Thursday, November 29, 2007

Naomi Wolf: America's Fascist Coup Owes Legacy To Bush's Nazi Grandfather

Author of "10 steps" speaks publicly for the first time about origins of modern-day tyranny

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, November 29, 2007

Author Naomi Wolf, who made headlines earlier this year after she identified the ten steps to fascism that were being followed to a tee by the Bush administration, spoke publicly for the first time yesterday about the origins of what we see unfolding today, Prescott Bush's attempt to launch a Nazi coup in 1930's America.

Speaking on the Alex Jones Show, Wolf said that she was first alerted to begin researching America's slide into fascism when her friend, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, warned her that the same events that laid the foundations for the rise of the Third Reich in early 1930's Germany, when it was still a Parliamentary democracy, were being mirrored in modern-day America.

"A small group of people began very systematically to use the law and dismantle the Constitution and put pressure on citizens to subvert the law - and that opened the door for everything that followed," said Wolf.

"When I started reading, not only are tactics and strategy being reproduced exactly right now by the Bush administration - but actual sound bytes and language and images and scenarios are being reproduced," she added.

Wolf's essay, Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps, has received plaudits for how it succinctly describes the ways in which dictatorships the world over throughout the 20th century have evolved by following the exact same blueprint for tyranny that we see unfolding in America today.

"Everybody that wants to close down a Democracy does the exact same ten things, the same classic steps and unfortunately we're starting to see these ten steps being put in place in the United States," said Wolf.

For the first time publicly, Wolf traced the origins of contemporary developments back to President Bush's Nazi grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his plan to launch a fascist coup in the 1930's.

"There was a scheme in the 30's and Prescott Bush was one of the leaders of this scheme, an industrialist who admired fascism and thought that was a good idea - to have a coup in the United States along the lines of the coup they saw taking place in Italy and Germany," said Wolf, referring to the testimony of Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, who was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush - the current President's grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.


Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush.

A recent BBC radio report confirmed that there was an attempted coup led by Prescott Bush.

"Smedley Butler had been involved with violent regime change throughout his career, but he was approached by these conspirators, including Prescott Bush, and he outed them and he testified to Congress that they were planning a coup in the United States - it's in the Congressional record," said Wolf, adding that the coup was being bankrolled by German industrialist and one of Hitler's chief financiers Fritz Thyssen.

"What is amazing to me and resonant to me is that when the Nuremberg trials were finally put in place, these Nazi industrialists, some of whom had colluded with Americans including IBM, were about to be brought to trial and sent to prison - there was a moment at which they were going to look into turning the spotlight on their American partners," said Wolf.

The author added that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were consciously designed to protect current President Bush and his co-conspirators from being indicted for war crimes, harking back to Prescott Bush's history.

"The family history is that you can make so much money uniting corporate interests with a fascist state that violently represses people, that's why when I saw the recycling of so much Nazi language, Nazi tactics, Nazi strategies, Nazi imagery in the Bush White House and then finally belatedly people brought to me this history of Prescott Bush's attempted coup and Smedley Butler's revelations - it gives me absolute chills," said Wolf.

The fact that Bush's grandfather was a Nazi cannot be presented alone as proof that President Bush is carrying on the legacy, but his policies and rhetoric, which in her essay Wolf clearly documents are borrowed from the Nazi playbook, and in particular the recent move to smear administration critics as potential terrorists, are evidence that George W. Bush is the figurehead for a modern-day fascist coup in America led by the Neo-Cons.

Wolf concluded that history shows the only safe course for preserving freedom in such a climate is to prosecute and jail the protagonists of the coup as early as possible, a process many would argue should have been enacted several years ago.

Click here to listen to the MP3 interview with Naomi Wolf.

President signs document effectively making Iraq a colony of the US

Damian Lataan
Wednesday November 28, 2007

I’m not sure that I’ve read a more sickening document than the one that was released by the White House yesterday entitled ‘Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America’. Encapsulated in this document is the geo-political reality of what the Bush/Cheney administration and their neoconservative and Likudnik supporters had set out to achieve since the day George W. Bush became President of the US.

Far from ‘liberating’ the Iraqi people from the ‘yoke of tyranny’ for them to become a ‘free and democratic’ model to which all other Middle Eastern states could aspire, which was the propaganda and rhetoric used by the neoconservatives that convinced the Coalition of the Willing that Iraq was a ‘noble and righteous cause’, the declaration instead condemns Iraq to an endless occupation designed to enhance the power of the elite puppets of Iraq, and to ensure that Iraq’s resources remain firmly under American control and enriching American controlled oil companies. In short, the document is the instrument by which Iraq has effectively become a colony of the US.

There are several iniquitous points made in the document that betray the real intent of the administration but, in particular, point five of the second principle relating to ‘the economic sphere’ which says: “Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq,” and point eight which says: “Supporting the Republic of Iraq to obtain positive and preferential trading conditions for Iraq within the global marketplace including accession to the World Trade Organization and most favored nation status with the United States,” says it all.

Iraq’s puppet leaders have signed over Iraq to the US.

Expert: Both parties cooperate to keep administration crimes secret

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Thursday November 29, 2007

The Bush administration has made widespread use of the so-called state secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits that seek to challenge its domestic wiretaps and other illegal activities. Now two veteran senators, Arlen Spector (R-PA) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), are teaming up to craft legislation that would direct judges to evaluate the government's state secrets claims rather than accepting them uncritically.

Keith Olbermann described this proposed legislation with a high degree of skepticism, saying sardonically, "The bill may end up as part of the Senate's wiretapping law, due for a vote next month -- after which the president will sign it and monkeys will fly out of his butt."

He then turned to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley, asking him why there isn't already such a law, as most Americans would assume there would be.

"It actually is the law," Turley replied. "This has been a distortion, or a mutation of the law. The privilege has become something that I think the Supreme Court never imagined when it first created it."

"Today, the privilege is used primarily not to keep something secret, but to keep something from being used against the government," Turley went on. "I was in a courtroom when people laughed when the government counsel argued that they could use the privilege to claim as secret something that was published on the cover of the New York Times."

Turley said that some judges are already scrutinizing government claims under the state secret privilege but suggested that those who do not are merely "lazy." He pointed out that even the original case which established the privilege was eventually found to have been based on a lie, "and the Supreme Court refused to reexamine the case."

Perhaps Turley's most telling observation was that members of both parties are happy to see these cases dismissed because they are determined to keep impeachment off the table. "There's a lot of people, both Democrats and Republicans, that ... don't want a court to say that the president did something that is a federal crime. That's why they're trying to get all these cases thrown out of court. ... When a federal judge says the president committed a crime, it's pretty darn hard to ignore that."

However, he agreed with Olbermann that it would still be important to have such a law in place for after Bush leaves office, saying, "The privilege is now a tool used to protect the government from its own crimes."


This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast on November 27, 2007.


More Boos At Republican YouTube Debate As McCain Re-Writes History

Crooks & Liars
Thursday November 29, 2007

The Republican CNN/YouTube debate looked more like an episode of Jerry Springer than a presidential debate. Senator John McCain was asked a question about taxes and decided to go way off topic and attack Rep. Ron Paul for his stance on Iraq and wanting to bring the troops home.

McCain accused Paul of what he called the same sort of appeasement that allowed Hitler to take power and WWII to happen, and told him he’d just returned from Iraq and said he had a message for Ron from “the troops” — and the audience let him have it. Paul put it right back in his face by reminding him that he has received more donations from active duty military personnel than any other Republican candidate. Oh, did anyone notice Chuck Norris in the audience? This stuff just writes itself…

CNN/YouTube FL Debate: Paul on North American Union, CFR

You Tube
Thursday November 29, 2007

CNN/YouTube FL Debate: Paul on North American Union, CFR, and Conspiracy.

Presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) responds to a question about talk of a North American Union, CRF and Conspiracy.

This was the "Grand Slam" answer of the evening!

Ron Paul for the Win!
www.ronpaul2008.com/donate

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Existing home sales fall for eighth month

Existing home sales fall for eighth month

Median U.S. home price dropped by record amount in October
The Associated Press
updated 10:05 a.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 28, 2007

WASHINGTON - Sales of existing homes fell for the eighth consecutive month in October, with median home prices falling by a record amount. Analysts blamed the worsening housing slump on the serious credit crunch that hit in August.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing single-family homes and condominiums dropped by 1.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million units.

The median price of a home sold last month declined to $207,800, a drop of 5.1 percent from a year ago, the biggest year-over-year price decline on record.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22006839/

World spooked by declining U.S. dollar

Duncan Cameron
Rabble
November 27, 2007

The world economy has been built on a major fault line: a national currency, the U.S. dollar, which is also the world monetary unit. The two different roles played by the American dollar have become increasingly incompatible. Today, low U.S. interest rates are needed to reduce recessionary pressures in the American domestic economy. But, lowering U.S. interest rates has made the U.S. dollar less attractive as an investment vehicle for foreign businesses, banks, and governments, rendering it unsuitable as world money, an international storehouse of value.

Developments in financial markets in recent months have brought the dilemma of using the U.S. dollar as the world currency back to the forefront of issues that need to be addressed. Commentators are so far taking stock of the bad news, but not addressing what needs to be done.

If central banks and finance ministries around the world know what to do next, so far they have kept it to themselves.

The bad news is that the U.S. economy is going into a recession. Since it is the world’s largest importer, its economic slowdown will hit others as well. With the U.S. dollar at record lows against the Euro, and recent lows against the Yen, U.S. purchases abroad are bound to fall precipitately.

The worse news is that the trouble in U.S. financial markets could be amplified by the recession, putting U.S. banks and financial institutions in an even weaker position than today. Loss of confidence in dollar-based assets will cause ever greater disruptions in financial markets abroad.

Those countries that have been selling more to the U.S., than they have been buying from the U.S., have, until now, accumulated surplus dollars, and placed them in U.S financial markets. But, since July, purchases of U.S. securities by foreign governments have dropped dramatically, driving the U.S. dollar down, and making financial markets more fragile.

Everybody who holds U.S. dollars or securities is losing money, and stands to lose more when, to fight recession, American interest rates go down again, and the U.S. dollar plunges even further.

The U.S. Treasury Department says it is pursuing a strong dollar policy, which no body believes. The U.S. Federal Reserve makes monetary policy to suit the domestic economy, not the overseas holders of U.S. dollars.

The U.S. policy response to the falling dollar has been to blame those countries, principally China, and other emerging economies, which have continued to peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar, rather than allow their currencies to rise. To avoid a domestic recession, the U.S. wants poorer economies to slow down. China remains unconvinced. Why should it adjust to U.S. needs?

For the past 60 years the U.S. has enjoyed the imperial privilege of having its money accepted all over the world, giving it the ability to buy real assets with its own money. The world held U.S. dollars as financial assets, and the U.S. dollar was used to calculate prices, and make payments throughout a world banking, and financial network.

Because there was a requirement for foreigners spending abroad to earn U.S. currency through international trade, but no requirement for U.S. spenders to earn foreign currency, the world had adopted a dollar standard.

Today, because of U.S. over-spending abroad, many businesses, banks, and governments are moving out of dollars and into Euros, British Pounds, or, even Swiss Francs or Yen. Investors are buying art, and real property outside the U.S., which have become more attractive investments than dollar denominated assets. However, by diversifying out of the dollar, investors only reduce its value further. The U.S. authorities have no back up plan to stop the U.S. dollar from shrinking in value even more.

The market is not going to fix the problems created by using a national currency as the world money. What is needed is a plan to create a genuine world currency to settle debts among central banks. At Bretton Woods, in 1944, John Maynard Keynes presented a plan for such a currency. He called it the “bancor.” His ideas were rejected. American bankers did not want to give up their lucrative business of trading dollars on foreign exchanges.

The world needs a truly international monetary unit, because the dollar cannot fulfill its international role, and replacing it with the Euro will not resolve the contradiction of using a central bank currency to fulfill two roles, one internal and one on the world stage.

Consider a continental currency, Jarislowsky says

STEVEN CHASE
Globe & Mail
Wednesday November 28, 2007

OTTAWA -- Canada should replace its dollar with a North American currency, or peg it to the U.S. greenback, to avoid the exchange rate shifts the loonie has experienced, renowned money manager Stephen Jarislowsky told a parliamentary committee yesterday.

"In a country like Canada we cannot permit ourselves to have a dollar that goes through these kind of gyrations," Mr. Jarislowsky told MPs on the Commons finance committee. " I think we have to really seriously start thinking of the model of a continental currency just like Europe."

MPs on the finance committee are probing the consequences of the strengthened loonie - which has risen more than 20 per cent against the U.S. greenback this year.

Mr. Jarislowsky, a former Canfor Corp. director, said the loonie's rise to above par with the U.S. dollar is destroying manufacturing and could devastate the forest sector.

"We don't have a single mill in Canada which isn't losing cash at the current exchange rate despite the fact we invested hundreds of millions in dollars into new equipment when we had the money," said Mr. Jarislowsky, chairman of Montreal investment firm Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd.

"I believe that if we stay at the present levels the entire forest products industry practically is going to be in liquidation-bankruptcy and there's going to be an enormous loss of employment."

He scorned suggestions that now is a great time to invest in new equipment because the stronger loonie can buy more.

Full article here.

U.S. Mortgage Crisis Slams Property Values, State Tax Receipts

Cryptogon
November 27th, 2007

Via: Bloomberg:

The worst U.S. housing recession in 16 years will drive down property values by $1.2 trillion next year and slash tax revenue by more than $6.6 billion, according to a report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

California, the hardest-hit state, will suffer a $630.6 billion decrease in property values that will cut property tax revenue to local governments by almost $3 billion, the study found. The New York City region will see the greatest slowdown in the output of goods and services because of the mortgage crisis, according to the report.

The U.S. residential real estate market is faltering as rising foreclosures among subprime borrowers have pushed down prices and led to a record supply of unsold homes. Foreclosures among homeowners with subprime adjustable-rate mortgages have reached a five-year high.

“The real estate crisis of 2007 and 2008 will go down in the record books,” according to the report, released as the Conference of Mayors gathers in Detroit today for a special meeting to discuss the housing slump. “The wave of foreclosures that has rippled across the U.S. has already battered some of our largest financial institutions, created ghost towns of once vibrant neighborhoods — and it’s not over yet.”

Signs Are Pointing South on Wall St.

Neil Irwin
Washington Post
November 27, 2007

Credit Woes Foster Bets on Bad Times

Wall Street is betting on a recession.

Investors in stocks and bonds are paying prices that indicate they believe a snowballing housing crisis and worsening credit crunch will soon tip the U.S. economy into a recession, analysts said. Many economists, including leaders of the Federal Reserve, don’t think things will get that bad, but some say the risk of a serious downturn has risen in recent weeks.

Investors were so eager to buy ultra-safe government bonds yesterday that they were willing to accept sharply lower interest rates. The rate on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 3.84 percent from 4 percent Friday. The low rates indicate investors expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates aggressively in the coming year to ease the pain of recession.

Stocks are now down more than 10 percent from their peak in October. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 2.3 percent yesterday, dropping the market to a level that Wall Street analysts say reflects an expectation that corporate profits will fall.

Taken together, those and other data indicate that financial markets have a decidedly negative prognosis for the economy. “They’re saying the odds of a recession are pretty damn high,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.

There are reasons to think things will not get that bad, however. Holiday sales started Friday with a strong 8.3 percent gain over last year, and U.S. consumers have proven resilient in past periods of financial distress. With the dollar weakening, U.S. exporters will be at an advantage; joblessness remains near historic lows, at 4.7 percent; and the stock market, an old joke goes, has predicted nine of the past five recessions.

Moreover, economic growth could slow sharply through the first half of next year, as the Federal Reserve and myriad private firms predict, without technically falling into recession territory. A recession is defined as a significant decline in economic activity, as measured by a variety of indicators, that lasts more than a few months. The nonprofit Conference Board said yesterday that its index of leading economic indicators fell in October, but not by so much as to suggest a recession is about to begin.

Other events yesterday showed how widely worry has spread.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said it would make at least $8 billion available so banks do not find themselves short of cash through early January. Former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers said in a column in yesterday’s Financial Times that he now believes the odds favor a recession, a view he did not hold a few weeks ago.

Housing prices are falling sharply in many of the nation’s biggest cities, and millions of foreclosures are forecast for the next two years. Oil prices are near $100 per barrel, which could thin out consumers’ pocketbooks if the winter is especially cold. And as the value of the dollar drops, imports as varied as French wine and Japanese electronics could become more expensive.

In a view increasingly typical among Wall Street economists, analysts at Merrill Lynch published a research note yesterday with the headline: “We believe we are going to see a recession in ‘08.”

Widespread expectations of a recession could be self-fulfilling because of how financial markets and mainstream America are interconnected. If investors are sufficiently convinced a recession is ahead, they would be reluctant to lend money to businesses that want to expand, making it so.

Just a month ago, financial markets seemed to be healing from the tumult of the summer, when fear of losses in the mortgage sector caused many markets to effectively shut down. But throughout November, the very institutions that were expected to ease the blow to the economy have shown more evidence of trouble.

Investors are worried that major banks are suffering such severe losses from mortgage and other risky securities that they will not be able to lend as much money to consumers and businesses in the months ahead. The same fears apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored housing finance companies.

“It looked like the problems in the credit markets were going away or at least calming down a few weeks ago,” said David A. Wyss, chief economist of Standard & Poor’s. “Now the signs are that they’re not.”

The credit problems are no abstraction. They make it more expensive for individuals to obtain mortgages and for businesses to expand.

Higher interest rates for risky mortgages, for example, could make it difficult for would-be buyers to afford a home, which could cause prices to drop further. That, in turn, could spur more foreclosures, which could lead financial institutions to further increase rates they charge on mortgages.

“These things feed off of each other,” Wyss said.

The same is true for businesses. Continuing expansion of the commercial real estate sector, for example, including office buildings and shopping centers, has been a major cushion from the housing downturn in recent months and has kept construction workers employed.

In February, owners could borrow against such properties at interest rates about one percentage point above the rate for Treasury bonds, based on a Morgan Stanley index for moderately risky commercial mortgage-backed securities. At the end of September, commercial property owners had to pay an additional four percentage points. By yesterday, the premium was seven percentage points.

Higher borrowing costs could make commercial builders less likely to move forward with new construction, analysts said, eliminating a crucial source of growth in jobs and in the gross domestic product.

The potential freeze in bank lending could mirror the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, a major cause of the 1990-91 recession.

“In any recession, you get to a tipping point where sentiment unravels and feeds on itself. Psychology takes over,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com.

Clinton I haven't considered possibility of losing Dem nomination

David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Raw Story
Tuesday November 27, 2007

Clinton says 'it's time' for aggressive campaign
The much-discussed "inevitability" factor is widely regarded as a major strength for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination -- and the senator herself appears to be buying in.

In an interview with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News, Clinton was asked how "disappointed" she would be if she wasn't her party's eventual nominee for president.

"Well, it will be me," Clinton shot back. "But of course, I'm ready to support the Democratic nominee, whoever it is."

Pressed by Couric about whether she had considered the possibility of seeing another Democrat in the general election, Clinton was dismissive.

"No, I haven't," said the senator. "You know, when you get up every day like I do and you go out and meet hundreds and thousands of people and you talk about yourself, and you talk about your dreams and hopes for the country... that takes up all my time and energy, to just keep presenting myself and my candidacy. So I get up every day intending to meet and reach as many as people as possible -- then I go to bed at night and I get up and do it all over again."

"So you never even consider the possibility?" repeated Couric.

"I don't. I don't," Clinton responded.

The former first lady also fielded a question about the new "aggressive tone" her campaign appears to have adopted.

"Well, it's time," said Clinton of her toughening rhetoric about her Democratic rivals. "I have absorbed a lot of attacks for several months now. My opponents have basically had a free reign...but after you've been attacked as often as I have -- from several of my opponents -- you can't just absorb it. You have to respond."

Clinton has stepped up criticisms of fellow Democratic presidential contenders in recent days, and targeted Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) last week for asserting that his time living abroad as a child was a part of his foreign relations experience.

"Voters will have to judge if living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face," Clinton had said. "I was wondering which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq," was Obama's retort.

"A lot of the attacks have been quite persistent shall we say," Clinton told Couric in the interview, describing critical comments from she says come from Republicans and Democrats alike. "Hardly a day goes by when I'm not attacked. And I just figure that it's about time now for me to draw the contrasts, which I think are pretty important to voters. And that's what I'm going to do."


This video is from CBS Evening News, broadcast on November 26, 2007.

We Are Change Ireland Attempts to Confront Bill Clinton

Kurt Nimmo
TruthNews
Wednesday November 28, 2007

Two members of We Are Change Ireland attempted to confront Bill Clinton, who visited their country on a fund-raising tour on behalf of his wife, selected by the elite to serve as our next ruler here in America.

“While Bill Clinton was in Ireland to Fundraise for Hillary and the continuation of the Bush/Clinton dynasty, We Are Change Ireland tried to confront him,” a blurb on YouTube explains. “Clinton didn’t get out of his vehicle and walk down the ‘runway’… but he got the message loud and clear that everybody is waking up to the New World Order jig.”

One of the two We Are Change Ireland activists yelled at Clinton, who was seated in the rear of a mini-van: “Investigate 9/11!” Clinton smiles and turned away as the vehicle moved past. It was obvious by the brief expression on Clinton’s face that he heard the demand.

After the short event, one of the activists explained how he intended to ask Clinton about professor Carroll Quigley, the former president’s political mentor at Georgetown University in the 1960s. In his book, The Anglo-American Establishment, Quigley details how the elitist duopoly long ago hijacked the political process in the United States and thus decimated the political paradigm held by a majority of the public, who are naturally clueless.

In addition, the Irish activists wanted to ask Clinton about his appearance at a Bilderberg meeting in 1991, the year before he was elected.

Clinton, however, after a brief exchange with We Are Change Minnesota in late October, has probably had enough of the common folk asking impromptu questions.

120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week

Penny Coleman
AlterNet
November 26, 2007.

Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone — and remember, this is just in 45 states — there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.

As the widow of a Vietnam vet who killed himself after coming home, and as the author of a book for which I interviewed dozens of other women who had also lost husbands (or sons or fathers) to PTSD and suicide in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful to CBS for undertaking this long overdue investigation. I am also heartbroken that the numbers are so astonishingly high and tentatively optimistic that perhaps now that there are hard numbers to attest to the magnitude of the problem, it will finally be taken seriously. I say tentatively because this is an administration that melts hard numbers on their tongues like communion wafers.

Since these new wars began, and in spite of a continuous flood of alarming reports, the Department of Defense has managed to keep what has clearly become an epidemic of death beneath the radar of public awareness by systematically concealing statistics about soldier suicides. They have done everything from burying them on official casualty lists in a category they call “accidental noncombat deaths” to outright lying to the parents of dead soldiers. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has rubber-stamped their disinformation, continuing to insist that their studies indicate that soldiers are killing themselves, not because of their combat experiences, but because they have “personal problems.”

Active-duty soldiers, however, are only part of the story. One of the well-known characteristics of post-traumatic stress injuries is that the onset of symptoms is often delayed, sometimes for decades. Veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam are still taking their own lives because new PTSD symptoms have been triggered, or old ones retriggered, by stories and images from these new wars. Their deaths, like the deaths of more recent veterans, are written up in hometown newspapers; they are locally mourned, but officially ignored. The VA doesn’t track or count them. It never has. Both the VA and the Pentagon deny that the problem exists and sanctimoniously point to a lack of evidence they have refused to gather.

They have managed this smoke and mirrors trick for decades in large part because suicide makes people so uncomfortable. It has often been called “that most secret death” because no one wants to talk about it. Over time, in different parts of the world, attitudes have fluctuated between the belief that the act is a sin, a right, a crime, a romantic gesture, an act of consummate bravery or a symptom of mental illness. It has never, however, been an emotionally neutral issue. In the United States, the rationalism of our legal system has acknowledged for 300 years that the act is almost always symptomatic of a mental illness. For those same 300 years, organized religions have stubbornly maintained that it’s a sin. In fact, the very worst sin. The one that is never forgiven because it’s too late to say you’re sorry.

The contradiction between religious doctrine and secular law has left suicide in some kind of nether space in which the fundamentals of our systems of justice and belief are disrupted. A terrible crime has been committed, a murder, and yet there can be no restitution, no punishment. As sin or as mental illness, the origins of suicide live in the mind, illusive, invisible, associated with the mysterious, the secretive and the undisciplined, a kind of omnipresent Orange Alert. Beware the abnormal. Beware the Other.

For years now, this administration has been blasting us with high-decibel, righteous posturing about suicide bombers, those subhuman dastards who do the unthinkable, using their own bodies as lethal weapons. “Those people, they aren’t like us; they don’t value life the way we do,” runs the familiar xenophobic subtext: And sometimes the text isn’t even sub-: “Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington and Pennsylvania,” proclaimed W, glibly conflating Sept. 11, the invasion of Iraq, Islam, fanatic fundamentalism and human bombs.

Bush has also expressed the opinion that suicide bombers are motivated by despair, neglect and poverty. The demographic statistics on suicide bombers suggest that this isn’t the necessarily the case. Most of the Sept. 11 terrorists came from comfortable middle- to upper-middle-class families and were well-educated. Ironically, despair, neglect and poverty may be far more significant factors in the deaths of American soldiers and veterans who are taking their own lives.

Consider the 25 percent of enlistees and the 50 percent of reservists who have come back from the war with serious mental health issues. Despair seems an entirely appropriate response to the realization that the nightmares and flashbacks may never go away, that your ability to function in society and to manage relationships, work schedules or crowds will never be reliable. How not to despair if your prognosis is: Suck it up, soldier. This may never stop!

Neglect? The VA’s current backlog is 800,000 cases. Aside from the appalling conditions in many VA hospitals, in 2004, the last year for which statistics are available, almost 6 million veterans and their families were without any healthcare at all. Most of them are working people — too poor to afford private coverage, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care. Soldiers and veterans need help now, the help isn’t there, and the conversations about what needs to be done are only just now beginning.

Poverty? The symptoms of post-traumatic stress injuries or traumatic brain injuries often make getting and keeping a job an insurmountable challenge. The New York Times reported last week that though veterans make up only 11 percent of the adult population, they make up 26 percent of the homeless. If that doesn’t translate into despair, neglect and poverty, well, I’m not sure the distinction is one worth quibbling about.

There is a particularly terrible irony in the relationship between suicide bombers and the suicides of American soldiers and veterans. With the possible exception of some few sadists and psychopaths, Americans don’t enlist in the military because they want to kill civilians. And they don’t sign up with the expectation of killing themselves. How incredibly sad that so many end up dying of remorse for having performed acts that so disturb their sense of moral selfhood that they sentence themselves to death.

There is something so smugly superior in the way we talk about suicide bombers and the cultures that produce them. But here is an unsettling thought. In 2005, 6,256 American veterans took their own lives. That same year, there were about 130 documented deaths of suicide bombers in Iraq.* Do the math. That’s a ratio of 50-to-1. So who is it that is most effectively creating a culture of suicide and martyrdom? If George Bush is right, that it is despair, neglect and poverty that drive people to such acts, then isn’t it worth pointing out that we are doing a far better job?

*I say “about” because in the aftermath of a suicide bombing, it is often very difficult for observers to determine how many individual bodies have been blown to pieces.

FOX News Takes 32 Seconds to Explain We're in Iraq Forever

You Tube
Wednesday November 28, 2007

On 11-26-07 FOX substitute anchor Bret Baier devoted 32 seconds to the news that George Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have signed a "deal" that means 50,000 American troops will remain in Iraq for a long, long time.

Feds retreat on Amazon buyers' identities

Feds retreat on Amazon buyers' identities

Subpoena pulled after ruling that protects book customers' privacy
The Associated Press
updated 7:35 p.m. ET, Tues., Nov. 27, 2007

MADISON, Wisconsin - U.S. prosecutors have withdrawn a subpoena seeking the identities of thousands of people who bought used books through online retailer Amazon.com Inc., newly unsealed court records show.

The withdrawal came after a judge ruled the customers have a right to keep their reading habits from the government.

"The (subpoena's) chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America," U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker wrote in a June ruling.

"Well-founded or not, rumors of an Orwellian federal criminal investigation into the reading habits of Amazon's customers could frighten countless potential customers into canceling planned online book purchases," the judge wrote in a ruling he unsealed last week.

Amazon said in court documents it hopes Crocker's decision will make it more difficult for prosecutors to obtain records involving book purchases. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Vaudreuil said Tuesday he doubted the ruling would hamper legitimate investigations.

‘The subpoena is troubling’
Crocker — who unsealed documents detailing the showdown, against prosecutors' wishes — said he believed prosecutors were seeking the information for a legitimate purpose. But he said First Amendment concerns about freedom of speech were justified and outweighed the subpoena's law enforcement purpose.

"The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission," Crocker wrote. "It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else."

Federal prosecutors issued the subpoena last year as part of a grand jury investigation into a former Madison city official who was a prolific seller of used books on Amazon.com. They were looking for buyers who could be witnesses in the case.

The official, Robert D'Angelo, was indicted last month on fraud, money laundering and tax evasion charges. Prosecutors said he ran a used book business out of his city office and did not report the income. He has pleaded not guilty.

D'Angelo sold books through the Amazon Marketplace feature, and buyers paid Amazon, which took a commission.

"We didn't care about the content of what anybody read. We just wanted to know what these business transactions were," prosecutor Vaudreuil said. "These were simply business records we were seeking to prove the case of fraud and tax crimes against Mr. D'Angelo."

Prosecutors tried compromise
The initial subpoena sought records of 24,000 transactions dating to 1999. The company turned over many records but refused to identify the book buyers, citing their right to keep their reading choices private.

Prosecutors later narrowed the subpoena, asking the company to identify a sample of 120 customers.

Crocker brokered a compromise in which the company would send a letter to the 24,000 customers describing the investigation and asking them to voluntarily contact prosecutors if they were interested in testifying.

Prosecutors said they obtained the customer information they needed from a computer seized from D'Angelo earlier in the investigation.

Crocker scolded prosecutors in July for not looking for alternatives earlier. Vaudreuil said computer analysts initially failed to recover the information.

"If the government had been more diligent in looking for workarounds instead of baring its teeth when Amazon balked, it's probable that this entire First Amendment showdown could have been avoided," he wrote.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21997757/

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

America's day of reckoning is at hand

Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal
Tuesday November 27, 2007

Pat Buchanan is too patriotic to come right out and say it, but the message of his new book, Day of Reckoning, is that America as we have known her is finished. Moreover, Naomi Wolf agrees with him. These two writers of different political persuasions arrive at America's demise from different directions.

Buchanan explains how hubris, ideology, and greed have torn America apart. A neoconservative cabal with an alien agenda captured the Bush administration and committed American blood, energy, and money to aggression against Muslim countries in the Middle East, while permitting America's domestic borders to be overrun by immigrants and exporting the jobs that had made the US an opportunity society. War and offshoring have taken a savage economic toll while open borders and diversity have created social and political division.

In her new book, End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Wolf explains America's demise in terms of the erosion of freedoms. She writes that the 10 classic steps that are used to close open societies are currently being taken in the US. Martial law is only a declaration away.

The Bush administration responded to September 11 by initiating military aggression in the Middle East and by using fear and the "war on terror" to implement police state measures at home with legislation, presidential directives, and executive orders

Overnight the US became a tyranny in which people could be arrested and incarcerated on the basis of unsubstantiated accusation. Both US citizens and non-citizens were denied habeas corpus, due process, and access to attorneys and courts. Congress gave Bush legislation establishing military tribunals, the procedures of which permit people to be condemned to death on the basis of secret evidence, hearsay, and confessions extracted by torture. Nothing of the like has ever been seen before in the US.

The cancer might have metastasized if the Guantanamo detainees had actually been the dangerous terrorists and enemy combatants that the Bush regime declared them to be. Had the administration actually possessed evidence against the detainees, the Bush regime might have succeeded in dispensing with the Constitution. Conviction of the detainees could have led to what Wolf calls a "fascist expansion." Following the exercise of its new powers, the regime could have broadened the definition of terrorist to include the regime's critics, thus pulling citizens in general into tribunals devoid of civil liberty protections.

It could still turn out this way in the event of another 9/11 attack, whether real or orchestrated. But momentarily the drive toward tyranny has been blunted, because the vast majority of detainees turned out to be hapless individuals sold into American captivity by warlords responding to the bounty the US paid for "terrorists." Any unprotected individual was vulnerable to being captured by Afghan and Pakistani warlords and sold as a "terrorist." The Americans needed to show results, and the Bush regime needed "terrorists" in order to feed the fear its propaganda had generated.

In Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany, the absence of evidence would not have mattered as the judicial system produced the results demanded by the tyrants. However, the US military had not been sufficiently corrupted for the Bush regime's Guantanamo agenda to succeed. Honorable officers, such as Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, were able to discern that the US government had no information on the detainees and used interrogations in order to rubber stamp the a priori determination that a detainee was a terrorist or enemy combatant. Military officers made these revelations known to real courts before the tribunal process could establish itself.

CounterPunch writer Andy Worthington's recently published book, The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, proves that the regime's claim that it had hundreds of dangerous terrorists at Guantanamo was just another Bush administration lie.

Currently, support for Bush, Cheney, and the neoconservative agenda is low. However, Congress, the press, and elections have proven to be feeble opponents of the Bush regime's drive toward war and tyranny. It remains to be seen whether the regime has sufficient credibility or audacity to initiate war with Iran or a false flag attack that would revive the fascist expansion of which Naomi Wolf warns.

The Bush administration has been a catastrophe. Its failures are unprecedented. Energy prices are at all time highs. The US is deeply in debt and dependent on foreign creditors. The dollar has lost 60 per cent of its value against other tradable currencies, and its reserve currency status, the basis of American power, is in doubt. The US has lost millions of middle class jobs which have been replaced with low paid domestic service jobs. Except for the very rich, Americans have experienced no gains in real income in the 21st century. As the ladders of upward mobility are dismantled and the middle class struggles and fails, America is left with a few rich and many poor. America's reputation and credibility are damaged perhaps beyond repair. Congress and the press have enabled the executive branch's disregard of the Constitution and civil liberty. The US is mired in two lost wars which are pushing Lebanon and nuclear-armed Pakistan into deepening political crises.

As Buchanan concludes, "Our day of reckoning is at hand."

Don't look now: Here comes the recession

Colin Barr
CNN
Tuesday November 27, 2007

The cash registers were ringing on Black Friday, but make no mistake: American consumers are jittery, and seem all but certain to push the U.S. economy into recession.

After years of living happily beyond their means, Americans are finally facing financial reality. A persistent rise in energy prices will mean bigger heating bills this winter and heftier tabs at the gas pump. Job growth is slowing and wage gains have been anemic. House prices are sliding, diminishing the value of the asset that's the biggest factor in Americans' personal wealth. Even the stock market, which has been resilient for so long in the face of eroding consumer sentiment, has begun pulling back amid signs of deep distress in the financial sector.

The latest evidence of the long-awaited consumer retrenchment: Chic discounter Target (Charts, Fortune 500) last week reported a weaker-than-expected third quarter, as sales of higher-margin apparel and home goods slowed. Starbucks (Charts, Fortune 500) reported for the first time that customer traffic in its stores declined in its latest quarter compared to a year earlier. Wal-Mart (Charts, Fortune 500) shares hit a six-year low in September after the retail giant posted another wan sales increase.

With consumer spending accounting for about three-quarters of U.S. economic activity, some economists say it is inevitable that the economy will stop growing at some point in the coming year, for the first time since the mild recession of 2001. "Right now, the question is how bad it's going to get," said David Rosenberg, chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch. "The question is one of magnitude."

Not everyone agrees. Many economists believe the Federal Reserve will steer the economy into a period of slow growth but avoid a recession, which is typically defined as two or more consecutive quarters of economic contraction. Indeed, the Fed already has twice cut its overnight interest-rate target, and options markets show investors expect the Fed to cut by another quarter-point at its Dec. 11 meeting, taking the Fed funds bank-lending rate down to 4.25%.

Government officials have steered well clear of recession talk, with recent Fed documents citing instead the risk of "an unexpectedly severe weakening in economic activity." But Rosenberg and others are skeptical of the Fed's influence on an economy staggering under a mountain of personal, corporate and government debt. The economic recovery underway in 2002 was driven by low interest rates and abundant credit availability -- helped along by then-Fed chief Alan Greenspan's decision to cut interest rates as low as 1% in 2003.

Full article here.

Denying the North American Union

Kurt Nimmo
TruthNews
November 26, 2007

Now that Alex Jones, Jerome Corsi, and others have exposed the plot to establish a “North American community,” that is to say eradicate the national sovereignty of the United States, Canada, and Mexico in favor of a “United Nations of America” based on the European Union, the corporate media and globalist apologists have kicked into over-drive with a propaganda effort to deny reality.

“Nobody is proposing a North American Union,” declared Robert Pastor, correctly identified as the father of the NAU and author of “Towards a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New,” a book published by the Council on Foreign Relations Press in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales. Pastor may insist the elite of the three countries, at the behest of transnational corporations, are not interested in a merged superstate, but his argument betrays the fact the former national security advisor dreams of an American version of the European Union.

Pastor is an advocate of NAFTA on steroids, or “NAFTA Plus.” According to Miguel Pickard, in “the early 1990s, when NAFTA negotiators were still wrangling over arcane language, Pastor was proposing ways to ‘improve’ the treaty. According to Pastor, NAFTA was off to a bad start, since negotiators were mostly seeking to dismantle trade tariffs. For Pastor it was crucial to find ways of integrating the three countries, similarly (but with important differences) to what the Europeans had done since the 50s. Years later, Pastor would bemoan that NAFTA’s promise had gone unfulfilled, since it lacked a ‘grand vision’ for the three countries, i.e., a much richer perspective than the emphasis put on trade.” In other words, NAFTA was simply a trade treaty minus the “grand vision” of global integration.

But there is a problem with Pastor’s “grand vision,” namely the people of the United States, Canada, and Mexico are reluctant to give up their national sovereignty.

Pastor, in a conversation with Jerome R. Corsi, “was careful to distinguish that his proposals were designed to create a North American Community and that he never has proposed to create a North American Union as an EU-style regional government,” thus Pastor’s insistence “nobody is “proposing a North American Union.”

But this is, to say the least, deceptive. “The idea seems to be to put new structures in place that change the look of the landscape,” writes Corsi. “[WorldNetDaily] pointed out to Pastor that this step-by-step approach is the same approach taken to create the European Union. The memoirs of Jean Monnet, regarded as the architect of European unity, finally disclosed he had used a strategy of deceit, knowing his plan to form a European Union would never succeed if it were openly disclosed.”

“Pastor in an article entitled ‘NAFTA is Not Enough,’ argued for an incremental process that could head toward the creation of the NAU, all the while providing cover for participating politicians and governments to deny that creating the NAU was their goal,” Corsi argues in a News with Views editorial. In the article, Pastor provides key details on how this stealth process works:

While the three governments of North America are unlikely to step into the debate on long-term goals at the current time, nongovernmental organizations, research institutes, and universities should fill the void with new ideas and old-fashioned cross-border dialogue.

Short of this sort of shadowy incrementalism, the NAU project may be dropped on the fast track by other means, according to Corsi. “Dr. Pastor seems to prescribe that a fear formula is all that is needed for the American people need to begin begging SPP to produce the NAU right now. Pastor openly writes as if the next 9/11 terrorist attack or a future outbreak of some health epidemic such as the avian flu could be just what the NAU doctor ordered as the prescription for the American people to abandon sovereignty in favor of super-regional government control, all in the interest of ’security’ leading to ‘prosperity.’ Or, is it ‘prosperity’ which necessitates more ’security’ via surrender to Big Brother government?”

In predictable fashion, the corporate media is tasked with characterizing those who document the emerging NAU as tinfoil hatters, nut cases, mental patients, conspiracy theorists, etc.


For instance, neocon Charles Krauthammer told Fox News: “I love this stuff because if you ever doubt your own sanity, all you have to do is read this stuff and realize that you’re okay” (see video), while “conservative” Michael Medved lamented what he calls the “paranoid and groundless frenzy… fomented and promoted by a shameless collection of lunatics and losers; crooks, cranks, demagogues and opportunists, who claim the existence of a top secret master plan to join the U.S., Canada and Mexico in one big super-state,” never mind the above, well-documented. “I’m sorry to sound cynical and intolerant about this stupidity, but I’m furious, actually – ashamed to be part of a proud medium (conservative talk radio) that increasingly encourages this paralyzing, puerile paranoia,” apparently a reference to Alex Jones and others who continue to flesh out the “incremental” conspiracy Medved refuses to acknowledge.

Drake Bennett writes for the Boston Globe:

Government officials say a continental union is out of the question, and economists and political analysts overwhelmingly agree that there will not be a North American Union in our lifetimes. But belief in the NAU — that the plans are very real, and that the nation is poised to lose its independence — has been spreading from its origins in the conservative fringe, coloring political press conferences and candidate question-and-answer sessions, and reaching a kind of critical mass on the campaign trail. Republican presidential candidate and Texas congressman Ron Paul has made the North American Union one of his central issues.

Government officials of the sort, no doubt, that told us Saddam Hussein was about use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or that the air at Ground Zero in New York was safe to breathe.

Finally, it is no mistake the Boston Globe has rolled Ron Paul into its diatribe of transparent denial, as Paul must be roundly discredited and characterized as a kook, primarily because a Paul presidency would most certainly put an end to Robert Pastor’s dream of an American version of the European Union once and for all.

US defense chief urges greater use of 'soft power'

AFP
Tuesday November 27, 2007

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Monday for a dramatic increase in spending on civilian efforts to project US "soft power" globally through diplomacy, foreign aid and public relations.

"We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen," Gates said in a speech at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.

Gates said greater civilian participation was needed for the success of military operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan but also to head off problems before they turn into conflicts.

He said the 36 billion dollars a year the United States budgets for foreign policy programs is "disproportionately small" when compared to a military budget that is now close to a trillion dollars a year.

"What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on civilian instruments of national security -- diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development," he said.

Noting the irony of a defense secretary advocating spending on diplomacy, Gates said "I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use 'soft power' and for better integrating it with 'hard power.'"

He was particularly scathing about Washington's failure at "communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture."

Full article here.

Alleged Trainer Of 9/11 Hijackers a CIA Informant

Sakka attempts to plug holes in 9/11 official story, claims Hanjour did not pilot Flight 77

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The man who claims to have trained six of the 9/11 hijackers is a paid CIA informant according to Turkish intelligence specialists, who also assert that Al-Qaeda is merely the name of a secret service operation designed to foment a strategy of tension around the world.

In a London Times report, Louai al-Sakka, now incarcerated in a high-security Turkish prison 60 miles east of Istanbul, claims that he trained six of the 9/11 hijackers at a camp in the mountains near Istanbul from 1999-2000.

Sakka was imprisoned in 2005 after being caught making bombs that he planned to use to blow up Israeli vessels.

Sakka asserts that he is a leading Al-Qaeda operative, having directed insurgency attacks in Iraq and also the beheading of Briton Kenneth Bigley in October 2004.

Some of Sakka’s account is corroborated by the US government’s 9/11 Commission. It found evidence that four of the hijackers – whom Sakka says he trained – had initially intended to go to Chechnya from Turkey but the border into Georgia was closed. Sakka had prepared fake visas for the group’s travel to Pakistan and arranged their flights from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. The group of four went to the al-Farouq camp near Kandahar and the other two to Khaldan, near Kabul, an elite camp for Al-Qaeda fighters.

When Moqed and Suqami returned to Turkey, Sakka employed his skills as a forger to scrub out the Pakistani visa stamps from their passports. This would help the Arab men enter the United States without attracting suspicion that they had been to a training camp.

"But, as with many things in the world of Al-Qaeda, there might be smoke and mirrors," reports the Times. "Some experts believe that Sakka could be overstating his importance to the group, possibly to lay a false track for western agencies investigating his terrorist colleagues."

However, when one considers what other experts have said about Sakka, it appears that his intentions towards "western agencies" are anything but deceptive - since Turkish intelligence analysts concluded that Sakka has been a CIA asset all along.

Prominent Turkish newspaper Zaman reported that Sakka was hired as a CIA informant in 2000, after receiving a large sum of money from the agency. This would explain why he was "captured" but then released on two separate occasions by the CIA during the course of 2000.

Sakka was later captured by Turkish intelligence but again ordered to be released after which he moved to Germany to assist the alleged 9/11 hijackers.

Shortly before 9/11, Sakka was allegedly hired by Syrian intelligence - to whom he gave a warning that the attacks were coming on September 10th, 2001.

In his book At the Center of the Storm, former CIA director George Tenet writes, that “a source we were jointly running with a Middle Eastern country went to see his foreign handler and basically told him something big was about to go down.”

"This is very likely a reference to Sakra, since no one else comes close to matching the description of telling a Middle Eastern government about the 9/11 attacks one day in advance, not to mention working as an informant for the CIA at the same time. Tenet’s revelation strongly supports the notion that Sakra in fact accepted the CIA’s offers in 2000 and had been working with the CIA and other intelligence agencies at least through 9/11 ," writes 9/11 researcher Paul Thompson, who was also interviewed for the London Times article.

Were the alleged "interrogations" of Sakka on behalf of the CIA merely a smokescreen to enable instructions to be passed on? This is certainly the view of Turkish intelligence experts, who go further and conclude that "Al-Qaeda" as a whole is merely a front group for western intelligence agencies used to foment a "strategy of tension" around the world.

Is Sakka still in the employ of western intelligence agencies? His apparent effort to plug the holes in the official 9/11 story is fascinating.

According to Sakka, Nawaf al-Hazmi was a veteran operative who went on to pilot the plane that hit the Pentagon. Although this is at odds with the official account, which says the plane was flown by another hijacker, it is plausible and might answer one of the mysteries of 9/11.

The Pentagon plane performed a complex spiral dive into its target. Yet the pilot attributed with flying the plane (Hani Hanjour) “could not fly at all” according to his flight instructors in America. Hazmi, on the other hand, had mixed reviews from his instructors but they did remark on how “adept” he was on his first flight.

Exactly how "adept" one has to be to pull off maneuvers that would be impossible for veteran crack fighter pilots is not explored in the Times report.

Congress, Courts Examine 'State Secrets'

Congress, Courts Examine 'State Secrets'

WASHINGTON (AP) — In federal courts and on Capitol Hill, challenges are brewing to a key legal strategy President Bush is using to protect a secret surveillance program that monitors phone calls and e-mails inside the United States.

Under grilling from lawmakers and attack by lawsuits alleging Bush authorized the illegal wiretapping of Americans, the White House has invoked a legal defense known as the "state secrets" doctrine — a claim that the president has inherent and unchecked power to shield national security information from disclosure, either to plaintiffs in court or to congressional overseers.

The principle was established a half-century ago when, ruling in a wrongful-death case brought by the widows of civilians killed in a military plane crash, the Supreme Court upheld the Air Force's refusal to provide an accident report to the plaintiffs. The government contended releasing the document would compromise information about a secret mission and intelligence equipment.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Judiciary Committee's senior Republican, believes the White House has gone too far in invoking state secrets to halt civil lawsuits.

"We have the authority to define the state secrets doctrine," Specter says. "I don't think that the simple assertion of state secrets ought to be the end of the matter."

Specter, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and others are working on legislation that would direct federal judges to review the president's state secrets claims and allow cases with merit to go forward.

Practices among judges vary. Some accept state secrets claims outright, dismissing cases on the government's word. Others read the privileged information and decide for themselves, but almost invariably side with the government, according to legal scholars.

The draft legislation is modeled on procedures used in criminal cases that involve classified information. The Classified Information Protection Act lets judges review classified information a criminal defendant wants to use in his defense, but which could compromise national security if it were released publicly. The law allows the court to delete classified passages, substitute summaries of the information, or substitute a statement of facts that the classified information would prove.

The measure could become part of the Senate's new eavesdropping law, expected to be voted on in early December, the aides said.

In another challenge to Bush's position on classified material, a federal judge in Virginia last week ordered the government to give trial prosecutors, defense lawyers and her clerk security clearances to review classified material in a terrorism case. Defense lawyers say the material will show the government failed to turn over evidence obtained by illegally monitoring their client's communications, and they want a new trial. The government says the information is protected by the state secrets privilege.

And in an Oregon case, a U.S. district court judge is set to decide whether the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act trumps presidential claims of secrecy.

Adopted after the Watergate scandal, FISA dictates when the government must get permission from a secret court to monitor electronic communications inside the United States. It also allows people who believe they were spied on illegally to sue the government for damages and to request materials that would prove the surveillance. If the attorney general says disclosure would harm national security, a district court may review the classified materials privately to determine if the surveillance was illegal.

That civil liability provision of FISA, however, comes up hard against the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush secretly authorized the spy agency to intercept international communications coming in and out of the United States that were believed to involve foreign terrorist organizations, according to the White House. It did so without going through the FISA court, claiming the Constitution and Congress' authorization to use military force after the terrorist attacks were all the authority the president needed to undertake the program.

Privacy and civil liberties groups say the warrantless surveillance violates FISA's prohibition on domestic surveillance without court orders. But for someone to sue the government for FISA violations, they must prove they were directly injured by the government's action. That is nearly impossible because the government will not disclose its targets or methods.

One organization, however, believes it can demonstrate it has standing to sue because of an accidental document release in 2004. That February, the Bush administration froze the assets of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Muslim charity the United Nations Security Council alleges is associated with al-Qaida. In preparation for a legal proceeding on the terrorist designation in August, the Treasury Department inadvertently gave the foundation's lawyers and directors a top secret document dated May 24, 2004.

The document appeared to be a government summary of phone conversations it monitored between foundation lawyers and directors, according to a Washington Post reporter who received a copy from the foundation.

The FBI took the document from the Washington Post and Al Haramain in October 2004.

Fourteen months later, The New York Times revealed the existence of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. That is when the foundation's lawyers realized what the top secret document was: proof the organization had been targeted for warrantless electronic surveillance under TSP. They believe that proves standing, unique among plaintiffs in dozens of surveillance cases filed across the country.

The government, however, asserts the states secrets privilege and refuses to release the document or confirm its contents. In its first crack at the case in 2006, the federal court in Oregon partially agreed. It said the document was rightfully protected by state secrets, but the foundation's lawyers could describe what they remembered about it to establish standing in their lawsuit.

The government appealed that decision to the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco, which last week upheld its state secrets claim. But it did not dismiss the case. Instead, it directed the lower court to tackle one question it had sidestepped: whether FISA overrides the common law state secrets privilege. While on appeal to the 9th Circuit Court, the case was transferred, so it will be decided by United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Whatever the lower court decides, its decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court, say legal experts and attorneys on the case. The high court is unlikely to be friendly to a challenge to the state secrets doctrine. In October it unanimously declined to hear a CIA torture allegation case that the Bush administration wanted dismissed on secrecy grounds. And in 2005, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the state secrets doctrine in an espionage contract case.

(This version CORRECTS which district court the case was remanded to. It had been transferred to another district court while the appeals ruling was pending.)



Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Family Shocked, Outraged after Deputy Shoots Pet Dog in their Yard

Nate Eaton
KIDK News
Wednesday, November 21, 2007


A Teton County, Idaho family is outraged after they say a sheriff's deputy tried to murder their dog in their own front yard.

The Barboza family has owned their dog Bobby for five years. A few days ago they say a Teton County Idaho Sheriff's Deputy knocked on their door demanding to see the dog.

Leonel Barboza, Dog Owner: "He says, 'I'm here to put him down. I'm here to kill him.'"

The officer told Leo Barboza there had been a complaint Bobby had bitten someone.

Barboza: "I said, 'Do you have any proof or anything?' He says, 'I don't need any proof.'"

So Leo got the dog while the deputy pulled out a rifle from his car. They walked a few feet from the Barboza's home where Leo's wife and his three year old son were inside.

Leo and the officer tied the dog to a pole when the deputy fired three shots. The dog then collapsed. Leo's son heard the gunshots and opened the front door. Meanwhile...

Barboza: "A bunch of kids just got off the bus and they were all on the street. All the kids were watching the officer shooting the dog. My heart was broken seeing an officer killing my dog."

The deputy then got in his vehicle and drove away leaving the dog bleeding profusely from his head almost dead.

Barboza: "I came back inside with my wife and hid. We were hugging each other crying about our dog because we were gonna miss him. He's been with us for five years."

That night Leo's father-in-law, who witnessed the whole thing, had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized. When the family returned home from the hospital a few days later, they were shocked to see their dog alive.

Barboza: "My wife called me up and she's like, 'Hey, the dog's alive!' I was like, 'What are you serious?' I was happy my dog was alive."

The Teton County Idaho Sheriff wouldn't say much about this case except that it's still under investigation. He also said there's been numerous complaints about the Barboza's dog. But when I checked court records, I could only find one complaint filed last year and that was dismissed.

Nate Eaton, Channel 3 Eyewitness News: "Did your dog ever bite anybody?"

Barboza: "Not to my knowledge. No."

Eaton: "And this was the first time you'd ever heard of any complaint?"

Barboza: "Yes, this is the first time. I still think about it. You know my kid thinks all the cops are bad because an officer came and shot his dog. Honestly when I think about it I get mad too and I don't trust that officer any more."

The Barboza's took Bobby to the vet. He's now on medication to get the wounds taken care of. The holes in his head will be sewn up after Thanksgiving.

The family has hired attorney Josh Garner. I spoke with him this evening and he says, "If the facts are as they appear, the deputies behavior is disgusting, troublesome, and appalling. The officer needs to be held responsible."

Several sources say the officer is still on duty and still working in the county.

Driver Tased For Asking Officer Why He Was Stopped

Man who refused to sign speeding ticket because he did not understand what it was is tased and arrested by officer who then refused to read him his rights

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednes
day, Nov 21, 2007



A man was tased and arrested on a Utah highway after being stopped by an officer and refusing to sign a speeding ticket because he did not understand what offence he had committed or why he had been pulled over.

The encounter, captured on the police car camera on September 14th and released this week, is the latest in a long string of incidents involving the unacceptable use of Tasers by officers on citizens whom the evidence reveals are in no way threatening, acting unlawfully or resisting co-operation.

The video shows the Utah Highway Patrolman pull over Jared Massey and his pregnant wife who also had their baby with them in the car and ask for Mr Massey's license.

Mr Massey tells the officer he does not understand why he has been stopped or what he is being charged with, at which point the officer orders Massey to get out of the car. The officer then puts down his clipboard and immediately takes out his Taser and points it at Mr Massey without any provocation whatsoever, yelling "Turn around and put your hands behind your back" as Massey attempts to point out the speed limit sign and engage the officer in conversation.


A shocked Massey asks "what the hell is wrong with you?" and backs away, turning around as the officer had demanded, at which point the officer unleashes 50,000 volts from the Taser into Massey's body, sending him screaming to the ground instantly and causing his wife to jump out of the car and yell hysterically for help.

Watch the video:

Lying face down on the ground a shell shocked, Mr Massey says "officer I don't know what you are doing, I don't know why you are doing what you are doing" to which the officer replies "I am placing you under arrest because you did not obey my instruction."

Mr Massey then once again asks the officer several times why he was stopped and what he is being charged with. He then asks for his rights to be read and points out that the officer cannot arrest him without doing this. Instead of reading Massey his rights the officer then addresses another patrolman who arrives on the scene sardonically commenting "Ohhh he took a ride with the Taser" to which the other officer answers "painful isn't it".

The icing on the cake comes at the end of the video when the officer LIES to his own colleague about the encounter, clearly stating that he verbally warned Massey he was going to tase him, as is the law, when there was no warning whatsoever.

Mr Massey is planning to file a lawsuit against the Utah Highway Patrol. He says he was already slowing down as he approached the 40 mile per hour sign in the construction zone outside of vernal. All charges except for the speeding ticket have been dropped.

This amazing video reveals how eroded civil and constitutional rights have now become. The officer had no legal right to make Massey sign any document he did not understand

Tasers are supposed to be the last response before lethal action, however, police now use them as if they are batons or pepper spray.

In the last year over 300 people have died in admitted cases in the US alone from being tased. In the last week alone we have posted three separate stories of Taser deaths. Every week we post stories of incidents, which often feature old women, children and disabled people as the victims. The weapons are even being used in schools.

The police are now trained that "pain compliance," a euphemism for torture, is acceptable in apprehending anyone even if that person poses no physical danger. If you electrify any person, they suffer extreme pain and stand a high chance of being killed.

Despite this, idiotic media hacks such as Fox News host Brian Kilmead are happy to promote police state tactics, selling the idea that protestors or people that merely question authority in any way are threatening and should be tased or "beaten to a pulp".

This phenomenon is out of control, how many more acts of wanton police brutality, torture and death by means of tasering are we to endure?

Taser use is being abused by police all over the country and beyond as cops are trained that torture is a perfectly acceptable response to somebody who acts out of the ordinary, asks the wrong question or refuses to show their papers.