By STUDS TERKEL
Published: October 29, 2007

EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the Constitution and existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court.

During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government. In 1920, during my youth, I recall the Palmer raids in which more than 10,000 people were rounded up, most because they were members of particular labor unions or belonged to groups that advocated change in American domestic or foreign policy. Unrestrained surveillance was used to further the investigations leading to these detentions, and the Bureau of Investigation — the forerunner to the F.B.I. — eventually created a database on the activities of individuals. This activity continued through the Red Scare of the period.

Retroactive immunity for telecom companies who engaged in illegal spying at the behest of the NSA is at the heart of a bill currently being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill, even before having been officially introduced, is being hotly debated by bloggers, electronic privacy groups, and civil libertarians, as well as presidential contenders (CT Senator Chris Dodd has actually posted a petition at his election website, encouraging readers to support his threatened "hold" on the bill). We should compare the issues involved here with the retroactive immunity provided CIA interrogators in the September, 2006 Military Commissions Act, who could otherwise have been accused of war crimes.

Please see 10/29 action alert from DownsizeDC at end of story, and take action.

by Mitch Albom
Free Press Columnist
October 21, 2007

This should make you angrier than you have been over almost anything since Sept. 11 -- and that includes the war in Iraq.

A recent report showed that 75% of fake bombs or bomb parts got past Transportation Security Administration security at Los Angeles International Airport and 60% got past TSA screeners at Chicago's O'Hare.

Those are two of the busiest airports in the world. Those are two of the juiciest targets a terrorist could desire.

By Daniel Ellsberg
September 26, 2007 (Text of a speech delivered September 20, 2007)

Consortium Editor’s Note: Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming war with Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at an American University symposium on Sept. 20.

Below is an edited transcript of Ellsberg’s remarkable speech:

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Families of 14 of the people killed in the planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, have settled their lawsuits, but relatives of other victims said yesterday that they would continue fighting in court to address their questions about how Islamic terrorists bypassed airport security, commandeered four jets and killed thousands of people.

One of those relatives, Mike Low, whose 28-year-old daughter, Sara, was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to strike the World Trade Center, said he was not deterred by the settlements, which were filed Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

“The frustrating thing is not having a trial date,” he said yesterday. “The wheels of justice turn excruciatingly slow. It doesn’t change my mind any. My desire and goal is to try to find some answers. I want to know why Abdulaziz Alomari and Mohamed Atta were allowed to walk on planes in Portland, Me., with prohibited weapons. I want somebody to tell me why that happened.”

The 14 settlements came a few days after the families won a ruling in Federal District Court in Manhattan that would have allowed a jury to hear a few minutes of a cockpit recording that captured the sounds of passengers trying to retake control of United Airlines Flight 93 before it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

The anti-war movement has proven impotent to stop the war in Iraq despite the fact that the war was initiated on the basis of lies and deception. The anti-war movement stands helpless to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran or any other country that he might demonize for harboring a future 9/11 threat.

September 11 enabled Bush to take America to war and to keep America at war even though the government’s explanation of the events of September 11 is mired in controversy and disbelieved by a large percentage of the population.

September 6, 2007 -- Two more cops have died of 9/11-related lung cancer, according to their families.

Officer Frank Macari, 51, died on Monday, after a five-year battle with the disease.

Macari, a 13-year veteran of the force assigned to Brooklyn, developed a tumor on his leg in December 2001, after working at Ground Zero. He leaves a wife and stepdaughter.

Officer Madeline Caro, 41, a 16-year veteran, succumbed to lung cancer in July. Carlo, assigned to the South Bronx, also spent days at the World Trade Center site. She leaves a son and daughter.

by Jenna Orkin http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com
August 27, 2007

The tragic fire at the former Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan nine days ago which took the lives of two firefighters, Joseph Graffagnino, 33 and Robert Beddia, 53, and which has already spawned two criminal investigations, highlights problems about which the community of Lower Manhattan has been warning for years.

[Author, Jenna Orkin of the World Trade Center Environmental Organization, is one of twelve original plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against the EPA.]

August 13, 2007 — Portland, Oregon

Portland to Host Terrorism Drill “NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2” Aug. 20 to 24
Citizens Warn of Established Pattern for Such Drills to go “live”
Contact: Info@OregonTruthAlliance.org

This is an urgent advisory notice from concerned citizens of Oregon and Washington about an upcoming U.S. Joint Forces Command emergency management exercise known as NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 that will simulate terrorism or disaster scenarios in the Lower Columbia River Basin between Aug. 20th and Aug 24th, 2007.

NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 was designed and will be directed by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and the Department of Homeland Security. We are aware of no public notice concerning this exercise, but preliminary investigation has revealed that Oregon National Guard officials and federal officials will conduct the drill. Details from official sources are minimal.

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

The top ten advances towards tyranny in the United States during the tenure of the Bush administration, from the Patriot Act to the latest expansion of the illegal eavesdropping surveillance program.

1) The USA Patriot Act

The party line often heard from Neo-Cons in their attempts to defend the Patriot Act either circulate around the contention that the use of the Patriot Act has never been abused or that it isn't being used against American citizens. Here is an archive of articles that disproves both of these fallacies.

The Patriot Act was the boiler plate from which all subsequent attacks on the Constitution were formed.

NEW YORK, New York, August 8, 2007 (ENS) - The New York Press Photographers Association is asking members of the media who covered the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center to contact the association.

These journalists were exposed to the same toxic chemicals and dust as first responders, and the association wants to ensure that they receive worker's compensation for health problems resulting from that exposure.

David Handschuh, the NYPPA intergovernmental affairs chair and a photographer for the "New York Daily News," circulated a letter to media Tuesday asking people who covered the attacks to come forward.