With Speakers: Cynthia McKinney, David Ray Griffin, Peter Dale Scott, Ellen Brown, Ian Crane, Annie Machon, Jim Marrs, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips, and Barrie Zwicker

In one packed weekend, Understanding Deep Politics will bring together ten distinguished speakers and hundreds of concerned citizens for the purpose of challenging the mainstream perceptions of political reality - revealing the hidden forces behind many widely accepted historical and current events.

In an extraordinary editorial, the whistleblower site WikiLeaks has demanded that the United States "stop spying" on its operations.

"Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations," founder Julian Assange writes. "We've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest. But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive."

On Tuesday evening, followers of the WikiLeaks Twitter feed were startled to read, "WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation." This was followed a few minutes later by "If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible." A succeeding message warned, "We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don't think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks."

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of "Turkish Activities" in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

The documents released under FOIA are almost completely redacted, but they do support many of Edmonds’ claims, including:

There were a number of very serious FBI investigations into "Turkish activity in Chicago" involving a number of targets, including TACA

These investigations were related to "National Security" among other things.

read more

 

War Protest Arrests: Eight Put Their Bodies on the Gears of the War Machine

March 20, 2010, thousands of people gathered across from the White House in D.C. and thousands more gathered around the U.S. to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the illegal U.S. attack on Iraq, and to protest Obama’s continuation of the violent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and other abuses of power. Eight people- Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, Matthis Chiroux, Jon Gold, Leflora Cunningham-Walsh, Dennis Frostbutter, Alex MacDonald and James Veeder- engaged in civil disobedience and were arrested.

Many people spoke at the D.C. rally, including peace activist Cindy Sheehan, organizer of the Peace Of The Action campaign and Camp OUT NOW. Cindy called for people to physically disrupt the activities of the war machine, and quoted from Mario Savio’s 1964 statement at Berkeley:

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers and all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop; and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

9/11 Truth Activist Jon Gold Arrested at White House War Protest

March 22, 2010

For Bobby!
For only when we put our bodies to the gears will the machine stop.

A terror war prisoner, once considered of such high value by the Bush administration that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered he be tortured, has taken his first step toward freedom thanks to a federal district court judge, who ordered the government to free him after nearly 10 years of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.

Though 39-year-old Mohamedou Slahi, an alleged 9/11 conspirator, won his habeas corpus appeal before U.S. District Judge James Robertson on Monday, he likely does not know it yet. That's because the judge's decision was classified, according to published reports.

"After the [9/11] attacks, he was fingered by a senior al Qaeda operative for helping assemble the so-called Hamburg cell, which included the hijacker who piloted United 175 into the South Tower," The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007.

After being captured and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, he was repeatedly subjected to torture by his American captors, with Rumsfeld himself ordering "special" interrogation tactics be set aside for Slahi.

March 21, 2010

March 19, 2010
CBSNews.com

A federal judge on Friday rejected a legal settlement of more than a half-billion dollars for people sickened by ash and dust from the World Trade Center, saying the deal to compensate 10,000 police officers, firefighters and other laborers didn't contain enough money for the workers.

"In my judgment, this settlement is not enough," said U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.

The judge also said he was concerned too much of the deal would be eaten up by legal fees and that ground zero responders were going to be pressured into signing on before they knew how much they stood to receive.

Racist bigots with the "Tea Party Movement" aren't the only ones in the streets, as we proved today with coast to coast protests against the wars and torture the U.S. is still carrying out.

There were thousands marching in DC today. Read AP report. Watch the AP video. Watch the local video coverage:

You can read my speech here. After the march, several protesters were arrested in front of the White House, including Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, and Matthis Chiroux. They are sitting in jail tonight and we are told they won't be arraigned until Tuesday.

Listen here

In this motivating interview I talk to organiser, activist and philanthropist Betsy Metz. We ask Betsy about the highly successful conference she organised and facilitated this month. The March 2010 "Treason in America: 9/11, the Wars & Our Broken Constitution" Conference was a milestone in the history of the 9/11 Truth Movement. For the first time in America, Peace Activists, Government Whistleblowers, Journalists and 9/11 Truth Activists explored recent American history together with open minds and hearts, searching for the shocking truth. See: www.treasoninamericaconference.com

So who is Betsy Metz?

Betsy Metz is the quintessential all-American gal! She is a well-educated and fiercely patriotic mother of four and a devoted and loving wife of her husband for 26 happy years. Her husband is also the all-American, being a college quarterback and a former Marine Corps Officer. Together as a family they want for nothing and by any standard have had an excellent and prosperous life. This life would be impossible in nearly any other country in the world and it is fair to say they are living the "American Dream"!

"I know a lot of truthers will join me at Camp OUT NOW in Washington, D.C., and they're welcome".

For more information on Camp OUT NOW click on this banner.

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.

"In response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation," the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks."