Tony Blair converts to Catholicism

Tony Blair converts to Catholicism

Ex-U.K. prime minister formally embraces his wife's faith

The Associated Press

updated 9:24 a.m. ET, Sat., Dec. 22, 2007

LONDON - Tony Blair, who often kept his religious views private while serving as Britain's prime minister, has converted to Catholicism, officials said Saturday.

Blair, who had long been a member of the Church of England, converted to the Catholic faith during a Mass held on Friday night at a chapel in London, the Catholic Church said.

"It can be confirmed that Tony Blair has been received into full communion with the Catholic church by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor," the head of the church in England and Wales, the church said in a statement.

"I'm very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church," the statement quoted Murphy-O'Connor as saying.

"For a long time he's been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he's been following a program of formation for his reception into full communion. Our prayers are with him, his family and his wife at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together," Murphy-O'Connor said.

Feared being a 'nutter'
There had long been speculation that Blair planned to convert to Catholicism. His wife, Cherie, is Roman Catholic, the couple's children have attended Catholic schools, and Blair had regularly attended Catholic, rather than Anglican, services.

Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in June.

The former prime minister told the BBC this year that he had avoided talking about his religious views while in office for about 10 years for fear of being labeled "a nutter."

In England's last census, 72 percent of people identified themselves as Christian. Many are Anglicans affiliated with the Church of England, which was created by royal proclamation during the 16th century after King Henry VIII — who married six times — broke ties with the Roman Catholic Church in a dispute over divorce.

The Church of England has said that less than 10 percent of its members are regular churchgoers.

Britons often are surprised by people who openly and fervently discuss their religious views, and the degree to which faiths such as evangelicalism can influence U.S. politics.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22368586/

Report: Hoover plotted mass arrest

Report: Hoover plotted mass arrest

Failed plan involved detaining 12,000 Americans suspected of disloyalty

The Associated Press

updated 4:20 p.m. ET, Sat., Dec. 22, 2007

WASHINGTON - Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Harry S. Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons.

Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage," The New York Times reported Saturday in a story posted on its Web site.

The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list Hoover had been compiling for years.

"The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States," Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. "In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the writ of habeas corpus."

Habeas corpus is the right to seek relief from illegal detention, and is a bedrock legal principle.

All apprehended individuals eventually would have had the right to a hearing under Hoover's plan, but hearing boards comprised of one judge and two citizens would not have been bound by the rules of evidence.

The details of Hoover's plan was among a collection of Cold War-era documents related to intelligence issues from 1950-1955. The State Department declassified the documents on Friday.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22371074/

FBI prepares vast biometrics database

FBI prepares vast biometrics database

$1 billion project to include images of irises and faces

By Ellen Nakashima

The Washington Post

updated 1:32 a.m. ET, Sat., Dec. 22, 2007

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. - The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.

Increasing use
The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.

The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person's prints.

"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."

If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.

In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI's database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made -- or ruled out--as many as 100,000 times a day.

Fast fingerprint checks
Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.

More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a "rap-back" service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees' fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.

Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals. The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.

The FBI's biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center's database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI's master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI's biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.

Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.

Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR's co-director. "It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists," he said.

Reliability questioned
Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.

In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.

Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to "fuse" fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.

To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.

"We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data," Bush said.

Privacy concerns
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. "You're giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate," he said.

In 2004, the Electronic Privacy Information Center objected to the FBI's exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was "not fully reliable" and that files "may be incomplete or inaccurate." FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law enforcement data collection, "it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete."

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. "Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever," said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data's security. "If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can't just get a new eyeball," Saffo said.

In the future, said CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, devices will be able to "recognize us and adapt to us."

"The long-term goal," Hornak said, is "ubiquitous use" of biometrics. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.

"That's the key," he said. "You've chosen it. You have chosen to say, 'Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.' "

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22366208/page/2/

BUSTED! SO-CALLED WHITE SUPREMICIST GROUP EXPOSED AS ISRAELI PROPAGANDA OPERATION!

whatreallyhappened.com

Every time the Israeli lobbyists in the United States demand more money or more special legal protections, they wave about these so-called "Neo-nazi" or "White Supremacist" groups like Stormfront and the American Nazi Party. AIPAC, ADL, JDL, and their ilk raise tons of money by waving these boogie-men around as a real imminent threat and danger!

Yet no matter what laws get passed and no matter how many millions ADL, JDL, etc. raise, Stormfront and the American Nazi Party remain strangely unmolested by either criminal or civil actions.

How very strange!!!

So, earlier today, the Commander of the American Nazi Party, one Bill White, posted an article on the official American Nazis website an article accusing rising Presidential candidate Ron Paul of being a "Secret" White Supremacist.

Now, one might suppose that the American Nazi party would be happy to have a candidate who shares their views, and one might assume that Bill White is smart enough to know that making such a public accusation is going to be quite harmful to the candidate he claims shares his philosophy. Indeed it does appear that Bill White's accusation is intended to cause as much harm to Ron Paul as possible.

Of course, Bill White's claim did not do much more than incite a great deal of laughter. But in their haste to get this message out, one of Bill's minions slipped up.

Rather than cut and paste the text of Bill's accusations, one of the members of Bill's blog, apparently to prove the story's source, screen captured Bill's article, posted it to various newsgroups and in doing so, let slip a rather interesting secret.

Here is that screen capture.

Click for full size image.

Note the tiny little icon indicated by the arrow in the Windows toolbar. It's a megaphone. But not just ANY Megaphone, it is the icon proving that the member of Bill White's American Nazi group is ALSO a member of Megaphone, the Israeli propaganda communications network!

Here is what the Megaphone looks like when it is running.

More about Megaphone can be found at Wikipedia and more about Bill White and his many fronts can be found HERE.

But what we have here is what appears to be a group of self-proclaimed NeoNazis using the Israeli propaganda network!

... which goes a long way to explaining why they are never arrested or sued by those groups that raise so much money using them as scarecrows!

Chertoff Concealed Role in Tape Destruction

Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t
Friday December 21, 2007

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff advised the CIA between 2002 and 2003 that its agents had the legal authority to use techniques that included waterboarding on one of the agency's so-called "high level detainees," according to a little-known report published in January 2005.

That interrogation was videotaped and the tape later was destroyed

Chertoff was head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division when CIA officials inquired whether its agents could be charged with violating the federal anti-torture statute for employing interrogation methods such as waterboarding. The tactic causes detainees to slowly drown, and is generally terminated before the detainees die.

"The CIA was seeking to determine the legal limits of interrogation practices for use in cases like that of Abu Zubaydah, the Qaeda lieutenant who was captured in March 2002," says a January 29, 2005, New York Times story. That story quoted unnamed sources who told the newspaper that "Chertoff was directly involved in these discussions, in effect evaluating the legality of techniques proposed by the CIA by advising the agency whether its employees could go ahead with proposed interrogation methods without fear of prosecution."

During his Senate confirmation hearing in February 2005, Chertoff maintained that he provided the CIA broad guidance in response to its questions about interrogation methods and never specifically addressed the legality regarding waterboarding or other techniques.

However, Chertoff, according to intelligence sources who spoke to Truthout, was briefed about the videotaped interrogations. Chertoff told former CIA General Counsel Scott Muller and his deputy, John Rizzo, that an August 1, 2002, memo widely referred to as the "Torture Memo" put the CIA on solid legal ground and that its agents could waterboard a prisoner without fear of prosecution. The memo was written by former Justice Department attorney John Yoo.

Yoo's memo said that Congress "may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

The videotaped interrogations were destroyed in November 2005, after The Washington Post published a story that first exposed the CIA's use of so-called "black site" prisons overseas to interrogate terror suspects, using techniques that were not legal on US soil. The Post's story discussed Abu Zubaydah and the harsh methods the CIA used when questioning detainees. However, it's unknown whether the Post's story directly led to the destruction of the videotapes.

An intelligence official told Truthout that the CIA's Muller and Rizzo feared that the Justice Department's issuance of a new legal opinion defining torture in broader terms than Yoo's August 2002 memo would expose its agents - specifically those who interrogated Abu Zubaydah - to prosecution and so Rizzo had approved the destruction of the videotapes. That reported approval followed publication of The Washington Post story exposing the CIA's secret prisons, and the new legal opinion defining torture. Last week, The Times reported, however, that Rizzo did not give a top spy in the agency's clandestine division final approval to destroy the videotapes. Whether Rizzo did or did not approve destruction of the videotapes is one of the questions Congress said it was determined to get answers to.

Rizzo, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, is now the agency's acting general counsel. Congress has requested Rizzo to testify before a Congressional committee investigating the videotapes' destruction. However, the Bush administration is blocking Rizzo from testifying. In September, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee requested that Rizzo be withdrawn as the administration's pick to lead the CIA's legal department, on grounds that he was a strong supporter of the White House's so-called "enhanced interrogation methods." Those methods include waterboarding, which has been described as torture by human rights groups.

At his confirmation hearing in 2005, Chertoff claims he did not advise Rizzo or Muller on the legality of specific methods agents used during their interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Rather, he said, he answered general questions the CIA had posed about interrogations.

"You are dealing in an area where there is potential criminality," Chertoff said he told the agency. "You better be very careful to make sure that whatever you decide to do falls well within what is required by law."

A spokesman for Chertoff said the Homeland Security secretary would not comment on his previous role in advising the CIA on its interrogation methods.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility launched an internal probe in late 2004 to determine whether one of two "torture" memos drafted by Yoo's office at the DOJ was unethical and opened the door to legal challenge. The details of that probe have not been disclosed. A DOJ spokesman would not respond to specific questions regarding the issue. The agency is required to turn over to the attorney general an annual report of its activities and internal probes. However, OPR has not posted on its website a copy of its annual report on its website since 2004, and the spokesman for the agency would not say whether the agency has submitted reports for the past three years or whether the findings of its probe into Yoo's "Torture Memo" were included in its fiscal year 2005 report, nor would the spokesperson provide Truthout with a copy.

The Capture and Interrogation

Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002, and whisked to a secret prison site in Thailand for interrogation, according to published reports.

During the early stages of his interrogation, Zubaydah was somewhat cooperative. Later he became tight-lipped when questioned about alleged terrorist plots against the United States and the whereabouts of other high-level associates of al-Qaeda.

In July 2002, a meeting was convened at the White House, where former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Justice Department attorney John Yoo, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's attorney David Addington, and unknown CIA officials discussed whether the CIA could interrogate Zubaydah more aggressively in order to get him to respond to questions.

It was at this July 2002 meeting where Yoo, Gonzales and Addington gave the CIA the green light to use a wide variety of techniques, including waterboarding, on Zubaydah and other detainees at several secret prisons to "break" them and force them to cooperate with interrogators, according to an account published in Newsweek in late December 2003. Less than a month after the meeting, on August 1, 2002, Yoo drafted a memo to Gonzales that was signed by Jay Bybee, the assistant attorney general at the time. That memo declared that President Bush had the legal authority to allow CIA interrogators to employ harsh tactics to extract information from detainees. Human rights organizations and Democratic and Republican lawmakers have characterized the methods outlined in the Yoo memo as torture.

In his book "The One Percent Doctrine," author Ron Suskind said Zubaydah was not the "high value detainee" the CIA had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind says.

Abu Zubaydah's captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes.

But Bush portrayed Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.

"And, so, the CIA used an alternative set of procedures" to get Zubaydah to talk, Bush said in the spring of 2002, after Zubaydah was captured.

Suskind writes that Zubaydah became one of the first prisoners in the wake of 9/11 to undergo some of the harshest interrogation methods at the hands of American intelligence officials.

Suskind says that, despite the fact that Bush was briefed by the CIA about Zubaydah's low-level al-Qaeda status, the president did not want to "lose face" because he had stated his importance publicly.

"Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"

Zubaydah was strapped to a waterboard and, fearing imminent death, he spoke about a wide range of plots against a number of US targets, such as shopping malls, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Yet, Suskind writes, the information Zubaydah had provided under duress was not credible.

Still, that did not stop "thousands of uniformed men and women [who] raced in a panic to each ... target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

Ron Paul: Nation "Going Broke"

You Tube
Friday December 21, 2007

American Thinker's New Smear about Racist Ron Paul

Nolan Chart
Friday December 21, 2007

Thomas Lifson, editor at AmericanThinker.com recently published a new piece in a series of smears about Ron Paul’s connections to racist groups. Although it does not claim that the latest evidence is the best evidence yet, it specifically eschews past critics’ concerns over the American Thinker’s previous hysteria by alluding that they have finally obtained…well, the best evidence yet.

Lifson cited an article by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, which cited a post by Bill White, a Commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party and a white supremacist. White claimed that Ron Paul had been at some dinners that were originally organized by Pat Buchanan, where several members of white supremacist groups attended. That’s pretty much the long and the short of the alleged facts. Oh…they also met on Wednesdays.

The only provocative part of the post was the tone. White claims that he is exposing Ron Paul’s "extensive involvement in white nationalism". White also states that he is upset that Ron Paul denies any affiliation with white supremacist groups. He says that Ron Paul is a white supremacist of the "Stormfront-type". Finally, White claims that the Ron Paul Campaign is being ridiculous by calling "white racialism" a small ideology.

Given Thomas Lifson’s excitement over the "extensive involvement" issue, one might expect to see more damning facts. Instead, Lifson claimed that Charles Johnson had assembled all the links to the corroborating evidence. I went to Little Green Footballs to find out this supposed dirt on Paul. The first sentence of Johnson’s page reads "Take this one with a grain of salt, please". I will be charitable and assume Lifson missed that statement.

Johnson’s "corroborating evidence" included an expenditure at the Thai restaurant and two links to websites. One of the websites claimed that Paul gave a speech to the Robert Taft club, a club organized by Pat Buchanan and dedicated to oversight of the Republican Party to ensure adherence to libertarian-conservative values. The website called the Robert Taft club an "extremist group" because it is headed by a man with "racist connections", whatever that means.

The other website was the white supremacist forum where Bill White made his claim. The forum was rather interesting. Amazingly, none of the comments from other white supremacists supported White nor did they allude to any similar knowledge of Paul’s "extensive" ties. Almost all of them chastised White for being generally obnoxious. Many claimed that they had seen White in various forums and consider him to be chronically attention-hungry. Perhaps the most inetresting point came from a comment which insisted self-respecting white supremacists don't go to Thai restaurants. I never would have guessed that white supremacy could be so nuanced. (I did not link the forum, because it can be a little shocking in other respects).

This is what it all the corroborating evidence boils down to: 1) White claims that he has been in the same room as Paul at undescribed dinners organized by Pat Buchanan. 2) Those were likely Robert Taft Club meetings. 3) Paul paid for his own dinner. 4) White, an observed attention-mongerer, wants this to be significant without citing anything significant. But here is another wrench in Lifson's gears: Don Black, the leader of Stormfront (the group Ron Paul is supposedly a member of), has recently admitted that while he endorses Paul's campaign, he has never met Paul and he regrets that Paul does not share his white supremacist views.

So which white supremacist is lying? The American Thinker position would have to be that Don Black is lying about the disconnect between himself and Paul and that the two have engaged in a massive conspiracy to defraud the public into believing Paul doesn’t care for Don Black, Bill White, or white supremacy in general. Second, Lifson would have to maintain that, while Black took the all the precautions to maintain Paul's secrecy, he forgot to not endorse Paul. Finally, Lifson would have to hold that Paul has spent the last 20 years in Congress reigning in all of his white supremacist furor, while faking the most libertarian platform in GOP memory, on the off-chance that he may someday become president, whence he can unleash his true socialist white supremacist agenda.

Of course, the more reasonable position is that Bill White is a social pariah in the white supremacy movement who is trying to capitalize on Paul’s fame, that Don Black simply endorsed the 'small government' candidate as white supremacists usually do, and that American Thinker, despite its name, wants Paul to be a racist a little too much.

So here is my take on Charles Johnson and Thomas Lifson: Johnson doesn’t get a complete pass just because he warned readers to take it with a grain of salt. He made an obnoxiously-attenuated connection with no real evidence. I am sure he has been in this game long enough to know that anyone who hates Paul as much as the staff of American Thinker would completely ignore the warning. The "ooohs" and "ahhhs" of his comment section are a testament to the value of hype over substance and Johnson ought to know about that factor.

Thomas Lifson and American Thinker do not get a shred of respect for this. This is the latest episode in American Thinker’s larger campaign to smear Paul with weak and attenuated claims. The fact that he thinks this one will finally silence the critics and the "abusive" Ron Paul supporters (whine), just shows how weak his previous claims were. It is an indictment on the quality of American Thinker as a publication and an indictment on Thomas Lifson’s seething bias. It stems from a broader attitude of dismissal about Ron Paul and his supporters: an attitude which Lifson would surely like to preserve. However, I cannot intelligently predict how the ends could justify Lifson turning himself into a conspiracy theorist.

The Real Reason this is Happening

There is a subtlety at play that readers may not pick up on. There is a major battle over control of the GOP right now. In one corner, there are the old-school libertarian-conservatives. They oppose war, taxes, spending, and any behavioral mandates. In the other corner are the neoconservatives. They espouse similar core principles, but often take to equivocation because they regularly breach them. They have more or less redefined ‘conservative’ to mean anything ‘right wing’ and ironically attempted to mandate their brand of conservatism on the people. Moreover, neoconservatives have coerced original conservatives to vote their way ever since Bush took the White House and they have even resorted to overt threats.

To libertarian-conservatives, Ron Paul is a hero. He stands for uncompromised integrity, unwavering adherence to the core principles of the old GOP, and a refusal to buckle under the threat of new GOP ostracism. More important, Paul’s candidacy has come to symbolize a possible resurgence of Goldwater’s GOP. So much in fact, that he has been endorsed by Goldwater’s progeny.

American Thinker has made it clear which side they take, which is why they don't mind wrapping non-neoconservative Republicans like Pat Buchanan in this obnoxious claim. Yet, they have miscalculated some key facts. When Dan Rather miscalculated neoconservative power by misreporting Bush’s dereliction of duty, he found himself retiring early. But now neoconservatism is an injured animal and libertarian-conservatism just raised $23 Million dollars for a humble country doctor’s presidential bid. Sure, it has been open season on Ron Paul until late, but his support has firmed and it is ready for action. It does not take kindly to Republicans who lie, obscure, and side with white supremacists against honest members of the GOP. Lifson’s complaining about the "abusive" letters from supporters misunderstands normative ideas of political power and refuses to acknowledge this obvious resurgence. Barry Goldwater, who once said, "I think every good Christian ought to kick [Jerry] Falwell right in the ass," has returned in the form of 130,000 donating Ron Paul supporters to kick neoconservatism in its metaphorical ass. They might be pleased to start with American Thinker, but I should not speak for them: I’m sure they will be talking to Lifson himself.

Karl Rove Worried About Ron Paul "Momentum"

Bush's brain fears "bandwagon effect" could trump national recognition in early Republican primaries

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, December 20, 2007

Without mentioning his name, Karl Rove made it clear during a recent appearance on Hannity and Colmes that he is worried about people jumping on a bandwagon and supporting a candidate who picks up momentum as a result of the early Republican primaries being bunched together tightly.

Since Rove had already discussed the other Republican candidates in the Fox News piece, he could only have been referring to Congressman Ron Paul.

The man who was dubbed "the architect" and "Bush's brain" told Hannity he was concerned that the thick and fast style of the early primaries would hinder Americans from making a "more considered judgment," increasing the likelihood of a "bandwagon effect" overcoming "national reputation."

Here's the quote in full.

HANNITY: Do you lean towards one strategy over the other? Or you don't want to say?

ROVE: I don't want to say. I —

HANNITY: You do, though.

ROVE: But it is interesting to see that everybody has made their strategic bets. I'm not certain, incidentally, that this is helpful for the country, for this to be settled so quickly. I mean, people do need the time — this process ought to be spread out over time, in my opinion, because it allows more people to participate, more people in the country to develop a deeper understanding of who the candidates are, and for the people of America to make a more considered judgment.

This thing is happening so quick on so many different battle fronts that I'm not certain, regardless of who makes the — who bet on the right strategy, there is going to be a bandwagon effect, no, national reputation is going to count — no matter which way that works out, I'm not certain it is necessarily in the best interest of the country.

With the media desperate to exalt Mike Huckabee's campaign as some kind of alternative to the standard Neo-Con fare, it's clearer than ever that the establishment are trying to run a dead horse against Hillary Clinton to ensure her victory.

As polls have shown, only Congressman Ron Paul could beat Hillary should they go head to head for the presidency, and that's why people like Rove are scared stiff of the Texan building momentum during the key early primaries.

'People's poll' picks Ron Paul

azcentral
Thursday December 20, 2007

Republican hopefuls are chasing the Democrats' Hillary Clinton. Marvelous.

Now, where is Ron Paul in all of this heady discussion about these Republican "leaders," as it were?

The "polls" say he is at about 4 percent. Whose polls? AP? Gallup? Fox News? Certainly not us.

These so-called polls are as biased and abusive as their sponsors.

The ugly and awful truth of the matter is that Ron Paul has actually won each and every televised GOP debate to date, and the GOP establishment is too embarrassed to admit it or even back him against the Democrat hopefuls.

As an analogy, this is clearly a case of the Oscars vs. the People's Choice. However, the People's Choice Award does not have to hire a Big Seven accounting firm to conceal the ballots. The "people's poll" is winning this one hands down, and Ron Paul is leading the way.

Pity the losers of the Iowa caucuses and upcoming primaries. I give my support to Ron Paul for president of these United States. - William Gaillard, Prescott

Taj Mahal Won't Accept Bush Dollars as India Laments Lost Value

James G. Neuger and Simon Kennedy
Bloomberg
Thursday December 20, 2007

The Taj Mahal, one of the world's architectural masterpieces, welcomes about 2.5 million visitors each year -- provided they don't try to buy tickets with dollars. India's most popular shrine announced in November that it would stop accepting the U.S. currency and take only rupees, hurling yet another insult at the once mighty greenback.

The dollar, which has been snubbed by everybody from government officials in Kuwait and South Korea to top-earning Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, may not recover its luster. Economists say the currency, which has declined in five of the past six years against the euro, is caught in a downdraft as investors pour into Asia, prompting a tectonic shift in economic power from the U.S.

``Can it be turned around? Probably not totally,'' says Riordan Roett, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. ``The century of Asia has arrived, and the U.S. and its European allies will need to adjust to that.''

In Asia, an investment boom has boosted local currencies. China's roaring economy has grown an average of 10.4 percent in the past four years, fueled by record exports and a flood of foreign funds. That's pushed up the yuan since the government ended the currency's peg to the dollar in July 2005. As of Dec. 19, the yuan -- managed against a basket of currencies -- climbed 12 percent against the dollar.

In India, the economy has grown at its fastest pace in the past four years since independence in 1947. That's helped lift the rupee 12 percent against the U.S. currency in 2007 through Dec. 19.

Dollar Bulls

Dollar bulls say the currency, which rose to its highest in seven weeks against the euro on Dec. 17, could rally further in 2008. They cite the fiscal 2007 U.S. budget deficit, which fell to $162.8 billion compared with $412.8 billion three years earlier. And the current account deficit narrowed to $178.5 billion in the third quarter after reaching a record $217.3 billion in the 2006 period.

Deutsche Bank AG, the world's largest currency trader, predicts the dollar next year will rise about 2 percent more versus the euro, a currency shared by 15 nations as of January.

Full article here.

FBI Now Admits Evidence Used to Connect Oswald to Kennedy Assasination Was Bogus

Jonathan Elinoff
TruthAlliance.net
Thursday December 20, 2007

The front page of the Sunday Washington Post features, "FBI Forensic Test Full of Holes." It claims that hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that has been found to be completely full of inconsistent results and has actually been discarded by the FBI for such reasons more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has failed to take or attempt to alert any of the affected defendants or courts, even though the window for appealing convictions is closing.

As early as 1991, the FBI conducted studies on the reliability of the "bullet-lead" analysis used to connect bullets found at the scene of a crime to bullets in thepossession of a suspect. The studies found that lead composition of bullets in the same box didn't always match, which should have been a sign that the test was completely unreliable. Further analysis discovered that bullets packaged15 months apart in different areas of the country in different boxes, unexpectedly matched - a gap the forensic testing originally claimed had different bullet lead make-up.

The Innocence Project is a group of individuals who have committed their time and finances to investigate claims of innocence in convicted cases where DNA testing was never available. To date, over 200 individuals have been set free due to the DNA analysis of many rape cases confirming that the child born from a rape victim's DNA didn't match the accused and convicted individual. Hopefully, they will pick this flawed forensic test up and begin to look at the tens of thousands of people estimated to have been placed in prison solely on this bogus "bullet-lead analysis."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The test, now confirmed by the FBI's own admittance, has actually been used to connect people to crimes they never committed. The test was first initiated and used on July 8, 1964 by order of J Edgar Hoover for the Warren Commission to connect Lee Harvey Oswald to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. Throughout the following decades, this same test has been used to convict civil rights activists and gang members, many of which have maintained their "innocence."

The forensic test was the only major connection Oswald had to the actual scene of the crime. For Kennedy assasination researchers, this is a big leap. For years, the only evidence outside this forensic connection has been completely circumstantial. Oswald never confessed to the murder and actually stated to the public that he believed he was being made a patsy. Oswald was only picked up because an APB had been ordered in Dallas in his description, even though no one saw the shooter.

Oswald maintained that he had gone down to the parade to see the President's motorcade pass, as did everyone, when he was working that day. A famous picture surfaced that many researchers believe identifies Oswald in the doorway of the School Book Depository as the motorcade passed and was not in the sixth-floor window as he was accused to have been.

The interrogation which took place for several hours was not recorded, a violation of standard operating procedure. Oswald was murdered the next morning on live television while being transported in the parking garage at the local jail. Jack Ruby, the man who shot Oswald, was a major mafia/CIA connected nightclub owner and hated Kennedy with a passion. Kennedy's younger brother, Bobby Kennedy, was mounting a large scale war against organized crime, even though the Kennedy's had used the mafia in voter fraud crimes to get elected. The Kennedy empire was built from bootleging alcohol in an organized crime syndicate that Joe Kennedy, John and Bobby's father, ran with connections to Al Capone. Of the many odd factors in the assasination of the former president, it turns out Jack Ruby ran bootleging in Chicago for crime boss Al Capone in his early years as well.

DHS Finalizing Spy Satellite Program To Watch Americans Without Congressional Oversight

Plans also include "cyber-security strategy" to "protect" domestic computer networks

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Dec 20, 2007

The Department of Homeland security is forging ahead and finalizing plans to use a network of spy satellites for domestic surveillance despite the fact that the Congressional committee supposedly overseeing the program has had no update on it for over three months.

A report in today's Wall Street Journal suggests that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is in the process of finalizing a charter for the program this week, regardless of the fact that it is supposed to be suspended.

The DHS had declared that the program was "on hold" after its existence was made public in August, prompting an outcry amongst civil libertarians and lawmakers.

Demands to justify the congressional legality of the satellites, which were originally mandated for foreign surveillance, followed the revelation that a new department branch called the National Applications Office would oversee the program and be responsible for providing images from the satellites to non military law enforcement agencies.

Critics have called for cuts to DHS funding, stressing that the program is in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus act, which prevents the use of military for domestic law enforcement. It also violates the fourth amendment as the satellites are capable of seeing through the walls of people's homes.

Domestic intelligence and security agencies are now receiving more funding for spy satellites than the military.

"We still haven't seen the legal framework we requested or the standard operation procedures on how the NAO will actually be run," House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie G. Thompson told the WSJ.

In addition to the satellites, the surveillance program also includes new forms of internet monitoring:

Mr. Chertoff also plans soon to unveil a cyber-security strategy, part of an estimated $15 billion, multiyear program designed to protect the nation's Internet infrastructure. The program has been shrouded in secrecy for months and has also prompted privacy concerns on Capitol Hill because it involves government protection of domestic computer networks.

Essentially the program would allow the DHS to regulate and control access to the internet in the name of "protecting" national security.

The news comes on the back of separate revelations that another military spy agency, the NSA has increasing control over SSL, now called Transport Layer Security, the cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications on the internet for web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers.

In other words the agency is capable of intercepting and reading your emails and instant messages in real time.

We also learned this week that the lawyer for an AT&T engineer has alleged that "within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.” That is BEFORE 9/11, before the nation was embroiled in the freedom stripping exercise commonly known as the "war on terror" had even begun.

We shouldn't be surprised obviously, Government surveillance programs targeting Americans are legion and have been in place for decades.

'My husband is planning an accident in my car': Diana's sensational letter is revealed in full

TOM KELLY
UK Daily Mail
Thursday December 20, 2007

A handwritten letter from Princess Diana claiming that Prince Charles was plotting to kill her was shown to her inquest yesterday.

In the note, sent to her butler Paul Burrell, Diana suggested that her husband was "planning an accident in my car".

She also made the astonishing suggestion that Camilla Parker Bowles was just a "decoy" while Charles's real desire was to marry William and Harry's nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.

A copy of the letter has previously been published, but the references to "my husband" and to Miss Legge-Bourke were blacked out. The uncensored version was revealed to the public after being read to the London hearing into the death of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed.

It was sent in October 1993, ten months after Charles and Diana's separation was announced. Handwritten in black pen, it reads: "I am sitting at my desk today longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high.

"This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning an accident in my car, brake failure or some serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing more than a decoy so we are being used by the man in every sense of the word."

Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, is convinced that the couple were killed by MI6 on the orders of Prince Philip because she was pregnant and they were about to announce their engagement.

The jury has already heard that Diana told her solicitor she feared both she and Camilla would be assassinated to allow the prince to marry the nanny.

She insisted to Lord Mishcon at a tense private meeting in October 1995 that "reliable sources" had informed her of the plan.

He kept it secret until after the Paris crash in which she died almost two years later.

The respected royal lawyer and Labour peer, who died aged 90 last year after a long illness, also said that the princess told him that Tiggy had undergone an abortion and that she would obtain a medical certificate to prove it.

Charles and Diana finally divorced in July 1996. Tiggy Legge-Bourke is now 42-year-old Mrs Alexandra Pettifer and runs a bed-and-breakfast business near Abergavenny, South Wales.

The inquest had earlier heard claims that the letter is a fake.

Lucia Flecha de Lima, a close friend of the princess, said the butler was "perfectly capable of imitating" her handwriting.

She added: "I still don't believe in it. I still don't believe she was fearing for her life, especially from Prince Charles, the future king of your country."

Full article here.

FBI E-Mail Shows Rift Over Warrantless Phone Record Grabs

By Ryan Singel 12.20.07 | 12:00 AM

By now it's well known that FBI agents can't always be troubled to get a court order before going after a surveillance target's telephone and internet records. But newly released FBI documents show that aggressive surveillance tactics have even caused friction within the bureau.

"We deal mostly with the fugitive squad here, and, like in many other offices, these guys have a reputation for cutting corners," a surveillance specialist at the FBI's Minneapolis field office complained in an internal e-mail last year. "I'm not bashing them; it's the way they do business. Getting a court order is the absolute last step, if they have to.

"Before I had a blowup with a particular agent ... we were constantly asked to call our contacts at service providers to see if we could get various information without having to get a court order," the message continues. "This gets old, believe me. ... Doing this once or twice to help out turns into SOP (standard operating procedure) ... It's expected, and you're criticized as a tech agent if you refuse to do this later on."

The revelation is the second this year showing that FBI employees bypassed court order requirements for phone records. In July, the FBI and the Justice Department Inspector General revealed the existence of a joint investigation into an FBI counter-terrorism office, after an audit found that the Communications Analysis Unit sent more than 700 fake emergency letters to phone companies seeking call records. An Inspector General spokeswoman declined to provide the status of that investigation, citing agency policy.

The June 2006 e-mail (.pdf) was buried in more than 600-pages of FBI documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The message was sent to an employee in the FBI's Operational Technology Division by a technical surveillance specialist at the FBI's Minneapolis field office -- both names were redacted from the documents. The e-mail describes widespread attempts to bypass court order requirements for cellphone data in the Minneapolis office.

Remarkably, when the technical agent began refusing to cooperate, other agents began calling telephone carriers directly, posing as the technical agent to get customer cellphone records.

Federal law prohibits phone companies from revealing customer information unless given a court order, or in the case of an emergency involving physical danger.

The documents are the second batch released by the EFF after winning a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last May. The first set of documents shed light on the breadth and sophistication of the FBI's national wiretapping system, which is wired into telecom switches around the United States under the terms of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act -- a law that was extended to broadband internet switches in May of this year.

The new documents detail how a little-known FBI telephone intercept unit has developed a powerful cellphone tracking technology that agents use to monitor the physical movements of surveillance targets, even on phones that are not GPS equipped.

Originally developed to capture and arrest computer hacker Kevin Mitnick in 1995, the system today relies on a mobile FBI van that has access to a wireless carrier's cell site tracking information in real time. A special surveillance unit called the Wireless Intercept and Tracking Team (WITT) operates the van, using the cell site location to get to the approximate location of the cellphone customer, then uses direction-finding gear to zero in on the target.

The technical agent complained in the e-mail that FBI agents looking for a suspect tend to skip gumshoe investigative techniques in favor of the slick tracking van. "These guys always want to take the WITT vehicle out and drive around half of town (sic) to find the guy," the agent wrote.

The tracking system is part of the FBI's Digital Collection System, or DCS, a suite of software packages used for criminal and intelligence phone taps, which relies on a massive interlinked fiber-optic network that connects surveillance terminals around the country.

In brief, the mobile tracking system works as follows:

1. FBI agents investigating a case prepare a court order saying a cellphone number is likely relevant to an ongoing investigation, and a judge signs off on it.
2. The court order is faxed to a mobile carrier, which then turns on surveillance in its switches, and begins delivering call data and cell site information to the FBI's DCS 3000 software.
3. That software keeps track of which cellphone towers a phone uses or pings. A central FBI database translates a mobile carrier's cell tower code to latitude and longitude coordinates.
4. The software sends the coordinates to the agents and technical personnel in the mobile unit who then drive to the general area. But since cell tower information is not precise, agents in the van use antenna array connected to tracking software to zero in on the cellphone.

The FBI's technology office trumpeted the tracking function of the DCS 3000 software in a letter to the FBI director, boasting that it was used after a December 2005 North Carolina kidnapping to help find the victim unharmed.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd says the department's policy allows the FBI to get cell tower information using under the low legal standard that applies to monitoring the digits a phone customer dials. Under that "pen register" standard, the FBI need only assert that the surveillance is relevant to an investigation -- the target need not be suspected of a crime.

When GPS-level data is wanted, law enforcement agents still need to show probable cause to a judge, said Boyd, who deferred questions about the Minneapolis agent's e-mail to the FBI.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson cautioned against drawing conclusions from redacted government documents, and claimed that the FBI follows the law.

"FBI agents are trained to enforce the law using all available legal tools," Bresson said. "Absent an emergency circumstance involving danger or death or serious physical injury, the FBI does not request, nor do service providers give, any records without a court order."

The FBI tech agent's critical e-mail is best understood in light of the bureau's ongoing courtroom attempts to get cellphone location information without having to show probable cause, according to EFF lawyer Marcia Hofmann.

"For years the government has made dubious legal claims to justify tracking people's locations with minimal oversight," Hofmann said. "These docs show that the government hasn't satisfied its own weak standards in some cases."

Other revelations in the document include:

• National security wiretaps in a Florida investigation captured more than 1,800 phone conversations, and led to 50 international terrorism advisories. Though details are redacted from the document, that case appears to be the so-called Liberty City Seven. Prosecutors initially trumpeted that the seven men were plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, though a government official later admitted the group was "more aspirational than operational." Last week a Florida jury acquitted one man and failed to reach a verdict on the other six.
• In 2006, DCS 5000, the FBI's national security wiretapping software, captured 27,728,675 communication sessions. The document does not define what a "session" consists of. That year the FBI reported winning 2,176 FISA, or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, warrants from a secret court.
• By 2003 one cellphone carrier, Richmond, Virginia-based Triton PCS, was handling some 1,800 subpoenas and court orders a year. With 800,000 customers, that represented one records demand for every 444 customers.
• The FBI uses a Raytheon-developed tool known as the Digital Multimedia Watchdog to record and store phone calls and internet communications between informants and targets of an investigation. That tool can "collect, process and store large amounts of multimedia data, including voice, fax, data and video."
• DCS 3000 -- the FBI's tool for recording the phone numbers a target calls, or is called from -- was set loose on 5,300 phones in 2005, at a cost of $320 per targeted number. Those costs did not include payments to telecoms for the intercepts. The software is maintained by Booz Allen Hamilton and contained more than 490,000 lines of code as of 2005.
• The three software components of the FBI's phone surveillance system cost $38.7 million in 2003 and $39 million in 2004. Computers running these software packages at FBI offices and surveillance locations are connected through a Sprint-run closed fiber-optic network that allows surveillance to continue even when offices are destroyed, as happened during Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina.

US warrantless wiretapping predates 9/11

John Leyden
The Register
Wednesday December 19, 2007

Fresh evidence has emerged that the US government's warrantless wiretapping program predates the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Secret surveillance operations that enabled the National Security Agency (NSA) to access telecommunications traffic data have been in place since the 1990s, according to the New York Times. In an attempt to gain intelligence on narcotics traffickingThe NSA forged an uneasy alliance with telcos to gather data on phone calls and emails from the US to Latin America.

The alliance between the US government and telcos to gather call records involving thousands of US and foreign citizens was constrained by legal worries and fears of public exposure. Even so, it took until 2004 for one unnamed carrier to break ranks and refuse to provide customer data, the paper reports.

Separately, US carrier Qwest refused to provide NSA spooks with access to local communications switches (a move that would have allowed surveillance of domestic phone calls without a court order) in early 2001 - before the devastating World Trade Center attacks in September that year.

Negotiations between the NSA and AT&T in February 2001 allegedly involved replicating a New Jersey network centre to allow the US signals intelligence "access to all the global phone and email traffic that ran through it". The incident has become one aspect of a lawsuit which also brings in allegations that Verizon set up a dedicated fibre-optic line from New Jersey to a large military facility in Quantico. Spooky.

An AT&T technician at the time has provided evidence supporting the allegations. However, other AT&T technicians are due to testify that the project was confined to improving internal communications within the NSA.

News that the NSA eavesdropped on the international communications of terrorism suspects making calls from the US without warrants first emerged two years ago. The latest revelations that this was a development of a much longer running practice that also involved US domestic calls come as the Bush administration is pushing Congress to pass legislation indemnifying telecoms carriers from liability in assisting law enforcement with warrantless eavesdropping programs. Since 2005, the warrantless wiretapping program has become the topic of 40 lawsuits.

Taiwan president pushes for naval build-up

AFP
Wednesday December 19, 2007

Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian on Tuesday pressed for a build-up of the island's seaborne defences, warning of a possible Chinese blockade during a trip to a naval base.

Taiwan is moving slowly towards acquiring eight new submarines from the United States after gaining parliamentary approval for a two billion dollar (61.54 million US) "assessment fee" last week.

"Since Taiwan is surrounded by ocean, its external trade relies largely on shipping. Should China launch a naval blockade, Taiwan's lifeline would suffer severe impact," Chen said at Tsoying, southern Taiwan's main naval base.

The submarine deal, offered by US President George W. Bush in April 2001, is part of an arms procurement bill scaled down from an original 512 billion dollars.

It also calls for the purchase of six PAC-3 Patriot systems and 12 P-3C anti-submarine aircraft.

Chen also said he has ordered "the defence ministry and the navy to ... facilitate the processing of the arms deal."

The defence ministry says Taiwan needs the eight submarines because China could use its huge fleet to blockade the island in the event of war.

Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade the island should it declare formal independence. Taiwan and China are ruled separately since their split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.

Taiwan navy's submarine fleet currently consists of two 50-year-old Guppy-class diesel-electric boats, both in very poor condition, and two Dutch-built Hai-Lung-class boats commissioned in 1987/88.

Culling the herd

Sheila Samples
Online Journal
Wednesday December 19, 2007

"Everything you can imagine is real" --Pablo Picasso

In 1974, a year after orchestrating a mass terror bombing of Cambodia -- after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize -- Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his National Security Council completed “National Security Study Memo 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This document, whose sharp edges are dulled by page after leaden page of how to reduce overpopulation in the Third World through birth control and "other" population-reduction programs, was classified until 1989, but was almost immediately accepted as US policy, and remains the US blueprint for ethnic cleansing today.

It is difficult to imagine the staggering number of innocent humans who have perished through war or famine as a direct result of Kissinger's half-century obsession with, and lust for, genocide. It's even more difficult to imagine the cruel indifference with which Kissinger, and those like him in positions of political and corporate power -- the elite -- continue to plan the elimination of millions, even billions. All under the guise of national security, or to spread freedom . . . democracy . . .

Kissinger targeted a number of "key countries" whose populations, he said, must be curtailed and controlled lest they gain economic, political and military strength, and thus threaten US strategic interests. "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the Third World," Kissinger said, "because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”

Then, as now, any nation refusing to surrender its natural resources was an ominous threat to our national security and was dealt with initially through birth control and other population-reduction programs such as food rationing. But that was too slow for Kissinger, for Brent Scowcroft who replaced Kissinger as national security adviser and was put in charge of thinning out the Third World population, and for his eager enabler, CIA Director George H.W. Bush who trotted like a love-starved puppy at Kissinger's heels for decades.

At first, they used food as "an instrument of national power" to coerce the dumb masses to stop copulating and populating, and then as a deadly weapon because widespread famine not only dealt death quicker, but it was cost-effective. And it made more sense. Like Kissinger said, "To give food aid to a country just because they [sic] are starving is a pretty weak reason."

If we could imagine the suffering endured by victims of such perverse inhumanity, we might feel a twinge of outrage or, as George Washington so succinctly put it, a "little spark of celestial fire called conscience." Or not. Perhaps we are so far removed from reality because our minds cannot grasp the horror of that reality. Those who seek to destroy the denizens of this planet are totally without compassion or remorse. They are grotesque mutants who kill indiscriminately in their relentless drive for world conquest and domination.

It's naive to think the carnage will stop once predators such as Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Robert McNamara, George H.W. Bush, and other One World advocates, many of whom are in their 80s or 90s, are no longer in our midst. With the release of thousands of tons of depleted uranium in both Bush Gulf wars and Afghanistan, they have poisoned food, water and air, and turned the entire region into massive radioactive death camps. Without fear of accountability, they have ensured the slow, agonizing extermination of entire populations, to include the American military, whom Kissinger views as "dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy" -- and their families -- that will continue for many generations.

We're like herds of cattle, grazing placidly, unable or unwilling to imagine that we might share the same fate as the millions throughout the Third World targeted by the elite as "bottom feeders," contributing nothing -- eating into their profit -- gluttons who must be dispensed with. Any rancher or farmer will tell you that it's good business to cull the herd for a variety of reasons, such as market outlook, cash flow, or just to maintain a healthier, more easily controlled mass of cattle. It makes no sense to keep problem cows, the elderly, the ill or nonproductive around. There comes a time when you must cut your losses and cull the herd.

There are those who, unlike Kissinger and his co-conspirators, are not interested in profit or power, but believe fervently that human population is destroying the planet. Perhaps the most outspoken is University of Texas evolutionary scientist Dr. Eric R. Pianka, who gave a speech in March 2006 advocating the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population.

According to Forrest M. Mims III, chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science and the editor of The Citizen Scientist, Pianka shrugged aside war and famine -- too slow -- and said "the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die" is disease. Pianka advocates airborne Ebola because, he explained, "it is highly lethal, and it kills in days, instead of years."

Pianka drew rounds of enthusiastic applause throughout his speech, and a standing ovation when he threw in the Bird Flu for good measure, and quipped gleefully, "We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth." Five hours later, the university presented Pianka with a plaque, not for winning hands down as "Mad Scientist of the Year," but in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

It doesn't take a wild imagination to know that genocide is real, and it's underway in America. The most blatant example is the barbaric response to Hurricane Katrina victims -- withholding food, blocking aid, ignoring those clinging to rooftops while crying out in vain for help, leaving corpses to float in the flooded streets or to rot in the Superdome. If you start with the poor, minorities, elderly, the ill or nonproductive, the culling becomes much easier the next time around. Those who wait become inured to the inhumanity and, rather than rise up against it, breathe sighs of relief that it's others and not them who are rounded up and herded to the slaughterhouse.

Imagine what life would be like if the Food and Drug Administration did not ensure the safety of our food chain . . . if our creeks and rivers were polluted by sewage and industrial waste . . . if vaccines forced on our children caused mental deficiencies, even death . . . if mothers were afraid to breast-feed their babies because the environmental toxin perchlorate present in our food and water supply accumulates in mother's milk . . . if our air was contaminated . . . if we had a government cold-hearted enough to withhold food and aid from the needy and health care from poor children . . . if we were spied upon and incarcerated, tortured, disappeared without charges . . .

Oh yeah. I forgot. That is what our life is like. All that, and more, is grinding relentlessly away at our safety, our health and our lives.

We have the power to remove these madmen. They are criminals under Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and they must pay for their crimes. One more year wherein millions more throughout the world are slaughtered is, as they say, not an option.

The culling must stop, even if we are forced to stampede. They must be impeached. Go here, here, and here and take action.

Chemtrail Weather Control - NBC4

Youtube

Congressman Mark Udall-NWO Weatherman.
H.R. 2995 (2005)
H.R. 3445 (2007)
NBC4 investigating Chemtrails in the San Bernardino mountains CA,USA.

If you don't believe that weather modification is going on via chemtrails, look here:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill....

Even though this bill(H.R. 2995) did not pass back in 1995, someone is still spraying Barium & Aluminum in our skies!

Rep. Mark Udall could not interest Congress with Bill H.R.2995, so he is trying again with Bill H.R.3445. Congressman Mark Udall just tweaked the wording a little on his latest attempt to modify our climate and health:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill....

Iraq Vet War Critics Detained at Fort Bragg

Fayetteville Observer
Wednesday December 19, 2007

Two Army veterans of the war in Iraq were detained for several hours Dec. 17 on Fort Bragg, N.C., after handing out baked goods and anti-war literature at one of the post’s shopping centers.

The veterans, Jason Hurd, 28, and Steve Casey, 23, both of Asheville, belong to Iraq Veterans Against the War, a national group that opposes the United States’ military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hurd is president of the group’s Asheville chapter; Casey is the vice president.

Hurd and Casey said they arrived on Fort Bragg shortly before noon Monday. They set up a folding table outside the Reilly Road Mini-Mall and started handing out paper bags of brownies and cookies.

The latest monthly newsletter from Iraq Veterans Against the War was attached to the bags.

Hurd said he and Casey were there about an hour when an employee from the Army and Air Force Exchange Service came outside and told them they could not stay without a permit. The exchange runs the shopping centers on post.

Hurd said he and Casey asked where they could get a permit and were packing up to go get one when Fort Bragg military police arrived. Hurd said a nearby soldier told police that he was offended by the literature. Hurd said the police then took him and Casey to the Provost Marshal’s Office.

He said they left their car and a box of the gift bags at the mini-mall and stayed at the Provost Marshall’s Office about four hours before they were released.

Tom McCollum, a Fort Bragg spokesman, said that two veterans had been escorted off Fort Bragg on Monday. He said neither had been charged.

When the military police took the men back to the mini-mall and their car, Hurd said, they found that someone had written words of encouragement in black magic marker on the box of gift bags:

“Many friends in my platoon died brutally to protect the First Amendment. We have the right to peacefully protest.”

Surprise Over Government Criminality in the Corporate Media Echo Chamber

Kurt Nimmo
TruthNews
Wednesday December 19, 2007

Commenting on that now old news article by the “Timesmen Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Scott Shane,” Ryan Singel, for Wired, tells us the “Drug Enforcement Agency, for one, continued and expanded the data mining records of phone calls and emails from the United States to Latin American countries in order to catch smugglers” and the “program began under President Clinton in he 1990s and expanded under President Bush.”

Any excuse will suffice, be it the “war” on drugs or the “war” on government manufactured terrorism, as the point is to monitor everybody 24/7, especially possible opponents to the established ruling order.

I don’t know if Wired is considered “mainstream,” part of the corporate media, but this sort of brain death is indeed becoming wearisome.

Back in 2005, Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote about what some of us have known for years:

Even before President Harry Truman established the NSA in a Cold War era directive in 1952, government cryptologists jumped in the domestic spy hunt with Operation Shamrock. That was a super secret operation that forced private telegraphic companies to turn over the telegraphic correspondence of Americans to the government. The NSA kicked its spy campaign into high gear in the 1960s. The FBI demanded that the NSA monitor antiwar activists, civil rights leaders, and drug peddlers. The Senate Select Committee that investigated government domestic spying in 1976 pried open a tiny public window into the scope of NSA spying. But the agency slammed the window shut fast when it refused to cough up documents to the committee that would tell more about its surveillance of Americans. The NSA claimed that disclosure would compromise national security. The few feeble Congressional attempts over the years to probe NSA domestic spying have gone nowhere. Even though rumors swirled that NSA eyes were riveted on more than a few Americans, Congressional investigators showed no stomach to fight the NSA’s entrenched code of silence.

So, please, stop with the mouth-agape surprise. Snooping — indeed, thievery, fraud, lying, and murder — are defining hallmarks of government. Supposedly intelligent writers need to reverse the brainwashing that has them buying into the lie that “our” government would never do such things — and that includes the persistent stupidity that blocks acceptance of the fact the government pulled off the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

“Maybe having the phone companies relearn to say to the government ‘Come back with a warrant,’ isn’t such a bad thing,” Mr. Singel concludes. “That might be a good thing for keeping the Constitution safe.”

In fact, the Constitution is punctured full of holes. The “phone companies,” actually transnational corporate leviathans, will certainly do nothing about that. All they are concerned about is covering their posteriors.

It is, really, quite laughable to think CEOs — who are basically fascists, as Mussolini knew — will be saviors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Beck Complains Of Threats, Yet Wanted To "Kill Michael Moore"

Uses part of Ron Paul interview to suggest his supporters are dangerous

Steve Watson & Paul Watson
Prison Planet
Wednesday, December 19, 2007

ay, December 19, 2007

Ron Paul appeared on Glenn Beck's CNN show last night for a full hour in what was, it has to be said, a fair interview, rare as that concept has been in the past where Beck is concerned. However, Beck couldn't resist straying away from Ron Paul's campaign issues towards the end of the interview in order to complain that he has received several death threats from people who claim to support Paul.

The thinly veiled attack was clearly designed to suggest that Ron Paul's supporters are dangerous and that this reflects on his policies, a smear tactic Beck has previously used, and one that most likely landed him with said threats in the first instance.

A bemused Ron Paul was of course cornered into condemning any threat of violence, despite not having any knowledge of what Beck was referring to. However it is quite impossible to have any sympathy for Beck given the fact that not only does he regularly regurgitate the "kill those darn Islamists before they kill us" mantra, but has also personally threatened to kill people whose views he condemns, namely those of film maker Michael Moore.

Credit goes to blogspot Real Truth Online for pointing out that on May 17, 2005, Glenn Beck, on his radio show, said the following:

“Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus -- band -- Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, "Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore," and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, "Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death." And you know, well, I'm not sure”.

Listen to the audio:

No explanation of Beck's incredible hypocrisy is required, instead here is Ron Paul's elegant response which Beck should maybe take more careful consideration of in the future:

"All I can do is address the subject of violence, I am committed to non violence, no initiation of aggression, these are my political viewpoints, I believe in political change coming about through the mode of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, through non-violence. I happen to believe that we should practice these principles both domestically against individuals as well as other countries, this is the reason I don't want to use aggression against other countries to bring about change. I don't ever want to initiate aggression, this is what is in our constitution and so I reject anybody who would use violence."

We support this view 100% and have always urged a commitment to non violence and peaceful political activism, sadly Mr Beck, you cannot say the same.