Business spies for FBI eyes

Jerry Mazza
Online Journal
Thursday February 14, 2008

In George Bush’s mania to outdo George Orwell’s 1984, we bring you more than 23,000 members of private industry working quietly with the FBI and Department of Homeland Insecurity under the banner of InfraGard, i.e., the joint government/business program to guard (not rebuild) our infrastructure. Get it? Wanta forget it? Can’t. They’ll be climbing up your nose soon. Or shooting to kill in the case of Martial Law. Argh!

It’s eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s novel, in which the superstate Oceana’s three PARTY slogans are WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” Yes, that George was a genius, the other a nebbish. In fact Wikipedia tells us, “Each of these is of course either contradictory or the opposite of what is normally believed, and in 1984, the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant.”

“The slogans are analysed in Goldstein’s [a writer character’s] book. Though logically insensible, the slogans do embody the Party. If anybody (like Winston) becomes too smart, they are whisked away for fear of rebellion. Through their constant repetition, the terms become meaningless, and the slogans become axiomatic. This type of misuse of language, and the deliberate self-deception with which the citizens are encouraged to accept it, is called doublethink.” Say that again . . .

“One essential consequence of doublethink is that the Party can rewrite history with impunity, for “The Party is never wrong.” The ultimate aim of the Party is, according to O’Brien, to gain and retain full power over all the people of Oceania; he sums this up with perhaps the most distressing prophecy of the entire novel: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Get your iron mask. I hear the boot stomp.

Secret warnings of terrorist threats

The members of InfraGard receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does. In fact, former California Governor Gray Davis got a tip on so-called terrorists in California from his brother, Barry, a Morgan Stanley broker/InfraGard member. Gray, being a normal human being, phoned it in to authorities, thinking that if he knew (and his brother did as well as Enron), so should law enforcement, which pissed off the FBI abundantly. Somebody let the secret out of the bag, which is a no-no in SecretLand.

This story was also picked up by The Progressive in a report, titled “Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business.” Editor Matthew Rothschild wrote, “InfraGard is ‘a child of the FBI,’ says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

“InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“’Then the FBI cloned it,’ says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

“InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“’We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,’ says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.” Doesn’t her double-life give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside?

FBI Director Robert Mueller spoke to an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. He suggested “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.” And so he asked InfraGard members to call the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” Personally, I find InfraGard to be both “suspicious activity and an unusual event.” Who do I call?

Mueller also suggested members could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against employers,” a sort of quid pro quid. On the InfraGard website, Mueller tells us, “It’s a great program.” Yeah, Bob, especially that “shoot to kill under Martial Law” part.

The ACLU not so enthusiastic

“This special status concerns the ACLU,” Rothschild wrote.

“The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment,” says Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program. “There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . .

“This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.

“When the government raises its alert levels, InfraGard is in the loop. For instance, in a press release on February 7, 2003, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General announced that the national alert level was being raised from yellow to orange. They then listed ‘additional steps’ that agencies were taking to ‘increase their protective measures.’ One of those steps was to ‘provide alert information to the InfraGard program.’”

“They’re very much looped into our readiness capability,” says Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “We provide speakers, as well as do joint presentations [with the FBI]. We also train alongside them, and they have participated in readiness exercises.”

“On May 9, 2007, George Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 entitled ‘National Continuity Policy.’ In it, he instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with ‘private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.’”

Asked if the InfraGard National Members Alliance was involved with these plans, Schneck said it was ‘not directly participating at this point.’ Hershman, chairman of the group’s advisory board, however, said that it was.”

“InfraGard members, sometimes hundreds at a time, have been used in ‘national emergency preparation drills,’ Schneck acknowledges.

“’In case something happens, everybody is ready,” says Norm Arendt, the head of the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of InfraGard, and the safety director for the consulting firm Short Elliott Hendrickson, Inc. ‘There’s been lots of discussions about what happens under an emergency.’ Which brings us to InfraGard members’ right “to shoot to kill in a Martial Law’ situation.’” Funny, how this keeps popping up.

Shoot to kill under Martial Law

The ACLU goes on to report, Rothschild noted, “One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation — and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, ‘Partnership for Protection.’ On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

“This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

“’The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,’ he says. ‘From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.’ These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out. But that’s not all.

“’Then they said when — not if — martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,’ he says.

“I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. ‘I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,’ he adds. ‘I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.’

”Though Schneck says that FBI and Homeland Security agents do make presentations to InfraGard, she denies that InfraGard members would have any civil patrol or law enforcement functions. ‘I have never heard of InfraGard members being told to use lethal force anywhere,’ Schneck says.

“The FBI adamantly denies it, also. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ says Catherine Milhoan, an FBI spokesperson. ‘If you want to quote a businessperson saying that, knock yourself out. If that’s what you want to print, fine.’ But one other InfraGard member corroborated the whistleblower’s account, and another would not deny it.

“Christine Moerke is a business continuity consultant for Alliant Energy in Madison, Wisconsin. She says she’s an InfraGard member, and she confirms that she has attended InfraGard meetings that went into the details about what kind of civil patrol function — including engaging in lethal force — that InfraGard members may be called upon to perform.

“’There have been discussions like that, that I’ve heard of and participated in,’ she says.

Curt Haugen is CEO of S’Curo Group, a company that does ‘strategic planning, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, physical and IT security, policy development, internal control, personnel selection, and travel safety,’ according to its website. Haugen tells me he is a former FBI agent and that he has been an InfraGard member for many years. He is a huge booster. ‘It’s the only true organization where there is the public-private partnership,’ he says. ‘It’s all who knows who. You know a face, you trust a face. That’s what makes it work.’

“He says InfraGard ‘absolutely’ does emergency preparedness exercises. When I ask about discussions the FBI and Homeland Security have had with InfraGard members about their use of lethal force, he says: ‘That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.’

“’We were assured that if we were forced to kill someone to protect our infrastructure, there would be no repercussions,’ the whistleblower says. ‘It gave me goose bumps. It chilled me to the bone.” And probably most everyone else, which led probably to the following . . .

The ACLU’s ‘Surveillance-Industrial Complex”

Based on-going activities like the above, the ACLU developed a much larger, in-depth study, The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society. Its Table of Contents includes . . .

Recruiting Individuals
“Watch” programs
Citizen vigilance
Recruiting Companies
Voluntary sharing of data
Purchasing data on the open market
Plentiful legal powers to demand private-sector data
Building in surveillance
The Patriot Act: Drafting industry into the government’s surveillance net
Enlistment in the government’s surveillance web hurts business
Mass Data Use, Public and Private
Data mining
Data aggregators
The advantages of private surveillance
Pro-Surveillance Lobbying and
Six Conclusions

This study’s 47 pages detail programs that turn the US into a national spy-fest, neighbors on neighbors, business on consumers, et al. It concludes with a series of convoluted FBI rationales for a self-inflicted oppression echoing Orwell’s 1984 and then some. You wonder what else is going on as you sleep, work, spend time with your family, and try to have a life.

Bottom line, this perverse, thousand-eyed Argus is here for one reason alone, to inspire fear, which in turn will diminish questioning and independent thought or criticism, which in turn will turn us into a nation of robots, who in turn will go unquestionably to fight the Empire’s endless wars and avoid considering 9/11 as an inside job, the keystone to this arch of misery.

I personally would like to tell InfraGard right now to go to hell, which is what they are trying to create in what is my beloved America. I grew up in World War II and this crap tops “Loose lips sink ships,” and all the various “please speak low” programs. It’s more redolent of the Hitler Youth Program, which encouraged youth to turn in their parents, family members, or neighbors who might speak ill of the Reich or der Fuhrer. This is the worst garbage imaginable, posing as patriotism.

It is nothing short of WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH doublespeak. And now is the time, in the name of the Constitution of the United States of America to stop it.

New Bill To Allow Police Misconduct Be Hidden From Public

Jonny Glines
KUTV 2
February 14, 2008

A new bill proposed at the legislature would allow for police to withhold misconduct reports from the public. Supporters of the bill believe that police misconduct should be kept secret from the public so to not discredit police testimony. Others say that a forthright police unit is essential to the community.

In September, Jared Massey was zapped with a taser by Trooper John Gardner. A video of the incident was recorded from Gardner’s patrol car. Gardner can be seen shocking Massey until he hits the ground while Massey’s wife screams from the side of their SUV.

More than a million people watched the video on “YouTube.” Massey was shocked to see his new found fame. The footage may have never been seen had Massey not made a records request to obtain the tape.

Obama Pushes Bill That Would Mandate Global Tax

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
February 14th, 2008

Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama is pushing a bill that will lead to the implementation of a UN global tax, costing the U.S. at least $845 billion dollars over thirteen years in the name of fighting worldwide poverty, as well as banning "small arms and light weapons".

The "Global Poverty Act," which is sponsored by Obama, is up for a Senate vote today, and if passed would mandate the U.S. to spend 0.7 percent of the gross national product on foreign aid, on top of the money being sent out of the country already.

The bill passed the House by a voice vote last year because most members failed to read what was actually in it. The words "global" and "poverty" in the title were presumably enough to convince them that it must be good.

In reality, the bill also "Commits nations to banning "small arms and light weapons" and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child," writes Cliff Kincaid.

"Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.’s "Millennium Project," says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.’s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is expected to meet the "Millennium Development Goals," this amounts to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels."

A UN controlled global tax has long been a cherished goal of the elite and they have attempted to piggy-back it on numerous different pretexts, most recently via a global carbon tax on fuel, a move that was advanced at the recent summit in Bali.

During the summit, over one hundred prominent scientists signed a letter dismissing the move as a futile bureaucratic scheme which will diminish prosperity and increase human suffering.

In 2005, former French President Jacques Chirac called for the imposition of a global tax to finance the fight against AIDS.

Perfectly happy with giving Bush carte blanche to continue illegal spying on American citizens with the passage of this week’s telecom immunity bill, the Senate seems destined to rubber stamp legislation that would lead to a global carbon tax.

President Bush has overseen the biggest increase in foreign aid since the Marshall Plan and is highly unlikely to veto the bill if it is passed.

Contact the Senate and voice your opposition to this bill. Call the switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and asked to be connected to the office of your Senator.

University Police: Illinois Campus Shooter On “Medication”

As suspected, the Illinois campus shooter, identified as Stephen Kazmierczak, was on medication, although ABC News reports at this time it is unknown what sort of medication.

In the last few weeks, Kazmierczak’s

behavior had become erratic, according to [NIU campus Police Chief Donald Grady], and it is believed the Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medication. The chief declined to specify the type of medication the gunman was on.

As was revealed soon after the shootings at Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui was taking the anti-depressant Paroxetine, which he took from June 1999 to July 2000. Seung-Hui’s “doctor stopped the medication because Mr. Cho had improved,” the New Yorks Times reported on August 30, 2007.

“Recent regulatory warnings about adverse behavioral effects of antidepressants in susceptible individuals have raised the profile of these issues with clinicians, patients, and the public. We review available clinical trial data on paroxetine and sertraline and pharmacovigilance studies of paroxetine and fluoxetine, and outline a series of medico-legal cases involving antidepressants and violence,” notes PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical publication. “Both clinical trial and pharmacovigilance data point to possible links between these drugs and violent behaviors.”

Bob Unruh, writing for WorldNetDaily, cites Dr. Peter Breggin, a prominent critic of psychiatric drugs and founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, who states that even if Cho wasn’t taking psychiatric drugs the day of the shooting, “he might have been tipped over into violent madness weeks or months earlier by a drug like Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft.” In his book, The Antidepressant Fact Book, Breggin “warned that stopping antidepressants can be as dangerous as starting them, since they can cause very disturbing and painful withdrawal reactions.”

ABC reports that “Kazmierczak’s interests are listed as corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice, according to [an] essay, and he had plans to co-author a manuscript on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons.” In 2006 Kazmierczak co-authored the essay entitled “Self-Injury in Correctional Settings: ‘Pathology’ of Prisons or of Prisoners,” in which an attached biography describes him as having just begun his graduate work at NIU.

According to Kazmierczak’s coworkers at the Pirates Cove Childrens Theme Park, he had a penchant for violence. “I remember Steve Kazmierczak,” an anonymous coworker wrote on a music site message board in 2006, “the kind of person who injured kids on the train ride cuz he was mental and he shouldn’t be given domain over kids on little faux-traincars with an aluminum baseball bat…”

In short, Kazmierczak appears to be a prime candidate for violent behavior, especially now that authorities in Illinois are revealing that he was on medication, although as of yet unspecified.

Is it simply a coincidence that Mr. Kazmierczak decided to launch his murderous campaign at precisely the time the Supremes are taking up critical issues related to the Second Amendment?

___

From ABC News:

Kevin Sundstrom said, “He had [a] blank stare on his face, not a frown, not a grin, like there was nobody there. I went back to find Paul. He was reloading his gun, like he’s in the backyard, methodically going about it.”

In other words, to witnesses, Kazmierczak appeared to be a zombie. How is it possible a person, who in 2006 he received a Dean’s Award from the sociology department and was reportedly well regarded by his teachers, engage in mass murder without any emotion? Is it possible he was in fact on “medication,” but not the sort prescribed by a doctor?

Barack Obama: Old package in a new wrapping

Kéllia Ramares
Online Journal
Friday February 15, 2008

He's young. He's black. And he's a great stump speaker. But if Barack Obama has you convinced that he represents change, he's pulled the wool over your eyes.

He's a change only on the shallow level of identity politics, just as Hillary is.

As the video, Barack to Hillary: I look forward to you advising me, illustrates, Barack Obama has many advisers from previous administrations, including the Clinton Administrations. Are these advisers going to advise any material change from the past? I don't think so.

If Obama truly represents change, he would not be recycling advisers from previous administrations.

One of his foreign policy advisers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who goes back to the Carter Administration. Zbig is as imperialist as they come. He is the author of a book called "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" (Basic Books, 1997). Here are a few choice excerpts

. . . it is correct to assert that America has become, as President Clinton put it, the world “indispensible nation.” . . . Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long, the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally. [p. 195]

The last thing Zbig wants is what Peak Oil and climate change is now demanding: more political localism and local control of resources by the people of whose land they are a part. When this book was published in 1997, Big Oil thought it had discovered in the Caspian Sea basin oilfields that would be greater even than those of Saudi Arabia. However, soon thereafter, the oil companies found out that there was not nearly the amount of oil there that they thought and they canceled projects.

In the short run, it is in America's interest to consolidate and perpetuate the prevailing geopolitical pluralism on the map of Eurasia. That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy, not to mention the remote possibility of any one particular state doing so. . . . The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitrating role. [p. 198].
A genuinely populist democracy has never before attained international supremacy. The pursuit of power and especially the economic costs and human sacrifice that the exercise of such power often requires are not generally congenial to democratic instincts. Democratization is inimical to imperial mobilization. [p. 210, emphasis mine]

Last but not least:

Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. [p. 211, emphasis mine]

People such as Zbig, at a minimum, would welcome an event such as 9-11 as an opportunity to extend American hegemony.

If it's true that you are known by the company you keep, what does it say about Barack Obama that Zbig is one of his foreign policy advisers? And I believe him when he says he looks forward to Hillary advising him, Bill, too. If you think Obama represents change, think again. And if you are excited about his candidacy because he's black, remember the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. " . . . not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

There are some pretty sorry characters running for president these days. I recently saw a question online: "How come we get to choose from over 50 candidates for Miss America, but only 2 for president?" Indeed, how come?

BAE: Saudis told Britain it could 'face another 7/7' if arms deal probe continued

Space.com
Friday February 15, 2008

Investigators working on the fraud probe into Saudi arms deals were told they faced "another 7/7" and the "loss of British lives on British streets" if they continued the inquiry, secret papers reveal.

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless the corruption investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was stopped, according to documents shown to the High Court.

The previously secret files reveal the warning by the Saudis that they would go ahead and cut off intelligence links with the UK about potential terror strikes and suicide bombers.

It was alleged in court that Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, was behind the threats to withold information.

During the hearing, he was accused of flying to Britain in December 2006 and issuing the warning which forced Tony Blair to call for an end to the investigation into alleged bribery and corruption involving deals between British arms firm BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia.

Lord Justice Moses said yesterday that the Government appeared to have simply "rolled over in the face of" Saudi threats that they would pull out of lucrative arms contracts if the bribery investigation went ahead.

He also attacked Mr Blair for "holding a gun" to a prosecutor's head to make sure he dropped the probe.

The former Prime Minister was singled out for cricicism during the case in which two pressure groups are challenging the decision by the director of the SFO to drop the investigation.

Dinah Rose QC, for the groups, also accused him of overstepping the mark by applying "irresistible pressure" to ensure the probe was halted.

It also emerged that 24 hours after Foreign Office officials met Prince Bandar, a Saudi national security adviser, No 10 informed the Attorney General they wanted to make further representations on the case.

Three days later Mr Blair wrote to the Attorney General.

Full article here.

Tasers, Torture and Terror Tactics: America Becomes a Police State

EXISTENTIALIST COWBOY

Torture and atrocities are not confined to Abu Ghraib. In and out of the nation's 'out-sourced' penal institutions, perverts with badges terrorize the nation, threatening innocent children, , women and the handicapped. Everyone is a target.

Being an innocent bystander, a model citizen, a Rotarian is not enough to keep you safe from rogue cops, tin-horn sheriffs, or other so-called law enforcement personnel. Who let these dogs out? Who uncorked this evil genie? What Nazi mentality makes a lethal enemy of those who had been sworn to "protect and serve" us? I am pissed!
My fellow Americans, we are being made war upon! And it is no coincidence that the culture of fear, hate, prejudice, perversion and violence unleashed by the evil administration of one George W. Bush is largely to blame. The endemically corrupt GOP has 'stunk up the place' and no one is safe --not in your home, your car, your property! This is what it means to live in a police state.

They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Watch the following video and try to remember what a free America used to be.

What a Police State Looks Like

Perhaps because someone uncorked the bottle and unleashed the evil genie, there is renewed interest in the 'scientific' study of evil. Such a renewed study may have its roots in the work of Dr. Gustav Gilbert, the American psychologist who was tasked with interviewing the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. He believed evil to be an "utter lack of empathy". Certainly, this trait, this symptom of pure evil is seen throughout Bush's America. It is always characterized by an unmistakeable inability of persons in 'power' to identify in any way with the victims of their abuse.

The term, "ponerology" is an obscure theological term that means the study of evil. Andrzej knew this, and decided to reclaim and rehabilitate this word for scientific use since, as it happens, our science really doesn't have a word for the study of "evil," per se. We need one.

The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others

Someone should conduct a study of the evil that Bush has loosed in the US --the evil epidemic of needless and unlawful tasering, the 'deputies' who assaulted and stripped naked an innocent woman who had merely called the department for help, the 'deputies' who brutally threw a paralyzed man from his wheelchair and laughed about it. SCUM!

Four Hillsborough deputies dump Brian Sterner, a quadriplegic man, out of his wheelchair.

Now police are told they can use Taser guns on children

By JASON LEWIS - More by this author » Last updated at 15:27pm on 2nd September 2007Police have been given the go-ahead to use Taser stun guns against children.The relaxing of restrictions on the use of the weapons comes despite warnings that they could trigger a heart attack in youngsters.Until now, Tasers - which emit a 50,000-volt electric shock - have been used only by specialist officers as a "non lethal" alternative to firearms.

American 'law enforcement' may have always been endemically crooked, appealing to incipient psychos in any case. Now, in Bush's America, where every evil impulse is rewarded and somehow passes into a 'mainstream' itself corrupt and rotten, evil is winked at, encouraged by 'those in power', practiced by unqualified sociopaths, sadists, and perverts with badges.An addendum from the comments section:

ANY policeman/woman, ANY military person, ANY official, who chooses to use a Taser weapon, against ANy other person...is guilty of RAPE, and can be charged with such offences. If the person being Tasered is then taken away by force, the charge is also kidnapping, which is worth $1.6 million dollars per day!!
Get them ALL to contact David_Wynn Miller and show them how!!!

SUE THESE BASTARDS AND SEND THEM UP THE RIVER FOREVER!

FOX News Exposes Diebold Electronic Vote Flipping in Florida

Youtube
Friday February 15, 2008

Greenspan says U.S. "on the edge" of recession

Anna Driver and Eileen O'Grady
Reuters
Friday February 15, 2008

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday said the U.S. economy is "clearly on the edge" of a recession.

Greenspan said the economy will continue to erode until there is a stabilization of U.S. housing prices.

"We have a long way to go" before housing prices hit a bottom, Greenspan told energy executives at the CERA conference.

High oil prices are dragging on the economy, but the fact that they haven't done more damage shows its resiliency.

"It's a burden now," Greenspan said. He added that it's "quite remarkable" that the U.S. economy is "able to do reasonably well" with oil prices near historic highs.

Crude oil futures hit above $95 a barrel on Thursday and went above $100 in early January.

Greenspan again -- as he had last month -- said that the likelihood of the U.S. economy going into recession was "50 percent or better."

He said the U.S. economy was growing at "stall speed."

"Stagflation is too strong a term for what we are on the edge of," Greenspan said.

The subprime mortgage crisis would already have put the United States into recession if U.S. businesses weren't healthy in part as the result of years of low interest rates, Greenspan said.

"If businesses weren't in extraordinarily good shape, I have no doubt we wouldn't be asking if we're in a recession, but how long and how deep," Greenspan said.

Full article here.

Bush Spy Bill Stance Called Fear-Mongering

CBS
Friday February 15, 2008

President Bush, in remarks meant to spur House Democrats into accepting a controversial new bill that would expand the government's ability to spy on Americans, warned that the country faced terror strikes that would make September 11 "pale by comparison."

In response, critics of the new bill accused Mr. Bush of "fear mongering," and of trying to deflect attention from the bill itself. Its most controversial provision would prevent Americans from suing phone companies that helped the administration spy on them since the White House surveillance program was instituted in 2001.

Mr. Bush has made immunity from civil prosecution for the telecoms a must-have element for revamping the nation’s surveillance laws, repeatedly saying he would veto any bill that does not exempt telecoms from lawsuits.

The battle lines are being dug in more deeply as House and Senate members prepare to meet in conference to match competing versions of the legislation, an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (or FISA).

The House-passed version does not include telecom immunity. This past week, the Senate approved a similar version which includes a provision that protects telecoms from civil lawsuits.

There are approximately 40 lawsuits now brought by citizens and consumer groups against companies that enabled the government to illegally eavesdrop on Americans' phone and Internet communications.

Opponents of the administration's program, which engaged wiretaps against any and all Americans without obtaining court-ordered warrants, say the telecoms' participation was illegal. They say that, given the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy, lawsuits against the telecoms are the only way to obtain disclosure about the facts from the government.

Full article here.