Filed under: 2-party system, Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bush, bush = obama, Child Abuse, child torture, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainees, DOJ, Extraordinary Rendition, Geneva Convention, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, interrogation, Iraq, john yoo, left right paradigm, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obamas war, occupation, rendition, Torture, War Crimes, War On Terror
Obama Protecting Bush’s “Testicle Crusher” Attorney
San Francisco Chronicle
December 8, 2009
The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.
Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose “the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military’s detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict,” Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Other sanctions are available for government lawyers who commit misconduct, the department said. It noted that its Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo’s advice to former President George W. Bush since 2004 and has the power to recommend professional discipline or even criminal prosecution.
The office has not made its conclusions public. However, The Chronicle and other media reported in May that the office will recommend that Yoo be referred to the bar association for possible discipline, but that he not be prosecuted.
Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, worked for the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was the author of a 2002 memo that said rough treatment of captives amounts to torture only if it causes the same level of pain as “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize torture of enemy combatants.
Filed under: 2-party system, Barack Obama, Bryan Whitman, Colonialism, Concentration Camp, corruption, Detainees, Detention Camps, DoD, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, free press, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, Gulag, Habeas Corpus, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, occupation, Oppression, Propaganda, rendition, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House
Obama making Guantanamo off-limits to press
Press TV
September 29, 2009
The Obama Administration is denying journalist access to the Guantanamo detention facility despite pledging ‘transparency’ about the infamous prison.
The reporters, who were previously allowed to peek into the prison while covering military trials of the detainees there, are no longer given such authorization, FOXNews reported on Monday.
Arguing in favor of the decision, Defense Department Spokesman Bryan Whitman said “Past experience has led me to believe it is best to keep these visits focused on the purpose of the trip, which in this case is military commission motions,” not the detention camps.
“…the decision, according to multiple sources, is coming out of Washington and the Defense Department,” said the network’s Catherine Herridge.
“…it is clearly not consistent with the administration’s stated goal of transparency,” she added.
Under the banner of the war on terror, former president George W. Bush set up the facility in a US naval base in Cuba shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Ever since, the prison has earned notoriety for conducting torture-aided interrogations of alleged ‘terror’ suspects.
The White House has now even adjourned the military trials at the Guantanamo, taking away the only opportunity journalists had to access the prison.
Shortly after his inauguration in January, Obama signed an official order to shut down Guantanamo within a year, describing it as a “sad chapter in the American history.”
Recently, however, the White House reportedly decided against the closure, citing legal and logistical complexities surrounding the detention and prosecution of inmates held without any charges.
The recent news blackout came, according to Herridge, after a May incident in which two Chinese detainees at Guantanamo’s Camp Iguana compound “held up signs questioning whether the president was a communist or a Democrat and they questioned whether Mr. Obama was oppressing them because they had not been released five months after the president promised to close Guantanamo within a year.”
“…multiple sources have told us this incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” asserted Herridge. “It was highly embarrassing for the Defense Department and for the White House and this was, interestingly enough, the last trip for the journalists to the camps to cover the commission hearings.”
Over 220 inmates are currently held at Guantanamo, widely regarded as one of many American torture chambers reserved for Muslims with “suspected” ties to anti-US terrorism. Many inmates remain in prison unaware of any charges against them and with no right to a legal counsel.
Filed under: 1984, Big Brother, boston, Checkpoints, civil liberties, civil rights, Concentration Camp, Continuity of Government, DHS, Dictatorship, door to door, Empire, Fascism, FEMA, FEMA buses, fema camp, Fema Camps, forced detention, forced quarantine, forced vaccination, forced vaccinations, government control, government takeover, h1n1, h1n1 clinic, h1n1 vaccine, Habeas Corpus, Homeland Security, homeland security buses, human rights, innoculation, involuntary detention, involuntary isolation, involuntary quarantine, involuntary vaccination, knock and talk, mandatory detention, mandatory quarantine, mandatory vaccination, Martial Law, Massachusetts, medical industrial complex, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nanny state, Nazi, New World Order, NWO, Oppression, orwell, Pandemic, Pandemic Influenza, pandemic virus, police brutality, Police State, Posse Comitatus, quarantine, swat, swine flu, swine flu pandemic, swine flu vaccine, Troops, US Constitution, vaccinations, Vaccine, vaccine checkpoints, vaccine teams
Swine flu vaccine recipients could be tracked with RFID bracelets using Big Brother medical technology
Mike Adams
Natural News
Sept 24, 2009
Here’s the scene from some dark, present-day action movie: David Balfour breathed hard. He could hear the thumping of heavy boots outside his door, down the hall, mixed with the muffled grunts of military men. He had known they would come. It was obvious from the moment he refused the VaxTrax bracelet at the county clinic. They said it would keep him safe because they could pinpoint his location if he ever suffered a heart attack or an accident. As a bonus, his entire medical history was also imprinted in the RFID chip, so even if he was found unconscious, they could determine his medical status and start treatment right away.
But he had refused on the spot. David didn’t want to be tracked. So he walked away from the clinic, without the vaccine and without the bracelet.
That was stupid, he now realized. They had apparently tracked him anyway… somehow… and now they were at his door, and their fists pounded loudly.
“Boston Police! Open up!”
He glanced at the window behind him. Too late to plan an escape route. Maybe he should have thought of that earlier, but no, fleeing out the window was the stuff of Hollywood fiction, not here-and-now reality in Boston, Massachusetts.
“Mr. Balfour!” the police shouted. “You have ten seconds to open this door, or we are coming in.”
They weren’t bluffing. Pretending he wasn’t home clearly wouldn’t work. Maybe he could talk his way out of it. “I’ve broken no law!” he screamed back at the door.
“Mr. Balfour,” came the voice in authoritative tones, “You have refused to wear the VaxTrax bracelet as mandated by the National Pandemic Protection Act, and as we cannot determine your vaccination status, you are considered a danger to the people of this city.”
“You have five seconds.”
There was no way to fight this, he realized. So David stood, reached out to the door and began to slide the locking mechanism open…
BAM! The door burst open, striking David across the chest and forehead, flinging him backwards, stumbling, then collapsing with a gasp onto the living room floor. A mass of armored military men swarmed into the room, grabbed his wrists and forced his hands behind his back to be painfully handcuffed. He tried to scream but discovered himself too disoriented to find his voice. All he could do was hurt.
The scramble was over in seconds. He found himself face down, nose buried into the patterns of his living room rug, half conscious, with a hard knee pressed sharply into his kidney. There was a pause.
Then he heard footsteps… not those of military boots, but the soft shuffling of worn walking shoes. This was someone different, someone more… civilian.
“I’m doctor Argosy,” a voice hummed above and behind him. “Mr. Balfour, you are now going to receive an FDA-approved H1N1 vaccination and be fitted with a VaxTrax bracelet. Please remain calm.”
So this is what it has come to, he thought. Face down on the floor of his own home, a squad of vaccine enforcers standing on his back, a pair of handcuffs, a shattered front door, a probable black eye and a doctor, hidden from view, about to inject him with something he knew couldn’t possibly be safe.
The vaccine shot itself was painless and quick. Maybe it was the adrenaline, he thought, that masked the pain. He felt the cold plastic of a tracking bracelet being zipped around his wrist, then the handcuffs slid away and the pressure in his back released. “There, Mr. Balfour. You’re all set,” said the voice of the doctor. “Have a nice day.”
Before leaving, one of the police officers leaned close to him, almost whispering in his ear, “And don’t try to take off your VaxTrax, or we’ll know, and we’ll have to come back here.”
They marched out almost as quickly as they had entered, stomping down the hall for a few moments, and then the sounds paused. A pounding on another door broke the silence. David heard them shouting through the door of his neighbor’s apartment. “Mrs. Henderson, open up. This is the Boston Police!”…
This may not be fiction for very long
The above fictional account may not remain fiction for long. Late last year, the city of Boston began fitting vaccine recipients with RFID tracking bracelets, allowing health authorities to visually track the vaccine status of city residents on a large digital map. This map shows the location and status of anyone wearing an RFID tracking bracelet, thereby revealing areas of the city where vaccination rates are low, too.
By identifying these “low vaccination” areas, city officials could roll in with mobile vaccination units and law enforcement personnel, then march door to door, vaccinating and tagging residents either voluntarily or at gunpoint, depending on the circumstances. It’s all perfectly legal, by the way, under Massachusetts laws that are being put in place right now to handle the expected swine flu pandemic.
This RFID vaccine tracking technology isn’t fiction. It exists right now and was reported by the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma…) which revealed that vaccine-tracking bracelet trials were in place nearly a year ago.
“Several hundred people are expected to queue up for immunizations at the headquarters of the Boston Public Health Commission,” the Boston Globe reports. “Each of them will get a bracelet printed with a unique identifier code. Information about the vaccine’s recipients, and the shot, will be entered into handheld devices similar to those used by delivery truck drivers.”
This effort, says the Boston Globe, is “aimed at eventually creating a citywide registry of everyone who has had a flu vaccination. The resulting vaccination map would allow swift intervention in neighborhoods left vulnerable to the fast-moving respiratory illness.”
This is an open admission that the kind of scenario depicted in the fictional snapshot at the top of this article could potentially become reality. “Swift intervention” means “rapid-fire vaccinations.” And people who resist those vaccines aren’t going to have much of an opportunity to say no.
The worse the pandemic gets, the more aggressive these actions will become.
If people start dying from the pandemic in larger numbers, the “vaccine squads” are likely to be out in full force, injecting victims at road checkpoints and possibly even in their own homes via door-to-door sweeps. People who refuse to be vaccinated can be legally arrested and detailed by authorities, and to use the exact terms that are about to be passed into law in Mass., they can be “involuntarily transported” to a quarantine camp. Almost sounds like fun, huh? A free ride, free food, free showers… oh yeah, and a free vaccine shot, too, courtesy of the state.
To repeat, this part isn’t fiction: It’s written right into proposed laws that are very likely to be passed and aggressively enforced if a runaway pandemic scenario unfolds. You can read about some of these proposed laws right here: http://www.naturalnews.com/026934_h…
Your papers, please
Beyond the RFID tracking technology, there’s another disturbing development you need to be aware of: Law enforcement all over the country are now reportedly being briefed about the possibility of “vaccine checkpoints.” These could be set up on key roads and highways, and people passing through those checkpoints will have to prove they have been vaccinated or they may face being arrested and “involuntarily transported” to a quarantine camp.
Of course, it might not take much documentation to get past the checkpoints. There’s no formalized vaccine ID card that exists yet, so a letter from your doctor (or some reasonably believable rendition of such) will likely be sufficient, unless they actually mandate vaccine tracking bracelets for everyone (but even that would take years to implement simply due to the manufacturing and distribution logistics).
I’m also not too sure that the masses of American sheeple will be willing to wear RFID bracelets that report their real-time positions to the U.S. government. It’s just a little too close to being barcoded like a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. People generally don’t like that.
Then again, as the Boston Globe reported in 2008, hundreds of Bostonians actually lined up and volunteered to wear these bracelets, even knowing they would be tracked in real time by their own government. This is disturbing evidence that lots of people just can’t wait to be medically enslaved by the state. Some will actually raise their hands and line up for the opportunity!
On the other end of the spectrum, there are a whole lot of people who will refuse to be medically enslaved by the state. Known as “refuseniks,” these are the people like you and me who choose not to be injected with some hastily-approved chemical cocktail that’s never been long-term tested on anyone. Let the volunteers be the guinea pigs, if they’re really that anxious to get injected. The rest of us will take care of our own immune systems through more natural methods, thank you very much.
Action items: What to do
Here’s the word for those who wish to avoid problems at vaccine checkpoints: Acquire some “proof” of vaccination as soon as possible after the vaccinations begin. And keep it with you at all times.
I’m not actually suggesting you get vaccinated just to get the paperwork, by the way. In fact, there’s a chance you’re already immune to H1N1. You may already have antibodies for the virus, meaning you’ve been “naturally vaccinated” even without a shot. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027037_s…)
Your healthy immune system, you see, will create its own built-in vaccine upon exposure to the pandemic virus, and within a few days after being exposed, you will generate your own H1N1 antibodies, just like all the other people who were vaccinated. Except your antibodies will be even stronger than theirs, because you were exposed to a live virus, while they were only exposed to a weakened one (via the vaccine). So in effect, you will be far better vaccinated against H1N1 than the people who got the vaccine shots!
Even without the vaccine, H1N1 swine flu is no more fatal than a regular seasonal flu, and why should anybody have to prove they’ve been vaccinated against a flu that’s so mild it only kills roughly 1 out of 100,000 people who get infected?
Do you realize that if a pharmaceutical being tested in clinical trials killed the same percentage of people as the swine flu virus, it would be declared astonishingly SAFE by the FDA? The swine flu, as currently circulating, isn’t dangerous. It’s the vaccines that pose the greater risk to your health, in my view. Only time will tell how many people the vaccines end up killing, of course.
Are nasal vaccines safer?
Should you, for some reason, wish to actually get a vaccine in order to acquire vaccine documentation, I recommend nasal vaccines over injected vaccines. They’re inherently safer, in my view, because the nose is one of the natural pathways through which viruses enter your body anyway (as opposed to a hole in your arm). Nasal vaccines don’t contain thimerosal, either.
The FluMist nasal vaccine, just so you know, contains “Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine,” meaning it is made out of live viruses (http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/about/qa/nas…). But your uncle Charlie probably also contains live influenza, so this isn’t anything to be too worried about. If you plan to get lots of rest, have strong immune system support, get lots of vitamin D and spend a few days recuperating with little or no stress, your chances of being harmed by the nasal vaccine are virtually nil, unless you’re obese and suffer from a preexisting respiratory condition or immune system problem, in which case you shouldn’t be receiving a nasal vaccine in the first place.
If you actually do get a vaccine, hold on to the paperwork. That’s what will get you through the vaccine checkpoints, if they are indeed put into play. In reality, there are likely to be hundreds of different documents showing “proof” of vaccination, so anything that looks even remotely convincing will probably get you through. What the checkpoint police will really be looking for are people who are completely clueless and haven’t gone through the trouble to come up with any paperwork at all. Those are the ones likely to be injected or detained.
Dealing with a mandatory RFID bracelet
So what happens if everybody is required to wear RFID bracelets that track their whereabouts and vaccination status?
I think this is highly unlikely in the short term, as there probably aren’t enough bracelets to go around (unless huge truckloads of bracelets have been secretly manufactured and stored somewhere, which seems really unlikely). But I wouldn’t put it past these people in the medium term: This is the perfect way to enslave the population under some medical pretext. Some percentage of the population will even line up and volunteer to be outfitted with such devices.
If such bracelets do get forced upon the population, within a few days you’ll start to see websites appearing on the ‘net with instructions for hacking or disabling your bracelet. Since those websites don’t exist yet, I can’t point you to them, but it’s a fairly easy Google search on the term “disable RFID.” That search will pull up sites like this one: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/20…
And that website advises the following:
“The last (and most covert) method for destroying a RFID tag is to hit it with a hammer. Just pick up any ordinary hammer and give the chip a few swift hard whacks. This will destroy the chip, and leave no evidence that the tag has been tampered with. This method is suitable for destroying the tags in passports, because there will be no proof that you intentionally destroyed the chip.”
Obviously, don’t hit the bracelet with a hammer if you are still wearing it, or the RFID chip won’t be the only thing you’ll disable. Anyone who fails this intelligence test should probably just put the bracelet back on and hopelessly do what they’re told.
Don’t worry about being caught with a “failed” chip. Chip failures will be common, so the authorities will be used to the idea that a lot of bracelets just don’t work correctly. If they ask why yours isn’t working, just shrug and say, “Dunno. I thought it was working fine. Maybe it got bumped or something…”
Don’t freak out over this
So is this RFID tracking bracelet a sign of things to come? Possibly. They’re clearly experimenting with the technology not only to see how well the tech works, but more importantly to get some answers on the psychology: Will people accept tracking bracelets? Will they feel protected, or enslaved? Will they try to remove or disable the bracelets?
For now, I’m not aware of any serious talk of tracking bracelets being made mandatory, nor is there even any real chatter about making swine flu vaccinations mandatory for the public at large (although certain professionals such as day care workers and hospital staffers are being told to get vaccinated or lose their jobs…). But all this could change almost overnight. One mutation of H1N1 could rewrite the entire play book on this by increasing the fatality rate of the infection. From there, it would be a simple matter for vaccination mandates to be swiftly put into place, and mandatory tracking bracelets could soon follow.
Let’s hope that scenario doesn’t unfold. I know there are many good law enforcement professionals out there who would never go along with such a Nazi-inspired medical enslavement scheme, but sadly there are more than enough who will be willing to follow orders and carry through with whatever they’re told to do. Let us hope our law enforcement community is never forced to make that decision.
If things get worse, however, be prepared to produce your vaccination documentation (”papers, please”) at roadblocks and checkpoints. And make sure you dutifully wear your vaccination RFID tracking bracelet, too, even if you’ve hammered the RFID chip into scrap.
Filed under: 2-party system, 4th amendment, Barack Obama, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Detainee, Detainees, detention, DOJ, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, FISA, forced detention, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, left right paradigm, mandatory detention, Marines, Military, military commissions act, Military Industrial Complex, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, Patriot Act, preventative detention, quantanamo, rendition, roving wiretaps, Senate, soldiers, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, USMC, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap
Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely
John Byrne
Raw Story
September 24, 2009
President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.
The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold “combatants” without habeas corpus — a legal term literally meaning “you shall have the body” — which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect’s detention.
Obama’s decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times’ New York edition on Thursday. It didn’t appear on that page in the national edition. (Meanwhile, the front page was graced with the story, “Richest Russian’s Newest Toy: An N.B.A. Team.”)
Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions — including the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
“The administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” the Times‘ Peter Baker writes. “In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”
Constitutional scholar and Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald discussed the policy in a column in May. He warned that the ability for a president to “preventively” detain suspects could mushroom into broader, potentially abusive activity.
“It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding,” Greenwald wrote. “That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, ‘preventive detention’ allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally ‘dangerous’ by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they ‘expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden’ or ‘otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans’). That’s what ‘preventive’ means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be ‘combatants.’”
“Once known, the details of the proposal could — and likely will — make this even more extreme by extending the ‘preventive detention’ power beyond a handful of Guantanamo detainees to anyone, anywhere in the world, alleged to be a ‘combatant,’” Greenwald continues. “After all, once you accept the rationale on which this proposal is based — namely, that the U.S. Government must, in order to keep us safe, preventively detain “dangerous” people even when they can’t prove they violated any laws — there’s no coherent reason whatsoever to limit that power to people already at Guantanamo, as opposed to indefinitely imprisoning with no trials all allegedly ‘dangerous’ combatants, whether located in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Western countries and even the U.S.”
The Obama Administration appears to have embraced “preventive detention” in part because of problems with how Guantanamo prisoners’ cases — and incarceration — were handled under President Bush. Military prosecutors have said that numerous cases could not be brought successfully in civilian courts because evidence was obtained in ways that wouldn’t be admissible on US soil. The Bush Administration originally sought to try numerous detainees in military tribunals, but the Supreme Court ruled that at least some have the rights to challenge their detention in US courts.
Baker notes that Obama’s decision to hold suspects without charges doesn’t propose as broad an executive authority claimed by President Bush.
“Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress,” Baker writes.
In a statement to Baker, the Justice Department said, “The administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress [and] is not currently seeking additional authorization.”
“The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee,” the statement added.
Roughly 50 detainees of the more than 200 still held at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are thought to be affected by the decision.
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Detainees, DHS, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, FISA, forced detention, George Bush, Habeas Corpus, Homeland Security, HR 6166, left right paradigm, mandatory detention, Military, military commissions act, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Patriot Act, preventative detention, quantanamo, rendition, roving wiretaps, Senate, Sprint, Spy, Surveillance, telecoms, Torture, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: obama = bush
Obama Pushes For Renewal of Warrantless Spying
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
September 16, 2009
President Barack Obama has once again betrayed his promise to restore liberties eviscerated by the Bush regime by pushing Congress to renew Patriot Act provisions that allow for warrantless spying on American citizens, even in cases where there is no link to terrorism whatsoever.
According to a Wired News report, the “Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.”
Obama’s support for the provisions should come as little surprise because he first voted for warrantless wiretapping of Americans in 2008 when he was an Illinois Senator, while also lending support for immunizing the nation’s telecommunications companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit in the Bush administration’s wiretapping program.
One of the provisions Obama is pushing to renew is the so-called “lone wolf” provision, enacted in 2004, which allows for the electronic monitoring of an individual without the government having to prove that the case has any relation whatsoever to terrorism or a foreign power. This is in effect a carte blanche for the government to use every method at their disposal to spy on any American citizen they choose.
The “lone wolf” provision is opposed by the ACLU, whose legislative counsel Michelle Richardson told Wired, “The justification for FISA and these lower standards and letting it operate in secret was all about terrorist groups and foreign governments, that they posed a unique threat other than the normal criminal element. This lone wolf provision undercuts that justification.”
Another Patriot Act provision Obama wants Congress to renew gives the government access to business, library and medical records, with the authorities generally having to prove that the investigation is terrorism related. However, since according to Homeland Security guidelines the new breed of terrorist is classified as someone who supports a third party, puts a political bumper sticker on their car, is part of the alternative media, or merely someone who disagrees with the authorities’ official version of events on any given issue, the scope for the government to use this power against their political adversaries is wide open.
The third provision Obama is pushing to renew allows a FISA court to grant “roving wiretaps” without the government having to even identify their target. This is another carte blanche power that gives the state the power to monitor telephone calls, e mails and any other form of electronic communication.
Barack Obama swept into office on a mandate of “change” and a commitment to restore liberties that were eviscerated under the Bush regime. Despite promising to do so, he has failed completely to overturn Bush signing statements and executive orders that, according to Obama, “trampled on liberties.” Indeed, despite promising to end the use of signing statements, he has continued to use them.
Obama has failed to close Guantanamo Bay or any other CIA torture “black site” as he promised to do.
Obama has failed in his promise to “reject the Military Commissions Act” and instead has supported the use of military commissions.
Obama has continued to allow the rendition and torture of detainees, while protecting Bush administration officials who ordered torture from prosecution and blocking the release of evidence related to torture.
Obama has gone even further than the Bush administration in introducing “preventative detention” of detainees, ensuring people will never get a trial.
In restating his support for warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, Obama has once again proven that his promise of “change” was nothing more than a hollow and deceptive political platitude to ensure his election. Since he took office, Obama has betrayed almost every promise he made and effectively become nothing more than the third term of the Bush administration.
Filed under: big pharma, Child Abuse, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainee, Dictatorship, Empire, federal crimes, forced quarantine, forced vaccination, forced vaccinations, France, government control, government takeover, h1n1, h1n1 clinic, h1n1 vaccine, Habeas Corpus, health and environment, Human Experiments, human rights, influenza, innoculation, involuntary quarantine, involuntary vaccination, mandatory quarantine, mandatory vaccination, mandatory vaccinations, medical Experiments, medical industial complex, medical industrial complex, Military, nanny state, Oppression, Pandemic Influenza, pandemic virus, parental rights, Police State, prison industrial complex, public school, swine flu, swine flu pandemic, swine flu vaccine, vaccinations, Vaccine, vaccine squads, vaccine teams, virus pandemic
France To Use Swine Flu ‘Threat’ To Gut Liberties
Infowars / AFP
September 9, 2009
In case of a swine flu pandemic the French government has a plan to introduce emergency measures that would gut legal protections for citizens, the daily Liberation reported Tuesday.
According to documents provided to the daily by a judges’ union, the plan would extend the period police can keep a suspect in detention without charge or a hearing before a judge to up to six months.
Suspects would also not be able to contact a lawyer until after spending 24 hours in custody.
Under the plan children could be tried in adult courts and more trials held behind closed doors.
The Syndicat de la Magistrature called the measures “revolting” and said they would amount to “liberticide,” and called on Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to abandon the plan.
This news comes on the back of last week’s revelations that the French government plans to impose a mass swine flu vaccination program on the entire population.
According to a leaked internal document singed by the French Health Minister and the Minister of the Interior, the program would be focused around regional vaccination centers and would be carried out by H1N1 injection teams, completely bypassing medical establishments and GP’s.
According to the document, schoolchildren will also be vaccinated by mobile injection squads who will travel from school to school, covering the entire country. Babies from 6 months old will also be given the shot.
To date just fifteen people have died of swine flu related complications in France.
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11 Truth, afghan deaths, Afghanistan, airstrike, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, death toll, defense department, Dictatorship, DoD, Empire, Eugenics, fake alqaeda, fallen soldiers, false, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, flag, free press, Genocide, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, infanticide, Iraq, Israel, kidnapping, left right paradigm, marine, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, military strikes, nation building, NATO, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, nuremburg, obama, occupation, Propaganda, Robert Gates, soldiers, State Sponsored Terrorism, Taliban, The American Legion, Torture, Troops, truth movement, u.s. soldiers, Uncategorized, USMC, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawk, warhawks, warmonger
NATO Air Strike Kills 150 Afghan Civilians
Rahmatullah, 19, a victim of Friday’ NATO air strike, tries to sit up on his bed in a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009.
Pajwok Afghan News
September 5, 2009
Residents of Chahar Dara district in northern Kunduz province say more than 150 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded in Friday’s air strike by NATO-led forces.
The bombing in Haji Aman village came as insurgents and residents emptied oil into jerry canes from tankers hijacked by Taliban militants from the Kunduz-Baghlan Highway.
Inhabitants of the area told Pajhwok Afghan News all those killed in the bombardment were civilians and there were no Taliban at the site at the time the attack took place. Fighters had left the scene after they asked the people to take fuel for free.
An elder from Sarak-i-Bala neighbourhood, Abdul Rahim, said 15 children were among the 50 people of Yaqubi village killed in the bombing raid.
The man, who lost two sons in the incident, argued: “Poverty brought us to this stage.” No guerrillas were among the dead, he said, explaining the fighters well before the deadly assault.
A 50-year-old woman bitterly cried while standing in front of her ruined house. She said her three sons, husband and a grandson perished in the bombardment. Locals showed this reporter as many as 50 graves of civilian victims.
In the Maulvi Naeem village, residents said 20 civilians were killed in the incident. Haji Najmuddin, a tribal elder, lost two nephews. He claimed chemicals bombs were dropped on the villagers. Clothes of his nephews were not damaged but their bodies were badly charred, the man argued.
This reporter saw the graves of those killed in the air strike. Seventy of the fatalities were from Yaqubi and Maulvi Naeem villages and the rest from three other areas.
Meanwhile, Kunduz Governor Eng. Muhammad Omar said a delegation from Kabul had arrived in the district to investigate the incident and determine the exact number of civilian deaths.
Government gives up hope of more European Nato help in Afghanistan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6143065/Government-gives-up-hope-of-more-European-Nato-help-in-Afghanistan.html
Afghan air strike galvanises war protesters
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan deaths, Afghanistan, airstrike, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, death toll, defense department, Dictatorship, DoD, Empire, fallen soldiers, false, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, flag, free press, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Iraq, Israel, kidnapping, left right paradigm, marine, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, milirary, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, military strikes, nation building, NATO, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, nuremburg, obama, occupation, Propaganda, Robert Gates, soldiers, The American Legion, Torture, Troops, u.s. soldiers, Uncategorized, USMC, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawk, warhawks, warmonger | Tags: dead marine photo, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Joshua M. Bernard, Julie Jacobson, Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, wounded marine photo
Mass Censorship of Dead Marine Photo
Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar.com
September 7, 2009
Americans have lost their ability for introspection, thereby revealing their astounding hypocrisy to the world.
U.S. War Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the Associated Press and a reporter, Julie Jacobson, embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, for taking and releasing a photo of a U.S. Marine who was wounded in action and died from his injury.
The photographer was on patrol with the Marines when they came under fire. She found the courage and presence of mind to do her job. Her reward is to be condemned by the warmonger Gates as “insensitive.” Gates says her employer, the Associated Press, lacks “judgment and common decency.”
The American Legion jumped in and denounced the Associated Press for a “stunning lack of compassion and common decency.”
To stem opposition to its wars, the War Department hides signs of American casualties from the public. Angry that evidence escaped the censor, the war secretary and the American Legion attacked with politically correct jargon: “insensitive,” “offended,” and the “anguish” and “pain and suffering” inflicted upon the Marine’s family. The War Department sounds like it is preparing a harassment tort.
Isn’t this passing the buck? The Marine lost his life not because of the Associated Press and a photographer, but because of the war criminals – Gates, Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the U.S. Congress that supports wars of naked aggression that serve no American purpose, but which keep campaign coffers filled with contributions from the armaments companies.
Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the U.S. government and a significant percentage of the U.S. population believe that the U.S. has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda.
For the American war secretary it is a photo that is insensitive, not America’s assertion of the right to determine the fate of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers.
The exceptional “virtuous nation” does not think it is insensitive for America’s bombs to blow innocent villagers to pieces. On Sept. 4, the day before Gates’ outburst over the “insensitive” photo, Agence France Presse reported from Afghanistan that a U.S./NATO air strike had killed large numbers of villagers who had come to get fuel from two tankers that had been hijacked from negligent and inattentive occupation forces:
“’Nobody was in one piece. Hands, legs, and body parts were scattered everywhere. Those who were away from the fuel tanker were badly burnt,’ said 32-year-old Mohammad Daud, depicting a scene from hell. The burned-out shells of the tankers, still smoking in marooned wrecks on the riverbank, were surrounded by the charred-meat remains of villagers from Chahar Dara district in Kunduz province, near the Tajik border. Dr. Farid Rahid, a spokesperson in Kabul for the ministry of health, said up to 250 villagers had been near the tankers when the air strike was called in.”
What does the world think of the United States? The American war secretary and a U.S. military veterans association think a photo of an injured and dying American soldier is insensitive, but not the wipeout of an Afghan village that came to get needed fuel.
The U.S. government is like a criminal who accuses the police of his crime when he is arrested or a sociopathic abuser who blames the victim. It is a known fact that the CIA has violated U.S. law and international law with its assassinations, kidnappings, and torture. But it is not this criminal agency that will be held accountable. Instead, those who will be punished will be those moral beings who, appalled at the illegality and inhumanity of the CIA, leaked the evidence of the agency’s crimes. The CIA has asked the U.S. Justice (sic) Department to investigate what the CIA alleges is the “criminal disclosure” of its secret program to murder suspected foreign terrorist leaders abroad. As we learned from Gitmo, those suspected by America are overwhelmingly innocent.
The CIA program is so indefensible that when CIA director Leon Panetta found out about it six months after being in office, he cancelled the program (assuming those running the program obeyed) and informed Congress.
Yet, the CIA wants the person who revealed its crime to be punished for revealing secret information. A secret agency this unmoored from moral and legal standards is a greater threat to our country than are terrorists. Who knows what false flag operation it will pull off in order to provide justification and support for its agenda. An agency that is more liability than benefit should be abolished.
The agency’s program of assassinating terrorist leaders is itself fraught with contradictions and dangers. The hatred created by the U.S. and Israel is independent of any leader. If one is killed, others take his place. The most likely outcome of the CIA assassination program is that the agency will be manipulated by rivals, just as the FBI was used by one mafia family to eliminate another. In order to establish credibility with groups that they are attempting to penetrate, CIA agents will be drawn into participating in violent acts against the U.S. and its allies.
Accusing the truthteller instead of the evildoer is the position that the neoconservatives took against the New York Times when after one year’s delay, which gave George W. Bush time to get reelected, the Times published the NSA leak that revealed that the Bush administration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The neocons, especially those associated with Commentary magazine, wanted the New York Times indicted for treason. To the evil neocon mind, anything that interferes with their diabolical agenda is treason.
This is the way many Americans think. America über alles! No one counts but us (and Israel). The deaths we inflict and the pain and suffering we bring to others are merely collateral damage on the bloody path to American hegemony.
The attitude of the “freedom and democracy” U.S. government is that anyone who complains of illegality or immorality or inhumanity is a traitor. The Republican Sen. Christopher S. Bond is a recent example. Bond got on his high horse about “irreparable damage” to the CIA from the disclosures of its criminal activities. Bond wants those “back stabbers” who revealed the CIA’s wrongdoings to be held accountable. Bond is unable to grasp that it is the criminal activities, not their disclosure, that is the source of the problem. Obviously, the Whistleblower Protection Act has no support from Sen. Bond, who sees it as just another law to plough under.
This is where the U.S. government stands today: Ignoring and covering up government crimes is the patriotic thing to do. To reveal the government’s crimes is an act of treason. Many Americans on both sides of the aisle agree.
Yet, they still think that they are The Virtuous Nation, the exceptional nation, the salt of the earth.
Filed under: 2-party system, ACLU, Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Canada, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainee, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Donald Rumsfeld, egypt, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, federal crimes, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Hillary Clinton, human rights, interrogation, left right paradigm, Nazi, Neolibs, New York, obama, Oppression, rendition, Syria, Torture, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: Maher Arar
Outsourcing Torture To Continue Under Obama
Anthony Gregory
Campaign For Liberty
August 25, 2009
Flashback: Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions
About two years ago, candidate Obama, writing in Foreign Affairs, strongly criticized Bush’s practice of “extraordinary renditioning.” Under this policy, terror suspects were apprehended, transferred, sometimes through secret prisons and black cites, and handed over to foreign regimes like Egypt and Morocco. Sometimes this involved torture. Maher Arar, for example, was a Canadian citizen later determined to be innocent, captured in New York and sent to Syria where he was tortured in brutal ways. See this piece in the New Yorker chroniciling other such horror stories.
Obama’s criticism of renditioning, along with his general criticism of the Bush administration’s violations of habeas corpus, was one of his most serious indictments of the war on terrorism as managed by the Republicans.
Now the New York Times reports that “[t]he Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to insure they are not tortured.”
How will they monitor such treatment? The administration “would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused.” This is the State Department headed by Hillary Clinton — the same politician whom Ann Coulter had said she’d vote for over John McCain because Clinton was more pro-torture!
The Times goes on to report:
“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture,” said Amrit Singh of the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.
She cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, which offered assurances against torture but beat Mr. Arar with electrical cable anyway.a new administrative interrogation unit, to be housed within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which will oversee the interrogations of top terror suspects using largely non-coercive techniques approved by the administration earlier this year.”
Filed under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, abraham lincoln, big government, Britain, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, constitution, Detainee, Dictatorship, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, enemy combatant, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI, fearmongering, free speech, George Bush, government bureaucrat, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, House, john ashcroft, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Judge Napolitano, knock and talk, london, neocons, oligarchy, Oppression, Patriot Act, Police State, search warrant, Senate, slavery, supreme court, thomas jefferson, Torture, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search
Judge Napolitano on the Patriot Act
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, anti gun, army, Barack Obama, Britain, catastrophic event, CDC, China, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Concentration Camp, death camps, DHS, Dictatorship, Empire, Eugenics, Europe, False Flag, Fascism, FEMA, fema camp, Fema Camps, final solution, Genocide, georgia, global elite, global government, Gun Control, H.R. 645, Habeas Corpus, halliburton, Hitler, Holocaust, Homeland Security, katrina, KBR, Martial Law, Military Industrial Complex, Nazi, new mexico, new orleans, New World Order, NORTHCOM, NWO, obama, ohio, Oppression, poland, Police State, Population Control, Posse Comitatus, presidential directive, prison industrial complex, re-education camp, Russia, Texas, Troops, Turkey, UN, United Kingdom, urban warfare, wal-mart, War On Terror, White House, wyoming | Tags: Civilian Inmate Labor Program, corrections corporation of america, detention center, Dulce, FBI, FEMA trains, foreign troops, fort hood, gas chamber, gas chambers, german troops, holliman air force base, KAPOW, National Counterterrorism Center, National Emergency Centers Act, NCTC, NCTC list, NSA, plastic coffins, PolyGuard Vaults., prison trains, red and blue list, red and blue lists, Romans 13, wackenhut, wright patterson air force base
New Legislation Authorizes FEMA Camps In U.S.
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
January 27, 2009
A new bill introduced in Congress authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.
The National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill.
The legislation also states that the camps will be used to “provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations”.
Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse.
Many credible forecasters have predicted riots and rebellions in America that will dwarf those already witnessed in countries like Iceland and Greece.
With active duty military personnel already being stationed inside the U.S. under Northcom, partly for purposes of “crowd control,” fears that Americans could be incarcerated in detainment camps are all too real.
The bill mandates that six separate facilities be established in different Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions (FEMA) throughout the country.
The camps will double up as “command and control” centers that will also house a “24/7 operations watch center” as well as training facilities for Federal, State, and local first responders.
The bill also contains language that will authorize camps to be established within closed or already operating military bases around the country.
As we have previously highlighted, in early 2006 Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root was awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.
The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps would also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”
As far back as 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.
A much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program, was more recently updated and the revision details a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.”
Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.
Red and Blue Lists And The Death Camps
CDC and FEMA Stockpile 500,000 Plastic Coffins
Neithercorp Forum
July 21, 2008
Yep, these are cheap plastic coffins. Hundreds of thousands of them. Don’t believe it?
Why coffins? Why in the middle of Georgia? Well, apparently the Government is expecting a half million people to die relatively soon, and the Atlanta Airport is a major airline traffic hub, probably the biggest in the country, which means Georgia is a prime base to conduct military operations and coordination. It is also the home of the CDC, the Center for Disease Control. I don’t want to alarm anyone, but usually you don’t buy 500,000 plastic coffins “just in case something happens,” you buy them because you know something is going to happen. These air tight seal containers would be perfect to bury victims of plague or biological warfare in, wouldn’t they?
More info on the coffins:
http://www.polyguardvaults.com/index.cfm?ID=9
FEMA sources confirm coming martial law
Wayne Madsen
Online Journal
October 13, 2008
WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.
In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.
On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario: WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document·The document is being called the “C & R” document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. “Conflict” is the “C word” in the document· The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. “Revolution” is the document’s “R word.
Pastors to calm the public during Martial Law -KSLA Reports
http://www.prisonplanet.com/church-organiza..fema-payroll.html
Secretive FEMA Camp Drill Running In Iowa
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=8948
Rule by fear or rule by law?
http://www.sfgate.com/cg..2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL
FEMA: Trains To Take You To The Camps
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=6621
Army will have weapons and tanks when policing U.S. streets
http://noworldsystem.com/2..ons-and-tanks-when-policing-us-streets/
U.S. Troops In Homeland “Crowd Control” Patrols From October 1st
http://noworldsystem.co..s-streets-searching-for-civil-unrest/
McCain suggests military-style surge in urban neighborhoods
http://noworldsystem.co..ts-military-style-surge-in-urban-neighborhoods/
Filed under: 2008 Election, Amero, angela merkel, asia, bailout, Bank of America, Big Banks, brad sherman, Britain, C-Span, Canada, Carroll Quigley, central bank, CFR, China, civil liberties, civil rights, CNBC, Congress, corporations, corporatism, Credit Crisis, DEBT, Dictatorship, Dollar, ECB, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, Europe, european central bank, european union, Fascism, Federal Reserve, France, g8, George Bush, Germany, glenn beck, global economy, global elite, global government, Globalism, gordon brown, Great Depression, Greenback, Habeas Corpus, henry paulson, Hitler, House, hyperinflation, imf, Inflation, interest rate cuts, internationalist, internationalists, job market, John McCain, liquidation, london, Martial Law, Media, middle class, morgan stanley, mortgage, national socialism, Nazi, New World Order, paris, Paulson, peter schiff, Police State, Posse Comitatus, rate cut, Sarkozy, Senate, single currency, socialism, sovereignty, Stock Market, tax, Taxpayers, unemployment, United Kingdom, US Economy, us sovereignty, US Treasury, Wall Street, World Bank, WW2, Zimbabwe | Tags: Ewald Nowotny, fiat currency, global currency, global currency system, global financial order, globalists, globalization, international order, Jean-Claude Trichet, Jeffrey Garten, John Mack, José Manuel Barroso, new global monetary authority, one world currency, Timothy Geithner, weimar republic, world economic crisis, world financial system, world monetary system, world money system, world order
Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency
Paul Joseph Watson & Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet
October 20, 2008
The swift and ruthless exploitation of the economic meltdown on behalf of globalists and central banks revolves around their drive to move towards a one world currency system and an unprecedented centralization of global financial power.
Statements on behalf of world leaders and central banks over the past two weeks have made it clear that the agenda to further collate economic power and control of currencies into the hands of the few is rapidly accelerating – all in the name of solving a financial crisis that was caused as a result of the same fiat money system that the elite themselves created and maintained.
The original Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, spurred by the depression of the 1930s and the second world war, created the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and laid down common standards for markets around the world. Now with the current financial crisis EU leaders see another opportunity to impose global regulations on sovereign economies.
As the crisis reached its peak at the end of September, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the call for “a new global financial order” in which the world financial system would be built around a centrally coordinated policy of international regulation.
Morgan Stanley Chief Executive John Mack has also called for a new global body to oversee the financial crisis, warning that it is like nothing he’s ever seen before.
The sentiment echoes those of elite figures such as CFR member Jeffrey Garten and Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who have both recently called for a “new global monetary authority”, a de-facto global financial dictatorship, operating across borders and forcing nations and corporations to register and adhere to strict monitoring and regulations.
European Central Bank council member Ewald Nowotny told Bloomberg yesterday that the centrality of the U.S. dollar was in question and that a “tri-polar” global currency system is in development between the U.S., Asia and Europe to replace it.
This followed a call by French President to question whether a “worldwide currency system” should be introduced in response to the financial crisis.
“Another subject in tomorrow’s world is that of the great currencies. How many should there be? What should the agreement between these great currencies be? Should we organize a discussion? Should a country like India one day have a global currency?” Sarkozy told a news conference, reports Reuters.
Any discussion would be purely academic, as the ruling elite long ago decided to force a global currency down our throats. In fact, a global currency is at the very core of their plan to dominate the world. Control money and you control the destiny of states, you eliminate national sovereignty. “The control of money and credit strikes at the very heart of national sovereignty,” A.W. Clausen, president of Bank of America once observed.
As Georgetown professor and CFR historian Carroll Quigley noted, the goal of the banking families and their minions consists of “nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole… controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”
It remains to be seen if the EU will realize its “solution” to the world economic crisis. In 2007, Robert Mundell, “the father of the euro,” noted that “international monetary reform usually becomes possible only in response to a felt need and the threat of a global crisis.”
Certainly, the elite cooked up an appropriate global crisis, now they will engage in a full court press to establish a global currency and eventually a global government.
EU Leaders Call for Global Currency
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
October 18, 2008
If we are to believe the Washington Post, French president and current EU leader Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to save us from nameless “freewheeling bankers and traders” who get the blame for the current economic crisis.
Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, and EU honcho José Manuel Barroso are talking up an international summit to discuss an “urgent overhaul of the world’s financial architecture,” that is to say a new Bretton Woods to establish a brand spanking new international economic order. Sarkozy has managed to grab George Bush’s ear and he will travel to Washington on Saturday to lay the groundwork for a conference.
In 1944, 44 allied nations met at a resort in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to fiddle with monetary standards, fix exchange rates, and create the IMF and World Bank. “Launching a remake of this old model — particularly in such a short time, with so many new participants — would represent a daunting challenge at any time, but particularly during the twilight of the Bush presidency and the crisis that is still jolting banks and stock markets around the world,” reports the Post.
Sarkozy and the EU leaders would have us believe this new Bretton Woods will call for “globally coordinated regulation of the financial industry, elimination of tax havens and a compensation system in which traders are not rewarded for dangerous risk-taking,” among other things.
It was the demise of Bretton Woods in 1971, insists European Central Bank president Jean- Claude Trichet, that led to the abandonment of regulation and subsequent market turmoil. “The explosion of the first Bretton Woods in a way could be interpreted as a rejection of discipline,” said Trichet, reports Bloomberg.
Gordon Brown, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, wants to fix that turmoil with a new spate of regulations aimed at international finance. On October 13 in London, Brown said “we must devise new rules for a world of global capital flows” just as the founders of Bretton Woods “devised rules for a world of limited capital flows.”
“We now have global financial markets but what we do not have is anything other than national and regional regulation and supervision,” Brown lamented from Brussels.
All of this is nonsense. It should be obvious by now the bankers engineered the current crisis in order to consolidate their hold on the global economy and all the talk about rogue traders, tax havens, and over-compensated executives is merely that — talk, or more specifically a sales pitch, a slick parlor trick devised to fool the commoners.
Glossed over in all the corporate media coverage is the global elite demand that a global currency be established. “Europe wants to present a blueprint for a new worldwide currency system,” reports the AFP in the video here.
“Another subject in tomorrow’s world is that of the great currencies,” Reuters reported Sarkozy musing on October 16. “How many should there be? What should the agreement between these great currencies be? Should we organize a discussion?”
Glenn Beck On One World Currency
“There is a global meltdown coming, it is a global depression, a One World Currency and One World Financial System is the ENDGAME! China said last week said they want One Global Currency, France said yesterday or the day before that they want One World Order a New World Order at the end of this event!” – Glenn Beck
CNBC: The New World Order is in effect on wall street
http://www.prisonplanet.com/calls-for-new-global-financial-order-increase.html
Tri-Polor Global Currency A Possibility
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps..&sid=apjqJKKQvfDc&refer=home
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=885494
G-8 Announces Global Summit On Financial Crisis
http://news.yahoo.com/s/a..t=Ah6wNwIX5KlE5B1m5eFoDXlbbBAF
Bush & Allies Pledge Joint Action On Economy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InFBnX87lzU
Brown: Use This Crisis To Create New Financial World Order
http://www.prisonplanet.com/..new-financial-world-order.html
Filed under: Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainee, Dictatorship, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, federal crime, gitmo, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, interrogation, Iraq, nation building, Nazi, occupation, Oppression, rendition, Torture, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror
U.S. Interrogator: “You have 3 minutes to live”
Filed under: civil liberties, civil rights, Detainee, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crime, Habeas Corpus, human rights, Iraq, Military, nation building, navy, occupation, Oppression, pepperspray, rendition, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: soldiers, u.s. soldiers
Iraq prisoners sealed in pepper-spray cell
Herald Sun
August 15, 2008
SIX American sailors working as prison camp guards in Iraq face courts martial for abusing detainees, some of whom were sealed in a cell with pepper spray.
The US Navy said seven other sailors were given non-judicial punishments over the incident, which took place on May 14 at Camp Bucca, the vast desert camp in southern Iraq where the US military houses 18,000 of its 21,000 prisoners.
“Two detainees suffered minor abrasions as a result of the alleged assaults, eight others were confined overnight in a detainee housing unit which was sprayed with riot control agent and then the ventilation secured,” the Navy said in a statement.
Navy Fifth Fleet spokeswoman Commander Jane Campbell said the riot control agent was pepper spray. None of the victims required medical attention apart from the two who were beaten, she said.
“The day that this all took place there had actually been some unrest at the camp. There had been some detainee-on-guard issues, which ranged from spitting to throwing bodily functions at some guards,” she said.
The six facing courts martial have remained with their unit at the prison camp but were removed from duty.
“They are no longer doing the mission of guards,” Commander Campbell said.
The courts martial will begin at Camp Bucca within the next 30 days.
The seven guards already subjected to the less-severe system of non-judicial punishment had mainly faced accusations that they failed to report the incident, rather than being accused of taking part themselves, she said.
Two had their charges dismissed and the rest were given reductions in rank, with some also docked pay or confined to base for 45 days.
Use of pepper spray in warfare is banned by international treaties on chemical weapons, but many governments say members of their armed forces are permitted to use it in war zones for law-enforcement duties.
Filed under: Baghdad, Child Abuse, civil liberties, civil rights, Concentration Camp, Detainee, Dictatorship, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, federal crime, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, Iraq, Military, nation building, Nazi, occupation, Oppression, prison camp, rape, rendition, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: iraqi civilians, soldiers, u.s. soldiers
Video: 9 year old in U.S. prison camp
Filed under: 9/11, ACLU, Baghdad, Britain, Centcom, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Department of justice, Detainee, Dick Cheney, DOJ, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crime, FOIA, Geneva Convention, Habeas Corpus, human rights, Impeach, interrogation, Iraq, john ashcroft, london, Mi5, Military, Nancy Pelosi, nation building, occupation, rendition, Torture, Troops, United Kingdom, War Crimes, War On Terror, waterboarding, White House | Tags: diego garcia, indian ocean, island of diego garcia, prisoner boxes, wooden crates
Iraqi detainees put in wooden crates
The Memory Hole
July 23, 2008
In Iraq, some prisoners/detainees are kept in wooden crates known as “prisoner boxes,” so I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the US Central Command asking for the following:
“Vanity Fair (Feb 2005 issue) has reported the existence of wood “prisoner boxes” being used by the US military in facilities in and around Baghdad. They are used to hold individual prisoners and detainees.
“I hereby request all photographs of these boxes, including empty boxes as well as boxes holding prisoners and detainees.”
Around nine and a half months later, CentCom responded by sending the three photographs on this page.
Another Secret Terror War Prison Found
Huffington Post
August 1, 2008
The existence of a secret, CIA-run prison on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has long been a leaky secret in the “War on Terror,” and recent revelations in TIME — based on disclosures by a “senior American official,” who was “a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings” after the 9/11 attacks, and who reported that “a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island” — will come as no surprise to those who have been studying the story closely.
The news will, however, be an embarrassment to the US government, which has persistently denied claims that it operated a secret “War on Terror” prison on Diego Garcia, and will be a source of even more consternation to the British government, which is more closely bound than its law-shredding Transatlantic neighbor to international laws and treaties preventing any kind of involvement whatsoever in kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and the practice of torture.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/..6my6QSyHcMGDyb_qe2WwvIE
ACLU: Memos authorized CIA torture
http://rawstory.com//news/2008/A..horized_CIA_torture_0724.html
Former Gitmo Prosecutor Says Trials Rigged
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2008/07/former-gitmo-prosecutor-says-t.html
MI5 Outsourced Torture
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/15/humanrights.civilliberties
`Terrorist’ Loses 60 Pounds on Cheney Torture Diet
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/new..8&sid=as7YVr4Wamak&refer=home
Why Pelosi won’t impeach: She knew about the torture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w88NXHsgi08
Ashcroft: Waterboarding ‘Consistently’ Seen As Legal, Refuses To Say Use On U.S. Troops Is ‘Unacceptable’
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/17/ashcroft-torture/
Filed under: Abu Ghraib, ACLU, Afghanistan, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainee, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crime, flip flop, flip flopping, Geneva Convention, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, interrogations, Iraq, John McCain, lindsey graham, Military, nation building, neocons, occupation, rendition, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, veto, War Crimes, War On Terror, waterboarding | Tags: Detainee Treatment Act, gitmo
Forgetting His Vote To Allow Waterboarding, McCain Says ‘We Could Never Torture Anyone’
Think Progress
July 28, 2008
In February, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) voted against a bill banning the CIA from waterboarding and using other torture tactics in their interrogations. When the bill passed, McCain urged Bush to veto it, which he did.
In an interview with Newsweek published today, McCain defended his position, insisting that the CIA plays “a special role” in defending the U.S. and thus should be allowed to use harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding:
NEWSWEEK: On torture, why should the CIA be treated differently from the armed services regarding the use of harsh interrogation tactics?
MCCAIN: Because they play a special role in the United States of America and our ability to combat terrorists. But we have made it very clear that there is nothing they can do that would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits torture. We could never torture anyone, but some people misconstrue that who don’t understand what the Detainee Treatment Act and the Geneva Conventions are all about.
McCain’s vote against the waterboarding ban did make one thing clear: that he condones torture. With Bush’s veto, waterboarding remains a distinct option for the CIA:
Still, waterboarding remains in the CIA’s tool kit. The technique can be used, but it requires the consent of the attorney general and president on a case-by-case basis. Bush wants to keep that option open.
“I cannot sign into law a bill that would prevent me, and future presidents, from authorizing the CIA to conduct a separate, lawful intelligence program, and from taking all lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack,” Bush said in a statement.
McCain is either clueless or ignorant about the fact that his vote allows the CIA to waterboard detainees. And as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of McCain’s chief surrogates, has said about waterboarding, “I don’t think you have to have a lot of knowledge about the law to understand this technique violates Geneva Convention common article three, the War Crimes statutes, and many other statutes that are in place.”
Filed under: 1st amendment, 2008 Election, 9/11, 9/11 Mysteries, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, al-qaeda, anthrax, anthrax vaccine, army, bill of rights, bin laden, Bio Weapons, biochemicals, biological attack military, biological warfare, Congress, david letterman, Dissent, False Flag, FBI, Fort Detrick, Habeas Corpus, HR 6166, inside job, Iraq, jews, John McCain, lone nut, media blackout, Military, military commissions act, muslim, nation building, neocons, New York, occupation, Patriot Act, Police State, Protest, religion, Senate, State Sponsored Terrorism, Taliban, us army, US Constitution, USAMRIID, War On Terror, Washington D.C. | Tags: Cipro, michael fury, tom daschle, United States Army Medical Research Institute
Army Scientist Accused of Anthrax ’Commits Suicide’
London Times
August 1, 2008
The chief suspect in the 2001 anthrax postal attacks in the US has died from an apparent suicide just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him.
Bruce Ivins, 62, one of America’s top biodefense researchers, had been told that he was going to be prosecuted for the attacks that killed five people and sent the country into panic in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. He died in hospital on Thursday after taking a huge dose of prescription Tylenol, a painkiller, mixed with codeine.
The scientist had worked at the the United States Army Medical Research Institute,(USAMRIID), the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories in Maryland for 18 years. He had played a pivotal role in research to improve anthrax vaccines, and during the attacks had helped the FBI analyse powdery material recovered from an envelope tainted with anthrax which had been sent to the Washington DC office of Tom Daschle, a US senator.
His imminent prosecution had not been made public but followed a government payout of $US5.82m (Pounds 2.9m) to a former government scientist, Steven Hatfill, who had been the FBI’s chief suspect for the anthrax attacks almost since the beginning. The payout to Hatfill, an unusual development that exonerated him of being the anthrax attacker was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, lawyers familiar with the case told the LA Times.
Government Tries to Bury Anthrax Story
George Washington’s Blog
August 1, 2008
The government is trying to bury the 2001 anthrax attack scandal (the anthrax came from a U.S. military base) by claiming that one of the key suspects – Bruce E. Ivins – was a “lone nut” who committed suicide. The government claims that the anthrax letters were an innocent mistake which was “part of an Army scientist’s warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin“. Case closed.
There are just a couple of loose ends:
The government is trying to bury the 2001 anthrax attack scandal (the anthrax came from a U.S. military base) by claiming that one of the key suspects – Bruce E. Ivins – was a “lone nut” who committed suicide. The government claims that the anthrax letters were an innocent mistake which was “part of an Army scientist’s warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin“. Case closed.
There are just a couple of loose ends:
- “The attacks were not entirely unexpected“, according to a journalist, who was urged soon after 9/11 to take Cipro by a high-level government official (confirmation that government employees started taking Cipro before the Anthrax attacks here). As Michael Fury put it, “So even if Ivins was involved, how would ’a high government official’ know that a rogue bioweapons scientist was going to ’go postal’ with anthrax if that ’high government official’ was not himself involved?” (and see this comment by Atrios)
- If Ivins was trying to “test his cure for the deadly toxin”, why did he only send anthrax to the members of Congress most likely to say no to the Patriot Act and to people within the media? (I guess the Unabomber’s lawyer should have argued that his client sent bombs to certain specific people involved in the technology field because he was testing defenses to bombs). And why didn’t Ivins send his “cure” to the targets before he mailed the anthrax? How could that be a “test [of] “his cure”?
- Why did the anthrax letters attempt to link 9/11 and the anthrax attack and pretend to be from radical Muslims and be anti-America and anti-Israel, if they really came from an American with a warped plan but good intentions?
- Why did the U.S. government – including, apparently, the people responsible for sending the anthrax letters – falsely claim (and read this) that the materials in the anthrax proved that it was manufactured in Iraq? Would a disgruntled “lone nut” be motivated to concoct a false justification for invading Iraq?
- “The FBI has completely shut Congress out of its now five-year investigation into anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill and around the nation”. In other words, Congress — which legally has every right to know what really happened, and which was the main victim of the attack — is being kept in the dark. Why is that?
- An entirely different guy was actually caught on tape entering the storage area where the anthrax used in the letters was stored, without proper authorization and after being fired from his job over a racially motivated attack on an Egyptian co-worker. But instead of investigating him, or Ivins, the FBI spent years wasting time and falsely accusing an innocent guy
- The lawyer who had been representing Ivins in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains Ivins’ innocence
But its only crackpots who think that these loose ends point towards anything sinister, right? Well, the bioweapons expert who actually drafted the current bioweapons law (the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989), says he is convinced that the anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the later Military Commissions Act.
Is he right?
Maybe, but he clearly forgot one motive: to justify war against Iraq.
Note: Even if Ivins was the killer, and even if he did act alone, it was still a false flag attack. Why?
Because Ivins was solidly in the Judeo-Christian, not Muslim, camp, and yet the anthrax letters were made to frame Muslims for the attack. For example, Ivins was a parishioner and musician at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church. And he wrote:
“By blood and faith, Jews are God’s chosen”
One thing is clear: he wasn’t a Muslim.
After 9/11, McCain Linked Anthrax to Iraq
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/05/3..ller-anthrax-came-from-us-army-facility/
The 9/11 Anthrax Frame-Up
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/frameup.html
NYT Changes Anthrax Story… As I Was Reading It!
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/20..-storyas-i-was-reading-it/
Filed under: ACLU, Afghanistan, al-qaeda, Child Abuse, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Cuba, Detainee, enemy combatant, Extraordinary Rendition, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, Military, mukasey, nation building, neocons, occupation, rendition, supreme court, Taliban, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House | Tags: gitmo, John Walker Lindh, US Bagram Theater Internment Facility
Leaked photo shows detainee’s lips sewn shut, wires coming out of the face
Wikileaks
July 22, 2008
Photo leaked from a military computer
Photo of a detainee held by the United States, with his face wired, lips sewn, red eyes and torso sacked. According to digital camera metadata the image was taken on Feb 9, 2003 03:49:25. The 6 Aug 2004 is also mentioned in relation to this photo. The facial wiring is clearly non-medical. The location of the detainee is unknown, possibly the US Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan. Although there is a resemblance to the US Taliban supporter John Walker Lindh, the connection is superficial. The negative image to the right was created by Wikileaks to draw attention to certain regions of the photo on the left. Wikileaks staff have verified that the photograph came from a US military computer network.
ACLU: AG Wants Congress To Subvert Constitution
Raw Story
July 21, 2008
Attorney General Michael Mukasey prompted Congress Monday morning, during a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, to create new rules governing the rights of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The American Civil Liberties Union immediately responded to Mukasey’s request, calling his proposals nothing short of asking Congress to subvert the Constitution.
Mukasey “proposed that Congress subvert the right of habeas corpus with a new scheme of procedures that will hide the Bush administration’s past wrongdoing – an action that would undermine the constitutional guarantee of due process and conceal systematic torture and abuse of detainees,” the group charged.
“Mukasey is asking Congress to expand and extend the war on terror forever,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, in a media advisory. “Anyone that this president or the next one declares to be a terrorist could then be held indefinitely without a trial. This is clearly the last gasp of an administration desperate to rationalize what is a failed legal scheme that was correctly rejected four times by the Supreme Court.”
The Associated Press, acknowledging a Congress eager to transition into a busy election season, notes the rules are not likely to be approved. Mukasey’s requests come on the heels of a Supreme Court decision granting detainees the right to challenge their captivity in US federal court. Under Mukasey’s proposals, a detainee would be able to challenge their detention, but would receive no extradition to the United States for the proceedings.
According to the Washington Post: “Under the Justice plan that Mukasey talked about today, the U.S. government could hold prisoners indefinitely so long as the armed conflict with al-Qaeda persisted.”
http://rawstory.com//news/2..ps_over_opposing_0721.html
Lawyer: U.S. Military Jails Are Legal Black Holes
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US..black_holes_say_U_07202008.html
US tells lies about torture, say MPs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/20/humanrights.uksecurity
Conservative Lawyers Urge Bush To Issue ‘Pre-Emptive Pardons’ To Officials Involved In Illegal Programs
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/21/bush-preemptive-pardons/
Guantánamo children
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/20..gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, Afghanistan, Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, amnesty, army, Barack Obama, bill of rights, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Coup, Dictatorship, Empire, enemy combatant, False Flag, federal crime, FISA, flip flop, flip flopping, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Hillary Clinton, Iran, John McCain, left right paradigm, Military, military base, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, neocons, Neolibs, Nuke, obama, Pentagon, Police State, poll, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe, Surveillance, Syria, Tehran, telco pac, telecoms, Torture, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, WW3, ww4
The Lesson from Obama’s Cowardly Flip-Flop
Jacob G. Hornberger
FFF
July 10, 2008
Those who think that the election of Barack Obama will save the nation from its many foreign-policy/civil-liberties woes got smashed and dashed with a cold dose of reality. Flip-flopping in the finest political tradition, Obama voted in favor of President Bush’s wiretap/immunity bill, after promising to filibuster it before he secured the Democratic Party nomination.
Presumably, Obama’s thinking goes like this: “Now that I’ve secured the nomination of my party, liberals will vote for me regardless because they won’t want John McCain in power. So, I can now flip flop and taken different positions on foreign policy and civil liberties so that John McCain won’t be able to tell people that I’m soft on terrorism.”
Reminding people of what happened in 2002, when the Democrats unconstitutionally and cowardly delegated the power to declare war on Iraq to President Bush because of fear that the president would accuse them of being soft on Saddam Hussein, congressional Democrats voted to give Bush everything he wanted plus more in the wiretap/immunity bill, including civil immunity to private telecom companies for apparent felony offenses committed against their customers.
For an excellent analysis of the cowardly and craven cave-in by Obama and his fellow Democrats, see Glenn Greenwald’s blog and Jonathan Turley’s television interview, which is included in Greenwald’s June 9 blog. (Both Greenwald and Turley delivered terrific speeches at our recent conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.”)
Meanwhile, the president and his associates continue to threaten Iran with a military attack without even pretending that they’re going to first ask for a declaration of war from Congress, which the Constitution requires. Keep in mind that the Constitution is the law that we the people impose on the president and the Congress. That’s the law that the president feels that he can violate with impunity.
The fact is that Americans are living under a lawless regime, one in which the president feels that constitutional constraints are illegitimate during his “war on terrorism,” which he says will last indefinitely given that there are still so many terrorists and potential terrorists in the world. Never mind that the U.S. government’s own policies generate the terrorist threat against the United States, which is then used as the excuse for the president to operate in an omnipotent and extra-constitutional manner.
That’s what his signing statements, illegal wiretaps and other searches, enemy-combatant designations, torture and sex abuse camps, cancelation of habeas corpus, wars of aggression, indefinite detentions, and kangaroo military tribunals are all about — the power to ignore constitutional restraints — omnipotent power.
The battle over the wiretap/immunity bill demonstrates a critically important point, one that every lover of liberty must ultimately confront: It is not sufficient to fight every assault on civil liberties that comes down the pike. The infringements are endless. Even if one civil-liberties battle is won, there are always three more battles to wage.
Suppose, for example, that civil libertarians succeed in getting the Pentagon’s torture and sex abuse camp at Guantanamo Bay closed down. Would that end the torture and sex abuse? Of course not. They’ll simply start sending detainees to torture and sex abuse camps in Afghanistan or to friendly terrorist regimes, such as Syria (which they still claim they don’t talk to despite the fact that the CIA somehow or another made the arrangements with Syrian torturers to torture an innocent man on its behalf).
Thus, what every American who thirsts for the restoration of a normal, free society must recognize is that there is one — and only one — solution: the dismantling of America’s standing army, especially the military-industrial complex and the CIA, which are the center of the rot of the U.S. Empire. This is what should have been done when the Berlin Wall fell and it’s what should be done today.
That’s the root of the weed. That’s what needs to be pulled out of the ground. It’s not sufficient to simply continue trimming its branches.
That would mean the closing of every U.S. military base around the world — Europe, Asia, South America, and everywhere else. It would entail bringing all those troops home and discharging them into the private sector. It would entail closing the multitude of military bases all across the United States. It would entail the abolition of the CIA. It would include the repeal of the deadly and destructive war on drugs. It would entail the end of all foreign aid. It would mean the end of the U.S. government’s meddling in the affairs of other nations. It would entail the repeal of all the taxes that fund these people and their deadly, destructive, and nefarious operations.
Barack Obama’s cowardly flip flop should remind every American that the key to our future lies not in electing different people to public office. Instead, the key to our future lies in a shift in paradigms — from one of big government in foreign (and domestic) affairs to one of limited government in foreign (and domestic) affairs.
The time has come for the American people to do what Americans in 1787 were doing: reflecting upon the principles of liberty and limited government on which this nation should be based. The time has come to end the U.S. government’s role as the world’s policeman, intervener, interloper, aggressor, welfare provider, and sole remaining empire. The time has come for the American people to restore the principles of liberty and limited government that our ancestors bequeathed to us.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Obama’s poll numbers plummet: Apparently betraying Americans does not pay
Newsweek
July 11, 2008
A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama’s glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month’s NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.
Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience–an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.
More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama’s outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June’s NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/14/thi..ager-begs-for-money/
Obama sees three straight months of declining donations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/../2008/07/10/AR2008071002813_pf.html
Filed under: 5th Amendment, ACLU, Afghanistan, Britain, Canada, Child Abuse, Cuba, Detainee, Dick Cheney, enemy combatant, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, interrogation, Iraq, Military, nation building, neocons, occupation, POW, rendition, Russia, special forces, Stephen Harper, Taliban, Torture, Troops, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House | Tags: crying, gitmo, gitmo video, guantanamo video
New Gitmo Video: Child Detainee Cries During Interrogation
Current
July 15, 2008
Omar Khadr was captured as a 15-year-old after being accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. Now his lawyers have released excerpts of a video showing their client being questioned by Canadian officials at Guantanamo Bay prison. The video is said to provide insight into the effects prolonged interrogation and detention had on Khadr.
The video was shot in 2003 over four days of interviews and is seven hours long in total. It was originally marked “Secret/No Foreign”.
Keeping America Safe: Prosecuting Children as Terrorists
Common Dreams
June 21, 2008
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the rest of the warmongers and terror-pimps in the White House would have us believe that Omar Khadr is a monster. Khadr is the 21-year-old Canadian who is facing one of the first show-trials at Guantanamo.
But let’s just step back a minute and consider Mr. Khadr’s case.
The son of an alleged Islamic fundamentalist, Khadr was sent to one of those fundamentalist madrassa schools in Pakistan back when he was 14. From there, he went to Afghanistan, to join with the Taliban in fighting against the remnant warlord backers of the Soviet Union, which had attempted to run Afghanistan as a vassal state.
Then came 9-11 and the October 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. Young Khadr suddenly found himself fighting against the world’s most powerful military.
In 2002, after the Taliban government had fallen, Khadr was still out in the hills with the forces of resistance. The Taliban government was gone, but the war was not over. In fact it’s still not over, with the Taliban resurgent in much of Afghanistan.
In this situation, with some 20,000 US and European troops battling across Afghanistan, Khadr, by then at the ripe age of 15, found himself with a group of five older fighters in a compound up in the hills. Some US Special Forces came on the location, and, peeking through cracks in the door, saw the group, armed with AK rifles. They called on the men to surrender, but the men allegedly refused.
At that point the brave Americans called in an air strike, and clobbered the building. After that softening up, they went inside to pick up the pieces.
Someone at that point, and US military prosecutors claim it was the wounded Khadr, tossed a grenade while lying injured on the ground. The grenade killed Special Forces Sergeant Christopher Speer. Speer’s comrades opened fire, with three of them hitting Khadr.
When they went to check on him, the critically injured, yet miraculously still living Khadr reportedly pleaded, “Shoot me!” Reportedly, some of Sgt. Speer’s buddies were ready to do just that. Apparently the “clicking” of injured captives by American forces (a war crime) is not uncommon, and even has its own slang word. But a medic with the group interceded and stopped the battlefield execution, and took action to save Khadr’s life.
Khadr was eventually shipped off to Guantanamo, at the age of 15, in violation of a 2002 protocol signed by the US which extended the protection of the Geneva Conventions against imprisoning child soldiers from the prior “under 15″ standard to “under 18.” No matter, “bad guy” Khadr would be one of at least 2500 children that the US has admitted to incarcerating in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere as “enemy combatants.”
Today, Khadr is 21. He has spent the second half of his teenage years confined in a prison camp on the naval base at Guantanamo.
This is what Bush and Cheney are really referring to when they assure us that they are holding “the worst of the worst” on the island of Cuba.
They are keeping us safe from 15-year-old boys.
And what, exactly, is Omar Khadr’s “crime”?
As far as I can tell, if he did toss that grenade (and there is testimony from American witnesses that the thrower may have been another man, who was killed in the resulting US barrage of fire), Khadr was simply demonstrating extraordinary bravery of the kind that would earn a silver star, at least, had it been a US soldier or marine doing the same thing under the same circumstances. Consider: he and his comrades-in-arms, battling in defense of their religion and, in some cases, their nation, were bombarded from the air. They were then approached by armed US troops-the very ones who had called in the air strike. This was a battle, and it was not over yet. For all Khadr knew, those US soldiers were going to kill them all. And in any event, Khadr and his fellow fighters had a right to defend themselves to the death to prevent capture. Sure it’s unfortunate that Sgt. Speer was killed, but that’s what happens in wars.
Still, a fighter killing another fighter during warfare is not the act of a “terrorist.” It may be brutal and it may be tragic, but it is the act of a soldier. That soldier, if captured, is not a criminal, but a POW. Moreover, if he is a child, the Geneva Conventions and the subsequent protocol mentioned above, require that he be treated not as a POW but as a victim of war.
Bush and Cheney don’t want to admit that the people fighting US forces in Afghanistan are legitimate soldiers, entitled to protection under the rules of war. They want us to believe that anyone who takes up a gun in defense of their homeland or of the homeland of their allies, and fights against the US military forces that are spread all over the globe like Roman Legions of old, are “terrorists,” deserving of whatever fate we hand them, by whatever rules we want to gin up.
But it’s worth remembering that this particular “terrorist,” at the time of his “crime,” was simply a scared and badly-wounded 15-year-old kid who had the balls to toss a grenade at well-armed soldiers on a search-and-destroy mission.
In an interesting twist that further highlights the absurdity of calling a 15-year-old a hardened terrorist, Speer’s widow, Tabitha, and another soldier who lost an eye in the grenade blast, sued not Khadr, but his father’s estate, claiming that his “failure to control his son” had been the proximate cause of their losses. A federal district judge, in February 2006, awarded the two $102.6 million in damages. In other words, the court concluded Khadr wasn’t responsible for his actions; his father was. And yet the US is prosecuting Omar Khadr for being a hardened terrorist at an age when he was too young to drive!
The Bush/Cheney administration’s incarceration and prosecution of this boy was a war crime. His continued incarceration and the attempt to prosecute him as a terrorist today makes a mockery of America’s motto: Home of the Brave.
We should all be ashamed.
Canadian PM brushes off evidence of Guantanamo abuse
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/..c;_ylt=ApU100eyhTE7E6X04pjztsIWIr0F
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/43453.html
Gitmo Suspect Wants Classified Docs
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200..ydW6ZuxuSioZmJznfRg.3QA
Iraqis Tortured By UK Military Settle For $6M
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080..7dWGmjBETqpCRueqUl5bbBAF
Filed under: Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Britain, Child Abuse, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainees, Dick Cheney, enemy combatant, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, Geneva Convention, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Iraq, nation building, neocons, occupation, Oppression, rendition, Torture, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror, waterboarding
Neocon gets waterboarded; agrees that it’s torture
The Guardian
July 2, 2008
Late last year, the writer, polemicist and fierce proponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq Christopher Hitchens attempted, in a piece for the online magazine Slate, to draw a distinction between what he called techniques of “extreme interrogation” and “outright torture”.
From this, his foes inferred that since it was Hitchens’ belief that America did not stoop to the latter, the practice of waterboarding – known to be perpetrated by US forces against certain “high-value clients” in Iraq and elsewhere – must fall under the former heading.
Enraged by what they saw as an exercise in elegant but offensive sophistry, some of the writer’s critics suggested that Hitchens give waterboarding (which may sound like some kind of fun aquatic pastime, but is probably best summarised as enforced partial drowning) a whirl, just to see what it was like. Did the experience feel like torture.
Filed under: Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Britain, Child Abuse, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainees, Dick Cheney, enemy combatant, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, Geneva Convention, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Iraq, john yoo, Military, nation building, occupation, Oppression, rendition, Torture, Troops, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror
Former Iraqi detainees sue U.S. military contractors
Reuters
June 30, 2008
Four Iraqi men are suing U.S. military contractors who they say tortured them while they were detained in Abu Ghraib prison, according to lawsuits being filed at U.S. federal courts on Monday.
The lawsuits allege the contractors committed violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy.
The scandal over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib unleashed a wave of global condemnation against the United States when images of abused prisoners surfaced in 2004
The four plaintiffs, all later released without charge, described their experiences to Reuters on Monday at an Istanbul hotel, where they periodically meet their U.S. legal team. They gave accounts of beatings, electric shocks and mock executions.
Farmer Suhail Naim Abdullah Al-Shimari, 49, said he was caged, beaten, threatened with dogs and given electric shocks during more than four years in detention. He was released in March without being charged and without any judicial process.
“I lost my house, my family were made homeless and left without a breadwinner. I lost four-and-a-half years of my life and all they did was say sorry,” he told Reuters.
Some lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted in military courts in connection with the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Abu Ghraib detainees.
The latest lawsuits follow a similar one launched in early May in federal court in Los Angeles by another former Abu Ghraib detainee, Emad Al-Janabi. The latest plaintiffs sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
“This litigation will contribute to the true history of Abu Ghraib. These innocent men were senselessly tortured by U.S. companies that profited from their misery,” said Susan L. Burke, one of the attorneys representing the detainees.
The lawsuits were being filed where the contractors reside. They named CACI International Inc, CACI Premier Technology, L-3 Services Inc and three individual contractors.
Cheney’s Aide Says He Didn’t Write Torture Memos
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