegal organization. (The 1994 Marrakech Summit agreement which led to the creation of the WTO on January 1, 1995). (Ibid)

The NGO leaders were fully aware as to where the money was coming from. Yet within the US and European NGO community, the foundations and charities are considered to be independent philanthropic bodies, separate from the corporations; namely the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, for instance, is considered to be separate and distinct from the Rockefeller family empire of banks and oil companies.

With salaries and operating expenses depending on private foundations, it became an accepted routine: In a twisted logic, the battle against corporate capitalism was to be fought using the funds from the tax exempt foundations owned by corporate capitalism.

The NGOs were caught in a straightjacket; their very existence depended on the foundations. Their activities were closely monitored. In a twisted logic, the very nature of anti-capitalist activism was indirectly controlled by the capitalists through their independent foundations.

"Progressive Watchdogs"

In this evolving saga, the corporate elites --whose interests are duly served by the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO-- will readily fund (through their various foundations and charities) organizations which are at the forefront of the protest movement against the WTO and the Washington based international financial institutions.

Supported by foundation money, various "watchdogs" were set up by the NGOs to monitor the implementation of neoliberal policies, without however raising the broader issue of how the Bretton Woods twins and the WTO, through their policies, had contributed to the impoverishment of millions of people.

The Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Network (SAPRIN) was established by Development Gap, a USAID and World Bank funded NGO based in Washington DC.

Amply documented, the imposition of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) on developing countries constitutes a blatant form of interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states on behalf of creditor institutions.

Instead of challenging the legitimacy of the IMF-World Bank's "deadly economic medicine", SAPRIN's core organization sought to establish a participatory role for the NGOs, working hand in glove with USAID and the World Bank. The objective was to give a "human face" to the neoliberal policy agenda, rather than reject the IMF-World Bank policy framework outright:

"SAPRIN is the global civil-society network that took its name from the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI), which it launched with the World Bank and its president, Jim Wolfensohn, in 1997.

SAPRI is designed as a tripartite exercise to bring together organizations of civil society, their governments and the World Bank in a joint review of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and an exploration of new policy options. It is legitimizing an active role for civil society in economic decision-making, as it is designed to indicate areas in which changes in economic policies and in the economic-policymaking process are required. ( http://www.saprin.org/overview.htm SAPRIN website, emphasis added)

Similarly, The Trade Observatory (formerly WTO Watch), operating out of Geneva, is a project of the Minneapolis based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), which is generously funded by Ford, Rockefeller, Charles Stewart Mott among others. (see Table 1 below).

The Trade Observatory has a mandate to monitor the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). (IATP, About Trade Observatory, accessed September 2010).

The Trade Observatory is also to develop data and information as well as foster "governance" and "accountability". Accountability to the victims of WTO policies or accountability to the protagonists of neoliberal reforms?

The Trade Observatory watchdog functions does not in any way threaten the WTO. Quite the opposite: the legitimacy of the trade organizations and agreements are never questioned.

The World Economic Forum. "All Roads Lead to Davos"

The people's movement has been hijacked. Selected intellectuals, trade union executives, and the leaders of civil society organizations (including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Greenpeace) are routinely invited to the Davos World Economic Forum, where they mingle with the World's most powerful economic and political actors. This mingling of the World's corporate elites with hand-picked "progressives" is part of the ritual underlying the process of "manufacturing dissent".

The ploy is to selectively handpick civil society leaders "whom we can trust" and integrate them into a "dialogue", cut them off from their rank and file, make them feel that they are "global citizens" acting on behalf of their fellow workers but make them act in a way which serves the interests of the corporate establishment:

"The participation of NGOs in the Annual Meeting in Davos is evidence of the fact that [we] purposely seek to integrate a broad spectrum of the major stakeholders in society in ... defining and advancing the global agenda ... We believe the [Davos] World Economic Forum provides the business community with the ideal framework for engaging in collaborative efforts with the other principal stakeholders [NGOs] of the global economy to "improve the state of the world," which is the Forum's mission. (World Economic Forum, Press Release 5 January 2001)

The WEF does not represent the broader business community. It is an elitist gathering: Its members are giant global corporations (with a minimum $5 billion annual turnover). The selected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are viewed as partner "stakeholders" as well as a convenient "mouthpiece for the voiceless who are often left out of decision-making processes." (World Economic Forum - Non-Governmental Organizations, 2010)

"They [the NGOs] play a variety of roles in partnering with the Forum to improve the state of the world, including serving as a bridge between business, government and civil society, connecting the policy makers to the grassroots, bringing practical solutions to the table..." (Ibid)

Civil society "partnering" with global corporations on behalf of "the voiceless", who are "left out"?

Trade union executives are also co-opted to the detriment of workers' rights. The leaders of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), the AFL-CIO, the European Trade Union Confederation, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), among others, are routinely invited to attend both the annual WEF meetings in Davos, Switzerland as well as to the regional summits. They also participate in the WEF's Labour Leaders Community which focuses on mutually acceptable patterns of behavior for the labor movement. The WEF "believes that the voice of Labour is important to dynamic dialogue on issues of globalisation, economic justice, transparency and accountability, and ensuring a healthy global financial system."

"Ensuring a healthy global financial system" wrought by fraud and corruption? The issue of workers' rights is not mentioned. (World Economic Forum - Labour Leaders, 2010).

The World Social Forum: "Another World Is Possible"

The 1999 Seattle counter-summit in many regards laid the foundations for the development of the World Social Forum.

The first gathering of the World Social Forum took place in January 2001, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This international gathering involved the participation of tens of thousands of activists from grass-roots organizations and NGOs.

The WSF gathering of NGOs and progressive organizations is held simultaneously with the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). It was intended to voice opposition and dissent to the World Economic Forum of corporate leaders and finance ministers.

The WSF at the outset was an initiative of France's ATTAC and several Brazilian NGOs':

"... In February 2000, Bernard Cassen, the head of a French NGO platform ATTAC, Oded Grajew, head of a Brazilian employers' organisation, and Francisco Whitaker, head of an association of Brazilian NGOs, met to discuss a proposal for a "world civil society event"; by March 2000, they formally secured the support of the municipal government of Porto Alegre and the state government of Rio Grande do Sul, both controlled at the time by the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT).... A group of French NGOs, including ATTAC, Friends of L'Humanité, and Friends of Le Monde Diplomatique, sponsored an Alternative Social Forum in Paris titled "One Year after Seattle", in order to prepare an agenda for the protests to be staged at the upcoming European Union summit at Nice. The speakers called for "reorienting certain international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO... so as to create a globalization from below" and "building an international citizens' movement, not to destroy the IMF but to reorient its missions." (Research Unit For Political Economy, The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum, Global Research, January 20, 2004)

From the outset in 2001, the WSF was supported by core funding from the Ford Foundation, which is known to have ties to the CIA going back to the 1950s: "The CIA uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source." (James Petras, The Ford Foundation and the CIA, Global Research, September 18, 2002)

The same procedure of donor funded counter-summits or people's summits which characterized the 1990s People's Summits was embodied in the World Social Forum (WSF):

"... other WSF funders (or `partners', as they are referred to in WSF terminology) included the Ford Foundation, -- suffice it to say here that it has always operated in the closest collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency and US overall strategic interests; the Heinrich Boll Foundation, which is controlled by the German Greens party, a partner in the present [2003] German government and a supporter of the wars on Yugoslavia and Afghanistan (its leader Joschka Fischer is the [former] German foreign minister); and major funding agencies such as Oxfam (UK), Novib (Netherlands), ActionAid (UK), and so on.

Remarkably, an International Council member of the WSF reports that the "considerable funds" received from these agencies have "not hitherto awakened any significant debates [in the WSF bodies] on the possible relations of dependence it could generate." Yet he admits that "in order to get funding from the Ford Foundation, the organisers had to convince the foundation that the Workers Party was not involved in the process." Two points are worth noting here. First, this establishes that the funders were able to twist arms and determine the role of different forces in the WSF -- they needed to be `convinced' of the credentials of those who would be involved. Secondly, if the funders objected to the participation of the thoroughly domesticated Workers Party, they would all the more strenuously object to prominence being given to genuinely anti-imperialist forces. That they did so object will be become clear as we describe who was included and who excluded from the second and third meets of the WSF....

... The question of funding [of the WSF] does not even figure in the charter of principles of the WSF, adopted in June 2001. Marxists, being materialists, would point out that one should look at the material base of the forum to grasp its nature. (One indeed does not have to be a Marxist to understand that "he who pays the piper calls the tune".) But the WSF does not agree. It can draw funds from imperialist institutions like Ford Foundation while fighting "domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism" (Research Unit For Political Economy, The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum, Global Research, January 20, 2004)

The Ford Foundation provided core support to the WSF, with indirect contributions to participating "partner organizations" from the McArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the European Commission, several European governments (including the Labour government of Tony Blair), the Canadian government, as well as a number of UN bodies (including UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, ILO and the FAO) .(Ibid).

In addition to initial core support from the Ford Foundation, many of the participating civil society organizations receive funding from major foundations and charities. In turn, the US and European based NGOs often operate as secondary funding agencies channelling Ford and Rockefeller money towards partner organizations in developing countries, including grassroots peasant and human rights movements.

The International Council (IC) of the WSF is made up of representatives from NGOs, trade unions, alternative media organizations, research institutes, many of which are heavily funded by foundations as well as governments. (See Fórum Social Mundial). The same trade unions, which are routinely invited to mingle with Wall Street CEOs at the Davos World Economic Forum (WSF) including the AFL-CIO, the European Trade Union Confederation and the Canadian Labor Congress (CLC) also sit on the WSF's International Council (IC). Among NGOs funded by major foundations sitting on the WSF's IC is the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) (see our analysis above) which oversees the Geneva based Trade Observatory.

The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), which has observer status on the WSF International Council plays a key role. While channelling financial support to the WSF, it acts as a clearing house for major foundations. The FTNG describes itself as "an alliance of grant makers committed to building just and sustainable communities around the world". Members of this alliance are Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers, Heinrich Boell, C. S. Mott, Merck Family Foundation, Open Society Institute, Tides, among others. (For a complete list of FTNG funding agencies see FNTG: Funders). FTNG acts as a fund raising entity on behalf of the WSF.

Western Governments Fund the Counter-Summits and Repress the Protest Movement

In a bitter irony, governments including the European Union grant money to fund progressive groups (including the WSF) involved in organizing protests against the very same governments which finance their activities:

"Governments, too, have been significant financiers of protest groups. The European Commission, for example, funded two groups who mobilised large numbers of people to protest at EU summits at Gothenburg and Nice. Britain's national lottery, which is overseen by the government, helped fund a group at the heart of the British contingent at both protests." (James Harding, Counter-capitalism, FT.com, October 15 2001)

We are dealing with a diabolical process: The host government finances the official summit as well as the NGOs actively involved in the Counter-Summit. It also funds the multimillion dollar anti-riot police operation which has a mandate to repress the grassroots participants of the Counter-Summit, including members of NGOs direcly funded by the government. .

The purpose of these combined operations, including violent actions of vandalism committed by undercover cops (Toronto G20, 2010) dressed up as activists, is to discredit the protest movement and intimidate its participants. The broader objective is to transform the counter-summit into a ritual of dissent, which serves to uphold the interests of the official summit and the host government. This logic has prevailed in numerous counter summits since the 1990s.

At the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, funding from the Canadian federal government to mainstream NGOs and trade unions was granted under certain conditions. A large segment of the protest movement was de facto excluded from the People's Summit. This in itself led to the formation of a second parallel People's venue, which some observers described as a "a counter-People's Summit. In turn, in an agreement with both the provincial and federal authorities, the organizers directed the protest march towards a remote location some 10 km out of town, rather than towards the historical downtown area were the official FTAA summit was being held behind a heavily guarded "security perimeter".

"Rather than marching toward the perimeter fence and the Summit of the Americas meetings, march organizers chose a route that marched from the People's Summit away from the fence, through largely empty residential areas to the parking lot of a stadium in a vacant area several miles away. Henri Masse, the president of the Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ), explained, "I deplore that we are so far from the center-city.... But it was a question of security." One thousand marshals from the FTQ kept very tight control over the march. When the march came to the point where some activists planned to split off and go up the hill to the fence, FTQ marshals signalled the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) contingent walking behind CUPE to sit down and stop the march so that FTQ marshals could lock arms and prevent others from leaving the official march route." (Katherine Dwyer, Lessons of Quebec City, International Socialist Review, June/July 2001)

NGO Leaders versus their Grassroots

The establishment of the World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001 was unquestionably a historical landmark, bringing together tens of thousands of committed activists. It was an important venue which allowed for the exchange of ideas and the establishment of ties of solidarity.

What is at stake is the ambivalent role of the leaders of progressive organizations. Their cozy and polite relationship to the inner circles of power, to corporate and government funding, aid agencies, the World Bank, etc, undermines their relationship and responsibilities to their rank and file. The objective of manufactured dissent is precisely that: to distance the leaders from their rank and file as a means to effectively silencing and weakening grassroots actions.

Funding dissent is also a means of infiltrating the NGOs as well as acquiring inside information on strategies of protest and resistance of grass-roots movements.

Most of the grassroots participating organizations in the World Social Forum including peasant, workers' and student organizations, firmly committed to combating neoliberalism were unaware of the WSF International Council's relationship to corporate funding, negotiated behind their backs by a handful of NGO leaders with ties to both official and private funding agencies.

Funding to progressive organizations is not unconditional. Its purpose is to "pacify" and manipulate the protest movement. Precise conditionalities are set by the funding agencies. If they are not met, the disbursements are discontinued and the recipient NGO is driven into de facto bankruptcy due to lack of funds.

The WSF defines itself as "an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centred on the human person". (See Fórum Social Mundial, accessed 2010).

The WSF is a mosaic of individual initiatives which does not directly threaten or challenge the legitimacy of global capitalism and its institutions. It meets annually. It is characterised by a multitude of sessions and workshops. In this regard, one of the features of the WSF was to retain the "do-it-yourself" framework, characteristic of the donor funded counter G7 People's Summits of the 1990s.

This apparent disorganized structure is deliberate. While favoring debate on a number of individual topics, the WSF framework is not conducive to the articulation of a cohesive common platform and plan of action directed against global capitalism. Moreover, the US led war in the Middle East and Central Asia, which broke out a few months after the inaugural WSF venue in Porto Alegre in January 2001, has not been a central issue in forum discussions.

What prevails is a vast and intricate network of organizations. The recipient grassroots organizations in developing countries are invariably unaware that their partner NGOs in the United States or the European Union, which are providing them with financial support, are themselves funded by major foundations. The money trickles down, setting constraints on grassroots actions. Many of these NGO leaders are committed and well meaning individuals acting within a framework which sets the boundaries of dissent. The leaders of these movements are often co-opted, without even realizing that as a result of corporate funding their hands are tied.

Global capitalism finances anti-capitalism: an absurd and contradictory relationship.

"Another World is Possible", but it cannot be meaningfully achieved under the present arrangement.

A shake-up of the World Social Forum, of its organizational structure, its funding arrangements and leadership is required.

There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests which are the target of the protest movement. In the words of McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979),"Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as 'making the World safe for capitalism'".

Bank Of America Is Attempting To Rob America Blind With The Help Of The Federal Reserve

October 20, 2011

By Madison Ruppert BlacklistedNews.com

Bank of America Corp. (BAC) is in trouble and any other business which would just go under without any help; the corrupt banksters, with the help of the private Federal Reserve, are attempting to pass off their failures to the American people. Again.

Only three years ago the American people had massive debts piled on our heads by being forced to bail out the biggest lenders in the United States.

During this bailout, Bank of America received a whopping $45 billion and as of midyear had deposits numbering some $1.04 trillion.

Now Bank of America is attempting to protect itself from its derivative exposure through its Merrill Lynch unit by moving derivatives to a subsidiary replete with insured deposits.

This means that if the bank were to fail, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, would be on the hook for paying for the moved derivatives.

If the derivatives remained in Merrill Lynch, which is not insured by the FDIC and thus the taxpayer, and the bank were to collapse, the money would be lost.

Unsurprisingly, the private Federal Reserve has absolutely no problem with the move, while the FDIC is objecting according to anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg.

Even more unsurprisingly, Bank of America thinks that no regulatory approval is needed, regardless of the fact that this is an openly fraudulent way of insuring items which should never be insured.

This is surreptitiously timed given Moody's downgraded Bank of America's long term credit ratings on September 21st, slashing both the holding company and the retail bank's ratings by two notches each.

Section 23A of the Federal Reserve Act is supposed to act like a firewall, preventing the affiliates of lenders from gaining from the lenders' federal subsidy and also to protect the bank from risks originating from the affiliate, according to Saule Omarova, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law professor.

This section was created because, "Congress doesn't want a bank's FDIC insurance and access to the Fed discount window to somehow benefit an affiliate," Omarova said to Bloomberg.

However, in September of 2010, Bank of America was officially given a letter of exemption from Section 23A, effectively ending what the Federal Reserve's general counsel, Scott Alvarez, told Congress in 2008 "is among the most important tools that U.S. bank regulators have to protect the safety and soundness of U.S. banks".

So, with the help of the Fed, Bank of America is already exempt from one of the most important impediments to banks going out of control.

And now the Fed is once again backing the Bank of America's attempts to undermine what little regulation we have in the banking system by putting the American people on the hook for their derivative exposure.

Bill Black, a Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, summed the issue up nicely in an e-mail to Washington's Blog:

1. The bank holding company (BAC) is moving troubled assets held by an entity not insured by the public (Merrill Lynch) to the Bank of America, which is insured by the public

2. The banking rules are designed to prevent that because they are designed to protect the FDIC insurance fund (which the Treasury guarantees)

3. Any marginally competent regulator would say "No, Hell NO!"

4. The Fed, reportedly, is saying "Sure, no worries" by allowing the sale of an affiliate's troubled assets to B of A

5. This is a really good "natural experiment" that allows us to test whether the Fed is protects the public or the uninsured and systemically dangerous institutions (the bank holding companies (BHCs))

6. We are all shocked, shocked [sarcasm] that Bernanke responded to the experiment by choosing to protect the BHC at the expense of the public.

It is also worth noting that Bank of America has been guilty of refusing to let customers close accounts in what are essentially mini-bank runs. Unfortunately, this is not isolated to one branch.

America's poverty problem is worse than ever with 46.2 million Americans living in poverty in 2010 - the worst since record-keeping began over 50 years ago at the Census Bureau.

A record percentage of Americans are impoverished at 15.1% and even more disturbingly, 22% of children are living below the poverty line.

Hunger problems in America are already worse than China's according to Gallup.

How long are we going to allow bankers to run roughshod over the American people?

How long are we going to allow the private Federal Reserve - which is rife with deception and corruption and can block internal investigations, audits and subpoenas by its own Investigator General via the Fed's Chairman, Bernanke - to keep serving the banks while robbing the rest of us?

While the Occupy Wall Street movement is mostly accurate in targeting the criminals on Wall Street and in the banks, we must not forget that the private Federal Reserve is what makes it all possible.

We must not lose focus on the head of the snake as cutting off the tail will just allow the snake to wriggle away and strike again.

America needs to step up to the plate and fight back against the private Federal Reserve and their buddies in the "too big to fail" banks that continue to take every single penny from hungry Americans' pockets.

I hope the Fed reads this and detects "an ongoing trend of negative sentiment" - if you'd like to help them get the picture you can plaster anti-Federal Reserve language on every social network you are a part of.

We need to make them get the picture one way or another: we are sick and tired of a criminal banking cartel controlling our country's finances. We want freedom. We will no longer stand for corporatism or crony capitalism. We want the Federal Reserve to be dismantled as there is no other way to dig ourselves out of the hole they've put us in

FBI Ramps Up Next Generation ID Roll Out

Jennifer Lynch

EFF.org October 20, 2011

NextGov.com is reporting that the FBI will begin rolling out its Next Generation Identification (NGI) facial recognition service as early as this January. Once NGI is fully deployed and once each of its approximately 100 million records also includes photographs, it will become trivially easy to find and track Americans.

As we detailed in an earlier post, NGI expands the FBI's IAFIS criminal and civil fingerprint database to include multimodal biometric identifiers such as iris scans, palm prints, photos, and voice data. The Bureau is planning to introduce each of these capabilities in phases over the next two and a half years, starting with facial recognition in four states-Michigan, Washington, Florida, and North Carolina-this winter.

Why Should We Be Worried?

Despite the FBI's claims to the contrary, NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes. IAFIS is already the largest biometric database in the world-it includes 70 million subjects in the criminal master file and more than 31 million civil fingerprints. Even if there are duplicate entries or some overlap between civil and criminal records, the combined number of records covers close to 1/3 the population of the United States. When NGI allows photographs and other biometric identifiers to be linked to each of those records, all easily searchable through sophisticated search tools, it will have an unprecedented impact on Americans' privacy interests.

Although IAFIS currently includes some photos, they have so far been limited specifically to mug shots linked to individual criminal records. However, according to a 2008 Privacy Impact Assessment for NGI's Interstate Photo System, NGI will allow unlimited submission of photos and types of photos. Photos won't be limited to frontal mug shots but may be taken from other angles and may include close-ups of scars, marks and tattoos. NGI will allow all levels of law enforcement, correctional facilities, and criminal justice agencies at the local, state, federal and even international level to submit and access photos, and will allow them to submit photos in bulk. Once the photos are in the database, they can be found easily using facial recognition and text-based searches for distinguishing characteristics.

The new NGI database will also allow law enforcement to submit public and private security camera photos that may or may not be linked to a specific person's record. This means that anyone could end up in the database-even if they're not involved in a crime- by just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or by, for example, engaging in political protest activities in areas like Lower Manhattan that are rife with security cameras.

The biggest change in NGI will be the addition of non-criminal photos. If you apply for any type of job that requires fingerprinting or a background check, your potential employer could require you to submit a photo to the FBI. And, as the 2008 PIA notes, "expanding the photo capability within the NGI [Interstate Photo System] will also expand the searchable photos that are currently maintained in the repository." Although noncriminal information is ostensibly kept separate from criminal, all the data will be in the NGI system, and presumably it would not be difficult to search all the data at once. The FBI does not say whether there is any way to ever have your photo removed from the database.

Technological Advancements Support Even Greater Tracking Capabilities

According to an FBI presentation on facial recognition and identification initiatives (pdf, p.5) at a biometrics conference last year, one of the FBI's goals for NGI is to be able to track people as they move from one location to another. Recent advancements in camera and surveillance technology over the last few years will support this goal. For example, in a National Institute of Justice presentation at the same 2010 biometrics conference, the agency discussed a new 3D binocular and camera that allows realtime facial acquisition and recognition at 1000 meters. The tool wirelessly transmits images to a server, which searches them against a photo database and identifies the photo's subject. As of 2010, these binoculars were already in field-testing with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Presumably, the backend technology for these binoculars could be incorporated into other tools like body-mounted video cameras or the MORIS (Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System) iPhone add-on that some police officers are already using.

Private security cameras and the cameras already in use by police departments have also advanced. They are more capable of capturing the details and facial features necessary to support facial recognition-based searches, and the software supporting them allows photo manipulation that can improve the chances of matching a photo to a person already in the database. For example, Gigapixel technology, which creates a panorama photo of lots of megapixel images stitched together (like those taken by security cameras), allows anyone viewing the photo to drill down to see and tag faces from even the largest crowd photos. And image enhancement software, already in use by some local law enforcement, can adjust photos "taken in the wild" so they work better with facial recognition searches.

Cameras are also being incorporated into more and more devices that are capable of tracking Americans and can provide that data to law enforcement. For example, one of the largest manufacturers of highway toll collection systems recently filed a patent application to incorporate cameras into the transponder that sits on the dashboard in your car. This manufacturer's transponders are already in 22 million cars, and law enforcement already uses this data to track subjects. While a patent application does not mean the company is currently manufacturing or trying to sell the devices, it certainly shows they're interested.

Data Sharing and Publicly-Available Information Will Supplement the FBI's Database

Data sharing between the FBI and other government agencies and the repurposing of photographs taken for noncriminal activities will further support the FBI's ability to track people as they move from one location to another. At least 31 states have already started using some form of facial recognition with their DMV photos, generally to stop fraud and identity theft, and the Bureau has already worked with North Carolina, one of the four states in the NGI pilot program, to track criminals using the state's DMV records. The Department of Justice came under fire earlier this year for populating the NGI database with non-criminal data from the Department of Homeland Security through the Secure Communities program and could be considering doing the same with facial-recognition ready DMV photos. Even if the FBI does not incorporate DMV photos en masse directly into NGI, the fact that most states allow law enforcement access to these records combined with the new expansion of the FBI's own photo database, may make this point moot.

Commercial sites like Facebook that collect data and include facial recognition capabilities could also become a honeypot for the government. The FBI's 2008 Privacy Impact Assessment stated that the NGI/IAFIS photo database does not collect information from "commercial data aggregators," however, the PIA acknowledges this information could be collected and added to the database by other NGI users like state and local law enforcement agencies. Further, the FBI's 2010 facial recognition presentation notes another goal of NGI is to "Identify[ ] subjects in public datasets." If Facebook falls into the FBI's category of a public dataset, it may have almost as much revealing information as a commercial data aggregator.

The Problem of False Positives in Large Data Sets

As the FBI's facial recognition database gets larger and as more agencies at every level of government rely on facial recognition to identify people, false positives-someone being misidentified as the perpetrator of a crime-will become a big problem. As this 2009 report by Helen Nissenbaum and Lucas Introna notes, facial recognition

performs rather poorly in more complex attempts to identify individuals who do not voluntarily self-identify . . . Specifically, the "face in the crowd" scenario, in which a face is picked out from a crowd in an uncontrolled environment, is unlikely to become an operational reality for the foreseeable future.

The researchers go on to note that this is not necessarily because the technology is not good enough but because "there is not enough information (or variation) in faces to discriminate over large populations." In layman's terms, this means that because so many people in the world look alike, the probability that any facial recognition system will regularly misidentify people becomes much higher as the data set (the population of people you are checking against) gets larger. German Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar has noted false positives in facial recognition systems pose a large problem for democratic societies. "[I]n the event of a genuine hunt, [they] render innocent people suspects for a time, create a need for justification on their part and make further checks by the authorities unavoidable."

It appears it will take a few years for the FBI to bring NGI up to its full potential. In the meantime, we will continue to monitor this troubling trend.

HOLY BAILOUT - Federal Reserve Now Backstopping $75 Trillion Of Bank Of America's Derivatives Trades

The Daily Bail

October 19, 2011

This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning. Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.

This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.

This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.

What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

This is a recipe for Armageddon. Bernanke is absolutely insane. No wonder Geithner has been hopping all over Europe begging and cajoling leaders to put together a massive bailout of troubled banks. His worst nightmare is Eurozone bank defaults leading to the collapse of the large U.S. banks who have been happily selling default insurance on European banks since the crisis began.

Bloomberg Excerpt:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn't believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

Three years after taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect FDIC- insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. Bank of America, which got a $45 billion bailout during the financial crisis, had $1.04 trillion in deposits as of midyear, ranking it second among U.S. firms.

"The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution," said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. "We should have fairly tight restrictions on that."

Moody's Downgrade

The Moody's downgrade spurred some of Merrill's partners to ask that contracts be moved to the retail unit, which has a higher credit rating, according to people familiar with the transactions. Transferring derivatives also can help the parent company minimize the collateral it must post on contracts and the potential costs to terminate trades after Moody's decision, said a person familiar with the matter.

Keeping such deals separate from FDIC-insured savings has been a cornerstone of U.S. regulation for decades, including last year's Dodd-Frank overhaul of Wall Street regulation.

U.S. Bailouts

Bank of America benefited from two injections of U.S. bailout funds during the financial crisis. The first, in 2008, included $15 billion for the bank and $10 billion for Merrill, which the bank had agreed to buy. The second round of $20 billion came in January 2009 after Merrill's losses in its final quarter as an independent firm surpassed $15 billion, raising doubts about the bank's stability if the takeover proceeded. The U.S. also offered to guarantee $118 billion of assets held by the combined company, mostly at Merrill.

Bank of America's holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.

That compares with JPMorgan's deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm's $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.

Moving derivatives contracts between units of a bank holding company is limited under Section 23A of the Federal Reserve Act, which is designed to prevent a lender's affiliates from benefiting from its federal subsidy and to protect the bank from excessive risk originating at the non-bank affiliate, said Saule T. Omarova, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law.

"Congress doesn't want a bank's FDIC insurance and access to the Fed discount window to somehow benefit an affiliate, so they created a firewall," Omarova said. The discount window has been open to banks as the lender of last resort since 1914.

FEMA Communication Takeover Test Scheduled for November 9

Kurt Nimmo

Infowars.com October 18, 2011

FEMA, the FCC, and Homeland Security plan to commandeer the airwaves next month. The Emergency Alert System (EAS) will be tested at 1 PM EST on November 9. EAS alerts are transmitted over radio and television broadcast stations, cable television and other media services.

Local and state EAS components are tested weekly and monthly, but this will be the first national test of the system. It is significant that FEMA will conduct the mandatory test.

FEMA was created by executive fiat. EO 12148 was signed into law by a stroke of Jimmy Carter's pen on July 20, 1979. FEMA is described as a federal agency designed to coordinate government response to natural disasters that overwhelm the resources of local and state authorities.

In fact, the federal agency was established as part of a martial law mechanism.

Under Reagan, FEMA was headed by Louis O. Giuffrida, the former national guard general who contributed to the Garden Plot and Cable Splicer, two sub programs under REX 84, a plan to establish concentration camps in America. Operation Cable Splicer is described as "the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government." For more information on these martial law programs, see Mary Louise, Stalag 17, American Style Plans For Civilian Internment (& Worst).

Giuffrida, a counterinsurgency enthusiast, focused the agency's resources on the "civil disturbance" aspect of its charter and worked to undermine Posse Comitatus. In 1982, Reagan formally militarized FEMA with National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 26). The result was a series of national training exercises led by the military. Under REX 82, civilian police from around the country received what FEMA euphemistically referred to as "military police methods" for quelling domestic political unrest.

Under Reagan, with Giuffrida at the helm, FEMA mutated "civil defense planning into a military/police version of civil society," a plan on a collision course with Posse Comitatus.

"Hidden behind FEMA's benevolent face as the body whose chief responsibility is disaster relief, another FEMA exists," Ritt Goldstein wrote in 2002, referring to Bush's effort to turn the agency into a counter-terrorism and "enemy combatant" detention outfit under the newly established Department of Homeland Security.

"At present, the final contents and disposition of the Reagan security initiatives, part of a national crisis plan, remains beyond public knowledge," Goldstein writes. "But given the ‘War On Terror's' scope, even if a formal crisis is not declared, speculation exists that a de facto drift into an effective deployment of FEMA's crisis powers could occur."

Next month's EAS test represents the public notification aspect of that national crisis plan. It is significant that EAS will be tested nationally. Natural disasters are usually regional affairs and do not require a nationwide response. The new national EAS system is designed for a more significant event that conforms to the implementation of martial law as envisioned under Garden Plot and Cable Splicer, a plan that was nearly revealed when Representative Jack Brooks of Texas grilled Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987

The World in Crisis: Time for responsible decision-making

Global Research, October 13, 2011

Elaborate efforts are being made by corporate-controlled mainstream media to downplay (if not ignore outright) the mass demonstrations taking place worldwide in the spirit of the Occupy Wall Street movement which began in New York City last month. Mirror protests are springing up globally with momentum and support increasing day by day.

Some of the big-brand media dismiss the protestors as ill-informed youth bored with their workaday lives. Still others point fingers at the attempts being made to infiltrate the movement by the same influential individuals and institutions that have financed and controlled earlier mass movements and so-called color revolutions, intent on aligning them with Western military and corporate interests.

Whatever one may believe at this point, there can be no denying that unprecedented numbers of people, of all ages and creeds, are increasingly frustrated by the governmental controls and machinations which keep them struggling to make ends meet while effectively jeopardizing their long-term potential to secure an adequate and fair standard of living.

Those who research further have come to see how the markets are manipulated by powerful figures to serve the interests of the few, the elite, the same individuals who control and determine economic trends and invariably direct them in their favour... at the expense of the broader public. As Tony Cartalucci points out:

"As Americans begin pouring into the streets with dissatisfaction, there seems to be some confusion as to who the source of their problem is. That 'who' is a corporate-financier oligarchy that has been destroying America for nearly a century and until now, has done a good job of parasitically feeding from America in the shadows.

They are not the "1%." They are the 1% of the 1%. They are billionaire banksters the Rothschilds, the Federal Reserve and the directors and chairmen of many of the largest corporations on earth including big oil, the military industrial complex, big pharma, big agri, and the corporate media which combine their resources and collective agenda in self-contrived institutions, think-tanks, and working groups to dominate humanity." (Read: #Occupy Wall Street: Change will not come until we Understand and Rewrite the Entire Balance of Power in America)

And while mainstream media keeps pumping out absurd disinformation of the necessity of invading and crippling sovereign nations abroad in order to bring them "freedom", the juxtaposition of these "humanitarian wars" with the economic collapse at home is not going unnoticed. (Watch the video: "I am not moving": Confronting America's Hypocrisy, which contrasts Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's statements on freedom and democracy relating to Syria, Egypt, Libya and Iran with the brutal and repressive treatment of peaceful protestors in America.)

Global Research has been bringing you a broad spectrum of voices analyzing these situations and we will continue to do so because we believe that access to information is the key to the truth. We encourage you to read as much as possible and discuss widely the issues on the table. Challenge yourselves and challenge each other, and in that way we will come to identify the real limits to our freedom and democracy and thereby determine the course of action that is right for us. It is time to seek out the truth and engage in responsible decision-making.

You can help Global Research make information available to the widest possible readership. The Internet is a tool that makes access to information easier than ever and it is our major means of connecting with the world. Likewise, our contributors and correspondents are scattered across the globe in order to report the issues with accuracy and insight. We ask that you consider making a donation to Global Research so that we may continue to support independent analysts in their battle against mainstream media disinformation.

You can also browse our Online Store and see the material we have available to give you in-depth understanding on the important issues of globalization facing humanity today. There are also various membership options available with free book offers to thank you for supporting our efforts.

Ultimately, we all have our own decisions to make on where we stand politically and economically, and the role our lives will play historically. Global Research gives you some of the important tools to make those decisions based on fact and real understanding. Please support us in these goals.

My Occupy Houston Experience: The Defining Moment Of Our Time

Why it can and will succeed

Col. South: www.riotusa.org

10/11/2011

When I heared that Occupy Wall St. was branching out to every major city and was scheduled to begin in Houston on Oct. 6, I didn't expect much. Having learned about the parasites that had their tenticles in Occupy Wall St, I expected Occupy Houston to be crawling with provacateures. Was I in for a surprise.

A few of my soldiers attended day one and advised me that I had better come out as soon as I could make it. When I did, I discovered hundreds of peaceful, well informed and incredibly organized people. It is a total utopian commune much like the Symbionese Liberation Army envisioned some four decades ago.

People from many different walks of life, from many different activist groups and people who are just plain fed up with corporate fascism and are now taking a stand. I met a Louisiana couple who hocked everything they owned to come up there. The core group, Occupy Houston, knows what they are doing. They have a legal team present to give them advice as to what they can legally do and are working with the city, not against it. They are organized and unified. All for one, one for all. Everyone gets to have a voice in what they will do or not do. Food and drinks are all donations and belong to everyone. The police , for the most part are on our side and believe in our right to protest and are not standing in our way.

The group camped out at city hall for the first few days and voluntarily moved to accomodate the arts festival for the weekend and returned to city hall today. We assembled at the Federal reserve building on Saturday and were joined by the legendary Alex Jones.

I have been out there for the past three days and it is not shrinking, it is growing. The people are being heard. This can no longer be ignored and we will keep this up as long as necessary. This is the defining moment and movement of our time, I have been active in Houston and nation wide for seven years and everything that has happened from that point has all come to this. I implore everyone to come out and join this movement in your closest major city now. At some point, the government will send in their provocateures to try to break us up and demonize us. It is the duty of everyone involved to find and point out these people and neutralize them. If every Occupy movement is being conducted like Occupy Houston, then we have a chance to succeed.

 George Soros, ACORN, SEIU Are Behind Occupy Wall Street

First of all I want to make it clear that I am totally against Wall Street corruption, Globalism and the New World Order. In principal I support REAL reform of Wall Street and the corrupt government. The NWO elite however are very crafty and I have become increasingly suspicious of the real motivations behind "Occupy Wall Street". As always, I try to get to the bottom of issues and dig into what nearly nobody else wants to. Recently many have suggested that this movement is being funded by the very same global elite that the protestors claim to be against. At first I thought "no way" and "they can't possibly be doing this" but in my investigation I have uncovered evidence that seem to prove my suspicions correct. So let me ask you, is George Soros involved and what is this about? Their website says this is all about combating banking and the financial forces that shape our country, but is there more? It would seems there is. I have discovered some information that suggests Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN and SEIU, announced the Day of Rage on March 25, 2011. I don't doubt that is true, but haven't been able to find anything other than someone else quote him - nothing linking to the actual quote. The source for the information seems to come from Canada FreePress. More so I have now discovered new information. It would seem George Soros is connected to the U.S. Day of Rage aka Occupy Wall Street through The Ruckus Society. On the U.S. Day of Rage website. The Ruckus Society receives funding from the Tides Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute provides grants to Tides, including a mere $4.2 Million in 2008, the last year figures are available. Several paragraphs down you'll find more on the hopes for a Robin Hood tax, and rewriting our U.S. Constitution, among other little Marxist dreams, including violence since "fiscal reform" probably won't do the job.

Occupy Wall Street, planned for September 17th, posted a video of a test run on September 1st. They planned to spend the night on Wall Street. They announce a Second Revolution and chant, "Wall Street is all streets." Exhilerating! You'll see police interaction, and the "revolutionaries" are telling police the Constitution of the United States gives them the right to sleep on the sidewalks. But Federal law transcends state law, don't you know? The other organization's they show is warresisters.org for the War Resister's League. That's not surprising, Marxism has always been behind peaceniks for a long, long time in America - just like they are behind their anarchists and Islamists. They don't want the "bastion of freedom", America to be either free or a bastion. See Gulag Bound's category, "Peace Movement Manipulation," for many articles primarily or secondarily about that.

So we have confirmation of George Soros connections. Surely there is enough of the $4.2 Million for the U.S. Day of Rage, and no doubt more millions have flowed in during the years since 2008. The U.S. Days of Rage (Occupy Wall Street ) agenda is to demand that money be removed from politics, that the U.S. see to it, that in the future, no bank is too big to fail, and to demand that the Federal Reserve no longer be able to "steal our future." So what will the "occupiers" do about that on standing around on sidewalks?
This is essentially just a loosely knit gathering of sidewalk groups.

WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein happened upon a tweet (don't you love Twitter!), from the account of Alice Khatib, who identifies as being located in Geneva, Switzerland. That led to the website Take the Square where Khatib posted a "Message from The General Assembly of New York City."

Here are some of her thoughts:

Some of us think that the imposition of a Robin Hood Tax on all financial transactions, tax increases on capital gains, and the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act are three essential measures to reestablish a minimum of fiscal sanity in the United States and abroad. [Read about the Glass-Steagall act here]
Some of us think that true autonomy and independence cannot be achieved through fiscal reform.
Some of us believe that we ought to reboot the system, rewrite the constitution, recuse a system of government employed by the rich for the rich.

Many of us think that what truly matters at this stage is to create a shared framework which may enable everyone to speak out, be heard, co-evolve and advance with others. If you look through this framework you may not see one defined picture. If you walk through it you will be amazed at the strange world on the other side. It is time to take back our lives. We ask you to join us now in New York City or to start your own General Assembly in your own town.

The Occupiers are hoping for 20,000 in Lower Manhattan, for what is billed a ‘Tahir moment,' emulating the ‘freedom fighters' in Cairo who have received no freedom. They are hoping for tents and kitchens to be a part of the sidewalk landscape. "Peaceful barricades" are also planned.
The following is a snippet from Adbusters, addressed to "patriots, rabble-rousers, revolutionaries:"

What if, try as we might, we just can't come up with only one demand? Well, then maybe we can decide together on an END THE MONIED CORRUPTION OF AMERICA MANIFESTO - a rousing compendium of our most urgent demands. And on the seventh day of our occupation we publicly deliver our manifesto to the White House and to the American media, letting Obama know that we won't leave Wall Street until he responds.
If thousands of us hang in there day after day, week after week, we may be able to create a spectacular revolutionary experience that fires up the public imagination and eventually maneuvers Obama into doing something that he has so far not had the guts to do: agree to a bold, decisive stroke against the financial corruption of America. Now that would get the American people behind us and cheering us on from coast to coast.
If we can achieve that, the sky will be the limit ... further demands will follow and a new America will be born.
On Saturday, our Tahrir moment begins ... strength, courage, nonviolence!

So, I believe it is clear Soros is connected to Occupy Wall Street via ACORN, and SEIU (founded by the same man), and you might want to do some more fact checking. This shows a clear definitive connection to George Soros via the the millions he gives these organizations. Just as he funded Barak Obama's election. Read confirmation of the SEIU connection here.
The best way to oppose the liberal agenda is to support genuine tea party sentiment. The reason is two-fold. Genuine embrace of our nation's founding principles as expressed by those who genuinely represent the tea party movement are honest interests to cure what ails our fine republic. Rejecting false purveyors of the tea party sentiment as evidenced by pseudo-tea party candidates in the 2010 midterms brings home the point. Most Americans have decided to express a conservative tone realizing a return to our founding principles is the best way forward.

Now all we have to do is separate the wheat from the chaff. Move On types and Soros sympathizers must be dispatched when they try to ‘co-opt' the tea party movement. We must also remove fake conservatives from the ranks of the tea party. It is the liberal intent to destroy this genuine movement by characterizing it as something it is not. Keep the faith conservatives and be on guard against liberal attempts to disrupt the tea party sentiment. Rather then target the real enemies, the private federal reserve, the organizers of this protest seem hell bent on destroying capitalism and instituting full on Marxist Socialism.

Exposed: Globalist Illuminati New World Order Agenda

"The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies [marxism/fascism/socialism v. democracy/capitalism] to enable them [the Illuminati] to divide larger and larger portions of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other." - Myron Fagan

RIOT Deleted From Facebook: Targeted For Political Views

Who doesn't like when we expose criminals and murderers? The criminals and murderers, of course

Col. South: www.riotusa.org

Wednesday night September 28 2011 at about 11:30 pm I attempted to access my RIOT Facebook account. To my horror, I discovered my account had been disabled. I dug deeper and found that I had been accused of "severe violations" of facebook rules. I was given the option to contact Facebook if I felt that this was a mistake. I obviously could not recall doing anything to violate any rules that I knew of, much less "severely", so I did just that. I demanded an explanation and for the situation to be fixed imediatley. The response came back, with Facebook talking lound and saying very little. They said they would not reinstate me because I severely violated facebook rules and that they "do not tolerate hate speech" HATE SPEECH???!!! Anyone who knows me and follows my website knows that all I do here is expose criminals and murderers. Exposing criminals and murderers can only be called hate speech if it is the criminals and murderers that are calling it such. I inquired about what specifically I did to constitute Hate speech and severe violations, I got no answers back exept for the same run around bullshit. Obviously, I thought, These people are not being honest with me. I was obviously being targeted for my political views. I continued my investigation.

So who really owns and controls Facebook? 30% is owned by it's employees. 24% is owned by founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg once made the statement that people " need to get over the fact that there is no privacy on the internet". Four percent is owned by, guess who?, Goldman (Government) Sachs.

So who funded Zuckerberg?

Facebook's first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome 'The Diversity Myth', he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.

The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company's key areas of expertise are in "data mining technologies".

Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet.

Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel's board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.

She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development.

So there we have it: Goldman Sachs (criminals) and CIA/DoD (murderers). Are you starting to get the picture?

This is a warning to all freedom fighters on Facebook. They will soon come for you too. This is a call to all freedom fighters to copy this article and spread it virally on Facebook and other sites. RIOT Facebook page will be back up and running in a matter of days. They can't keep us down. We are the resistance!

.‘Occupy Wall Street' protest slowly spreads across the United States

By Eric W. Dolan

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Small groups of demonstrators in major American cities have started their own "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations and organizers are planning further actions in more cities across the United States.

A diverse coalition of people have pledged to occupy Wall Street until something is done about corporate greed and the financial system's undemocratic influence on the U.S. government.

The protesters have been camped out in New York's old Liberty Plaza, one block from the Federal Reserve, since Saturday.

"The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99 Percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the one percent," said a statement on the Occupy Wall Street website.

At least 80 to 100 people were arrested over the weekend in the first big crackdown since the demonstration began. Police accused the protesters of blocking traffic and resisting arrest.

Video recordings showed female protesters being rounded up in an orange-colored mesh pen by police and subsequently sprayed with mace, seemingly without any provocation, and other protesters being dragged across the street by police. Another protester said she was arrested for trying to film the demonstration and locked in a police van for over two hours.

The protest spread to other cities over the weekend.

A small group of "Occupy Los Angeles" demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to show their support for the protesters in New York City.

"Corporate interests seem to be controlling both parties," one protester told LAActivist.com. "The ‘little man,' the ‘American every man,' just isn't getting their voice heard. When you need $35,000 to donate to a campaign to get your voice heard, to have a meeting, that's not democracy."

"Occupy Los Angeles" protesters plan to begin a demonstration at City Hall on October 1. The "Occupy Los Angeles" Facebook page had nearly 2,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.

Another demonstration popped up in Chicago over the weekend. Around 20 "Occupy Chicago" protesters gathered at Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, on Friday and then marched to the Federal Reserve Bank. Some protesters have remained camped out in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the organizers said the "occupation" had grown from 4 people to about 50.

Other "occupation" protests are being planned for Detroit, Denver, Cleveland, Boston, Phoenix, Seattle, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The site occupytogether.org has been set up in hopes of coordinating the protests.

Although the New York Times described the protest as a "noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people" whose purpose was "virtually impossible to decipher," the demonstration has attracted some prominent voices in the progressive and liberal community.

Journalist Chris Hedges described the protest as "really where the hope of America lies."

"The real radicals have seized power," he asserted, "and they are decimating all impediments to the creation of a neo-feudalistic corporate state, one in which there is a rapacious oligarchic class, a thin managerial elite, and two-thirds of this country live in conditions that increasingly push families to subsistence level."

MIT professor Noam Chomsky also said he supports the protest.

"Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street -- financial institutions generally -- has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world)," he said. "And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power."

Filmmaker Michael Moore and Current TV host Keith Olbermann both separately lamented the lack of substantial news coverage of the event, questioning why same-sized or smaller tea party protests garnered more attention than "Occupy Wall Street."

Even Stephen Colbert chimed in, wondering why his reporters couldn't find the stereotypical "mindless hippie argle-bargle" in the protest.

Wall Street protesters cuffed, pepper-sprayed during 'inequality' march

BY Matt Deluca and Christina Boyle DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Sunday, September 25th 2011

Scores of protesters were arrested in Manhattan Saturday as a march against social inequality turned violent.

Hundreds of people carrying banners and chanting "shame, shame" walked between Zuccotti Park, near Wall St., and Union Square calling for changes to a financial system they say unjustly benefits the rich and harms the poor.

At least 80 people were carted away in police vehicles and up to five were hit with pepper spray near 12th St. and Fifth Ave., where tensions became especially high, police and organizers said.

The National Lawyer's Guild, which is providing legal assistance to the protesters, put the number of arrests at 100.

Witnesses said they saw three stunned women collapse on the ground screaming after they were sprayed in the face.

A video posted on YouTube and NYDailyNews.com shows uniformed officers had corralled the women using orange nets when two supervisors made a beeline for the women, and at least one suddenly sprayed the women before turning and quickly walking away.

Footage of other police altercations also circulated online, but it was unclear what caused the dramatic mood shift in an otherwise peaceful demonstration.

"I saw a girl get slammed on the ground. I turned around and started screaming," said Chelsea Elliott, 25, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who said she was sprayed. "I turned around and a cop was coming ... we were on the sidewalk and we weren't doing anything illegal."

Police said 80 protesters were arrested or ticketed at multiple locations for disorderly conduct, blocking traffic and failure to obey a lawful order but the number could rise.

Officials said protesters did not have a permit for the march and one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer, causing a shoulder injury. The NYPD was investigating the use of pepper spray.

"I was shocked because it seemed like one person after another was being brutally tackled, and it wasn't clear why," said Meaghan Linick, 23, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who attended the rally. "I was deeply disturbed to see them throw a man [down] and immediately they were pounding on him. Their arms were going back in the air. I couldn't believe how violent five people needed to be against one unarmed man."

The protesters, joined together under the banner of an organization called Occupy Wall Street, have been stationed in Zuccotti Park since last weekend, attempting to draw attention to what they believe is a dysfunctional economic system that unfairly benefits corporations and the mega-rich.

"The central message is that in this country, there needs to be more conversation about wealth and power," said 23-year-old student Patrick Bruner.

As night fell, those detained were hauled out of vans and buses and into police precincts to be processed.

Hundreds more protesters congregated in Zuccotti Park where for a while another clash with police seemed imminent, but as midnight approached tension eased as die-hards prepared to camp out for the night.

September 19, 2011

Posted by Joshua Corn

A few weeks ago, I wrote to you about the FDA's proposed new policy on dietary supplements that could make it impossible or very expensive for you to purchase the natural products you rely on to support your health. The open comment period on the FDA's proposed guidelines ends on September 30, so NOW is the time to act and let your voice be heard if you want to retain your right to access supplements. (Scroll down to the bottom of this article to learn how you can get involved.)

If the FDA has its way, all vitamins, herbs and other dietary supplements will soon be classified in the same manner as unapproved drugs and synthetic food additives. The results of this change in classification could be disastrous for both natural health consumers and the natural health industry. Resveratrol, CoQ10, curcumin and even many multivitamins could be pulled from the market, and those that remain available may become so expensive that many people won't be able to afford them. Supplement companies that cannot afford to put their products through the FDA's intensive, burdensome drug trial process may be forced out of business, leaving room for pharmaceutical companies to swoop in and profit at your expense.

You know that Big Pharma is surely working hard behind the scenes to make sure that this law is passed, and that they carry incredible influence with the FDA and the government in general. This means that we all need to work together and use the power of the people to stop this from happening. Unless we stop these new guidelines from going in to effect, we stand to lose our right to access the natural healing tools that many of us depend on as alternatives to expensive and often dangerous pharmaceutical drugs.

This also means that the government will have even more say in telling us how we should manage our individual health, and of course, this means the bureaucrats will require additional funding in order to do so. Well, not to worry, the FDA is already working on getting more financial backing from Big Pharma. Apparently, it's not enough that drug companies already fund 60% of the FDA's costs associated with the drug review process. The Alliance for Natural Health reports:

Increasingly Pharma is funding the FDA. No wonder the agency seems to dance to their tune.

The Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) authorizes the FDA to collect fees from companies, allegedly to fund and expedite the drug approval process, but really to pay the agency's bills. Under this authority, pharmaceutical companies pay fees for certain new human drug applications, biologics applications, and supplements submitted to the agency for review - and the FDA's review of an application cannot begin until the fee has been submitted.

The law was enacted in 1992, and Congress needs to renew it every ten years; the next deadline for renewal is September 2012. To make this happen, the FDA has been performing its usual ritual of begging and blustering at the same time.

The FDA has been discussing a raise in the FDA "user" fees with industry since July 2010; in fact, Big Pharma had already agreed to a 6% increase in fees for new drugs through 2017. The increase is expected to produce an additional $40.4 million in user fee revenue in fiscal 2012, bringing the fiscal 2013 total to $712.8 million.

Nothing about this is good news. The issue of conflicts of interest aside, the statistics speak for themselves - more money spent on regulating health care does not yield a healthier population. Last week, Dr. Joseph Mercola published an article titled, "Two Charts That Prove the Government Is Making You Sick." As he explains in the article, health statistics from the OECD demonstrate that "the more a country spends on health care, the less healthy it tends to be."

Now I'm just speculating here, but I wonder if the reason that the U.S. lags behind other nations in life expectancy has anything to do with the vast numbers of early deaths attributable to pharmaceutical drugs. As I recently reported, according to leading experts, over 100,000 people die each year from FDA-approved over-the-counter or prescription drugs, and more than 700,000 more end up in an emergency room as a result of a drug side effect. Meanwhile, according to the government's own National Poison Data System, not a single death was attributed to vitamin, mineral, amino acid or herbal supplement use in the U.S. in 2008 or 2009, the most recent years for which data is available.

It's all rather mind-boggling. Clearly, the FDA is biased against supplements, but why? One could easily argue that any agency that gets 60% of its funding from Big Pharma is going to do everything it can to support that industry. To not enact policies to prop up Big Pharma would be literally suicidal for the FDA. In the end of the day, it seems to me that the FDA, and their close friends, the pharmaceutical companies are getting very nervous about the growing popularity of dietary supplements (which they regard as competition for drugs) and the growing number of Americans deciding to take their health into their own hands.

Well, if you're as confused and angered by all of this as I am, I encourage you to make your voice heard. Remember, the comment period on the FDA's proposed guidelines ends on September 30. The Alliance for Natural Health USA (ANH-USA) is spearheading lobbying efforts and filing lawsuits to challenge the FDA's proposed guidelines. Visit their action center to learn more.

Here are just a few examples of what you can do to help:

Write, email or call your senators, representatives and the FDA. ANH-USA makes it incredibly easy. You can submit a customizable letter directly from their site and locate the number for your local elected officials and view some suggested talking points.

Support the Alliance for Natural Health USA. If you are able, make a donation to the Alliance for Natural Health. Every little bit helps support their efforts to protect access to natural health treatments and information. Visit their website for more information.

Share this information with everyone you know! Send them this article or post it on your Facebook wall. We need to get every American who values health and freedom on board.

Unelected, Unaccountable, Unrepentant

The Federal Reserve Is Using Your Money To Bail Out European Commercial Banks Once Again

The Economic Collapse

Sept 16, 2011

For a moment, imagine that there is a privately-owned organization in the United States that can create U.S. dollars out of thin air whenever it wants and can loan that money to whoever it wants to. Imagine that this organization is able to act with the full power of the U.S. government behind it, but that nobody in the organization is ever elected by the American people, and that for all practical purposes the organization is not accountable to the president or to Congress. Imagine that the organization is able to make trillions of dollars of secret loans to banks, to foreign governments and even to their close friends without ever having to face a comprehensive audit. Does that sound preposterous? Well, such an organization actually exists. It is called the Federal Reserve, and today we found out that once again the Fed is going to be taking huge piles of your money and loaning it to commercial banks in Europe. The Congress cannot overrule this decision. Neither can Barack Obama. Because it has so much power, many refer to the Federal Reserve as "the fourth branch of government", but unlike the other three branches of government, there are basically no significant "checks and balances" on the Federal Reserve. If you don't like the fact that the Federal Reserve is racing in to help big foreign banks survive the European debt crisis that is just too bad. The Federal Reserve pretty much gets to do whatever it wants to do, and the folks over at the Fed simply do not care whether you like that or not.

So what in the world just happened today? The following is how an article onCNBC explained it....

Just ahead of the Wall Street open Thursday, the European Central Bank, along with the U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Japan and Swiss National Bank announced they would offer three-month dollar loans to Europe's commercial banks, easing dollar funding constraints.

It must be nice to do whatever you want without having to get the approval of anyone else.

What do you think Barack Obama would give for such power right about now?

The Federal Reserve and other major central banks around the world decided that lending big European banks gigantic piles of dollars would be a good idea, so they are just doing it.

No debate, no votes and no democracy - they just tell us how things are going to be and that is that.

It is a bit ironic that all of this happened on the third anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It is almost as if the central bankers of the world are trying to send some sort of a message.

So how much money is going to be loaned out?

Well, according to an article in The Daily Mail, big European banks are going to be able to borrow an "unlimited" amount of money....

The deal announced yesterday means banks will be able to borrow ‘any amount' of money in three separate auctions in October, November and December. Banks will have to put up collateral, or security, to tap the emergency funds.

Wow - I wish someone would offer to lend me an "unlimited" amount of money.

But of course this really is not going to solve anything in the long run. You can't solve a raging debt problem with more debt.

Yes, it will help the big European banks with their short-term liquidity problems, but it will do nothing to fix the long-term structural problems that are tearing Europe to pieces.

Win Thin, a senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, said essentially the same thing to CNBC today....

"They're taking care of the symptoms, but the underlying illness is still out there. On the margin, it's positive. Until Greece defaults and we clear this whole thing up, they're still treading water"

So, no, the financial problems of Europe have not been solved.

Just think of this latest move as a temporary band-aid.

So why get upset about it?

Well, what all of this shows is just how arrogant the Federal Reserve is.

The Federal Reserve gets to throw around trillions of dollars without any accountability to the American people.

As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their friends during the last financial crisis.

This was revealed in a GAO report, and members of Congress such as Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders tried to get people to pay attention to this. The following is a statement about this report that was taken from the official website of Senator Sanders....

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world"

So how much of that money went overseas? Well, it turns out that approximately $3.08 trillion of that money was loaned to big banks and major financial institutions in Europe and Asia.

Barack Obama can't lend trillions of dollars to foreign banks.

So why does the Federal Reserve get to do it?

Sadly, most Americans know very little about the Federal Reserve. In the United States today, most Americans graduate from high school without ever learning much of anything about the Fed.

But if you really want to understand what is going on with our economy, it is absolutely critical that you understand the Federal Reserve.

The following are some more reasons why you should be upset about what the Federal Reserve has been doing....

*The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine. Today, the U.S. national debt is 4700 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

*The Federal Reserve has recently been actually paying banks not to make loans. Right now banks can park money at the Federal Reserve and make risk-free income without having to make loans to the American people.

*Current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a track record of failurethat is legendary, and yet George W. Bush and Barack Obama both backed him 100%.

*The Federal Reserve system is designed to create inflation. The truth is that the United States has only had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflationsince the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

*Since 2008, what the Federal Reserve has been doing to our money supplyhas been absolutely insane. Eventually this is going to have very serious consequences for us.

*The U.S. government has handed over the task of "centrally planning" our economy to the Federal Reserve. The Fed decides what the target rate of inflation should be, what the target rate of unemployment should be, what interest rates are going to be and what the size of the money supply is going to be. This is quite similar to the "central planning" that goes on in communist nations, but very few people in our government seem upset by this.

*The Federal Reserve picks "winners" and "losers" in the financial system. For example, when the last financial crisis hit, the Fed bent over backwards to help out the big Wall Street banks, but hordes of small banks were left out in the cold.

*As mentioned above, the Federal Reserve has become way, way too powerful. The Fed is able to do a lot of things that the three branches of government are simply not able to do. Fortunately, there are a few of our leaders that are alarmed by this. For example, Ron Paul once told MSNBC that he believes that the Federal Reserve is now more powerful than Congress.....

"The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don't even have any transparency of this. They're more powerful than the Congress."

As long as we continue to use a debt-based currency that is controlled by a privately-owned central bank, we are going to continue to have permanent inflation and government debt that expands at an exponential pace.

The "central planning" done by the Federal Reserve has created bubble after bubble after bubble. Our dollars is on the verge of dying and our financial system is about to collapse.

The Federal Reserve system simply does not work.

Hopefully we can start sending more politicians to Washington D.C. that will be willing to stand up to the Federal Reserve.

But for now, the Federal Reserve is going to keep running around doing whatever it wants to do whether we like it or not.

Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry Into 9/11 Calls for a New 9/11 Investigation

Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry Into 9/11 - and Former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee - Calls for a New 9/11 Investigation

Washington's Blog

Sept 13, 2011

The Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, previously stated that an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House (confirmed here).

Today, Graham called for a new 9/11 investigation. As Raw Story notes:

Graham on Monday called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation into 9/11after a report found that links between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers were never disclosed by the FBI to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks.

"In the final report of the congressional inquiry, there was a chapter related primarily to the Saudi role in 9/11 that was totally censored, every word of the chapter has been withheld from the public," Graham said on MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show.

"Some of the other questions we ought to be asking are if we know that the Saudis who lived in San Diego and now apparently in Sarasota received substantial assistance, what about the Saudis who lived in Phoenix, Arizona? Or Arlington, Virginia? ... What was happening in those places?"

"I believe these are questions for which there are definitive answers, but the American people and largely their elected representatives have been denied that information."

Many other 9/11 Commissioners and congressmen have called for a new investigation, including:

For example:

9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ." He also says thatit might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11

9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue
9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal";"This investigation is now compromised"; and "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up"

Senator Mike Gravel - who was the main congressman responsible for making the Pentagon Papers public - calls for a new 9/11 investigation

Congressman Ron Paul calls for a new 9/11 investigation and states that "we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on"
Congressman Dennis Kucinich
wants a new investigation

Congressman Jason Chafetz says that we need to be vigilant and continue to investigate 9/11
Senator Lincoln Chaffee
endorses a new investigation

Congressman Dan Hamburg wants a new investigation
In addition,many high-level military and intelligence officials have called for a new investigation, including:

Daniel Ellsberg has called for a new investigation

U.S. General, Commanding General of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, decorated with the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart (General Wesley Clark) said"We've never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intelligence information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I've seen that for a long time"
Former Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Warning under Nixon, Ford, and Carter (Morton Goulder), former Deputy Director to the White House Task Force on Terrorism (Edward L. Peck), and former US Department of State Foreign Service Officer (J. Michael Springmann), as well as a who's who of liberals and independents) jointly call for a new investigation into 9/11

Booga Booga: Fear Ramped Up With Yet Another 9/11 Anniversary Terror Warning

Police state security employed in wake of series of sketchy and unconfirmed plots

Steve Watson

Infowars.com Sept 9, 2011

The Department of Homeland Security has issued yet another terror warning today, ordering security to be stepped up owing to a "credible and specific" intelligence report that al Qaeda is planning to blow up bridges or tunnels in New York on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The terror warning is just the latest in a series of advisories from Big Sis and the White House, all of which have been lacking in detail and described as "unconfirmed".

Sky News reports that the latest warning comes from "a reliable source", but remains "uncorroborated" because it has not been backed up by any other intelligence.

"There is specific, credible but unconfirmed threat information," said Janice Fedarcyk, the assistant director in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) New York division.

Details are sketchy, however, with the only specifics linking the threat to Pakistan and to a car or truck bomb.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered police to ramp up security at subways, with more random bag inspections, and to deploy radiation monitoring equipment.

The warning comes just days after a previous DHS advisory that al qaeda followers may attack the US with small aircraft on the anniversary of 9/11.

Again, the warning contained no specific information, but was aimed at airports, ordering heightened surveillance.

Another general warning was issued last week by the State Department.

The department said it had not identified any "specific threats" about possible attacks but that al Qaeda and its affiliates had "demonstrated the intent and capability to carry out attacks" against the U.S. and U.S. interests.

Establishment figurehead such as US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta have been out in force, hyping the possibility of another 9/11.

The numerous warnings have come along with a slew of reports from the government expressing fears that homegrown terrorists are growing in number inside the US and that the internet is radicalizing a new wave of jihadis. Again, specific details are lacking.

In addition, television networks have begun broadcasting an onslaught of 9/11 tenth anniversary specials as the establishment desperately tries to reinforce the myth that terrorists pose any more threat to Americans than intestinal illnesses or allergic reactions to peanuts.

As the major networks saturate our screens with documentary after documentary about how ‘the world changed on 9/11′, it's important to point out that the only genuine change has been the growth of a gigantic and oppressive Homeland Security surveillance state that feeds on fear and ignorance of the facts.

We have previously documented how such terror alerts have been routinely hyped purely for political purposes.

Never forget that the media and the government have been totally discredited over and over again by their complicity in issuing phony terror alerts designed to manipulate elections and frighten the public into slavish acquiescence.

Just as former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge admitted that DHS would issue fake terror alerts shortly before elections in a bid to influence the outcome during the Bush era, the Obama administration is mimicking the same tactic.

Ridge said he "was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over."

Fast forward seven years and you find exactly the same tactics being employed.

Warnings in October last year of a supposed al-Qaeda attack on targets in Europe were exaggerated by the Obama administration for political purposes, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials told the London Guardian.

No terror event occurred. "It was nothing specific, nothing very new," said Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask after the official warning. "We agree that there is no indication of concrete targets, concrete dates and concrete terror groups," added German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.

British intelligence officials admitted that there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that a significant terror plot was imminent, describing the suggestions as "irritating".

The furor surrounding the non-existant terror plot generated headlines such as"Britain gripped by Al Qaeda terror plot fear" with graphics depicting possible targets and warnings that "a Mumbai-type plot would ‘outmatch' the police and turn London into a war zone" with people being brutally "murdered one by one" - all based on nothing but media hype:

Earlier this year, when the freedom stripping PATRIOT ACT was up for renewal, DHS head Janet Napolitano officially notified a congressional panel that the US was facing the greatest possibility of a major terror attack since 9/11.

Big Sis noted that there was "an increased emphasis on recruiting Americans and Westerners to carry out small scale attacks."

Three of the PATRIOT Act's most draconian provisions were duly extended for a further year by House Republicans.

Every other "terror plot" since 9/11 that has materialized into anything beyond a vague and non specific warning has been exposed as either artificially engineered or seized upon and used by the federal government, with the enthusiastic support of the corporate media, to provide justification for more funding, more power, and more authority to continue the "war on terror" and a gross clampdown on freedom.

Just a brief reprisal of such instances gives a telling insight.

On January 27, 2010, the Detroit News reported how the State Department refused to revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's visa despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and allowed him to board the plane, allegedly in order to avoid tipping off a wider investigation.

After weeks of stonewalling, authorities quietly reversed the official story behind the aborted attack and acknowledged that an accomplice was involved, despite weeks of denial and derision of eyewitness Kurt Haskell's description of a sharp-dressed man who helped Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab board Flight 253 in Amsterdam.

Detroit lawyer Kurt Haskell maintained from the beginning that he saw a well-dressed Indian man aid the accused bomber to board the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terror watch list.

"While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. "The guy said, ‘He's from Sudan and we do this all the time,'" reported the Michigan Live news website.

FBI agents interviewed Haskell and he told them about the sharp-dressed man but officials refused to admit that a wider conspiracy was at hand, stoically maintaining the official story that Abdulmutallab had acted alone. Authorities claimed that videotapes did not show a second man accompanying Abdulmutallab and yet they refused to release any footage of the alleged bomber.

There seems little doubt that Abdulmutallab had at least one accomplice if not more. Authorities have remained silent on other eyewitness reports which described a man intently filming the alleged terrorist throughout the whole flight, a connection that strongly suggests the attempted bomber was involved in some kind of drill and that his strings were being pulled by people in more senior positions.

The Delta 253 incident was just one of the dozens of terror busts and stings since 9/11 to have been orchestrated by handlers aiding the accused terrorists at every turn. We have never come across a major case where the terrorists involved in a plot were not being prodded by the FBI and federal informants, or where clear prior knowledge and forewarning was not evident.

Take the case of Fort Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who repeatedly communicated with alleged Al-Qaeda leaders for nearly a year before his rampage. The FBI knew Hasan was sending emails to terrorists, but they did nothing, allowed him to remain on a U.S. Army base, and even invited him to participate in Homeland Security exercises.

Hasan, "Sent 10 to 20 e-mails to several terror-related Islamic figures, including Anwar Aulaqi, a radical imam from Virginia who has been openly propagandizing for al Qaeda in Yemen and who had ties to several of the 9/11 hijackers," reported the New York Post.

As Webster Tarpley reported, Aulaqi is "an intelligence agency operative and patsy-minder" and "one of the premier terror impresarios of the age operating under Islamic fundamentalist cover" whose job it is to "motivate and encourage groups of mentally impaired and suggestible young dupes who were entrapped into "terrorist plots" by busy FBI and Canadian RCMP agents during recent years."

Tarpley points to Aulaqi's role in the Toronto and Fort Dix, New Jersey, terror plots, which were both contrived by the feds, as proof of Aulaqi's usefulness to the authorities in radicalizing terrorist patsies.

Lawyers in a case relating to the much vaunted 2007 terror plot to attack Fort Dix and kill "as many soldiers as possible" concluded that FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies.

Similarly, the "Toronto" terrorists turned out to be "a bunch of incompetent guys who were primarily misled by a delusional megalomaniac". The explosive fertilizer material the terrorist cell apparently planned to use was in fact purchased by an informant working for the RCMP who had radicalized the group.

Hasan's direct relationship with FBI operative and ace patsy-minder Aulaqi provides strong evidence that the Fort Hood shooter was being watched very carefully long before he went on his tragic rampage.

Hundreds of terror suspects (read: patsies and mental deficients) have been convicted in civilian federal courts, including convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid who attended the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London. The Finsbury imam at the time was Abu Hamza al-Masri who began working with British Security Services in 1997. A large number of the supposed terrorists convicted in American courts were entrapped by the FBI in classic COINTELPRO fashion and did not have links to the CIA-created al-Qaeda. The entrapped were often fuzzy on al-Qaeda or what it represents.

In the media-lauded Miami terror case in 2007, the supposed ringleader Narseal "Prince Marina" Batiste "had heard of Al-Qaeda, but wasn't sure what it stood for. The FBI instigators made Batiste swear loyalty to al-Qaida; then had him call on his local buddies to form an ‘Islamic army' in Miami. None had military training. Some could barely read. But Batiste assured the group in the midst of its collective marijuana buzz of greatness ahead,"wrote Saul Landau.

These were the men who comedian John Stewart referred to as "seven dipshits in a warehouse" after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had ludicrously told the press that the group of semi-retarded gang-bangers had planned to "wage a ground war against America".

One of the more recent examples was the case of the so-called Muslim terrorists busted in New York, who supposedly wanted to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military airplanes flying out of the New York Air National Guard base. The men were provided with fake explosives and inactive missiles by an FBI informant, reported the Christian Science Monitor. Two of the ringleaders of the "deadly" plot which was endlessly hyped by the media turned out to be semi-retarded potheads, exactly as we had predicted would be the case due to the innumerable past cases with the exact same modus operandi.

The federal authorities seem none too concerned about stopping any real terrorists and are instead obsessed with manufacturing patsies, bankrolling, radicalizing and prodding rag-tag groups to attempt attacks so that the massive slush fund that is the "war on terror" can be prolonged, while the corporate media relishes each opportunity to politicize such events to demonize peaceful resistance to big government as "violent extremism".

With this insidious partnership now colluding to produce a constant supply of Abdul Mutallabs on an almost monthly basis, we can expect to see many more domestic terror alerts and "attacks", be they genuine, provocateured, or outright staged, and with each one the calls to crush free speech and censor the right to express dissent on the Internet will build to a crescendo, with little or no investigation on behalf of the mainstream media as to how such attacks came about in the first place, and who was really behind them.

These and countless other over hyped and completely manufactured threats have led directly to programs such as the "See Something, Say Something" campaign - a literal citizen spy operation overseen by the DHS, that is creating more paranoia and hysteria, if anything serving to make any real terror threat more likely to go undiscovered.

The endless terror alerts, whether real or phony, are now being issued via the mainstream media and beamed directly to mobile phones and home computers over social networking sites, and even via Emergency Alert broadcasts.

In addition to the invasion of traditional and new social media, The Federal Communications Commission announced recently that it has approved a presidential alert system.

Commissioners voted in February to require television and radio stations, cable systems and satellite TV providers to participate in a test that would have them receive and transmit a live code that includes an alert message issued by the president. No date has been set for the test, according to the Washington Post, which described it as being like something out of Orwell's1984.

Soon enough the creepy and invasive broadcasts that are already being played on giant telescreens in Walmarts across the nation may be playing in your front room.

The DHS is slowly creeping into the lives of every American to the point where it can no longer be sidestepped. Fattened federal agencies are using the over hyped threat of terrorism as an excuse to normalize the notion that the people are servants of the government, rather than the government acting as servant to the people.

The September 11 anniversary provides a unique opportunity for the establishment to reanimate their flagging war on terror with a new round of fear-mongering propaganda. The event will allow them to exploit decade old footage of the attacks in order to insist that there remains a threat large enough to require Gestapo goons at airports, a high-tech surveillance grid, and the point by point dismantlement of the Bill of Rights.

FEMA Forces Firefighters to Stand Down in Texas

Kurt Nimmo

Infowars.com September 6, 2011

In an outrageous repeat of Katrina, the federal government has moved into wildfire-stricken Texas and turned away firefighting trained volunteers who had converged on Bastrop and Smithville to combat the out of control flames.

According to The Gonzales Cannon, federal officials arrived at the scene and assumed command of the operation under the pretense "local officials never made a formal request for volunteers."

Jennifer Jones, a spokesperson with the U.S. National Interagency Incident Center, confirmed that a federal group comprised of several agencies would be assuming command in Bastrop County.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, FEMA refused to allow volunteer firefighters from around the nation, as well as trucks loaded with donated water, from entering New Orleans as troops, police, and mercenaries went house-to-house confiscating weapons.

Officials in Louisiana accused FEMA of making the situation worse with red tape and a hesitant response immediately after Katrina blasted into the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the Los Angeles Times reported on September 5, 2005.

Alex Jones was contacted on Tuesday by firefighters who confirmed that FEMA is blocking volunteer assistance and has frustrated local attempts through the U.S. Forest Service and its maze of bureaucratic red tape. The firefighters and other volunteers report that the Forest Service is not responding to their efforts to clear federal hurdles put in the way of a response to the worst fire in Texas history.

In the past, the first line of defense during emergencies was the state National Guard. Since 9/11, however, the federal government has taken control of the Guard away from the states and has merged its operations with the Pentagon. In 2008, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates commissioned a study proposing recommendations to merge the National Guard and Reserves into the U.S. armed forces.

In January 2010, Obama moved the process forward when he issued an executive order establishing a Council of Governors. "In other words, the Pentagon and Homeland Security will give hand-picked governors their marching orders under the guise of ‘synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States,' a direct violation of Posse Comitatus," we wrote at the time.

In 2005, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard told the national media that FEMA and the feds had abandoned New Orleans after the hurricane. He described how trucks with water delivered from Wal-Mart were turned back and FEMA cut emergency communication lines.

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said FEMA's actions during Katrina amounted to information warfare. "Jamming radio and other communications such as television signals is part of a Pentagon tactic called ‘information blockade' or ‘technology blockade.' The tactic is one of a number of such operations that are part of the doctrine of ‘information warfare' and is one of the psychological operations (PSYOPS) methods used by the US Special Operations Command," he told Prison Planet.com on September 6, 2005.

It appears FEMA and the feds are attempting a repeat in Texas.

"The mission of FEMA has never in reality been to bring people food and water and help in times of crisis. Alex Jones has attended numerous FEMA drills where the whole point of the exercise is to round people up, break up families and institute a brutal police state crackdown," Paul Joseph Watson wrote after the devastating storm in the Gulf.

Homeland Security: The Decade's Biggest Scam

September 2, 2011

Source: Salon - Glenn Greenwald

The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

Last year, McClatchy characterized this threat in similar terms: "undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism." The March, 2011, Harper's Index expressed the point this way: "Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 -- Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning: 29." That's the threat in the name of which a vast domestic Security State is constructed, wars and other attacks are and continue to be launched, and trillions of dollars are transferred to the private security and defense contracting industry at exactly the time that Americans -- even as they face massive wealth inequality -- are told that they must sacrifice basic economic security because of budgetary constraints.

Despite these increasing economic insecurities -- actually, precisely because of them -- the sprawling domestic Security State continues unabated. The industry journal National Defense Magazine today trumpets: "Homeland Security Market ‘Vibrant' Despite Budget Concerns." It details how budget cuts mean "homeland security" growth may not be as robust as once predicted, but "Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman . . . have been winning more contracts from DHS"; as a Boeing spokesman put it: "You'll still continue to see domestically significant investment on the part of the government and leveraging advances in technology to stand up and meet those emerging threats and needs."

Of course, the key to sustaining this Security State bonanza -- profit for private industry and power for Security State officials -- is keeping fear levels among the citizenry as high as possible, as National Defense expressly notes, and that is accomplished by fixating even on minor and failed attacks, each one of which is immediately seized upon to justify greater expenditures, expansion of security measures, and a further erosion of rights:

Polls still show that there is increasing public concern about another terrorist attack. It is this fear and an unrealistic American perception of risk that will continue to propel some aspects of the market, analysts say. . . .

Small-scale attacks, whether successful or not, will continue to prompt additional spending, the market analysts at Homeland Security Research Corp. say. They point to the failed 2009 Christmas plot of a man trying to blow up a flight to Detroit with explosives sewn into his underwear and the attempted car-bombing in Times Square early the next year. Though unsuccessful, these events led to immediate White House intervention, congressional hearings and an airport screening upgrade costing more than $1.6 billion.

The LA Times, while skillfully highlighting these wasteful programs, depicts them as some sort of unintended inefficiencies. That is exactly what they are not. None of this is unintended or inefficient but is achieving exactly the purposes for which it is designed. That's true for two reasons.

First, this wastefulness is seen as inefficient only if one falsely assumes that its real objective is to combat Terrorist threats. That is not the purpose of what the U.S. Government does. As Daniel Weeks explains today, the Congress -- contrary to popular opinion -- is not "broken"; it is working perfectly for its actual owners. Or, as he puts it, "Washington isn't broken -- it's fixed":

Our problem today is not a broken government but a beholden one: government is more beholden to special-interest shareholders who fund campaigns than it is to ordinary voters. Like any sound investor, the funders seek nothing more and nothing less than a handsome return -- deficits be darned -- in the form of tax breaks, subsidies and government contracts.

The LA Times, and most people who denounce these spending "inefficiencies," have the causation backwards: fighting Terrorism isn't the goal that security spending is supposed to fulfill; the security spending (and power vested by surveillance) is the goal itself, and Terrorism is the pretext for it. For that reason, whether the spending efficiently addresses a Terrorism threat is totally irrelevant.

Second, while the Security State has little to do with addressing ostensible Terrorist threats, it has much to do with targeting perceived domestic and political threats, especially threats brought about by social unrest from austerity and the growing wealth gap. This Alternet article by Sarah Jafee, entitled "How the Surveillance State Protects the Interests Of the Ultra-Rich," compiles much evidence -- including what I offered two weeks ago -- demonstrating that the prime aim of the growing Surveillance State is to impose domestic order, preserve prevailing economic prerogatives and stifle dissent and anticipated unrest.

Pointing out disparities between surveillance programs and the Terrorist threat is futile because they're not aimed at that threat. The British Government, for instance, is continuing its efforts to restrict social media in the wake of the poverty-fueled riots that plagued that country; as The New York Times reports today, it is secretly meeting with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and the company that owns Blackberry "to discuss voluntary ways to limit or restrict the use of social media to combat crime and periods of civil unrest." That revelation prompted taunting condemnations of British tyranny from China and Iran, both of which have been routinely excoriated for surveillance abuses and Internet suppression of the type increasingly common in the West.

Meanwhile, much of the anti-Terrorism weaponry in the U.S. ends up being deployed for purposes of purely domestic policing. As the LA Times notes: those aforementioned BearCats are "are now deployed by police across the country; the arrests of methamphetamine dealers and bank robbers these days often look much like a tactical assault on insurgents in Baghdad." Drones are used both in the Drug War and to patrol the border. Surveillance measures originally justified as necessary to fight foreign Terrorists are routinely turned far more often inward, and the NSA -- created with a taboo against domestic spying -- now does that regularly.

Exaggerating, manipulating and exploiting the Terrorist threat for profit and power has been the biggest scam of the decade; only Wall Street's ability to make the Government prop it up and profit from the crisis it created at the expense of everyone else can compete for that title. Nothing has altered the mindset of the American citizenry more than a decade's worth of fear-mongering So compelling is fear-based propaganda, so beholden are our government institutions to these private Security State factions, and so unaccountable is the power bestowed by these programs, that even a full decade after the only Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, its growth continues more or less unabated.

In America The Rule Of Law Is Vacated

Bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free...

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, August 31, 2011

With bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free, the US Department of Justice (sic) has nothing better to do than to harass the famous Tennessee guitar manufacturer, Gibson http://rt.com/usa/news/gibson-guitar-raid-wood-489/ , arrest organic food producers in California http://rt.com/usa/news/food-agents-year-milk/ and send 12 abusive FBI agents armed with assault rifles to bust down yet another wrong door of yet another innocent family, leaving parents, children, and grandmother traumatized. http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-family-adams-home/ .

What law did Gibson Guitar Corp break that caused federal agents to disrupt Gibson's plants in Nashville and Memphis, seize guitars, cause layoffs, and cost the company $3 million from disrupted operations?

No US law was broken. The feds claim that Gibson broke a law that is on the books in India.

India has not complained about Gibson or asked for the aid of the US government in enforcing its laws against Gibson. Instead, the feds have taken it upon themselves to both interpret and to enforce on US citizens the laws of India. The feds claim that Gibson's use of wood from India in its guitars is illegal, because the wood was not finished by Indian workers.

This must not be India's interpretation of the law as India allowed the unfinished wood to be exported. Perhaps the feds are trying to force more layoffs of US workers and their replacement by H-1B foreign workers. Gibson can solve its problem by firing its Tennessee work force and hiring Indian citizens on H-1B work visas.

In Venice, California, feds spent a year dressed up as hippies purchasing raw goat milk and yogurt from Rawesome Foods and then, decked out in hemp anklets and reeking of patchouli, raided with guns drawn--always with guns drawn--the organic food shop. The owner's crime is that he supplied the normal everyday foods that I grew up on to customers who requested them. For this heinous act, James C. Stewart faces a 13 count indictment and is held on $123,000 bail.

How did raw milk become a "health threat?" Far more Americans have died from e-coli in fast food hamburgers and from salmonella in mass produced eggs and chicken. Like many of my generation, I was raised on raw milk. Mathis Dairy delivered it to the homes in Atlanta. Even decades later a person could purchase Mathis Dairy's raw milk in Atlanta's grocery stores. How did supplying an ordinary staple become a crime?

The FBI agents who broke down Gary Adams door in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, claim they were looking for a woman. Why does it take 12 heavily armed FBI agents to apprehend a woman? Are FBI agents that effete? If the feds can never get the address right, how do we know they have the name and gender right?

I can remember when it only took one policeman to deliver a warrant and to arrest a person, and without gun drawn and without breaking down the door, tasering or shooting the object of arrest. It turns out that the FBI agents who broke into the Adams home not only were at the wrong address but also didn't even have a search warrant had they been at the correct address.

The practice of sending heavily armed teams into American homes has resulted in many senseless murders of US citizens. The practice must be halted and SWAT teams disbanded. SWAT teams have murdered far more innocents than they have dangerous criminals. Hostage situations are rare, and they are best handled without violence.

Jose Guerena, a US Marine who served two tours in Bush's Iraq War was murdered in his own home in front of his wife and two small children by a crazed SWAT team, again in the wrong place, who shot him 60 times. When his wife told him that there were men sneaking around the house, he picked up his rifle and walked to the kitchen to see what was going on and was gunned down. The hysterical SWAT team fired 71 shots at him without cause. Brave, tough, macho cops out defending the public and murdering war heroes. http://rt.com/usa/news/swat-kills-american-hero/

I have seen studies that show that police actually commit more acts of violence against the public than do criminals, which raises an interesting question: Are police a greater threat to the public than are criminals? On Yahoo I just searched "police brutality" and up came 4,840,000 results.

Meanwhile, the real master criminals, such as Dick Cheney, who, if tried for his actions at Nuremberg, would most definitely have been executed as a war criminal, run free. Cheney is all over TV hawking his memoirs. On August 29, interviewed by Jamie Gangel on NBC's Dateline, Cheney again proudly admitted that he authorized torture, secret prisons, and illegal wiretapping. These are crimes under US and international laws.

Cheney claims breaking laws against torture is "the right thing to do" if "we had a high-value detainee and that was the only way we can get him to talk."

Three questions immediately come to mind that no member of the presstitute media ever asks. The first is, why does Cheney think the office of Vice President, President, or Attorney General has the power to "authorize" breaking a law? Our vaunted "rule of law" disappears if federal officials can authorize breaking laws.

The second is, what high-value detainees is Cheney talking about? Donald Rumsfeld declared the Guantanamo detainees to be "the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth." http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=43817 But the vast majority had to be released when it turned out, after years of their lives were spent in a torture prison, that the vast majority of the detainees were hapless innocents who were sold to the stupid Americans by war lords as "terrorists" for bounties. To save face, the US government has held on to a few detainees, but hasn't enough confidence in their alleged guilt to put them on trial in a court of law.

The third is why does Cheney think that he knows better than the accumulated documented evidence that torture doesn't produce truthful or useful information. If the person under torture is actually a terrorist, he knows that his tormentors don't know the answers that they are looking for and so he or she can tell the torturers whatever serves the tortured victim's purposes. If the person under torture is innocent, he has no idea what the answers are and seeks to discover what his torturer wants to hear so that he can tell him.

As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, Dick Cheney, who presided "over policies that left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead from wars of aggression, constructed a worldwide torture regime, and spied on Americans without the warrants required by law" is now being feted and enriched thanks to "the protective shield of immunity bestowed upon him by the current administration." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28970.htm

Meanwhile Gibson Guitar faces prosecution because of the feds' off-the-wall interpretation of a law in India, and the owner of Rawesome has a 13-count indictment for supplying customers with a food staple that was a part of the normal diet from colonial times until recently.

In America we have the rule of law--only the law is not applied to banksters and members of the executive branch but, as Greenwald says, is only applied to "ordinary citizens and other nations' (unfriendly) rulers."

A country this utterly corrupt is certainly no "light unto the world."

Next Stop For NATO Regime Change: Syria

No humanitarian intervention to protect victims of US and British-backed tyrants in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia

Paul Joseph Watson

Infowars.com August 30, 2011

With western-backed Al-Qaeda rebels now firmly in control of Libya, NATO is set to move on to its next target for regime change - Syria - with Bashir Assad's government becoming increasingly isolated as attack plans are finalized.

According to DebkaFile's military and intelligence sources, several different blueprints for military intervention in Syria are now being considered by NATO powers and allied states in the region, including the use of Turkish and Saudi troops to overthrow Assad's regime.

"Well-informed military sources warn that Assad will not be cowed by the international, military and economic noose tightening around his neck. He is far more likely to try and loosen it by lashing out against his enemies, starting with Israel. Iran will certainly be a willing supporter of such belligerence, starting a war which could spread like wildfire across the region," states the report.

Earlier this month NATO powers, including US President Barack Obama, called on Assad to step down. The UN has already pulled all its non-essential staff out of the country.

Obama's demand that Assad step aside is exactly what happened prior to the bombardment of Libya. On February 26, Obama called on Gaddafi to give up power. Three weeks later, US B-2 bombers were attacking Libyan airfields.

The establishment media is repeating precisely the same rhetoric we were bombarded with prior to the attack on Libya, where for weeks rebel troops who had seized control of fighter jets, tanks and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were described as "protesters" and "demonstrators".

Given that the western press has proven adept at manufacturing lies to justify military interventions, whether the actions of Assad's regime represent genuine atrocities or legitimate conduct in the midst of a civil war remains unclear. Some have claimed the abuses are being embellished, while both former CIA agent Robert Baer and ex-MI6 officer Alastair Crooke point out that the Syrian people definitely want change, but not in the form of a NATO "humanitarian" assault.

"Syrians want change. But whether Westerners believe it or not, most people in Damascus, in Aleppo, the middle classes, the merchant classes and the [sectarian] minorities believe Assad is the only person who can bring in reforms," he said. "They fear two things above all else - civil war and Western intervention ... They would like to avoid the example of Libya because it would lead them into civil war," said Crooke.

Whether or not Assad's regime has committed atrocities, as Congressman Ron Paul points out today, both Assad and Gaddafi are no worse than some of the tyrants currently being propped up by western powers, such as the US and British-backed unelected monarchy in Bahrain which has terrorized and murdered its people for almost six months. Fellow western ally Saudi Arabia also sent troops into Bahrain, trained by the British Armed Forces, to crush the popular uprising, leaving behind a trail of human rights abuses.

There was no NATO "humanitarian" intervention when Bahraini troops acting on behalf of the dictatorship began indiscriminately firing tear gas into villages and homes, killing old women and children via asphyxiation, before detaining thousands of pro-democracy protesters and subjecting them to torture while killing scores of others.

Meanwhile, western ally Saudi Arabia is trying to pass a law that would designate any form of protest against the monarchy as a terrorist act. This follows widespread protests by pro-reform demonstrators earlier this year which were met with police brutality, murders and arrests without charge.

"Gaddafi may well have been a tyrant, but as such he was no worse than many others that we support and count as allies," writes Ron Paul. "Disturbingly, we see a pattern of relatively secular leaders in the Arab world being targeted for regime change with the resulting power vacuum being filled by much more radical elements. Iraq, post-Saddam, is certainly far closer to Iran than before the US invasion. Will Libya be any different?"

Given that Libya has now been seized by Al-Qaeda terrorists who are already committing atrocities against the country's black population, NATO's "humanitarian" pretext for further interventions has been completely discredited, but don't expect that to stand in the way of the opportunity to capture another "rogue state" and homogenize it into the global empire of the new world order.

Editor's Note: With Lybia all but in the bag, there are only a few more soveriegn nations left without a Rothschild controlled central bank. Once NATO has conquered them all, it is checkmate. The only question remains, will they allempt their martial law on America before or after the rest of the world falls?

- Col. South

The Rape of Libya

NATO Special Forces on the Ground

by Bill Van Auken

Global Research, August 26, 2011

Five days after "rebels" entered Tripoli, under the cover of NATO bombing and led by foreign special forces, the abject criminality of imperialism's takeover of Libya is becoming increasingly evident.

Fighting continues to rage throughout the Libyan capital, whose two million residents have been made hostages of the armed gangs and Western special forces troops that have seized control of the city's streets.

The focus of NATO operations has become a frantic effort to hunt down and murder Muammar Gaddafi, who has ruled the country for 42 years. A $2 million bounty has been placed on his head, and the British media now openly boast that SAS special forces troops are leading the search for him and his family. A vast array of US armed Predator drones, AWACS spy planes and other surveillance equipment has been concentrated on the North African country to facilitate the manhunt.

The pretense that the US and its European NATO allies were intervening in Libya to "protect civilians and civilian populated areas from threat of attack," as stated in the United Nations Security Council resolution, has effectively been abandoned. Behind the fig leaf of this resolution the naked imperialist and colonial character of the war has emerged.

The Security Council's stipulations that ground troops not be introduced into the country, that an arms embargo be kept in place and that mercenaries be prevented from entering Libya have all been flouted in this criminal operation to seize control of an oil-rich former colony and loot its resources. There is barely any attempt to hide the fact that special forces, intelligence agents and mercenary military contractors have organized, armed and led the "rebels", who have not made a single advance without the prior annihilation of government security forces by NATO warplanes.

After being terrorized for five months by NATO bombs and missiles, the people of Tripoli are now facing sudden death and a looming humanitarian catastrophe as a result of the NATO campaign to "protect civilians".

Kim Sengupta of the Independent reported Thursday from the Tripoli neighborhood of Abu Salim, which the "rebels" stormed under the cover of NATO air strikes. Known as a pro-Gaddafi area, its residents have been subjected to a reign of terror.

"There was no escape for the residents of Abu Salim, trapped as the fighting spread all around them," Sengupta reported. "In the corner of a street, a man who was shot in the crossfire, the back of his blue shirt soaked in blood, was being carried away by three others. ‘I know that man, he is a shopkeeper,' said Sama Abdessalam Bashti, who had just run across the road to reach his home. ‘The rebels are attacking our homes. This should not be happening.

"‘The rebels are saying they are fighting government troops here, but all those getting hurt are ordinary people, the only buildings being damaged are those of local people. There has also been looting by the rebels, they have gone into houses to search for people and taken away things. Why are they doing this?'"

Asked why local residents were resisting the NATO-led force's takeover of the city, Mohammed Selim Mohammed, a 38-year-old engineer, told the Independent, "Maybe they just do not like the rebels. Why are people from outside Tripoli coming and arresting our men?"

Meanwhile, other reports laid bare war crimes carried out by NATO and its local agents on the ground in Tripoli. Both the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies documented a massacre perpetrated against Gaddafi supporters in a square adjacent to the presidential compound that was stormed and looted on Tuesday.

"The bodies are scattered around a grassy square next to Moammar Gadhafi's compound of Bab al-Aziziya. Prone on grassy lots as if napping, sprawled in tents. Some have had their wrists bound by plastic ties," AP reported.

"The identities of the dead are unclear but they are in all likelihood activists that set up an impromptu tent city in solidarity with Gadhafi outside his compound in defiance of the NATO bombings."

AP said that the grisly discovery raised "the disturbing specter of mass killings of noncombatants, detainees and the wounded."

Among the bodies of the executed the report added were several that "had been shot in the head, with their hands tied behind their backs. A body in a doctor's green hospital gown was found in the canal. The bodies were bloated."

Reporting from the same killing field, Reuters counted 30 bodies "riddled with bullets". It noted that "Five of the dead were at a field hospital nearby, with one in an ambulance strapped to a gurney with an intravenous drip still in his arm." Two of the bodies, it said, "were charred beyond recognition."

Amnesty International has raised urgent concerns about the killing, torture and brutalization of people being rounded up by the "rebels," particularly African migrant workers who have been singled out for retribution because of the color of their skin.

In a report from a makeshift detention camp set up by the NATO-led forces in a Tripoli school, Amnesty stated:

"In an overcrowded cell, where some 125 people were held with barely enough room to sleep or move, a boy told Amnesty International how he had responded to calls by al-Gaddafi's government for volunteers to fight the opposition.

"He said that he was driven to a military camp in Az-Zawiya, where he was handed a Kalashnikov rifle that he did not know how to use.

"He told Amnesty International: ‘When NATO bombed the camp around 14 August, those who survived fled. I threw my weapon on the ground, and asked for refuge in a home nearby. I told the owners what happened, and I think they called the revolutionaries [thuuwar], because they came shortly after.

"‘They shouted for me to surrender. I put my hands up in the air. They made me kneel on the ground and put my hands behind by head. Then one told me to get up. When I did, he shot me in the knee at close range. I fell on the ground, and they continued beating me with the back of their rifles all over my body and face.

"‘I had to get three stitches behind my left ear as a result. In detention, sometimes they still beat us and insult us, calling us killers.'"

A pro-Gaddafi soldier told a similar story, recounting that he was captured August 19 while bringing supplies to his unit. "He said that he was beaten all over his body and face with the backs of rifles, punched and kicked. He bore visible marks consistent with his testimony."

Amnesty said that "rebel" leaders estimated that one-third of the detainees were "foreign mercenaries," meaning sub-Saharan Africans. "When Amnesty International spoke to several of the detainees, however, they said they were migrant workers. They said that they had been taken at gunpoint from their homes, workplaces and the street on account of their skin colour." Several said that they feared for their lives and that guards had told them that they would be "eliminated or else sentenced to death."

Among those detained were a family of five from Chad, including a minor, who were taken off of a truck while being driven to a farm to collect produce. A 24-year-old man from Niger who had worked in Libya for five years told Amnesty that armed men had seized him from his home, handcuffed and beaten him and thrown him into the trunk of a car. "I am not at all involved in this conflict," he said. "All I wanted to do was to make a living. But because of my skin colour, I find myself here, in detention. Who knows what will happen to me now."

The human rights group also cited a report from a Reuters reporting team which saw a "rebel" pickup truck carrying three black men in the back. One of them told Reuters he was Nigerian. "He sobbed as he said: ‘I do not know Gaddafi. I do not know Gaddafi. I am only working here.'"

News reports and statements from international aid agencies warn of a humanitarian catastrophe in the city as a result of the NATO siege. Reporting from a local hospital, the Telegraph said: "As battle raged in the Tripoli streets hundreds of casualties were brought in, rebel fighters, Gaddafi's soldiers, and unlucky civilians, laying next to each other in bed and even on a floor awash with blood, screaming or moaning in agony. Many died before they could be treated."

The paper interviewed Dr. Mahjoub Rishi, the hospital's Professor of Surgery: "There were hundreds coming in within the first few hours. It was like a vision from hell. Missile injuries were the worst. The damage they do to the human body is shocking to see, even for someone like me who is used to dealing with injuries." Most of the casualties, he said, were civilians caught in the crossfire.

The Telegraph reported that Tripoli's two other major hospitals were similarly overflowing with casualties and desperately understaffed, as were all of the city's private hospitals.

The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned that the city is facing a medical "catastrophe".

The group told Reuters that "Medical supplies ran low during six months of civil war [i.e., NATO bombardment] but have almost completely dried up in the siege and battle of the past week. Fuel supplies have run out and the few remaining medical workers are struggling to get to work." The lack of fuel means that hospitals that have kept their power by running generators can now no longer do so.

Health officials in Tripoli report that blood supplies have run out at the hospitals and that food and drinking water is unavailable over whole areas of Tripoli.

Meanwhile the governments of Algeria, Venezuela and South Korea have all reported that their embassies in Tripoli have been attacked and looted by "rebel" gunmen. While the governments of Algeria and Venezuela had opposed the NATO invasion and supported Gaddafi, South Korea, a close US ally, had taken no such positions.

The universal euphoria of the US and much of the European media, which is "embedded" with NATO and its "rebels," cannot conceal the brutal reality that a war waged under the pretense of human rights and protecting civilians has unleashed immense death, human suffering and destruction.

Far from a "revolution" or struggle for "liberation," what the world is witnessing is the rape of Libya by a syndicate of imperialist powers determined to lay hold of its oil wealth and turn its territory into a neo-colonial base of operations for further interventions throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

HAARP, Hurricane Irene and the DC Earthquake ...Connected?

Aug 23rd, 2011

Kevin Hayden - TruthisTreason.net

Some material originally written by Glenn Kreisberg, Spectrum Engineer

New York City and Washington, DC experienced a rather powerful, shallow earthquake this afternoon, just as a category 1 hurricane is making its way towards the Eastern seaboard. While these two events seem to be completely seperate, I have a feeling that they could be connected. Follow me down this rabbit hole, if you will, in a short exercise in conspiracy theory building.

In 1997, US Secretary of Defense William Cohen made the following statement at a well-attended conference on weapons of mass destruction, "Others (terrorists) are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves....So, there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations...It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our own (counterterrorism) efforts."

If you think about it, that's actually a pretty ominous statement coming from a sitting Secretary of Defense!

And consider that if our government believed terrorists were engaging in these pursuits back in 1997, you can sure as well assume our government, for better or worse, is currently well along in pursuing these abilities as well.

Now, there is a gentleman named Richard C. Hoagland who knows something more about all of this. Hoagland is a scientific researcher with some clout. He was technical science adviser to Walter Cronkite during the Apollo missions, worked with Carl Sagan developing the message discs placed aboard Pioneer spacecraft and has had a close working relationship with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for many years. Hoagland's own independent research group is called The Enterprise Mission.

Hoagland claims, among other things, that after scouring hundreds of hours of satellite radar images from a variety of sources, he has documented a phenomenon which he believes is evidence that someone or something is affecting the path and intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. As sci-fi as that sounds, the evidence is quite compelling. - via Glenn Kreisberg at http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/KreisbergG2.php

Radar images of Hurricanes Ophelia from the Enterprise Mission website. http://www.enterprisemission.com/weblog/weblog.htm

Images originally from the University of Wisconsin MIMIC (Morphed Integrated Microwave Imagery at CIMSS)

The satellite image loops of the storm tracks indicate some anomalous and erratic behavior in the path and intensity of Hurricane Ophelia. They show Ophelia as a well-organized, strong category 1 storm off the southeast coast of the US. Over very warm, late season open water, the US Weather Service predicted a category 4 storm within 24 to 48 hours and the westerly path of the storm track had it headed for landfall along the mid-Atlantic coast.

Instead, in less than 12 hours, the storm had change course and dissipated completely. The radar image shows something very strange occurring to the storm. As the storm tracks west towards the coast, the satellite precipitation image reveals two extremely heavy, nearly parallel bands of precipitation emanating, in waves from the east, directly toward the eye of the storm. As these heavy bands of precipitation intensify over Hurricane Ophelia, the storm begins to change course, dissipate and is quickly extinguished. The effect is quite dramatic and not at all natural looking. The fact is, intensely heavy bands of cool rainfall falling on the eye of a well organized hurricane, through which the warm waters of the ocean below rise to provide energy and circulation to the hurricane, would have the effect of interfering with that energy flow and for all practical purposes, starving the storm of its fuel.

Hurricane Irene

This is extremely similar to what was currently predicted for Hurricane Irene that is currently making its way up the East Coast. Until now. Suddenly, the day that the north-east, and specifically the Virginia/DC/New York area, experiences freak seismic activity, Hurricane Irene begins to weaken and move off course, avoiding its initial path of Florida, the Carolinas, and eventually, Washington, DC. Just as Ophelia did when it threatened the same region. However, we have microwave imagery of Ophelia and later discovered the anomalous bands of energy and cold rain.

It is still yet to be determined with any certainty whether Hurricane Irene will continue out into the ocean and subside or will it regain its strength and head back inland?

Hoagland describes the dual heavy rain bands in Ophelia as taking on a "tuning fork" interference pattern that moves in lock step with the eye of the storm.

It is Hoagland's contention "...based on the physics of these images that these bizarre ‘tuning fork' patterns - note, geometrically aimed at the precise centers of these respective storms! - are actually a "rainfall side-effect" of an unseen energy technology being applied to these respective storms ... in an effort to decrease both their wind velocities, and to simultaneously alter the storms' tracks themselves."

As a Spectrum Engineer, I see some merit in this electro-magnetic "energy technology" explanation, but I believe Hoagland's "rainfall side effect" may actually be the main desired effect, given that enough intense cold rain from above, on the storm, could act as a blanket on the storms fire and have the effect of the storm rapidly raining itself out. As I'm no meteorologist, this is mere speculation on my part.

But could this effect possibly be attained using electromagnetic waves? Consider that research indicates, and it's not unlikely, certain frequencies of high intensity EM fields could have the ability to separate molecules or break up molecular compounds. This could be used for such things as say separating H2O from air allowing the water to fall. It seems this would be more plausible over open water than over land as water vapor levels and atmospheric conditions over large bodies of water would seem more conducive. - via Glenn Kreisberg at http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/KreisbergG2.php

Furthermore, as many are starting to learn about, the HAARP facilities are a prime suspect in this potential disturbance in both seismic activity and hurricane intensity. Perhaps in their attempt to divert the hurricane, it caused an unintended, unusual earthquake in the region? Is it possibly due to the gas and oil firms fracturing the rock layers (fracking) in their efforts to find more resources? The earthquake is highly unusual, in and of itself.

I suppose we'll never know, but I would be interested in seeing some of the current microwave imagery of Hurricane Irene if it is available somewhere from the early hours of August 23rd, 2011, and look for any similar tuning-fork bands.

High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program

HAARP has been met with controversy since the mid-1990s when the State Duma of Russia issued a press release written by international affairs and defense communities on HAARP and signed by 90 deputies: "The U.S. is creating new integral geophysical weapons that may influence the near-Earth medium with high-frequency radio waves ... The significance of this qualitative leap could be compared to the transition from cold steel to firearms, or from conventional weapons to nuclear weapons. This new type of weapons differs from previous types in that the near-Earth medium becomes at once an object of direct influence and its component."

For more information on HAARP - see HAARP.net or simply look for it as a keyword in your favorite search engine. There is plenty of information out there, some more sane than others.

"HAARP can zap the upper atmosphere with a focused and steerable electromagnetic beam. It is an advanced model of an "ionospheric heater." (The ionosphere is the electrically-charged sphere surroundin