Wednesday, November 30 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

Levin-McCain bill would create a presidential dictatorship. Where is the outrage?
by Justin Raimondo
November 30, 2011
Antiwar.com

Buried in the annual defense appropriations bill is a provision that would give the President the power to use the military to intern anyone -- including American citizens -- indefinitely, and hold them without charges or trial, anywhere in the world, including on American soil. The provision essentially repeals the longstanding Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the military from engaging in law enforcement on US territory -- the greatest fear of the Founders. Approved by a Senate subcommittee in secret hearings, the provisions open the road to a military dictatorship in this country -- and for that we can thank Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, who introduced the measure. Both the FBI and the Pentagon came out against the Levin-McCain monstrosity, and Senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado) introduced an amendment striking the provision: the amendment was defeated in the Senate, 37-61.

The mind reels. As the ACLU's Chris Anders puts it:

"I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn't anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?"

Why now, indeed -- and the answer is not hard to fathom. With the US banking system making very loud creaking noises as the eurozone descends into the economic abyss, and a total meltdown staring us in the face, the Powers That Be want to make sure they have their hands on the reins of power -- and on the whip they won't hesitate to use.

 

Wednesday, November 30 2011   -   9/11 Consequences

November 29, 2011
Steven Aftergood
Secrecy News Blog
fas.org/blog/secrecy

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that was supposed to provide independent oversight of U.S. counterterrorism policies remains dormant and out of service because its members have still not been named and confirmed.

In a report that was newly updated this month, the Congressional Research Service traced the origins of the Board from a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission through its initial establishment as a White House agency to its reconstitution as an independent agency chartered by statute in 2007.

The Board was assigned two overriding missions: It was supposed to "analyze and review actions the executive branch takes to protect the Nation from terrorism, ensuring that the need for such actions is balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties"; and to "ensure that liberty concerns are appropriately considered in the development and implementation of laws, regulations, and policies related to efforts to protect the Nation against terrorism."

 

Tuesday, November 29 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

By Andrew W. Griffin
Red Dirt Report, editor
November 28, 2011
RedDirtReport.com

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Ten years after 9/11 and 16 years after the Oklahoma City bombing, it appears the federal government continues to view some Americans who embrace their First Amendment rights -- press and speech, primarily -- as a danger to the State, and as a result they are listing certain investigative websites as extremist and a terroristic threat to the "homeland."

One, labeled as "extremist" and therefore a threat to the U.S. Government, includes a well-known site, once operated by a truth-seeking Oklahoma state legislator, working to expose anomalies related to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing -- OKCbombing.net. A link to the document can be seen here.

This shocking designation is indeed troubling, particularly to the local documentary film production company Free Mind Films, which is also releasing an explosive documentary about the Oklahoma City bombing, A Noble Lie.

 

Monday, November 28 2011   -   Editorials

November 28, 2011
Dr. Paul Rea
911Truth.org

Dr. Lynn Margulis was always an iconoclast--and now, even after her tragic passing, she continues to teach us a great deal. While many know that Lynn Margulis was once married to astronomer Carl Sagan, in scientific circles she was best known for her theory of symbiogenesis. This theory proposes that inherited variation does not come from random mutations in genes but from long-lasting interaction between organisms.

Steve Goodwin, Dean of Natural Resources at the University of Massachusetts, understands that his colleague would "take the theory of evolutionary biology and see how far she could push it." Given the prevailing Darwinian dogma, her challenge was very gutsy indeed. Strict Darwinists, Margulis pointed out boldly, "miss bacteria, protoctista, fungi, and plants. They take a small and interesting chapter in the book of evolution and extrapolate it into the entire encyclopedia of life."

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Research/Evidence

November 23, 2011
David Ray Griffin
911Truth.org

The family of Lynn Margulis has announced that she died at home on Tuesday, November 22, at the age of 73. She had suffered a serious hemorrhagic stroke on Friday, November 18 - so serious that there was no chance of recovery.

Having authored dozens of books and scientific papers, Margulis was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1999.

In 2004, she began looking into the evidence against the official account of 9/11. She not only accepted it but also -- always known for her courage - announced her views, writing in 2007:

"Whoever is responsible for bringing to grisly fruition this new false-flag operation, which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as unprecedented assaults on research, education, and civil liberties, must be perversely proud of their efficient handiwork. Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization. I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Other Important News

by Glenn Greenwald
November 23, 2011
Salon.com

A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation's former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of "crimes against peace" and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal -- which featured an American law professor as one of its chief prosecutors -- has no formal enforcement power, but was modeled after a 1967 tribunal in Sweden and Denmark that found the U.S. guilty of a war of aggression in Vietnam, and, even more so, after the U.S.-led Nuremberg Tribunal held after World War II. Just as the U.S. steadfastly ignored the 1967 tribunal on Vietnam, Bush and Blair both ignored the summons sent to them and thus were tried in absentia.

The tribunal ruled that Bush and Blair's name should be entered in a register of war criminals, urged that they be recognized as such under the Rome Statute, and will also petition the International Criminal Court to proceed with binding charges. Such efforts are likely to be futile, but one Malaysian lawyer explained the motives of the tribunal to The Associated Press: "For these people who have been immune from prosecution, we want to put them on trial in this forum to prove that they committed war crimes." In other words, because their own nations refuse to hold them accountable and can use their power to prevent international bodies from doing so, the tribunal wanted at least formal legal recognition of these war crimes to be recorded and the evidence of their guilt assembled. That's the same reason a separate panel of this tribunal will hold hearings later this year on charges of torture against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others.

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Legal Response to 9/11

Historical Judgment of Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal

by Cynthia McKinney
November 22, 2011
Global Research

Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal
Bush, Blair Defense Relies On 9/11/01
That's why we need an independent investigation of 9/11.

While the prosecution of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for the crime of aggression, crimes against the peace, took two days to present because the docket was so full of important evidence, including their own books written after the Iraq War, the Defense (by way of Amicus Curiae) sought to conclude its proceedings by invoking the emotionalism of the tragedy that took place on 11 September 2001. Amid multiple rebukes by the Chief Justice of the Tribunal to avoid emotionalism, the Defense team could not help itself.

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Get Involved

By Stephen C. Webster
November 23, 2011
RawStory.com

The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (Protect IP) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) "are like two peas in a pod," Sen. Ron Wyden, the bills' most vocal opponent in the U.S. Senate, explained to Raw Story in an exclusive interview.

"These are Web blacklisting bills, Web censorship bills, and anybody with a Web site would be vulnerable," he said, a tone of urgency prevailing in his voice.

"Had I not put a hold on it in May, it would have simply passed at that time," Wyden continued. "I put a hold on the previous version back in December, and had I not put a public hold on it then, that version would have passed."

Now, the Protect IP Act and SOPA are back, and this time seemingly with enough momentum to make it through Congress -- but that could be changing.

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Other Important News

November 23, 2011
WashingtonsBlog

I have repeatedly demonstrated that -- despite the false divide-and-conquer tactics of the mainstream parties and mainstream media -- the overwhelming majority of Americans agree on the most important issues facing our country. And see this.

NO MORE BAILOUTS!

As I've noted since 2008, Americans are united in their overwhelming disapproval for bailouts to the big banks.

This has remained true right up to today.

As Rassmussen found only last month (as summarized by KXLF news):

Today's Rasmussen Reports survey finds that most Americans don't like bailouts for financial institutions.

read more

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Research/Evidence

by Peter Dale Scott
November 22, 2011
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 9, Issue 47 No 2)

I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." -- Senator Frank Church (1975)

I would like to discuss four major and badly understood events - the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. I will analyze these deep events as part of a deeper political process linking them, a process that has helped build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy.

In recent years I have been talking about a dark force behind these events -- a force which, for want of a better term, I have clumsily called a "deep state," operating both within and outside the public state. Today for the first time I want to identify part of that dark force, a part which has operated for five decades or more at the edge of the public state. This part of the dark force has a name not invented by me: the Doomsday Project, the Pentagon's name for the emergency planning "to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis."¹

My point is a simple and important one: to show that the Doomsday Project of the 1980s, and the earlier emergency planning that developed into it, have played a role in the background of all the deep events I shall discuss.

More significantly, it has been a factor behind all three of the disturbing events that now threaten American democracy. The first of these three is what has been called the conversion of our economy into a plutonomy - with the increasing separation of America into two classes, into the haves and the have-nots, the one percent and the 99 percent. The second is America's increasing militarization, and above all its inclination, which has become more and more routine and predictable, to wage or provoke wars in remote regions of the globe. It is clear that the operations of this American war machine have served the one percent.²

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Editorials

November 22, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) When I read a story yesterday about an 89-year-old woman being water-boarded by nursing home staff over an argument about ice cream, I knew something terrible was amiss across the American landscape. Spontaneous acts of tyranny have been cropping up lately like cancer tumors: a food tyrant in Nevada raids a farm picnic and orders everyone to destroy their food (http://www.naturalnews.com/034125_f...); student protesters in California get pepper-sprayed by thuggish cops who clearly enjoy causing pain and suffering (http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/_ne...); and now nursing home staffers torture their own resident using techniques borrowed from Guantanamo Bay (http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2011/11...).

I watched all this with a sense of sadness and disgrace for the human race. And then a realization hit me like a sledgehammer...

People are only following by example

These random acts of tyranny aren't really random acts at all. They are the infantile acting-out of behaviors the childish American public has witnessed being demonstrated by their "leaders." The TSA sexually molesting air travelers isn't just a violation of fundamental human rights -- it's also a demonstration to the mindless masses that this is now "normal" behavior in society, you see.

So as the masses observe Big Government reaching down their own pants, they now get the message that it's okay to sexually molest little boys at sports stadiums, or that it's okay to take children away from parents through C.P.S. and then rape them as part of child relocation "processing" procedures.

When the American people see George Bush set up secret military prisons and condone waterboarding torture techniques, they called for Obama to stop the practice. Obama promised he would, and then not long after becoming President, he expanded Gitmo and actually presided over an increase in funding for the military and all its secret torture facilities.

The message to the American people? If Obama supports it, then torture must be okay. After all, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, so "peace" must be something that can be achieved through torture. Thus, we should not be at all surprised when an 89-year-old woman gets water-boarded in a nursing home. After all, those staffers are only doing to her what they've watched the U.S. leaders do to other human beings, too. (And yet, for some reason, the nursing home staff were arrested while all the high-level government operatives who engage in the exact same torture techniques are never even questioned...)

This phenomenon of everyday American people mirroring the behavior of federal "authorities" who act as tyrants needed a name, and as I began to ponder this issue, the name came to me in a flash:

I'm calling this phenomenon Trickle-Down Tyranny.

 

Monday, November 21 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

Critics say bureau is running a sting operation across America, targeting vulnerable people by luring them into fake terror plots

by Paul Harris
16 November 2011
guardian.co.uk

Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment' questioned

Critics say bureau is running a sting operation across America, targeting vulnerable people by luring them into fake terror plots

Lawyers for the so-called Newburgh Four have now launched an appeal that will be held early next year. Advocates hope the case offers the best chance of exposing the issue of FBI "entrapment" in terror cases. "We have as close to a legal entrapment case as I have ever seen," said Susanne Brody, who represents another Newburgh defendant, Onta Williams.

Some experts agree. "The target, the motive, the ideology and the plot were all led by the FBI," said Karen Greenberg, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, who specialises in studying the new FBI tactics.

But the issue is one that stretches far beyond Newburgh. Critics say the FBI is running a sting operation across America, targeting -- to a large extent -- the Muslim community by luring people into fake terror plots. FBI bureaux send informants to trawl through Muslim communities, hang out in mosques and community centres, and talk of radical Islam in order to identify possible targets sympathetic to such ideals. Or they will respond to the most bizarre of tip-offs, including, in one case, a man who claimed to have seen terror chief Ayman al-Zawahiri living in northern California in the late 1990s.

That tipster was quickly hired as a well-paid informant. If suitable suspects are identified, FBI agents then run a sting, often creating a fake terror plot in which it helps supply weapons and targets. Then, dramatic arrests are made, press conferences held and lengthy convictions secured.

But what is not clear is if many real, actual terrorists are involved.

Another "entrapment" case is on the radar too.

read more

 

Sunday, November 20 2011   -   Legal Response to 9/11

By Pete Kasperowicz
November 19, 2011
TheHill.com
A bipartisan group of senators proposed legislation this week that would overturn a court interpretation of current law that has blocked a lawsuit brought by 9/11 victims against Saudi Arabia for supporting al Qaeda.

The bill introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) to clarify that victims of terrorist acts in the U.S. can hold the foreign sponsors of those attacks responsible in U.S. courts. Co-sponsoring the bill are Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

 

Friday, November 18 2011   -   OccupyWallStreet

November 17, 2011
OccupyWallSt.org


Today, November 17th, over 30,000 New Yorkers took to the streets to resist austerity, rebuild our economy, and reclaim our democracy. It was our largest action to date.

Our will was only emboldened by Mayor Bloomberg's heavy-handed attempt to eradicate Occupy Wall Street; our brutal eviction from our homes at Liberty Square has strengthened both our resolve and our legitimacy. Together, we raised our voices to declare: "No to evictions! No to the 1% that profits from our collective impoverishment." We showed the world we are not a fringe group of naive idealists--we are truly a people's uprising embodying the revolutionary spirit of economic justice, mutual aid, and participatory, consensus-based democracy. We are the 99%.

And the world responded.

 

Wednesday, November 16 2011   -   9/11 Commission

Former 9/11 commission director talks at lecture

By Travis Alford
November 7, 2011
The Daily Cougar

As the crowd of students, professors and Houstonians brushed off the cold, Philip Zelikow stepped to the podium in The Honors College Commons on Thursday to discuss the US government's defense against terrorism. Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, an executive on the President Intelligence Advisory Board and a history professor at the University of Virginia, focused his lecture, "The Twilight of War," on America's resiliency and his experience with the horrific events of 9/11. "It's my job to make meaning of 9/11," Zelikow said. During the lecture, Zelikow spoke of his personal experiences on the scene during Sept. 11. "I can still smell the sulfur, it stands out," Zelikow said. "It was as if the terrorist opened up a special path to hell."