Filed under: 1984, 9/11 Truth, Anti-War, Barack Obama, Big Brother, brownshirts, Censorship, CIA, climate change, climategate, cointelpro, Communism, Concentration Camp, conspiracy theories, corruption, CRU, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, end the fed, enemy combatant, Fairness Doctrine, False Flag, Fascism, FBI, FCC, FEMA, free speech, Global Warming, global warming hoax, government bureaucracy, government bureaucrat, government control, government crimes, Hadley CRU, hoover, Internet 2, internet censorship, internet police, JFK, journalism, Martial Law, MK ultra, MLK, nanny state, Nazi, New World Order, NWO, obama, obama czar, obama deception, Oliver North, orwell, Police State, political dissidents, progressive, Protest, provocateur, scandal, Sean Hannity, stasi, stasi tactics, Sunstein, Surveillance, tax, trilateral commission, truth movement, u.s. constutiton, warrantless wiretap, White House, ww1, WW2 | Tags: Alien and Sedition Acts, Church Committee
Obama Advisor: BAN Conspiracy Theories Against U.S. Government
Sunstein: Taxation and censorship of dissenting opinions “will have a place” under thought police program advocated in 2008 white paper
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
January 14, 2010
The controversy surrounding White House information czar and Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein’s blueprint for the government to infiltrate political activist groups has deepened, with the revelation that in the same 2008 dossier he also called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.
Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency within the Executive Office of the President.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.
- 1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
That’s right, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, political opinions that the government doesn’t approve of. To where would this be extended? A tax or a shut down order on newspapers that print stories critical of our illustrious leaders?
And what does Sunstein define as “conspiracy theories” that should potentially be taxed or outlawed by the government? Opinions held by the majority of Americans, no less.
The notion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing JFK, a view shared by the vast majority of Americans in every major poll over the last ten years, is an example of a “conspiracy theory” that the federal government should consider censoring, according to Sunstein.
A 1998 CBS poll found that just 10 per cent of Americans believed that Oswald acted alone, so apparently the other 90 per cent of Americans could be committing some form of thought crime by thinking otherwise under Sunstein’s definition.
Sunstein also cites the belief that “global warming is a deliberate fraud” as another marginal conspiracy theory to be countered by government action. In reality, the majority of Americans now believe that the man-made explanation of global warming is not true, and that global warming is natural, according to the latest polls.
But Sunstein saves his most ludicrous example until last. On page 5 he characterizes as “false and dangerous” the idea that exposure to sunlight is healthy, despite the fact that top medical experts agree prolonged exposure to sunlight reduces the risk of developing certain cancers.
To claim that encouraging people to get out in the sun is to peddle a dangerous conspiracy theory is like saying that promoting the breathing of fresh air is also a thought crime. One can only presume that Sunstein is deliberately framing the debate by going to such absurd extremes so as to make any belief whatsoever into a conspiracy theory unless it’s specifically approved by the kind of government thought police system he is pushing for.
Despite highlighting the fact that repressive societies go hand in hand with an increase in “conspiracy theories,” Sunstein’s ’solution’ to stamp out such thought crimes is to ban free speech, fulfilling the precise characteristic of the “repressive society” he warns against elsewhere in the paper.
“We could imagine circumstances in which a conspiracy theory became so pervasive, and so dangerous, that censorship would be thinkable,” he writes on page 20. Remember that Sunstein is not just talking about censoring Holocaust denial or anything that’s even debatable in the context of free speech, he’s talking about widely accepted beliefs shared by the majority of Americans but ones viewed as distasteful by the government, which would seek to either marginalize by means of taxation or outright censor such views.
No surprise therefore that Sunstein has called for re-writing the First Amendment as well as advocating Internet censorship and even proposing that Americans should celebrate tax day and be thankful that the state takes a huge chunk of their income.
The government has made it clear that growing suspicion towards authority is a direct threat to their political agenda and indeed Sunstein admits this on page 3 of his paper.
That is why they are now engaging in full on information warfare in an effort to undermine, disrupt and eventually outlaw organized peaceful resistance to their growing tyranny.
Sunstein’s Paper Provides More Evidence COLINTELPRO Still Operational
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
January 14, 2009
Cass Sunstein’s white paper, entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” is an exclamation point in the latest chapter of a long history of government tyranny against citizens who organize in opposition to the government. Sunstein argues that individuals and groups deviating from the official government narrative on a number of political issues and events are a national security threat. The administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs formulates “a plan for the government to infiltrate conspiracy groups in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings, according to a recently uncovered article Sunstein wrote for the Journal of Political Philosophy,” writes Paul Joseph Watson.
 FDR, an icon for many liberals, sent the FBI after citizens who opposed his war policies. |
Sunstein’s plan is a reformulation of a long-standing effort to subvert the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. Concerted government attacks against organized political opposition began soon after the founding of the republic — specifically with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 by the Federalists — but have gained critical momentum in the modern era.
During the First World War, the government created the Bureau of Investigation, predecessor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and appointed J. Edgar Hoover as its head. Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, with the assistance of police and the military — described as a “citizens auxiliary” — conducted mass raids against the anti-war movement of the time, according to documents released by the Church Committee in the 1970s. The Bureau, specifically designed as a national political police force, “rounded up some 50,000 men without warrants of sufficient probable cause for arrest” for the crime of opposing the First World War.
In 1920, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted a massive program in 33 cities and rounded up over 10,000 people. The Church Committee report (p.384) talks of “the abuses of due process of law incident to the raids.” According to Robert Preston (Aliens And Dissenters), the Palmer Raids involved “indiscriminate arrests of the innocent with the guilty, unlawful seizures by federal detectives” and other violations of constitutional rights. The Church Committee (p.385) “found federal agents guilty of using third-degree tortures, making illegal searches and arrests, using agents provocateurs.” Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed Bolshevik revolution as they claimed but a large number of the rounded up suspects continued to be held without trial.
The Second World War brought a new wave of government terrorism against political opponents. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1940 issued a memorandum giving the FBI the power to use warrantless wiretaps against suspected subversives, that is to say activists opposed to U.S. involvement in the war. FDR not only unleashed the FBI on activists, but concerned citizens as well. After giving a speech on national defense in 1940, FDR had his press secretary, Stephen Early, send Hoover the names of 128 people who had sent telegrams to the White House criticizing the address. “The President thought you might like to look them over,” Early’s note instructed Hoover.
Following the Second World War, the government engineered the immensely profitable (for the military-industrial complex) Cold War and the attendant Red Scare. In 1956, the FBI established COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. COINTELPRO was ostensibly manufactured to counter communist subversion, but as a numerous documents reveal the program focused almost exclusively on domestic opposition to government policies.
The Church Committee explains that COINTELPRO “had no conceivable rational relationship to either national security or violent activity. The unexpressed major premise of much of COINTELPRO is that the Bureau has a role in maintaining the existing social order, and that its efforts should be aimed toward combating those who threaten that order.”
“This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous,” former Assistant to Director Hoover, William C. Sullivan, told the Church Committee. “No holds were barred.”
This “rough, tough, dirty business” included infiltration of political groups, psychological warfare, legal harassment, and extralegal force and violence. “The FBI and police threatened, instigated and conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements,” write Mike Cassidy and Will Miller. “They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s own words, to ‘expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize’ specific groups and individuals.”
After the Church Committee exposed COINTELPRO, the government claimed it had dismantled the program. However, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration legalized the tactics by signing Executive Order 12333.
“There is every reason to believe that even what was not legalized is still going on as well. Lest we forget, Lt. Col. Oliver North funded and orchestrated from the White House basement break-ins and other ‘dirty tricks’ to defeat congressional critics of U.S. policy in Central America and to neutralize grassroots protest. Special Prosecutor Walsh found evidence that North and Richard Secord (architect of the 1960s covert actions in Cambodia) used Iran-Contra funds to harass the Christic Institute, a church-funded public interest group specializing in exposing government misconduct,” Cassidy and Miller continue.
In addition, North worked with FEMA to develop contingency plans for suspending the Constitution, establishing martial law, and holding political dissidents in concentration camps. Since the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has worked incessantly to fine tune plans to impose martial law. It has also worked to federalize and militarized law enforcement around the country.
Brian Glick (War at Home) argues that COINTELPRO is a permanent feature of the government. “The record of the past 50 years reveals a pattern of continuous domestic covert action,” Glick wrote in the 1990s. “Its use has been documented in each of the last nine administrations, Democratic as well as Republican. FBI testimony shows ‘COINTELPRO tactics’ already in full swing during the presidencies of Democrats Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. COINTELPRO itself, while initiated under Eisenhower, grew from one program to six under the Democratic administrations of Kennedy and Johnson… After COINTELPRO was exposed [by the Church Committee], similar programs continued under other names during the Carter years as well as under Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. They have outlived J. Edgar Hoover and remained in place under all of his successors.”
Sunstein’s call for authoritarian action against government critics — including outright censorship in addition to the established tactics mentioned above — reveals that COINTELPRO has indeed outlived Hoover.
“Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence,” writes Sunstein. “Even if only a small fraction of adherents to a particular conspiracy theory act on the basis of their beliefs, that small fraction may be enough to cause serious harms.”
Sunstein’s analysis dovetails with that of the Department of Homeland Security. In its now infamous report on “rightwing extremism,” the DHS insists members of the constitutionalist movement (including Libertarians and advocates of the Second Amendment) are not only violent but also virulent racists (a conclusion provided pre-packaged by the ADL and the SPLC).
If realized, Cass Sunstein’s call for outright censorship and the absurd proposal to impose fines and taxes on people who hold political views contrary to those of our rulers will naturally result in a redoubling of political activity on the part of the truth movement (specifically mentioned as “kooks” by Sunstein) and Libertarians and Constitutionalists.
As history repeatedly demonstrates, when faced with a strong and determined political opposition government invariably turns to more brutal and violent methods to enforce its will. Our rulers understand this and that is why they are hurriedly finishing their high-tech police and surveillance grid.
Filed under: 1st amendment, army, chemical spraying, Chemical Warfare, CIA, Czech Republic, Darpa, Dissent, Donald Rumsfeld, free speech, health and environment, Human Experiments, Iraq, medical Experiments, militarized police, Military, Military Industrial Complex, MK ultra, moscow, nanotech, nanotechnology, nation building, neocons, nerve gas, occupation, Oppression, Pentagon, pepperspray, Police State, Posse Comitatus, Protest, riot, riots, Russia, tear gas, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror, WMD, ww1 | Tags: fentanyl, ferrocene, General Dynamics, Jim Ketchum, vehicle area denial, XM1063
Army uses “Calmatives”, non-lethal Chemical Weapons
The US Army’s XM1063 projectile is designed to be ’non-lethal’ – but is it peaceful or hovering on the brink of illegality?
Guardian
July 10, 2008
Is the XM1063 a stink bomb, a banana skin, or a bad trip? It’s hard to know. XM1063 is the code name for the US army’s new secret weapon which will “suppress” people without harming them, as well as stopping vehicles in an area 100m square. But is it a violation of chemical weapons treaties, or a welcome move towards less destructive warfare using non-lethal weapons?
Exactly how it works is classified, but we have established some details. The first part of the weapon is an artillery round – or as the army puts it, “a non-lethal personal suppression projectile” – fired from a 155mm howitzer, with a range of 28km. It scatters 152 small non-explosive submunitions over a 1-hectare area; as each parachutes down, it sprays a chemical agent. Development was overseen by the US Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre (Ardec).
A presentation by the makers, General Dynamics, says the XM1063 will “suppress, disperse or engage personnel” and “deny personnel access to, use of, or movement through a particular area, point or facility” (=see PDF).
Smelling it out
Experts suggest three possible payloads: an existing riot-control agent, malodorants or a new chemical agent. Existing agents include CS gas and a form of pepper spray. But these seem unlikely choices, because their effects only last minutes, and could wear off before friendly forces arrive. They could also face a legal challenge: the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of riot control agents in warfare
“The matter is further complicated if pepper gas was used as the irritant since this is a plant toxin,” says Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University. “Such toxins are explicitly banned.”
The possibilities seem to boil down to anti-traction agents (which make the whole area impossibly slippery), a malodorant or some novel chemical agents.
Anti-traction agents are possible, but seem unlikely because research in this area (such as Darpa’s Black Ice program) still seems to be at an early stage. It would be unusual for an agency to still be doing basic research when another is about to field a finished product.
A malodorant is a super stinkbomb with a truly intolerable smell. The Pentagon has been working on such chemicals for years, and a recent US army briefing on future artillery concepts specifically mentions artillery-delivered malodorants. (see PDF)
This might sidestep the Chemical Weapons Convention with the argument that malodorants are not chemical weapons. However, Ralf Trapp, an independent disarmament consultant formerly with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, challenges this interpretation.
“That argument rests on the assumption that there are no other toxic effects of these chemicals, and that one can control the dose so that one never crosses into the dose range for toxic effects,” says Trapp. “It also is based a concept of toxicity that is centuries out of date – malodorants do have a physiological effect and toxicity is not limited to lethality.”
Finally, there is the possibility that the US has decided to ignore the convention and use new non-lethal chemical agents. This approach has supporters in high places. Before the Iraq war in 2003, Donald Rumsfeld pushed for rules of engagement that would allow US forces to use non-lethal chemicals.
Until the 1980s, the US maintained stockpiles of a chemical incapacitant known as BZ or Agent Buzz. BZ is a psychoactive chemical causing stupor, confusion and hallucinations lasting for more than 24 hours. It has an evil reputation, but this is based largely on rumour as few facts are available. Most people have only heard of BZ in connection with the film Jacob’s Ladder. This depicted soldiers exposed to a secret chemical weapon in Vietnam with terrible results, including permanent psychosis.
“We are reaping the whirlwind today because of government secrecy in the past,” says Jim Ketchum, who ran the BZ testing program in the 1960s. “It has allowed critics to make unsupportable claims about agents such as BZ without rejoinder from the government research community.” Although the US is known to have been active in this area since 2000, no comments are available from researchers on non-lethal chemical agents – now termed “calmatives”, whatever their chemical action.
Ketchum has written a book, Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten, about his experiences of testing BZ on hundreds of volunteers. The effects are very different to those portrayed by Hollywood. None suffered physical harm, mental breakdown or any lasting after-effects. Rather than driving subjects berserk, it has a sedative action. But unlike the fentanyl used in 2002 by Russian police when they stormed a Moscow theatre where Chechen rebels were holding hostages, BZ does not rely on sedation for its effects and does not carry the same risk.
Clouding the issue
Ketchum is now retired, and his successors have had decades to develop more effective and safer agents. But strict secrecy is still in place and there is no information about current research. Ketchum argues that the use of incapacitants would save lives, especially in situations where insurgents are mixed with the civilian population. Others believe that such agents are not just illegal but a step towards unlimited chemical weapons.
“It shouldn’t be forgotten that the horrors of gas warfare in the first world war began with teargas, followed up with lethal firepower,” says Wright.
As a sideline, the XM1063 projectile also has a “vehicle area denial” component composed of nanoparticles. The US army has researched chemicals to interefere with engine combustion in the past, including work with ferrocene (normally used as an anti-knock additive) which prevent engines from working, with the idea is that this would stop any vehicle within the affected area. However, the potential health risks are unknown, especially when nanoparticles are involved.
Testing of the XM1063 was completed successfully last year and it is due for low-rate production from 2009. Ardec says that the production decision is on hold awaiting further direction from the program manager. It seems the decision on whether to enter a new age of chemical warfare now rests with the military rather then civilians. Unless put under pressure, the US Army seems unlikely to give any details of what’s in the surprise package until it is used. And maybe not even then.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9573
Filed under: Bank of England, Bear Stearns, Big Banks, Britain, central bank, credit card, Credit Crisis, DEBT, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Europe, Federal Reserve, global economy, Goldman Sachs, Great Depression, Greenback, Inflation, interest rate cut, interest rate cuts, JP Morgan, liquidation, Merrill Lynch, New World Order, New York, NYSE, rate cut, Stock Market, United Kingdom, US Economy, Wall Street, ww1
Bear Stearns Collapses, Sold to JP Morgan at $2/Share
Depression2.tv
March 17, 2008
Last Friday we got a taste of what the future is likely to be like as we make our way further into the belly of the second great depression. The Fed rushed to bail out a venerable Wall Street institution, which was rumored to be insolvent. Sunday evening, that rumor was confirmed to be true, as Bear Stearns agreed to sell itself to JP Morgan for a paltry $2 per share. Two dollars! This for a firm that was trading at $170 just over a year ago, and was as high as $54 just Friday! If Bear Stearns is only worth $2 per share, how can we possibly say with any confidence what other “investment banks” are worth?
While this bankruptcy comes as a shock to nearly everyone, it should be a surprise to no one. The global financial system has been teetering on a precipice for years if not decades, pumped up by unsustainable amounts of debt at every level of the economy, and is primed for a crash. That the crash has been postponed countless times by even easier money lent to yet poorer credit risks has served only to instill a false sense of confidence in markets and to magnify the impending calamity that seems finally to be at hand. Warnings that have been sounded on websites such as this one appear finally to be coming true, as confirmed by none-other than the venerable Wall Street Journal in a front page article titled, “Debt Reckoning: US Receives a Margin Call.”
The US is at the receiving end of a massive margin call: Across the economy, wary lenders are demanding that borrowers put up more collateral or sell assets to reduce debts.
The unfolding financial crisis – one that began with bad bets on securities backed by subprime mortgages, then sparked a tightening of credit between big banks – appears to be broadening further. For years, the US economy has been borrowing from cash rich lenders from Asia to the Middle East. American firms and household have enjoyed readily available credit at easy terms, even for risky bets. No longer.
Americans simply don’t have enough money to pay back the mortgage and credit-card debt they’ve run up. That reality is forcing banks to retrench as loans gone bad shrink their capital bases and falling house prices shrink the collateral that homeowners can borrow against. And it will presumably force chastened consumers to change their ways as well.
Americans simply don’t have enough money… What does it mean? It means defaults, economic loss and a spiral of fear and more loss. It means more Bear Stearns. Time’s article quotes David Rosenberg, an economist at Merrill Lynch: “I’m not saying we’re going back to our parents’ level of frugality, but what we have witnessed in the past 20 to 30 years – and especially the parabolic credit growth of the last five years – is going to be bursting in the next decade.” If not back to our parents’ level of frugality, then what? To our grandparents’ level? How can anything less be avoided, in an era when most people are already working full speed, maxed-out and yet still need credit to survive? And now they’re cutting off the credit!? The result for households will be the same as for Bear – massive liquidation. And the Fed is in no position to do anything about it. The Fed is currently operating in triage mode – desperately trying to aid the banks and save the global financial system as we know it. But what ammunition does the Fed have to save the average American working stiff, who is up to his eyeballs in debt?
Wall Street fears for next Great Depression
London Independent
March 16, 2008
Wall Street is bracing itself for another week of roller-coaster trading after more than $300bn (£150bn) was wiped off the US equity markets on Friday following the emergency funding package put together by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase to rescue Bear Stearns.
One UK economist warned that the world is now close to a 1930s-like Great Depression, while New York traders said they had never experienced such fear. The Fed’s emergency funding procedure was first used in the Depression and has rarely been used since.
A Goldman Sachs trader in New York said: “Everyone is in a total state of shock, aghast at what is happening. No one wants to talk, let alone deal; we’re just standing by waiting. Everyone is nervous about what is going to emerge when trading starts tomorrow.”
In the UK, Michael Taylor, a senior market strategist at Lombard, the economics consultancy, said on Friday night: “We have all been talking about a 1970s-style crisis but as each day goes by this looks more like the 1930s. No one has any clue as to where this is going to end; it’s a self-feeding disaster.” Mr Taylor, who had been relatively optimistic, has turned bearish: “It really does look as though the UK is now heading for a recession. The credit-crunch means that even if the Bank of England cuts rates again, the banks are in such a bad way they are unlikely to pass cuts on.”
Mr Taylor added that he expects a sharp downturn in the real UK economy as the public and companies stop borrowing. “We have never seen anything like this before. This is new territory for us. Liquidity is being pumped into the system but the banks are not taking any notice. This is all about confidence. The more the central banks do, the more the banks seem to ignore what’s going on.”
Bear Stearns Rescue Is `Finger in Dike,’ Scholars Say
Bloomberg
March 17, 2008
With Bear Stearns Cos.’ temporary rescue in place, the $200 billion subprime crisis joins the history of government bailouts to preserve jobs, homes and savings when economic disaster looms.
Ever since Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo shut the New York Stock Exchange for four months in 1914, to prevent foreign investors from cashing out and throwing the U.S. into financial chaos at the outset of World War I, American policy makers routinely have suspended their support for free markets when confronted by economic peril.
“I think the systemic risks dominate right now, which means you’ve got to put your finger in the dike,’’ says William Silber, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He is the author of “When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America’s Monetary Supremacy’’ (Princeton University Press, 232 pages, $27.95).
Bailouts can buy time while policy makers try to defuse panic. Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provided financial support for Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm. It faced eroding investor confidence in the fallout from losses related to securities based on mortgages to the least creditworthy borrowers.
Bear Stearns executives were striving today to strike an agreement to sell the firm to JPMorgan Chase & Co. before financial markets open tomorrow, people with knowledge of the talks said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080317/us_nm/bearstearns_lawsuits_dc
Banks Face New World Order Consolidation
http://www.reuters.com/artic..743541720080317?sp=true
Stocks Widely Mixed on Bear Stearns News
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080317/wall_street.html
noworldsystem.com 