Sibel Edmonds Interview

Sibel tells All!



I hope she has a body guard!



"The corruption wasn't confined to the State Department and Pentagon - it infected Congress as well. .... Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, was briefed on the investigations, and since they were Republicans,...


And this little tidbit:


GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?

EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.

As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.


Read the full interview at American Conservative Magazine.


http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006/

End the Fed

In the post-modern world, it is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering and challenging the role of the Federal Reserve.

Most people think of the Fed as an indispensable institution without which the country's economy could not properly function. But in END THE FED, Ron Paul draws on American history, economics, and fascinating stories from his own long political life to argue that the Fed is both corrupt and unconstitutional. It is inflating currency today at nearly a Wiemar or Zimbabwe level, a practice that threatens to put us into an inflationary depression where $100 bills are worthless. What most people don't realize is that the Fed--created by the Morgans and Rockefellers at a private club off the coast of Georgia--is actually working against their own personal interests. Congressman Paul's urgent appeal to all citizens and officials tells us where we went wrong and what we need to do to fix America's economic policy for future generations.

Source: http://www.booksamillion.com/product/9780446549196?id=4390738807082

The above book summary emphasizes that the creators of the Fed were the Morgans and Rockefellers while oddly ignoring that the actual motive force behind the Fed's establishment was the Rothschild family:

"Until a few years ago, however, the names of those who owned the Federal Reserve was one of the best kept secrets of international finance due to a proviso on passage of the Federal Reserve Act agreeing that the identities of the Fed's Class A stockholders not be revealed. Class A stockholders control the system by owning the stock of the largest member banks in the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The controlling interest is held by fewer than a dozen international banking establishments, only four of which are based in the United States. The rest of the interests are European, with the most influential of these being the Rothschild family of London. Each of the American interests are in some way connected to this family. Included among these are the Rockefellers who are by far the most powerful of the Fed's American stockholders.

"By the 1820's, the Rothschilds had become the dominant banking family of Europe, controlling the fastest growing banking houses in France, England, Austria, Italy, and Germany. Operations in these countries were overseen by the five Rothschild brothers, each of whom controlled a different country. Those bankers who allied themselves with the Rothschilds and the Masonic Order became wealthy in their own right. Those who didn't would find the going tough.

"During the late 1800's, the Rothschilds began to finance various American industrialists as well. They would do so primarily through the Warburgs of Germany who were partners in Kuhn, Loeb, and company of New York. In this fashion, Rothschild/Masonic interests would gain a foothold in the administration of this country's finances. Both the Warburgs and Kuhn Loeb would later become principal stockholders in the Federal Reserve--with Paul Warburg becoming the first chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

"Through their U.S. and European agents, the Rothschilds would go on to finance the Rockefeller Standard Oil dynasty, the Carnegie steel empire, as well as the Harriman railroad system. The Rockefellers...owing their colossal fortune to the Rothschilds, have for the most part remained loyal to them and their European interests." --Gary Kah, En Route to Global Occupation

The Fed is the greatest modern conspiracy, since its inception in 1913 all other later conspiracies (Roswell, UFOs, JFK, RFK, OKC bombing, Martian pyramids, AIDS, 911 etc.) are derived from it--either through generating them or preventing any honest government/mass media investigation. A covert, egomaniacal, ethnic clique of genetically-related bankers wield supreme socioeconomic power over the world through the operation of their central banking system and consequent monopoly of the corporate, mass media, political and academic arenas.

Afghanistan for Dummies?

Oh look.

The top O'Bomber has simplified Afghanistan for us:

Gen. Stanley McChrystal: "My position here is a little bit like a mechanic. We've got a situation with a vehicle and I've been asked to look at it and tell the owner what the situation is and what it will cost to make the vehicle run correctly and I will provide that… Now I understand that the vehicle owner then has to make a decision on what the car is worth, how much longer he intends to drive it. Whether he wants it to look good or just run."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090920/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_afghanistan

And then you realize he’s talking about Afghanistan. We’ve got a grave human situation in Afghanistan, not a car problem.

Note in the very same article the Top O’Bomber also states: "I do not see indications of a large al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan now."

Oh shit, people, we’re through the looking glass here.


When will our manipulators fully admit to “mission creep” in Afghanistan?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep

Obama/Osama

In Orwell's "fictional" masterpiece of 1984 he describes how the operation of the totalitarian State is based upon the interactive dialectic of Big Brother and Emanuel Goldstein. Since "9/11" this general model has been transposed upon the social structure of the western world--no more so than in the USA. In the book, Big Brother, Goldstein and his underground terrorist network are fabrications of the ruling class--the former an icon of "security" and "comfort", and the latter ones of hate and subversion for the slave population. As if to mock the masses and reveal the Orwellian organization of American society our current actor playing the role of Big Brutha is named "Obama", while the Goldstein character is performed by "Osama", thus exposing their interrelated identity and function.

Three suspects arrested in U.S. terrorism probe

Denver (Reuters)--A Colorado man, his father and an accused accomplice in New York were arrested Saturday and charged with lying to federal agents about a plot to blow up unspecified targets in the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Najibullah Zazi, 24, a native of Afghanistan who works as an airport shuttle bus driver, [at least its nice to know a native of Afghanistan had a job during this recession] was questioned by the FBI for three days, and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, were taken into custody at an apartment in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Also arrested was Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, a native of Afghanistan who was living in the Queens borough of New York City.

FBI agents who searched Zazi's rented car on September 11 found a laptop computer containing instructions on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training facility in Pakistan. In a telephone interview with the Denver Post newspaper on Saturday morning, Zazi said that contrary to media reports he had not admitted any link to al Qaeda or participating in training with the group in Pakistan. "It's not true," Zazi told the newspaper. "I have nothing to hide. It's all media publications reporting whatever they want. They have been reporting all this nonsense."

The questioning of Zazi came days after he traveled to New York City. Early on Monday, a joint anti-terrorism task force carried out a series of raids in an area of the Queens borough...where he had visited over the weekend. The raids rattled some residents as they came days after the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE58J07620090920

"The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror...The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live forever. Everyday, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon--and yet they will always survive." --1984

Two Face is Alive

I have to credit my teenage daughters for this one. Months ago they started routinely referring to Prez Obama as "Harvey." I asked what it was all about, and they explained it to me: "Harvey Dent. Dad, you know Batman; remember, Harvey Dent? The man who becomes Two Face? Well..." Then they went into detail. "Note that they only show one side of Harvey's face--I mean the President's face--in the photos? That's because they're hiding the other face! He's Two Face!"

Now I started noticing. Indeed, there was an uncanny resemblance between Obama and the cartoon version of Harvey Dent from 'Batman: The Animated Series.' Score one for my daughters. Next point: many pictures did only feature one side of his face...but of course, usually the 'good side' is shown...which, come to think of it, is in a way their point as well. Hmmm. Could there really be a dark side of the Obama moon?

Months later my daughters have been proved to be high priestesses of political prophecy. Mr. Change--Harvey--has ridden in on a white horse making near-messianic promises, fueling hope. And what has he done? Entrenched the so-called Federal Reserve economic rapists, bailed out Big Business, and ramped up the war in Af-Pak.

Daughters, I salute your prescience. With enough young people like you, there is still hope for this land of zombies.

Where Did the Towers Go?

The Evidence of Directed Energy Technology on 9/11

Dr. Judy Wood, a professor at Clemson University with degrees in Civil Engineering, Engineering Mechanics, and Materials Engineering Science, asked after the 9/11 catastrophe: How did two of the world's tallest buildings all but disappear, and faster than traditional physics can explain?

Over a half mile of vertical building height, containing nearly 150 football fields of floor space, were reduced to a near-level field of dust and debris, where rescue workers walked horizontally or rappelled into empty caverns to look for survivors. How was this possible given the standard laws of engineering and physics?

The 9/11 Commission report bypassed this central issue, as did the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). And contrary to its stated objective of determining "why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed", the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made the stunning admission that it did not investigate how the towers fell.

Neither the standard view, that the Towers collapsed from fire, nor the standard opposition view, that they were detonated by "thermite explosives", explains the evidence nor follow the laws of engineering and physics. Where Did the Towers Go? provides an understandable and photo-enhanced summary of Dr. Wood's disturbing findings, which resulted in her lawsuit against the contractors of the NIST report.

Source: http://www.booksamillion.com/product/9781932595475?id=4390738807082

O’Zombie bin Laden

September 11, 2009. Please take a moment of silence for the dead man, O’Zombie bin Laden, who died in December 2001, but is still roaming the mountains of “Af-Pak.” May his ghost instill a thousand wars in the name of Imperialism. Amen.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/pakistan/Zardari-claims-Osama-bin-Laden-is-dead/articleshow/4993857.cms



Ding, dong he's dead, ding dongs!

See also, David Ray Griffin:

http://davidraygriffin.com/books/osama-bin-laden-dead-or-alive/

Twenty Minutes with the President

Go Charlie Sheen!



See Charlie Sheen’s fictitious interview with Barack O’Bomber here:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/twenty-minutes-with-the-president.html

A Glitch in the Matrix?

If the "Af-Pak" war(s) seem familiar, there is good reason: the "death head" has changed its mask from "Right" to "Left," from Bush to Obama. Those who buy into the phony control schema of "Left versus Right" (minted from old patterns such as the kabbalistic two pillars in the Tree of Life) will miss the passing Game of Death--until a body bag arrives at their doorstep, or they inhabit one. That's a little late.

Zombie America needs to unplug itself from the feed tube in the back of the skull, wake up, and demand real change, not slogans and lies--starting with an end to the blood sacrifice of our young in the name of vague, fake "objectives." "Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it," said Santayana, and if we are experiencing Deja Vu--a "glitch in the Matrix"--watching these war reruns in realtime and real life--with real body counts--our lesson comprehension is being tested. Right now.

New Global Currency

UN Says New Currency Is Needed to Fix Broken 'Confidence Game'

The dollar's role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the "confidence game" of financial speculation, the United Nations said.

UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said today in a report.

China, India, Brazil and Russia this year called for a replacement to the dollar as the main reserve currency after the financial crisis sparked by the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market led to the worst global recession since WWII. China, the world's largest holder of dollar reserves, said a supranational currency such as the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights, or SDR's, may add stability.

"There's a much better chance of achieving a stable pattern of exchange rates in a multilaterally-agreed framework for exchange-rate management," Heiner Flassbeck, co-author of the report and a UNCTAD director, said in an interview from Geneva. "An initiative equivalent to Bretton Woods or the European Monetary System is needed." The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement created the modern global economic system and institutions including the IMF and World Bank.

While it would be desirable to strengthen SDR's, a unit of account based on a basket of currencies, it wouldn't be enough to aid emerging markets most in need of liquidity, said Flassbeck, a former German deputy finance minister who worked in 1997-1998 with then U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to contain the Asian financial crisis.

The 45-year old UN group, run by former World Trade Organization chief Supachai Panitchpakdi "promotes integration of developing countries in the world economy," according to its Web site.

Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aSp9VoPeHquI

Alien Baby

Mexican TV revealed the almost unbelievable story--in 2007, a baby 'alien' was found alive by a farmer in Mexico. He drowned it in a ditch out of fear, and now two years later scientists have finally been able to announce the results of their tests on this sinister-looking carcass.

At the end of last year the farmer, Marao Lopez, handed the corpse over to university scientists who carried out DNA tests and scans. Tests revealed a creature that is unknown to scientists--its skeleton has characteristics of a lizard, its teeth do not have any roots like humans and it can stay underwater for a long time.

And in a further mystery, Lopez has since mysteriously died. According to American UFO expert Joshua P. Warren, the farmer burned to death in a parked car at the side of a road.

There are frequent UFO sightings and reports of crop circles in the area where the creature was found. Mexican UFO expert Jaime Maussan was the first to break the story. He claimed it was not a hoax. Farmers also told him that there was a second creature but it ran away when they approached.
Source:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ufo-puzzle-alien-baby-or-elaborate-hoax/story-e6freuy9-1225768750492

Why the Wars Roll on

Why the Wars Roll on: Ban Campaign Money From Outside the District


http://www.truthout.org/090409A?n


As public opinion tips against the US military presence in Afghanistan, and Congress talks about "doubling down," as the pullout from Iraq is accompanied by steadily increasing violence, and talk turns to slowing or halting the pull-out, the question the anti-war public must ask itself is: What now? War funding for Iraq continues despite two consecutive Democratic majorities elected expressly to stop it. Obama's high-stakes 2008 Super Bowl ad blared "Getting Us Out of Iraq," and it worked. He was elected. But the cold hard fact seems to be emerging that, regardless of public opinion, the wars will roll on.

The occasional heroic Congress member or senator will call for a timetable, an exit plan or a halt to war funding, but despite lots of heat generated in the debate, the war bills seem to pass at the end of the day. This is because incumbents' real constituents are no longer the people who live in the district. The real power, the money which pays for television ad blitzes and the all-important donations to the local Little League, comes from far away.

Very few people know that on average 80 percent of their Congress members' and senators' campaign funds come from outside the district, and largely from outside the state. They come from industries like defense, telecommunications and financial services. What do they get for these contributions, even in cases when the Congress member votes against those contributors' positions on certain bills?

The 1976 US Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which equated money with "free speech," affirmed your right to buy your own congressman. But it did not explicitly affirm your right to buy mine. Since that decision, the amount of money in politics has skyrocketed and is at all-time highs. Also at record-breaking highs are the pay-offs, like bailouts for the auto and financial services industries.

The savings and loan bailout of the nineties, at $200 billion, was chump change compared to the $700 billion TARP slush fund of today, which rewards financial services companies for the subprime mortgage fiasco. In searching for an answer to how the $3 trillion Iraq war can drag on despite three years of Democratic majorities in Congress elected to end it, follow the money.

The citizen's watchdog group MAPlight.org has found that congressmen who voted for TARP, the "Troubled Assets Relief Program," received nearly 50 percent more in campaign contributions from the financial services industry (an average of about $149,000) than congressmen who voted no. Legislators who voted for the automobile industry bailout in 2009 received an average of 40 percent more in "contributions" from that industry (the less politic call them "bribes") than those who voted against it. And House Energy and Commerce Committee members who voted yes on an amendment in 2009 favored by the forest products industry, to allow heavier cutting of trees, received an average of $25,745 from the forestry and paper products industry. This was ten times as much as was received by each member voting no. This pattern repeats itself over and over.



Continue reading at



http://www.truthout.org/090409A?n

Bush's Third Term? You're Living It

by: David Swanson



http://www.truthout.org/090209D?n



It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can't you just picture it?

There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.

I picture this demonic president still swearing he doesn't torture, still insisting that he wants to close Guantanamo, but assuring his subordinates that the commander-in-chief has the power to torture "if needed," and maintaining a prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan that makes Guantanamo look like summer camp. I can imagine him continuing to keep secret his warrantless spying programs while protecting the corporations and government officials involved.

If Bush were in his third term, we would already have seen him propose, yet again, the largest military budget in the history of the world. We might well have seen him pretend he was including war funding in the standard budget, and then claim that one final supplemental war budget was still needed, immediately after which he would surely announce that yet another war supplemental bill would be needed down the road. And of course, he would have held onto his Secretary of Defense from his second term, Robert Gates, to run the Pentagon, keep our ongoing wars rolling along, and oversee the better part of our public budget.

Bush would undoubtedly be following through on the agreement he signed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 (except where he chose not to follow through). His generals would, in the meantime, be leaking word that the United States never intended to actually leave. He'd surely be maintaining current levels of troops in Iraq, while sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan and talking about a new "surge" there. He'd probably also be escalating the campaign he launched late in his second term to use drone aircraft to illegally and repeatedly strike into Pakistan's tribal borderlands with Afghanistan.

If Bush were still "the decider" he'd be employing mercenaries like Blackwater and propagandists like the Rendon Group and he might even be expanding the number of private security contractors in Afghanistan. In fact, the whole executive branch would be packed with disreputable corporate executive types. You'd have somebody like John ("May I torture this one some more, please?") Rizzo still serving, at least for a while, as general counsel at the CIA. The White House and Justice Department would be crawling with corporate cronies, people like John Brennan, Greg Craig, James Jones, and Eric Holder. Most of the top prosecutors hired at the Department of Justice for political purposes would still be on the job. And political prisoners, like former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and former top Democratic donor Paul Minor would still be abandoned to their fate.

In addition, the bank bailouts Bush and his economic team initiated in his second term would still be rolling along - with a similar crowd of people running the show. Ben Bernanke, for instance, would certainly have been reappointed to run the Fed. And Bush's third term would have guaranteed that there would be none of the monkeying around with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that the Democrats proposed or promised in their losing presidential campaign. At this point in Bush's third term, no significant new effort would have begun to restore Katrina-decimated New Orleans either.

If the Democrats in Congress attempted to pass any set of needed reforms like, to take an example, new healthcare legislation, Bush, the third termer, would have held secret meetings in the White House with insurance and drug company executives to devise a means to turn such proposals to their advantage. And he would have refused to release the visitor logs so that the American public would have no way of knowing just whom he'd been talking to.

During Bush's second term, some of the lowest ranking torturers from Abu Ghraib were prosecuted as bad apples, while those officials responsible for the policies that led to Abu Ghraib remained untouched. If the public continued to push for justice for torturers during the early months of Bush's third term, he would certainly have gone with another bad apple approach, perhaps targeting only low-ranking CIA interrogators and CIA contractors for prosecution. Bush would undoubtedly have decreed that any higher-ups would not be touched, that we should now be looking forward, not backward. And he would thereby have cemented in place the power of presidents to grant immunity for crimes they themselves authorized.

If Bush were in his third term, some of his first and second term secrets might, by now, have been forced out into the open by lawsuits, but what Americans actually read wouldn't be significantly worse than what we'd already known. What documents saw the light of day would surely have had large portions of their pages redacted, and the vast bulk of documentation that might prove threatening would remain hidden from the public eye. Bush's lawyers would be fighting in court, with ever grander claims of executive power, to keep his wrongdoing out of sight.

Now, here's the funny part. This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.

Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. For one thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expanded presidential powers and even - in the case of wars, military strikes, lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and the obstruction of justice - presidential crimes. In addition, in the new Democratic era of goodwill, peace and justice movements have been strikingly defunded and, in some cases, even shut down. Many progressive groups now, in fact, take their signals from the president and his team, rather than bringing the public's demands to his doorstep.

If we really were in Bush's third term, people would be far more active and outraged. There would already be a major push to really end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Undoubtedly, the Democrats still wouldn't impeach Bush, especially since they'd be able to vote him out before his fourth term, and surely four more years of him wouldn't make all that much difference.

Obama White House Has Secret Plan To Harvest Personal Data From Social Networking Websites

Obama White House Has Secret Plan To Harvest Personal Data From Social Networking Websites

Submitted by Ken Boehm on Mon, 08/31/2009


National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.

The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”

In the course of investigating procurement by the White House New Media office, NLPC discovered a 51-page solicitation of bids that was filed on Friday, August 21, 2009. Filed as Solicitation # WHO-S-09-0003, it is posted at FedBizzOps.com. While the solicitation specifies a 12-month contract, it allows for seven one-year extensions. It specifies no dollar cap. Other troubling issues include:

extremely broad secrecy terms preventing the vendor from disclosing to the public or the media what information is being captured and archived (page 7, “Restriction Against Disclosure”)

wholesale capturing of comments by non-White House staff on publicly accessible sites

capturing of content of any type (text, graphics, audio, or video)

capturing of comments by both Obama critics and supporters, with no restriction as to how the White House would use the information.

This is the third controversy involving the White House internet operations in less than a month. First, Obama’s New Media operation asked supporters to send information about critics of the White House health care effort to a White House email. This provoked a storm of criticism and the White House retreated. Then large number of people complained of getting email spam from the White House supporting the President’s health care position. Again the White House was forced to back down.

Now the same people at the White House are at it again with an ambitious plan to harvest huge amounts of information from the web and specifically social networking sites.

Given the White House’s recent abuse of its New Media operations, this huge, new secretive program is yet another sign that this Administration is at best indifferent to privacy rights and at worst prepared to violate civil liberties for political purposes.

Perhaps anticipating negative reaction to the invasiveness of the plan, a justification is provided in a Q&A. section of the solicitation. Question #9 reads:

The Presidential Records Act does not require the storage or archiving of non-EOP content, as such is there a specific reason as to why the content provided on EOP related websites in the form of comments is included in these archiving procedures?

Answer: The PRA includes in its definition of presidential records content ―received by PRA components and personnel. Out of an abundance of caution, we are treating comments made by non-PRA personnel on sites on which a PRA component has a presence as presidential records, requiring them to be captured or sampled.

Of course, this interpretation of the Presidential Records Act is so expansive that virtually any communication mentioning the president or the Administration could become subject to collection and archiving under the Act. This is not out of an “abundance of caution,” but out of an over-abundance of power. President Obama should make sure that this plan goes no further.

See also CNN 'Expert' Lamely Claims to 'Debunk' NLPC on White House Data Harvesting From Social Networks.


“Out of an abundance of caution, we are treating comments made by non-PRA personnel on sites on which a PRA component has a presence as presidential records, requiring them to be captured or sampled. … the Presidential Records Act is so expansive that virtually any communication mentioning the president or the Administration could become subject to collection and archiving under the Act.



http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2009/08/31/obama-white-house-has-secret-plan-harvest-personal-data-social-networking-website





CNN tries to debunk the story:



http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2009/09/02/cnn-expert-should-do-homework-claiming-debunk-nlpc-white-house-data-harvesting



NLPC: In other words, the administration wants the ability to have at least 10 government workers simultaneously adding new web sites to a crawl program, or adjusting the crawl frequency on web sites being crawled. This would allow a massive data mining operation. Our characterizations of this operation are not exaggerated.

MISOGYNY

The title is the link

Fantasies in your News

the title is the link

Inside the CIA's Haphazard Interrogation Program

Inside the CIA's Haphazard Interrogation Program

truthout.org


“It was a haphazard process, cobbled together in the months following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington by an agency that had never been in the interrogation business. The result was a patchwork program in which rules kept shifting and the goals often were unclear. . . . Yet Dick Cheney said the interrogation program was run by "highly trained professionals who understand their obligations under the law."

At times, the interrogators went too far, even beyond the wide latitude they were given under the Bush administration's flexible guidelines, according to newly unclassified documents released Monday. Interrogators took the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding beyond what was authorized. Mock executions were held. Family members were threatened. There were hints of rape.

If it was a terrifying process for the detainees, it was a bureaucratic nightmare for the interrogators. Until 2003, the agency provided its interrogators with rules on a case-by-case basis, sometimes giving permission by e-mail or even orally from CIA headquarters.

The interrogators were required to sign documents saying they understood the rules and would comply with them. Yet they were given ample room to improvise and make decisions about how much humanity to show to terror detainees.

While former Vice President Dick Cheney said the interrogation program was run by "highly trained professionals who understand their obligations under the law," the newly released documents suggest otherwise, at least in the early months.

The interrogators slapped prisoners, held a handgun to one's head, used power drills to make threats and left men shackled and naked in frigid rooms until they cooperated. "How cold is cold?" one officer said in the 2004 CIA inspector general's report released Monday. "How cold is life threatening?"

Continue reading:

http://www.truthout.org/082509C?n

Internment/Resettlement Specialist (31E)

Go Jobs! Go Army!

This job was actually posted at Monster.com but was taken down. The first part is probably for the prisoners that are coming to the U.S. from Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan and secret prisons around the world. The "displaced civilian resettlement facility" is something else, likely to include people from a disaster area but also civilian insurrection. So this is real, people.

The "civilian internment camps" are probably also being readied due to the fact that the states are about to start letting low level prisoners out. So it's certainly all related: http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=292



Internment/Resettlement Specialist (31E)

http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=292


Internment/Resettlement (I/R) Specialists in the Army are primarily responsible for day-to-day operations in a military confinement/correctional facility or detention/internment facility. I/R Specialists provide rehabilitative, health, welfare, and security to U.S. military prisoners within a confinement or correctional facility; conduct inspections; prepare written reports; and coordinate activities of prisoners/internees and staff personnel.

Specifically, see this section:

Provide command and control, staff planning, administration/logistical services, and custody/control for the operation of an Enemy Prisoner of War/Civilian Internee (EPW/CI)camp.

Provide command and control, staff planning, administration/logistical services, and custody/control for the operation of detention facility or the operation of a displaced civilian (DC) resettlement facility.

Common Sense 2009

Common Sense 2009

By Larry Flynt

The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change? "A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street."

There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: "And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis -- the Great Depression -- was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy."
This is nonsense.

The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.

Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve. Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most recent economic meltdown, yet failed to take action. Never mind that the Fed is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new oversight powers will be behind closed doors.

Obama's failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason.

Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 memoirs:
"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure -- one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

Read Rockefeller's words again. He actually admits to working against the "best interests of the United States."

Need more? Here's what Rockefeller said in 1994 at a U.N. dinner: "We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order."

They're gaming us. Our country has been stolen from us.


Continue reading at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-flynt/common-sense-2009_b_264706.html

Corporate murder and Blackwater

the title is the link

Our fascist neo-christian storm troopers

More on 'the family' .. the title is the link

First Lady Requires 26 Servants

I count 22 servants, he says 26.

By Dr. Paul L. Williams

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12652

Update: First Lady Now Requires 26 Servants

“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much. See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service." -- Michelle Obama

No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.

How things have changed! If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michele are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:

1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (CHIEF OF STAFF)
2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
5. Winter, Melissa E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
6. $90,000 - Medina, David S. (DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (DIRECTOR AND PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)
8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND ADVANCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)
11. Reinstein, Joseph B. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)
12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND EVENTS COORDINATOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)
13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ADVANCE AND TRIP DIRECTOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)
14. Lewis, Dana M. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT AND PERSONAL AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)
15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)
16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR SCHEDULING AND TRAVELING AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)
17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
18. Tubman, Samantha (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,SOCIAL OFFICE)
19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (STAFF ASSISTANT TO THE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
21. Bookey, Natalie (STAFF ASSISTANT)
22. Jackson, Deilia A. (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)

"The Family" Filling in the Blanks

The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not "What do fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?"

The title is the link

Buy this book!

The mainstream has discovered their illumanati

Excerpt: "In public, they host Prayer Breakfasts; in private, they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't.""

The title is the link

Cash for Clunkers program's CARS.GOV allows government to access all files on your computer!

The video below says it all.

Beware of the cars.gov website.

Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWs12ccbOiE

The Silence of the Sheep

“Is the Bush administration’s agenda now the Obama administration’s agenda? If not, what is? Exactly why are 130,000 U.S. troops hanging out in a bad part of town with a "kick me" sign taped to their backs? Inertia? Indecision? What?”


http://original.antiwar.com/lind/2009/08/04/the-silence-of-the-sheep/

"Introduce a little anarchy
...upset the established order...
and everything becomes chaos.
I’m an agent of chaos."



"At midnight, I blow you all up."


The Silence of the Sheep
By William Lind

August 05, 2009 "Military.com" -- In early July, U.S. Army Colonel Timothy Reese committed truth. According to a story by Michael Gordon in the New York Times (reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where I saw it), Colonel Reese wrote:

"... an unusually blunt memo (concluding) that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi government and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”

As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’” Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”

As usual, committing truth horrified Reese’s superiors. Michael Gordon reported: "Those (Reese’s) conclusions are not shared by the senior U.S. Commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno."

A spokeswoman for Odierno said that the memo did not reflect the official stance of the U.S. military and was not intended for a broad audience. Truth never is. On the situation in Iraq as on everything else, the American people get the mushroom treatment. That is how Brave New World works.

In fact, Colonel Reese’s conclusion, that we should leave Iraq as quickly as we can, is so obvious it raises some second-order questions. First, exactly why are we keeping 130,000 men in a horribly exposed position, their main LOC running parallel to a potential enemy’s front for 1000 miles, surrounded by a slowly accelerating civil war?

The official answer, that “we are there to back up the Iraqi government,” doesn’t wash. The Iraqi government and its security forces represent the currently dominant Shiite faction, nothing more. There is no state. There won’t be one until the Iraqis settle their own differences, by fighting. Our presence may delay that conflict, but cannot prevent it.

So, Mr. Obama, what’s the real agenda? Under Bush, we knew: an Iraq that had been reduced to an American client state was to provide us with military bases from which we could dominate the region and an unlimited supply of oil. Is the Bush administration’s agenda now the Obama administration’s agenda? If not, what is? Exactly why are 130,000 U.S. troops hanging out in a bad part of town with a “kick me” sign taped to their backs? Inertia? Indecision? What?

That’s one second-order question. Another one is, why is no one in Congress asking the first question? Iraq seems to have vanished off Washington’s radar screen, despite the fact that so long as we’re there, we are smoking in the powder magazine.

It seems that whatever the Obama administration’s agenda in Iraq is, it has gathered virtually unanimous support in Congress. Having worked on the Hill, I know some institutional reasons for that. Congress focuses on whatever the voters are focused on, which at the moment means the economy.

But even there, Iraq raises one of its hydra heads. The American occupation of Iraq continues to burn through money at the cyclic rate. So why aren’t the Blue Dog Democrats and other deficit hawks howling about our continued stay? All we hear is the silence of the sheep.

There are two possible explanations for the Obama administration’s remarkable failure to use its mandate to get out of Iraq while we still can. The first suggests some deep, dark plot, involving money, oil, the SMEC and the SMEC’s Washington’s agents in the White House. During the Bush administration, this explanation was plausible. It is still possible, but I think less likely true. The more likely truth is that the Obama administration is a mile wide and an inch deep.

The public is beginning to sense this, as President Obama’s falling approval ratings show. But within the Establishment, which includes Congress and most of the press, America’s first black President remains immune to criticism because he is America’s first black President. Were the current President, say, a Georgia cracker, the Establishment would already have him in the stocks, subject to a barrage of rotten fruit.

But even if President Obama were himself a man of depth and wisdom, an administration is much more than one man. Most of the Obama administration’s leading figures are merely second and third-stringers from the Clinton administration, resurrected as zombies (starting with Hillary herself). I don’t know of a single strategist among the lot. Most are playing at government, just as little girls play house.

If there is one among the lot who can think beyond the end of his nose – Jim Jones, has the cat got your tongue? –he would do well to quote Colonel Reese’s words to the President:

We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race…Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground.

With a thud that will be heard around the world.

William Sturgiss Lind, Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, born July 9, 1947. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1969 and received a Master's Degree in History from Princeton University in 1971. He worked as a legislative aide for armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He joined Free Congress Foundation.

Moot Court (WARNING! OFFENSIVE!!)

The title is the link

Bush to Barack O'Bomber

A seemless "change".

A picture says a thousand words.

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Implicated in Murder

This is so, so, so incredibly wrong. It’s just unbelievable that this was allowed to go on this long.



“Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades. Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Implicated in Murder

By Jeremy Scahill of The Nation


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill



A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."



In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. Susan Burke, a private attorney working in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is suing Blackwater in five separate civil cases filed in the Washington, DC, area. They were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions. Burke filed the August 3 motion in response to Blackwater's motion to dismiss the case. Blackwater asserts that Prince and the company are innocent of any wrongdoing and that they were professionally performing their duties on behalf of their employer, the US State Department.

The former employee, identified in the court documents as "John Doe #2," is a former member of Blackwater's management team, according to a source close to the case. Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, "it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct." John Doe #2 says he worked at Blackwater for four years; his identity is concealed in the sworn declaration because he "fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration." He also alleges, "On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince's employ, Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence."

[...]


Doe #2 states in the declaration that he has also provided the information contained in his statement "in grand jury proceedings convened by the United States Department of Justice." Federal prosecutors convened a grand jury in the aftermath of the September 16, 2007, Nisour Square shootings in Baghdad, which left seventeen Iraqis dead. Five Blackwater employees are awaiting trial on several manslaughter charges and a sixth, Jeremy Ridgeway, has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter and is cooperating with prosecutors. It is not clear whether Doe #2 testified in front of the Nisour Square grand jury or in front of a separate grand jury.

The two declarations are each five pages long and contain a series of devastating allegations concerning Erik Prince and his network of companies, which now operate under the banner of Xe Services LLC. Among those leveled by Doe #2 is that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe":

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis."

Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that "Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq." He states that he personally witnessed weapons being "pulled out" from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that "Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince's private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines," adding that Prince "generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade."

Doe #2 states: "Using his various companies, [Prince] procured and distributed various weapons, including unlawful weapons such as sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers, through unlawful channels of distribution." Blackwater "was not abiding by the terms of the contract with the State Department and was deceiving the State Department," according to Doe #1.

This is not the first time an allegation has surfaced that Blackwater used dog food bags to smuggle weapons into Iraq. ABC News's Brian Ross reported in November 2008 that a "federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food." Another former Blackwater employee has also confirmed this information to The Nation.

Both individuals allege that Prince and Blackwater deployed individuals to Iraq who, in the words of Doe #1, "were not properly vetted and cleared by the State Department." Doe #2 adds that "Prince ignored the advice and pleas from certain employees, who sought to stop the unnecessary killing of innocent Iraqis." Doe #2 further states that some Blackwater officials overseas refused to deploy "unfit men" and sent them back to the US. Among the reasons cited by Doe #2 were "the men making statements about wanting to deploy to Iraq to 'kill ragheads' or achieve 'kills' or 'body counts,'" as well as "excessive drinking" and "steroid use." However, when the men returned to the US, according to Doe #2, "Prince and his executives would send them back to be deployed in Iraq with an express instruction to the concerned employees located overseas that they needed to 'stop costing the company money.'"

Doe #2 also says Prince "repeatedly ignored the assessments done by mental health professionals, and instead terminated those mental health professionals who were not willing to endorse deployments of unfit men." He says Prince and then-company president Gary Jackson "hid from Department of State the fact that they were deploying men to Iraq over the objections of mental health professionals and security professionals in the field," saying they "knew the men being deployed were not suitable candidates for carrying lethal weaponry, but did not care because deployments meant more money."

Doe #1 states that "Blackwater knew that certain of its personnel intentionally used excessive and unjustified deadly force, and in some instances used unauthorized weapons, to kill or seriously injure innocent Iraqi civilians." He concludes, "Blackwater did nothing to stop this misconduct." Doe #1 states that he "personally observed multiple incidents of Blackwater personnel intentionally using unnecessary, excessive and unjustified deadly force." He then cites several specific examples of Blackwater personnel firing at civilians, killing or "seriously" wounding them, and then failing to report the incidents to the State Department.

Doe #1 also alleges that "all of these incidents of excessive force were initially videotaped and voice recorded," but that "Immediately after the day concluded, we would watch the video in a session called a 'hot wash.' Immediately after the hotwashing, the video was erased to prevent anyone other than Blackwater personnel seeing what had actually occurred." Blackwater, he says, "did not provide the video to the State Department."

Doe #2 expands on the issue of unconventional weapons, alleging Prince "made available to his employees in Iraq various weapons not authorized by the United States contracting authorities, such as hand grenades and hand grenade launchers. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal weaponry in Iraq, unnecessarily killing scores of innocent Iraqis." Specifically, he alleges that Prince "obtained illegal ammunition from an American company called LeMas. This company sold ammunition designed to explode after penetrating within the human body. Mr. Prince's employees repeatedly used this illegal ammunition in Iraq to inflict maximum damage on Iraqis."

Blackwater has gone through an intricate rebranding process in the twelve years it has been in business, changing its name and logo several times. Prince also has created more than a dozen affiliate companies, some of which are registered offshore and whose operations are shrouded in secrecy. According to Doe #2, "Prince created and operated this web of companies in order to obscure wrongdoing, fraud and other crimes."

"For example, Mr. Prince transferred funds from one company (Blackwater) to another (Greystone) whenever necessary to avoid detection of his money laundering and tax evasion schemes." He added: "Mr. Prince contributed his personal wealth to fund the operations of the Prince companies whenever he deemed such funding necessary. Likewise, Mr. Prince took funds out of the Prince companies and placed the funds in his personal accounts at will."

Briefed on the substance of these allegations by The Nation, Congressman Dennis Kucinich replied, "If these allegations are true, Blackwater has been a criminal enterprise defrauding taxpayers and murdering innocent civilians." Kucinich is on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and has been investigating Prince and Blackwater since 2004.

"Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically. The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn't exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated," Kucinich said.

A hearing before Judge Ellis in the civil cases against Blackwater is scheduled for August 7.

--------

President Carter: Many Children Tortured Under Bush

By Ralph Lopez

Read at:

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/07/22/president-carter-many-children-were-tort

While Congress says it is gearing up to investigate what is old news, that CIA and Special Ops forces are killing al-Qaeda leaders, a decision of far different gravity is being contemplated by Attorney General Eric Holder. The new insistence of Congress on its oversight role, conspicuously absent throughout 8 years of Bush, is suddenly rearing its head in the form of questioning a policy which has been in place with no controversy for years. The U.S. has been hunting and killing al-Qaeda leaders outside of official war zones since 2004, when The New York Times reported that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had signed an order authorizing Special Forces to kill al-Qaeda where they found them.

As recently as September 2008, CBS reported that Special Forces struck Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. The decision faced by Holder, whether or not to appoint a Special Prosecutor on torture, is of a different gravity altogether. A weight of evidence keeps building which indicates torture was employed on innocent men, that it didn't work, and that it didn't prevent any attacks. And it gets worse.

Bush's own FBI Director Robert Mueller recently confirmed to the New York Times what he told Vanity Fair a year ago, that "to [his] knowledge" torture didn't prevent a single attack. Former Legendary CIA Director William Colby has said that torture is "ineffective."

Harper's Magazine's Scott Horton nows suggests there are two Eric Holders at war with each other: Holder the good soldier who knows well the preference of his boss for prosecutions to not take place, and Holder the servant of the law who is aware that what he does now may determine what is likely to happen again.

It is becoming clear that such an investigation, if it happens, will not stop with a few low-ranking scapegoats. Horton notes: "President Obama's assurance to CIA officials who relied on the opinions of government lawyers in implementing these programs, an assurance that Holder himself repeated, would have to be worked in. That suggests that the focus would likely be on the lawyers and policymakers who authorized use of the new techniques."

What changed with Holder? Horton writes in "The Torture Prosecution Turnaround?":

Holder began his review mindful of the clear preference of President Obama's two key political advisers - David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel - that there be no investigation. Axelrod and Emanuel are described as uninterested in either the legal or policy merits of the issue of a criminal investigation. Their concerns turn entirely on their political analysis.... Holder initially appeared prepared to satisfy their wishes.

This attitude seemed to change after Obama's speech at the CIA, when Emanual and Axelrod moved out front to say there would be no prosecutions. According to Horton:

"In the days after Obama's speech at the CIA, both Axelrod and Emanuel insisted that the White House had made the decision that there would be no prosecutions. According to reliable sources, that incensed Holder, who felt that the remarks had compromised the integrity both of the White House and Justice Department by suggesting that political advisers made the call on who would or would not be criminally investigated."

To make things worse for the Bush administration, evidence is emerging that they can no longer even rely on exhibit A and B of the Torture Works theory, Al Zabudaya and Kalid Shiek Mohammed, the latter of whom is still confessing to everything short of being the real Boston Strangler. I guess if I'd been waterboarded 82 times I'd be babbling too. The FBI Special Agent who interrogated Abu Zubayda, recently breaking a 7-year silence after reading the "torture memos," wrote in The New York Times:

"One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn't been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence ... This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives."

Then there is the political risk to the Obama administration that Axelrod and Emanual have miscalculated, and that, in fact, the rest of the president's agenda is hamstrung while a growing number of Americans call for existing laws to be enforced. What is haunting Americans could be, in Washington jargon, "sucking oxygen" out of the debate, and "moving forward" is a pipe dream until pending business is dealt with. Spontaneous and planned rallies calling for a Special Prosecutor are growing, not diminishing. In addition, the worse revelations may be yet to come in the horrifying saga of what happened when, as Major General Anthony Taguba says:

[a] permissive environment [was] created by implicit and explicit authorizations by senior US officials to "take the gloves off" ...

President Jimmy Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon "have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse." In "Our Endangered Values" Carter said that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons "107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old." And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody.

Journalist Seymour Hersh's (who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal) bombshell before the ACLU some years ago has been in a temporary slumber, as there is question as to whether the videotapes in possession of the Pentagon were among those claimed to be destroyed. Destroyed or not, there is still the conscience of soldiers and agents who bore witness to contend with, as the reign of political terror against whistleblowers which characterized the Bush administration subsides. Hersh said:

" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said at the time:

"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."

A compilation in November 2008 of other evidence of alleged incidents involving children at the time recounts:

· Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, "suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation" and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of "random" arrests "not based on any legal text."

· Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a U.S. soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners."

· Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw "hundreds" of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, "They have undressed me. They have poured water over me." He said he heard her whimpering daily.

· Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy "who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed." Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.

· German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of "Report Mainz" quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists "poured water" over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, "smeared him with mud" and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.

· Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British "The Guardian" that "Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad's prisons...Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the "Guardian" he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.

· Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army's Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.

· Human Rights Watch (HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.

· IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners' Association for Justice(PAJ), stating that five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army "showed signs of torture all over their bodies," such as "cigarette burns over their legs," she said.

· One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep, according to the "Catholic Worker."

Attorney General Holder is a man of conscience who now serves both President Obama and the law. A Newsweek piece last week says he has no illusions that:

Such a decision [to appoint a special prosecutor] would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

There can be redemption for a nation which faces its past. One that does not can only become more monstrous.

Butchers: The hidden truth about Israel's kidney theft ring

Over the years, many have accused Israel of trafficking in the organs of Palestinians. The Palestinians themselves have no doubt that the practice is common.

Unfortunately, many of the websites trumpeting charges of Israeli organ theft often display an undeniable anti-Semitic bent. Some of the allegations I've looked into do indeed appear to be spurious. (I would, for example, dismiss any claim that traces back to so notorious a source as La Voz de Atlan.) But before you categorize all such accusations as fantasies, consider: As recently as 2004, the State Department officially denounced as mythical the claim that organ trafficking occurs in the United States. As we now know, that "myth" had a basis in reality.

Knee-jerk accusations of anti-Semitism should not deter us from conducting candid and unbiased research into Israel's record. I would note that those who discuss organ trafficking in India and China are not accused of racial animosity toward the Indians or the Chinese. -- Joseph Cannon


Butchers: The hidden truth about Israel's kidney theft ring

By Joseph Cannon

Where do the kidneys come from?

I'm talking about the kidneys offered by an "organist" named Izzy Rosenbaum. The FBI scooped him up in a corruption probethat focused on pay-offs to New Jersey pols (nothing surprising about that) and money laundering by prominent rabbis:
The probe also uncovered Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who is accused of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. According to the complaint, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering sale of kidneys for 10 years.

"His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000," said Marra.
Marra is a US attorney involved with the case. News accounts like the one quoted above have led the public to believe that the "donors" were both willing and compensated, and that this operation was purely private. But good evidence indicates that the matter is far, far more troubling.

The kidneys were "donated" at gunpoint by unwilling victims.

The Israeli government directed Rosenbaum's grisly scheme.

Major American hospitals wittingly participated in the plot.

Before we get to that evidence, let us confront two simple questions: Whosekidneys, exactly, were taken? And what kind of doctor would extract a kidney from a healthy patient?
"I am what you call a matchmaker," the complaint quotes Rosenbaum as telling the undercover agent.

Had the transaction been real, federal authorities said, it would have been the most recent chapter in Rosenbaum's 10-year career as an illicit middleman. In each case, he would take a blood sample from a prospective recipient and give it to an associate at an insurance company who could analyze it at a lab without arousing suspicion. The sample would then be shipped to Israel, and the necessary people paid off to find a match.

"He prayed on vulnerable people, " said assistant US district attorney Mark McCarron.
Rosenbaum would then arrange the donor's flight to New York, including obtaining a visa, authorities said. Once the donor arrived in the US, Rosenbaum would help fabricate a relationship between donor and recipient -- a story both would repeat during interviews with medical professionals. The two might pretend to business associates, for instance, or close friends from a religious congregation.

"The hospitals seemed to be in the dark," McCarron said.
As we shall see, we should take that last statement with a grain of salt roughly the size of Lot's wife.

A close reading of the actual indictment of Rosenbaum (pdf) is troubling. Rosenbaum spilled his guts (so to speak) to an undercover informant posing as a prospective organ purchaser. During these interviews, an FBI agent posed as the purchaser's secretary.

Let's look at some excerpts from the indictment. "UC" refers to the informant, whose real name is Solomon Dwek.

The UC asked defendant ROSENBAUM how defendant ROSENBAUM could obtain a kidney on behalf of UC’s uncle, and defendant ROSENBAUM explained that defendant ROSENBAUM could send a blood sample from the UC’s uncle to Israel to find a matching prospective donor. Defendant ROSENBAUM added that "if you want to arrange it faster, then I, I bring the donor over here... The hospital is the authority who decide it's a match or not. Not me, not you, not him, not nobody."

Defendant ROSENBAUM then explained that it would be necessary to fabricate some sort of relationship between the donor and the recipient. Defendant ROSENBAUM stated that "we put together something–-the relationship. The hospital is asking what's the relationship between" the donor and the recipient. Defendant ROSENBAUM continued, "So we put in a relationship, friends, or neighbor, or business relations, any relation."

Defendant ROSENBAUM explained that he was not a surgeon and that once he had brought a willing donor to this country, "it's beyond my control." He did add that "I take care of [the donor] after, after the surgery also." When pressed on this last point, defendant ROSENBAUM explained that "I place him somewhere," to look after the donor. Defendant ROSENBAUM further stated: "You have to babysit him like a baby because he may have a language problem, maybe not." Defendant ROSENBAUM explained the process of finding a donor in Israel and stated that "[t]here are people over there hurting . . . One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear (meaning pay various individuals for their assistance) all the time."

Defendant ROSENBAUM indicated that among those who would need to be paid were the donor and the doctors in Israel who would examine the donor, and further added that there would be expenses incurred for preparing the Visa work and paying the donor's expenses while in the United States. The only evidence that the donor would be willing came from Rosenbaum, who had the following motives for lying:

1. He needed to ease the conscience of the prospective recipient.

2. He needed to justify the large amount of cash involved.

3. He needed to protect the hospitals and doctors involved with his operation. Rosenbaum understood that he was engaged in a risky business, and that even if he got caught, he would still need to provide cover for any hospital or surgeon connected to this wretched business.

Do we have evidence of that the donors were coerced? Yes. In fact, we have the testimony of an "insider" witness:
Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, was and is very clear as to Rosenbaum's role in the ring.

"He is the main U.S. broker for an international trafficking network," she said.

Her sources include a man who started working with Rosenbaum imagining he was helping people in desperate need. The man then began to see the donors, or to be more accurate, sellers, who were flown in from impoverished countries such as Moldova.

"He said it was awful. These people would be brought in and they didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing and they would want to go home and they would cry," Scheper-Hughes said.

The man called Rosenbaum "a thug" who would pull out a pistol he was apparently licensed to carry and tell the sellers, "You're here. A deal is a deal. Now, you'll give us a kidney or you'll never go home.'
(Moldava, incidentally, is a small country bordering the Ukraine.)

Scheper-Hughes, who is writing a book on this topic, went to the FBI in 2002. They dismissed her evidence. The State Department issued a 2004 report which labeled organ trafficking an "urban legend." By contrast, authorities in other countries acted on her leads and made arrests.
Scheper-Hughes had better luck in Brazil and in South Africa, where law enforcement corroborated her findings and acted decisively.

But the ring kept operating elsewhere. Scheper-Hughes visited villages in Moldova where, "20% of the men were siphoned off to be kidney sellers in this same scheme."

Continue reading

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2009/07/butchers-hidden-truth-about-israels.html

Cap-and-Trade Could Benefit Organized Crime

Excuse me, do you know where I can go to get carbon credits?

At least somebody has his thinking cap on.


International Cap-and-Trade Regime Could Benefit Organized Crime by Creating Carbon Credit Black Market, Senator Warns


(CNSNews.com) – Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) said the cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House of Representatives could be a boon for organized crime in the United States by creating a carbon credit industry that could spawn fraud, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Barrasso spoke Thursday after a hearing by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that focused on climate change and national security.

“The hearing this morning was specifically about national security and climate change, and I view a big part of that is what Interpol is saying--187 different countries are involved--and they’re saying if you need carbon credits, the place to turn to is organized crime if we put in a cap-and-trade program.”

Barrasso asked that a May 30 article by Reuters News Service be entered into the record. The article features an interview with Peter Younger, an environmental crimes specialist with Interpol, the world's largest international police agency.

In the article, Younger refers to the United Nations REDD program--Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation--that would generate billions of dollars by rewarding countries that conserve forests and allowing them to sell for profit “carbon credits” to developing countries, an idea similar to the cap-and-trade legislation being debated in the U.S. Senate.

“If you are going to trade any commodity on the open market, you are creating a profit- and-loss situation,” Younger told Reuters. “There will be fraudulent trading of carbon credits.”

“In future (sic), if you are running a factory and you desperately need credits to offset your emissions, there will be someone who can make that happen for you,” Younger said. “Absolutely, organized crime will be involved."

At Thursday's Senate hearing, Barrasso warned, “We should all be concerned because these groups are a threat to national security. … Some even operate within our own borders.”

“If we endeavor to create a carbon trading scheme here in the U.S., we have to know the national security implications of such an approach,” Barrasso said. “But we need to know, is Interpol’s assessment shared by our intelligence community?” Barrasso added that the committee had not been briefed on that subject, if that’s the case.

The senator also said he sent letters on Wednesday to the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency asking if the agencies are aware of Interpol’s assessment and, if so, what is being done with the information.

The letters also noted that two EPA investigators are working with the Interpol’s pollution crime working group. Barrasso had asked the Congressional Research Services (CRS) to provide information about how much of the intelligence community’s staffing and budget resources are being used on climate change and security issues.

The CRS responded on July 29, saying that the intelligence community “is not engaged in evaluating scientific judgments concerning global climate change” and that “existing resources--both budget and personnel”--are being used, although details were classified.

While many witnesses and committee members at the hearing said that climate change issues such as droughts, hunger, poverty, and lack of water around the world are a threat to U.S. national security, Barrasso said what will likely happen in this country if cap-and-trade becomes law is a concern that is closer to home.

“Organized crime will be the place to go to get carbon credits,” said Barrasso.


http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51820

Currency Wars

The Battle of Waterloo. The deaths of six US presidents. The rise of Adolf Hitler. The deflation of the Japanese bubble economy, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis...

"In a new Chinese bestseller, Currency Wars, these disparate events spanning two centuries have a single root cause: the control of money issuance through history by the Rothschild banking dynasty. Even today, claims author Song Hongbing, the US Federal Reserve remains a puppet of private banks, which also ultimately owe their allegiance to the ubiquitous Rothschilds.

In China, which is in the midst of a lengthy debate about opening its financial system under US pressure, the book has become a surprise hit and is being read at senior levels of government and business. The book's publisher, a unit of state-owned CITIC groups, says Currency Wars had sold almost 200,000 copies, with an estimated 400,000 extra pirated copies in circulation.

Song, an IT consultant and amateur historian who has lived in the US since 1994 and is now based in Washington, says his interest was sparked by trying to uncover what lay behind the Asian crisis in 1997. Song argues that the Fed's key functions are ultimately controlled by five private banks, such as Citibank, all of which maintain a "close relationship" with the Rothschilds." [Strangely, the book hasn't been translated into English yet.]

Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22487560-36375,00.html?from=public_rss

Parasite Watch
"Hedge fund manager George Soros [birth name Gyorgy Schwartz] who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been 'stimulating' and the culmination of his life's work. And while the financial crisis continued to deepen across the globe, the 78-year-old still managed to make $1.1 billion last year.
"It is , in a way, the culminating point of my life's work", he told national newspaper The Australian. Soros is one of 25 top hedge fund managers from across Wall Street who have defied the credit crunch crisis to reap a total of $11.6 billion last year. "
Source: http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=26666

"Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused George Soros of ruining the Malaysian economy with "massive currency speculation". --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_Financial_Crisis