Wednesday, July 25, 2007

No "Conspiracy Theory": OKC Mayor Signed North American Union Document


Mayor Mick Cornett endorsed "The Declaration of North American Integration"

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Ridiculing claims by the establishment media that the North American Union plan is a "conspiracy theory," an activist has brought to light a document signed by the Mayor of Oklahoma City, which was also approved by 90 other officials, that endorses an economic and political integration of the U.S. with Canada and Mexico.

Jerome Corsi has the goods,

The endorsement by a major city mayor of a document described as "The Declaration of North American Integration" represents a long-term effort by local governments to bypass state and federal governments and work directly with Mexico and Canada to create agreements that integrate the continent below the radar screen, charges an activist.

Adam Rott, founder of watchdog blog Oklahoma Corridor Watch, brought to light the document signed by Mayor Mick Cornett.

The document was presented at the May 2004 summit meeting of the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, or NAITCP. According to an Internet-archived summary report of the meeting, held in Kansas City, Mo., the document was signed by 90 people.

Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Randy Brogdon warned that Cornett's endorsement of the plan represents a coordinated effort to "Destroy U.S. national sovereignty and to grab property like we have never seen before."

Globalist political heavyweights are preparing to formally propose to Congress the merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a North American Union at the end of summer after they held secret meetings to devise a plan that will be presented to representatives of all three governments.

The report is entitled "North American Future 2025 Project" and was prepared in collaboration with the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), who were previously instrumental in the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

The plan outlines an agenda to unify the three countries into a European Union style power bloc.


Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett

Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) documents released under the FOIA show that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under this program to "integrate" and "harmonize" with administrative law in Mexico and Canada, just as has become commonplace within the EU.

Despite the fact that these developments are manifestly provable and documented, the establishment media has engaged in a campaign of spin and denial in an attempt to dismiss the move towards a North American Union as a "conspiracy theory".

The latest to jump on the bandwagon were the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that hides behind tackling so-called hate crime as part of a broader agenda to strangle free speech and demonize conservative activists. According to author Heidi Beirich, the NAU represents a conspiracy theory in the mould of other "wild-eyed and unsubstantiated theories" like the assassination of JFK and the moon landing hoax.

A July 13th Washington Post article smeared those warning of a North American Union as "merchants of fear and exaggeration" and dismissed the agenda to merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a single union as nothing more than "vitriol and paranoia," despite the fact that President Bush himself refered to the SPP as a "union" in March 2005 during a meeting with Paul Martin and Vicente Fox.

The SPP documents contain references to upwards of 13 working groups within an entire organized infrastructure that has drawn from officials within most areas of administrative government including U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The United States and the European Union recently signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership that will see regulatory standards "harmonized" and will lay the basis for a merging of the US and EU into one single market.

Homeland General: Attack 'Could Happen Any Day'

AP
Wednesday July 25, 2007

The U.S. military commander in charge of defending the U.S. homeland said Tuesday that he believes there are al-Qaida cells in the United States or people working to create them.

Air Force Gen. Victor "Gene" Renuart said that while the terrorism threat within the nation's boundaries has increased in the past year, officials have strengthened intelligence sharing, particularly in an effort to shore up weaknesses in security at U.S. ports.

"I believe there are cells in the United States, or at least people who aspire to create cells in the United States," Renuart said in an interview with The Associated Press. "To assume that there are not those cells is naive and so we have to take that threat seriously."

He added, "Am I concerned that this will happen this summer, I have to be concerned that it could happen any day."

Other U.S. officials last week said they did not know of al-Qaida cells in the United States.

Renuart, who took over the job as the head of U.S. Northern Command just four months ago, said that to counter the growing threat, the military also needs to create two more brigade-size units to be available to respond to nuclear, chemical and biological incidents at home - because currently there is only one. A brigade is about 3,500 troops.

Renuart's comments came in the wake of a national intelligence report released last week, which concluded that al-Qaida is using its growing strength in the Middle East to plot attacks on U.S. soil.

Port security has long been identified as a key weak point, including the need to scan cargo containers coming into the country by ship.

Renuart said officials are expanding their use of sensors and other technologies that allow them to track ships, including their location, their speed and other commercial information. And, while he would not provide details, he said there has already been "real payback" in terms of identifying vessels of concern and either checking or boarding them well before they got into U.S. waters.

"Because the national intelligence estimate talks about the vulnerability of ports, and because of the importance that we place on the movement of a variety of goods through those ports, finding ways to improve that is a really important element of our day to day work," Renuart said.

At the same time, he said it will be a year or two before he is able to pull together the military units he needs to better be able to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear disaster in the U.S.

The units, he said, will be made up of active duty, reserves and National Guard troops. And while portions of the brigades will be located in different states, they will be expected to train together and be able to respond quickly to a disaster.

Overall, Renuart said that as the terror threat increases, the nation's ability to detect problems has also improved.

The intelligence report, he said, is a "summary of drumbeats, and the drumbeats are getting more prevalent out there. You cannot afford to ignore that." But he said, a few years ago, the nation was not as able to hear and interpret those drumbeats.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Hitachi goes global with vein recognition biometric

John Leyden
The Register

Monday July 23, 2007

Retinal scans, finger prints or facial recognition get most of the attention but developers across the world are quietly labouring away at alternative types of biometrics.

Recognition by the way someone walks (their gait) or the rhythm they make when they type and others have each been tried as potential biometrics. Hitachi is adding to this stock with the worldwide release this month of a finger vein identity authentication device.

Kit based on the technology will be available. Hitachi is also making a software development kit available to integrate the unit into existing security set-ups.

The product is based on PC log-in technology that's been on sale in Japan since October 2006. The technology is also as a validation device for bank ATMs: according to Hitachi, about 80 per cent of the financial institutions in Japan had adopted finger vein biometrics by the end of March 2007. Other applications such as opening car doors may also be possible.

The technology uses the vein patterns in users' fingers to manage their computer login process. A single chip design means the unit can be small and cheap.

User biometrics are captured, and subsequently verified, using a contact-less technique. Light penetrates through the finger using a light-transmission technique to allow the detection of the structure of the vein pattern. This vein pattern is image-processed using a special algorithm, resulting in digital data that can be stored in a relevant data repository.

Hitachi reckons vein authentication can offer higher accuracy rates than finger print recognition, with the additional benefit that finger vein patterns are thought to be impossible to forge. By contrast, finger print recognition technology has proved all too susceptible to attack.

World Trade Center Collapse Video REVEALS Demolition Sequence.

9/11 Blogger
Monday July 23, 2007

This video is not new, it actually has been used with fake explosion sounds to prove demolitions at the wtc.

This video is the original with no sound edits, it is stabilized, zoomed, 1/4 speed to reveal a demolition sequence 40 floors below going off diagonally reaching the service floor.

Not a conspiracy or fact?


World Trade Center Collapse Video REVEALS Demolition Sequence.

9/11 Blogger
Monday July 23, 2007

This video is not new, it actually has been used with fake explosion sounds to prove demolitions at the wtc.

This video is the original with no sound edits, it is stabilized, zoomed, 1/4 speed to reveal a demolition sequence 40 floors below going off diagonally reaching the service floor.

Not a conspiracy or fact?

New Research Into Public Surveillance Methods

Science Daily
Monday July 23, 2007

Research carried out by University of Southampton Masters students has identified the most effective ways of identifying individuals in public spaces.

In two separate research projects, two final year students of the MEng Master of Engineering Degree within the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS), Sarah Deane and Matthew Sharifi, who will graduate this month, addressed the growing importance of being able to identify individuals within a given environment, both from a security and marketing perspective.

Sarah’s project, A Comparison of Background Subtraction Techniques, highlighted the fact that most current Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) footage fails to give a clear image of an object because it is often obscured by background information.

Having reviewed several existing methods for taking away the background information and not finding any of them particularly effective, Sarah used several of these theories, combining them into her own implementation.

‘I found that background subtraction, although being simply defined as a difference between the background image without objects of interest and an observed image, has many difficult issues to overcome,’ said Sarah. ‘It was apparent that a simple subtraction algorithm was needed to allow the high computational efficiency that is required by CCTV applications.’

Matthew’s project, Audience Recognition in Public Spaces compared the effectiveness of face recognition and Bluetooth as a means of recognising individuals within a public space.

He found that a camera positioned in a reception area was able to detect all of the frontal faces that came into contact with the system, whereas Bluetooth only managed to recognise 8.33% of those who passed and was dependant on these individuals carrying Bluetooth devices.

The results have inspired Matthew to conduct a much larger video dataset, so that he can carry out further experiments.

‘Having observed the advantages and disadvantages of both Bluetooth and face recognition, it would be interesting to combine the two techniques into a multi-modal identification technology which could couple the ubiquity of face recognition with the recognition accuracy of Bluetooth,’ he said.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Southampton.

Bush's anti-torture Executive Order authorizes torture

Adam Thomas
Press Esc
Sunday July 22, 2007

President Bush's Executive Order prohibiting torture does exactly the opposite as White House and Pentagon have a very narrow definition of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment", human rights groups alleged yesterday.

They also point out that because the order interprets for the United States "Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions, only as authorized in the Military Commissions Act, and under the Act detainees can be held incommunicado forever, US authorities can carry on violating the Geneva Conventions with any restrictions.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Executive Order has effectively authorized forced disappearnces and 'Enhance Interrogation Techniques' including water-boarding and other forms of cruel methods that the Bush Administration does not consider as torture.

“By international human rights and humanitarian law standards, the CIA program is illegal to its core,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. “Although the new executive order bars torture and other abuse, the order still can’t purport to legalize a program that violates basic rights.”

Meanwhile the ACLU claimed that the President Bush cannot be trusted to enforce the order.

"If any of the recent past presidents, Republican or Democrat, were applying this order, we wouldn't have any doubt that it means an end to torture and abuse by the CIA," Christopher Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office said. "However, with President Bush's record of playing word games with anti-torture laws, we do not have the same confidence that the torture and abuse has stopped and will not start up again."

Embattled Gonzales: I'm sticking around to 'fix the problems'

David Edwards and Adam Doster
Raw Story
Monday July 23, 2007

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a surprise appearance Friday on Justice Vision -- an internal videoconferencing feed of the Department of Justice -- to assure employees that he would not step down from his post after his department was found taking political considerations into account during its hiring procedures.

"From my perspective, there are two options available in light of these allegations. I could walk away, as some have demanded, or I could devote my time, effort, and energy to fix the problems," he said. "Since I've never been one to quit, I've decided that the best course of action was to remain here and fix the problems. That is exactly what I'm doing."

Bush's former lawyer expressed slight regret over the practices. "I am troubled because the allegations regarding the politicization of this historic institution, an institution that stands for and protects the rights of the citizens of the greatest and most free nation on Earth, have occurred on my watch," he said.

Gonzales also outlined a number of reforms his department was undertaking, including replacing many top members of his team, such as the Deputy Attorney General, his Chief of Staff and the Director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.

"The strength of any institution, including one as great as the Department of Justice, lies in its people," he said. "And with that particular principle in mind, I have appointed individuals to serve in critical leadership positions who understand and embrace the independence of our law enforcement mission and who will ensure that our work and our hiring will never be influenced bu improper political considerations."

Among the other reforms implemented to reinforce the public's confidence in the department, Gonzalez pointed to revisions in the hiring process of immigration judges, the DoJ honors program and the summer law interns program.

The Attorney General finished with a call for dialogue. "I have learned that there is a real need for improved communications with our U.S. Attorneys and other components," he said, citing that he had met or spoken with all of the U.S. attorneys in the past few months to express regret over the flawed hiring process and to seek feedback about ways to improve the department.

The video here is from ABC, released on July 20.

Russian anti-nuclear activist killed in attack

AFP

Monday July 23, 2007

A Russian environmental activist died on Saturday after armed attackers raided a protesters' camp outside a nuclear facility in Siberia, officials and activists said.
One of some 20 protesters at the tent camp told AFP the attackers were "skinheads" who had used baseball bats, hammers, metal rods and an axe during the raid near the Angarsk uranium enrichment plant.

"They came at around 5:00 am (0100 GMT). They started beating people as they slept. Eight people were injured with broken ribs and head wounds. One of them died," said Igor, an activist with Autonomous Action, the main group organising the protest camp.

"They were wearing tracksuits and camouflage gear, they had shaved heads and their faces were covered up," he said in a telephone interview, declining to give his surname.

"They were shouting 'Anti-anti-fascist!' and 'For the Right!'... One of them said 'Next time, we'll kill you' as he was leaving."

A local police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that one person had died in the attack and said around 15 people had taken part in the attack. Local prosecutors were investigating the incident, he added.

The Angarsk plant was chosen last year as the site for a uranium enrichment centre that the Russian government wants to make available to countries seeking to develop nuclear energy.

Environmentalists have warned about the radioactive danger if the uranium enrichment capacity of the Angarsk plant is increased as planned and there is opposition to the project among local inhabitants.

A statement on the website of Autonomous Action said the camp, which was set up on July 14, had been visited several times by police, who had put pressure on the protesters to leave.

A spokesman for Russia's nuclear energy agency Rosatom expressed his condolences for the death of the activist and said Rosatom would continue to work together with non-governmental groups, the Interfax news agency reported.

Interior ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin told Echo of Moscow radio that 13 suspects in the attack had been identified.

He was later quoted by Ria Novosti news agency as saying that six suspects had been detained.

The spokesman added that investigators had not established any link between the suspected attackers and "extremist, radical groups," a term frequently used to refer to far-right radicals in Russia.

Autonomous Action identifies itself as an anarchist and anti-fascist group.

Fox Terrorizes its Audience w/Non-Story About an "Empty Tube" Found Near Newark Airport

News Hounds
Monday July 23, 2007

The third segment today (July 20, ,2007) on Your World w/Neil Cavuto (an alleged "business news" program), began with substitute host David Asman saying this:

Well, quite a scare today in New Jersey. A piece of a missile launcher that was found near a major airport. Now the police are saying the piece itself didn't pose a threat but just now easy are these things to get and are the nations airports, particularly the big ones, like Newark, in danger? Let's ask Michael Baker. He's a former CIA operative who is also a terror expert. Mike, first of all, how easy is it to get these things?
A somber Asman turned to Baker and the following chyron appeared in the bottom third: "Feds Probing Missile Launcher Part Found Near NJ Airport." Baker, who was laughing, began with:

Well, it's not as easy as just going to New Jersey and picking one up off the lawn. I mean, this could qualify as the strangest story of the week. Ah, people should be reassured, this was a 20-year-old piece of ordinance.
Turns out (1) that the missile had already been fired, (2) the launcher was a one-use type so it couldn't be reloaded or reused, and (3) it was too small a caliber to bring down an airplane.

At the end of the segment Asman asked Baker, "How nervous should we be?" Baker, who smiled and was very lighthearted throughout said, "Ah, in this situation, we shouldn't be nervous. We're in good shape."

Comment: At 1:30 p.m. EDT, two and a half hours before Asman went live, NJ.com posted this article, informing its readers that the FBI said the launcher was "harmless," and that, "FBI spokesman Sean Quinn said the launcher found by a homeowner in front of her house was essentially an empty tube. 'There was no threat.'" Being the fascist enabler that it is, Fox knew that but it decided to use this as one of its lead stories and to terrorize its audience anyway.

School with call centre training site in classroom criticised for lowering pupils' expectations

Matthew Taylor
London Guardian

Monday July 23, 2007

A secondary school which has opened an on-site call centre where pupils can practise selling mobile phone contracts and answering customer complaints has been criticised for lowering children's expectations.
The centre, at Hylton Red House school in Sunderland, was set up with the help of EDF Energy, which runs its own call centre a couple of miles away. Pupils taking the "preparation course" - worth half a GCSE - answer queries from computer-generated customers.

The assistant headteacher, Helen Elderkin, said the scheme gave 15- and 16-year-olds a wide range of skills that would help them to get a job or continue with their education.

However, Howard Brown, secretary of the National Union of Teachers in Sunderland, said schools had a duty to educate pupils rather than turn out efficient, pliant workers. "We do have to equip our children for a variety of different jobs, but I think this is a step too far," he said.

"It seems that this is going back to the old days when we told children round here that they had to go straight down the mines when they left. Now the mines have gone and we are saying they have to go and work in a call centre. We have an obligation to give them a bit more than that."

The first group of pupils graduated from the scheme last week, and Ms Elderkin said it had been a huge success. "It gives them a great deal of confidence and it allowed them to get a taste of a real working environment. Until now they have not been able to have this kind of experience until they left school."

Staff from EDF Energy helped to turn a classroom at the school into a call centre called Train 4 Life.

"This has been a great example of working closely with business and the City of Sunderland College," said Ms Elderkin. "The children approached us because they wanted something different and together we came up with a call centre. These lessons give them real confidence as well as skills in IT and communication that will help whether they stay in education or go out and look for work."

The school was deemed to be failing last year, although it has improved and was recently taken out of special measures. It has signed up to the government's academy programme and will reopen in a new building in 2009.

Most of its pupils come from estates just outside Sunderland with high levels of deprivation and unemployment.

Ms Elderkin said that the call centre course, which is also open to adults in the area, was part of a wider attempt to support the community. "We are committed to raising pupils' aspirations and offering adults, many of them former pupils, every opportunity to access training and employment that is going to be of real benefit," she said.

Angela Bryan, 15, said the call centre course had already proved popular with pupils and at the school. "A lot of people want to do it because it teaches us how to use computers better and about getting used to dealing with people on the telephone." Another pupil, Vicky Ward, said: "It's like proper work experience and that means it is useful, which makes it more popular."

National Intel Director: Bush Admin. Manipulated Iraq Intel ‘Because They Didn’t Like The Answers’

Think Progress
Monday July 23, 2007

In Stephen Hayes’s upcoming biography on Dick Cheney, he writes that the current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell appears to side with “those who believe that the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq for political purposes before the 2003 invasion.”

McConnell reportedly said he had “serious reservations” when asked by President Bush to become the DNI because of the Pentagon’s manipulation of intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war. Today, Meet the Press host Tim Russert previewed the relevant portion of the book:

McConnell was honored to be asked [to be DNI], but he had serious reservations. He had been unimpressed with many aspects of the Bush administration and its conduct of the war on terror, particularly what he felt was a politicized use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. […]

“My sense of it is their political faith and convictions influenced how they took information and interpreted [it], how they picked up and interpreted outside events. … I’ve read much more about the current set of players and they did set up a whole new interpretation because they didn’t like the answers. They’ve gotten results that in my view now have been disastrous,” [McConnell said].

Watch it:

McConnell decried the “secondary unit” established within the Pentagon to “reinterpret information” prior to the war. An internal Pentagon investigation released in February revealed that former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith utilized the Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group within the Pentagon to create and promote false links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Specifically, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz “asked Feith’s analysts to ignore the intelligence community’s belief that the militant Islamist al-Qaida and Saddam’s secular dictatorship were unlikely allies.” Subsequently, Feith “disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship…to senior decision-makers.”

McConnell stated, “The way you do intelligence is all sources considered. You have to factor one issue against the other and balance it.” Four years later, this administration is still reinterpreting intelligence.

US to stick with tough interrogations

Australia Herald Sun
Monday July 23, 2007

THE US will persist with techniques of interrogating terror suspects that have saved "countless lives," but will stop short of torture, the top US spymaster said today.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell refused to spell out whether methods such as the alleged practice of "waterboarding" were permitted under a new executive order of President George W. Bush.

"The United States does not engage in torture. This executive order spells it out," Mr McConnell said on NBC television.

But he indicated the implied threat of torture had reaped dividends in extracting life-saving information from detainees.

"And so this is a program where we capture someone known to be a terrorist, we need information that they possess, and it has saved countless lives," Mr McConnell said, without detailing any plots that might have been broken up.

"Because they believe these techniques might involve torture and they don't understand them, they tend to speak to us in a very candid way."

Under his order issued on Saturday, Mr Bush forbade the Central Intelligence Agency to torture suspected terrorists in its detention and interrogation program instituted after the September 11 attacks of 2001.

The order said the CIA program, confirmed to exist in September 2006, must abide by the Geneva Conventions on wartime detainees and directs the CIA director to enforce that standard.

It lists no specific practices that are affected, or punishments for violations, and does not describe in any further detail a secret CIA prison network that has drawn outrage from US allies in Europe.

Human rights groups said the executive order left out critical details, such as controversial tactics that administration officials often describe as "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Those are said by critics and former detainees to include waterboarding, or simulated drowning, sleep deprivation, prolonged captivity in "stress positions" and sexual humiliation.

Bush spokesman Tony Snow said the order barred "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" and "acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel and inhuman treatment".

Mr McConnell said he had been "quite frankly appalled" at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US guards at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail.

"My view was America risked losing the moral high ground."

But that was not a program administered by the CIA, and it was "not the program that the president approved in the recent executive order".

Fewer than 100 people have been subject to enhanced interrogations, and they were kept under medical supervision and "not abused in any way", Mr McConnell said.

However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed Mr Bush's new order as "contrary to the Geneva Conventions" because it essentially affirmed CIA secret detentions, a program which is "illegal to its core".

"The key aspect of this is all the parts that aren't said," said Jennifer Daskal, HRW senior counter-terrorism counsel, who charged that the order allowed "a system of incommunicado detention to continue, with the blessing of the president".

"What we have here is an administration basically reciting a number of legal principles and saying 'trust us'. And that's hard to take from an administration that refuses to renounce waterboarding," she said.

CIA director Michael Hayden told employees that the order was necessary to ensure that detentions and interrogations were in step with recent US Supreme Court rulings.

"Simply put, the information developed by our program has been irreplaceable," he said.


Bush's Martial Law Plan Is So Shocking, Even Congress Can't See it

Executive über alles as member of Homeland Security Committee barred from viewing post-terror attack provisions

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, July 23, 2007

President Bush's post-terror attack martial law plan is so shocking that even sitting members of Congress and Homeland Security officials are barred from viewing it, another example of executive über alles and a chilling portent of what is to come as constant reminders of the inevitability of terror attacks reverberate.

Congressman Peter DeFazio (D - OR) was asked by his constituents to see what was contained within the classified portion of the White House's plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.

Since DeFazio also sits on the Homeland Security Committee and has clearance to view classified material, the request would have appeared to be routine, but the Congressman was unceremoniously denied all access to view the documents, and the White House wouldn't even give an excuse as to why he was barred.

"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio told the Oregonian on Friday.

"We're talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America," DeFazio says. "I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee."

"Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right," DeFazio concluded.

The article also quotes Norm Ornstein, a legal scholar who studies government continuity at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who told the paper he "cannot think of one good reason" to deny access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee.

"I find it inexplicable and probably reflective of the usual, knee-jerk overextension of executive power that we see from this White House," Ornstein said.

The only plausible reason DeFazio was barred access to the documents is that the plans for a post-terror attack continuity of government scenario are so abhorrent that to reveal their true nature would cause a public outcry and lead to a major repeal of what is contained in the documents.


Congressman Peter DeFazio (D - OR)

What we already about Bush's recent spate of executive orders, and in particular PDD 51, is bad enough - the provisions outline preparations for the implementation of open martial law in the event of a declared national emergency.

New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.

It is important to understand that, although these powers have been on the books for previous presidents, Bush is the first to openly brag of the fact that he will utilize them and officially become the supreme emperor of the United States in the aftermath of a catastrophe that the government itself has said will happen on innumerable occasions.

According to columnist and author Jerome Corsi, the power grab assures that "The president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over."

Also in May, it was reported that a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program named "The Day After," which would effectively end civil liberties and implement a system of martial law in the event of a catastrophic attack on a U.S. city.

Last year we also exposed the existence of a nationwide FEMA program which is training Pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced relocation.

The documents that Congressman DeFazio was blocked from seeing likely interlock with both these programs and detail the overarching agenda to effectively nullify what's left of the U.S. Constitution and firmly ensconce George W. Bush as a supreme dictator.

Only by putting enough pressure on the media and in turn the White House to be transparent about what the secret martial law provisions are can we lead an effort to repeal them before the next terror attack, whether real or manufactured, takes place.

The outlaw president outlaws all war protest

Jerry Mazza
Online Journal
Monday July 23, 2007

I protest, as of the very first line of Bush’s July 17 “Executive Order” (meaning not necessarily read or approved by Congress). I protest this “Order,” which itself is in flagrant violation of the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees the right to freedom of speech, the press, and to protest, despite the fact that that right has been violated by various courts in various eras in contentious situations like the one we have today.

I protest also that the Bush “Order” sanctions its own unconstitutionality by invoking the Constitution for its enforcement in the first line: “By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.” Remember the Constitution is the document Bush called “just a goddamned piece of paper,” as he went forth to dismiss the right of habeas corpus and fought for renewal of the illegal USAPATRIOT Act.

The outlaw protects his illegal war

Yet, in this new illegal stroke of a pen Bush outlaws all protest in the United States against his scurrilous Iraq war. And with this law, he turns all of us (US) who do not nod in bobble-doll agreement with him into “the enemy." That is, if any act [of ours], provision of funds, goods, or services by [which can he mean anything], to, or for the benefit of same threatens the ‘stabilization of Iraq,’ which can equally mean anything.

I also maintain that the ‘stabilization of Iraq’ can be best achieved by a quick and diplomatic withdrawal of all troops from that beleaguered country, whose physical, spiritual, and human toll is destabilized each additional day we remain there. Our stay encourages resistance, as does our asserting ourselves as ‘an occupying force.” What’s more, we have totally failed at replacing the infrastructure we destroyed, and we have depleted Iraq’s human resources due to death, disease, and flight.

Exactly what and who ‘destabilized’ Iraq?

Moreover, the ‘destabilization’ of Iraq was created by illegal means, by the assertion of Bush and his band of outlaws, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, et al, and their knowingly untruthful assertions that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological, and were prepared to use them; and that, in fact, President Hussein had procured ‘yellow cake uranium from Niger” to use in the production of WMD for imminent use on America.

These assertions were proven to be a pack of lies by no less than Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had gone to Africa, found the “yellow cake” assertion to be fiction not fact, and asserted same in his New York Times op-ed, What I Didn’t Find in Africa. For this Wilson, an international business consultant and Untied States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995 had his wife, Valerie Plame, outed as a CIA officer, also jeopardizing the operatives working under her command. This ended her career not to mention endangering or ending the lives of those who worked for her.

In fact, outing a CIA officer is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. As is lying the United States into a unilateral, preemptive war a crime -- a war which drew the protests about its illegality from our allies and the United Nations.

Subsequently, the leaking of Valery Plame’s identity was traced to the office of Vice President Cheney, which begat a Department of Justice investigation into this crime, headed by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. On October 28, 2005, the VP’s chief assistant, I. Lewis Libby, was amazingly the only one indicted for the crime of passing Plame’s name and identity along to news reporters. Libby was subsequently sentenced on June 14, 2007, to 30 months of prison time and a $250,000 fine. Quelle dommage as the French say -- what a horrible thing. Ah, but then not so horrible because President Bush amazingly commutated the felon’s sentence. And Bush might, given his kingly druthers, completely pardon Scooter.

Additionally, UN fact-finder Hans Blitz and his investigators could find no trace of facilities for the production of WMD throughout Iraq. Blitz’s lack of findings compounded the evidence of the high-crime of misleading America into war. And still no one was fully prosecuted and imprisoned for that crime, which borders on treason.

What about the outlaws’ involvement in 9/11?

Nor were there any firings, denunciations or prosecutions for the administration’s failures to prevent 9/11, which event wrongly contributed to the war on Iraq. Truly, quelle dommage, considering the largest intelligence organization in the world, the CIA, and the largest Department of Defense, with a compound budget of $600 billion plus, were unable to stop 19 rag-tag “terrorists” with box-cutters from cruising airliners-as-missiles into the World Trade Towers on 9/11. Could we possible have more outlaws at large here, above and beyond the seven of the purported hijackers living in the Middle East today?

In fact, at this point not only do I protest but I accuse the government of criminal negligence, if not active participation, in the execution of 9/11’s horrific events. These very events gave the Bush administration to complete their the coup d’etat.

This change gave the administration the power to first preemptively, illegally, declare war on Afghanistan and attack it, supposedly in search of Osama bin Laden, of whom a look-alike confessed to the crimes on a poorly made tape, most likely by the CIA. The day before 9/11, bin Laden had checked into a Pakistan hospital for his kidney condition. As of July 2001, he had entered the American hospital in Dubai for dialysis and met with his CIA handler; so much for homemade patsies and their producers. As to explanation of the events of 9/11, please take a look here at what really happened.

The larger outlaws’ purpose of 9/11

The larger purpose of 9/11 was to be the inciting incident to create “The War on Terror” to secure Afghanistan and build pipelines to tap the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin countries and send those precious resources down to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean for export. Of course, the larger purpose of invading Iraq was to secure its oil as well, and provide a steady flow for the Texas-driven, price-gouging outlaws and the insatiable thirst of their SUV-driving clientele, et al.

The Bush gang goes on and on, like the James brothers roaming across the spiky landscape of the Wild West, as of now the Wild Western World, hell-bent on demonizing and scape-goating Muslims, to keep Americans hungry for war with the world and their so-called attackers. This is for the purpose of creating a global American empire.

Thus 9/11 was a classic false-flag operation, ala Hitler’s Reichstag Fire, which I thoroughly protest, including the 3,000 lost souls on 9/11, the 3,800 American soldiers subsequently lost in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans lost in their respective countries, and the squandering of some $650 billion dollars, if not more, to do so.

So add mass murder and colossal financial theft to the tab of the outlaws’ crimes, which have generated more Wanted-for-Impeachment posters on the Internet than ads to meet pretty singles.

Thus, given this egregious list of crimes, this endangerment of the US population, the wanton attacks on two countries, the raising of hostilities with Muslim countries worldwide, as well as with Russia and China, I refer to you for study, guidance and precedence for action, not just a piece of paper but The Declaration of Independence,

America’s first great legal document says . . .

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States . . ."

Do King George of England’s offenses sound like King George of America’s offenses?

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.”

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:”

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:”

“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:”

“He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation . . ."

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. . . ."

If you feel King George of America has failed the Declaration of Independence’s litmus test to lead, perhaps you should continue to protest, and protest even more loudly for his impeachment, along with Vice President Cheney’s, so as to put an end to their remorseless tyranny.

Pakistan rejects 'Bin Laden raid'

Pakistan rejects 'Bin Laden raid'
Pakistan has responded angrily to suggestions from the United States that American forces might be sent into Pakistan to strike at Osama Bin Laden.

A senior US official has said he believed the architect of the 2001 suicide attacks on New York and Washington was in northern Pakistan.

Pakistani FM Khurshid Kasuri said Bin Laden was not in the country.

A recent US intelligence report says al-Qaeda is intensifying efforts to put operatives into the US.

The report says the nation is at a heightened risk of attack.

Analysts warn that al-Qaeda's leaders have found a "safe haven" in Pakistani tribal areas which has allowed them to regroup.

All options available

US director of national intelligence Mike McConnell said recently he believed Bin Laden was in northern Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

President Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said that in the pursuit of Bin Laden, no options were off the table.

Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri said he did not believe that the al-Qaeda leader was in Pakistan - and in any case, if the US shared its intelligence, Pakistan's army could do a better job.

Pakistan Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said: "Our stance is that Osama Bin Laden is not present in Pakistan.

"If anyone has the information he should give it to us, so that we can apprehend him," he was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

President Pervez Musharraf last week vowed to root out extremists "from every corner of the country".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6911231.stm

Published: 2007/07/23 05:05:58 GMT

Friday, July 20, 2007

Bush will have colonoscopy

Bush will have colonoscopy

‘The president has had no symptoms,’ Snow says before Saturday procedure
BREAKING NEWS
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:40 p.m. ET July 20, 2007

WASHINGTON - President Bush will undergo a "routine" colonoscopy Saturday and temporarily hand presidential powers over to Vice President Dick Cheney, White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

Snow told reporters Friday that Bush will have the procedure done at his Camp David, Md., mountaintop retreat.

The last time Bush had colon and rectal cancer surveillance was on June 29, 2002. Doctors then advised him to have another colonoscopy in five years.

"The president has had no symptoms," Snow said.

The procedure will be supervised by the president's doctor, Richard Tubb, and will be performed by a medical team from the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.

Snow said that because president will be under the effects of anesthesia, he once again has elected to implement Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. Cheney will serve as acting president until Bush notifies authorities that he is ready to reassume his powers.

Cheney held power in 2002
In 2002, Bush transferred presidential powers to Cheney for more than two hours during the routine colon screening that ended in a clean bill of health.

It was only the second time in history that the Constitution's presidential disability clause was invoked. President Reagan was the first to invoke the Constitution's 25th Amendment since its adoption in 1967 as a means of dealing with presidential disability and succession.

The earlier colonoscopy for Bush also was done at the well-equipped medical facility at Camp David near Thurmont, Md. Bush felt well enough afterward to play with his dogs and take a 4 1/2-mile walk with the first lady and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his wife. He then went to the gym for a light workout.

Polyps found
Tubb said two polyps were discovered during examinations in 1998 and 1999 while Bush was governor of Texas. That made Bush a prime candidate for regular examinations.

The 2002 procedure began at 7:09 a.m and ended at 7:29 a.m. Bush woke up two minutes later but did not resume his presidential office until 9:24 a.m., after Tubb conducted an overall examination. Tubb said he recommended the additional time to make sure the sedative had no aftereffects.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19872260/

US might strike in Pakistan: White House

AFP
Friday July 20, 2007

The White House on Thursday refused to rule out striking at suspected terrorist targets inside Pakistan and would not say whether US forces would first seek permission from Islamabad.

Asked whether US President George W. Bush had ruled out US military action inside Pakistan, spokesman Tony Snow replied: "We never rule out any options, including striking actionable targets."

Asked whether Bush would first seek authorization from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Snow told reporters: "Those are matters that are best not discussed publicly."

Washington in recent days has sharply criticized Musharraf's truce with leaders in Pakistan's tribal areas, where Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants were believed hiding, calling on him to take aggressive military action.

And Bush's top counter-terrorism adviser at the White House recently suggested that the United States did not get all of the cooperation it hoped for from Pakistan in the global war on terrorism.

At the same time, the White House has been praising Musharraf personally.

"President Musharraf has put his life on the line and has been a very important ally in the war on terror," Snow said as Bush traveled here to make remarks on the federal budget.

"It's also clear that Taliban and al Qaeda, in the northwest territories and the federally administered tribal areas, have begun to put on operations that threaten the government of Pakistan itself," he added.

"President Musharraf, having tried one approach, in terms of dealing with the tribal leaders, is now going to have to be more aggressive and is being more aggressive moving forces into the region to deal with the security problems there," he said.

iPhone: NSA iSnoop Device?

Kurt Nimmo
Thursday, July 19, 2007

According to a Russian hacker team called “web-hack,” Apple’s much heralded and overly hyped iPhone contains “a built-in function which sends all data from an iPhone to a specified web-server. Contacts from a phonebook, SMS, recent calls, history of Safari browser” can be hijacked, as the VS iPhone blog reports.

In a white paper, according to the blog, the Russians indicate a possible “debug feature or a built-in backdoor module for some governmental structures,” i.e., the National Security Agency, the lead governmental structure responsible for violating en masse the constitutional rights of Americans.

Of course, it helps that “Apple has chosen AT&T, the best and most popular carrier in the US with over 62 million subscribers, to be Apple’s exclusive carrier partner for iPhone in the United States,” as the AT&T website boasts. As we know, the telecom leviathan illegally collaborated with the NSA to break the law.

“AT&T violated the law, and the rights of its customers, by allowing and assisting with the illegal wiretapping and data-mining. The government’s spying program on ordinary Americans would not be possible without AT&T collaborating in violating your privacy,” explains an Electronic Frontier Foundation FAQ. “EFF alleges that under the NSA domestic spying program, major telecommunications companies—and AT&T specifically—gave the NSA direct access to their vast databases of communications records, including information about whom their customers have phoned or emailed with in the past. EFF alleges that AT&T, in addition to allowing the NSA direct access to the phone and Internet communications passing over its network, and gave the government unfettered access to its over 300 terabyte ‘Daytona’ database of caller information—one of the largest databases in the world.”

“The essential hardware elements of a (Total Information Awareness)-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into ‘real world’ telecommunications offices,” Wired News reported former AT&T technician Mark Klein as writing. According to Klein and a report published by the New York Times, the NSA-AT&T “Orwellian project… is vastly bigger” than previously figured “and was directly authorized by President Bush, as he himself has now admitted, in flagrant violation of specific statutes and constitutional protections for civil liberties.” In the meantime, Bush has signed a number of executive orders essentially granting himself the power of a Roman Magister Populi, a dictatorial master over the commoners.

Considering all of this, it makes perfect sense for the Apple iPhone to double as an NSA iSnoop device.

“Last year, it was discovered that AT&T has been secretly spying on Americans for the government,” notes Adam Frucci for the Gizmodo blog. “Maybe it still is. Then, just recently, it announced that it planned to spy on Internet surfers yet again, looking for pirated media files, presumably to the delight of the RIAA and MPAA. If you don’t want to get spied on and want to switch ISPs, guess what? Depending on where you live, you might not have any other options. And if AT&T snoops on all data passing through its network, most US Internet users will be affected, not just AT&T customers. It runs a significant amount of the backbone infrastructure of the Internet, leaving little traffic outside its grasp.”

But never mind. Apple’s iPhone is so cool and trendy a lot of buyers and potential buyers will shrug off the fact the device is—if the Russian hackers who reverse engineered the gadget are correct—a custom-made snoop device that routes your personal data right to an NSA Cray super computer.

Pentagon: ‘Public Discussion’ Of Iraq Withdrawal ‘Reinforces Enemy Propaganda’

Think Progress
Friday July 20, 2007

On May 23, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging him to “prepare plans for the phased redeployment of U.S. forces.”

Given the express will of the Congress to implement a phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq and the importance of proper contingency planning to achieve that goal, I write to request that you provide the appropriate oversight committees in Congress - including the Senate Armed Services Committee - with briefings on what current contingency plans exist for the future withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Alternatively, if no such plans exist, please provide an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning.

Clinton said she conveyed similar concerns in a private meeting with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace, and has publicly warned the administration that redeployment is “complicated” and “If they’re not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way.”

On Monday, Clinton received a “biting reply” from Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman, who told Clinton that “public discussion” of withdrawal is inappropriate:

Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. … [S]uch talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.

Edelman is directly contradicted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who testified that debate over Iraq redeployment has been “helpful in bringing pressure to bear on the Maliki government.” Additionally, these “very same Iraqi allies” aren’t unnerved by talk of redeployment, but overwhelmingly favor it — 71 percent of Iraqis want the U.S. troops to withdraw within a year.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress has obtained Edelman’s letter HERE.