Wednesday, December 19, 2007

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.

Glenn Beck Show Scrolls Paul Is Dead Message During Interview

Michael McDonnough
Nolan Chart
Wednesday December 19, 2007

I find it very offensive for Glenn Beck to be scrolling the message Paul is Dead, Paul is Dead, Paul is Dead on the bottom of the screen during the interview with Ron Paul.

I think he should make it clear that he wishes no ill will to Dr. Ron Paul. His interview I thought was fair on the surface but he did take the interview into the typical conspiracy camp.

I would like to know why this guy Huckabee thought it appropriate to make this statement that was scrolling by during this interview? Ron Paul was right in that the threat of Theocons taking over the government is a serious threat to our nation. In his statement of earlier in the day he seemed a bit tired and un focused when he was hit with these off Fauxian questions.

I might add that Paul was talking about domestic threats to our nation at the moment that Huckabee's death to Paul comments are scrolling by in this video.

The subliminals are pretty obvious to most any trained observer.
I am quite disgusted with Beck for this. I am pretty much disgusted with Huckabee for his statements as well but that is politics. It is a dirty game. Here is the video.