All Gov’t lies Stem From The Mother of all Lies – The Official 9/11 Lie. An aerial view on September 17th, 2001 shows only a small portion of the scene where the World Trade Center collapsed following the supposed Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Surrounding buildings were obviously heavily damaged by the scattered debris and massive force of the imploding twin towers ~ before DOJ head and future Director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff retained and destroyed all the evidence from this clearly evident, but never declared crime scene.
(U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate Eric J. Tilford) by Allen L Roland Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” - Noam Chomsky It was Carl Sagan who once wrote “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. Like this: Like Loading... Patriot Act author: ‘There has been a failure of oversight.’ Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner is the author of the Patriot Act — and an opponent of how it has been used to justify broad domestic spying powers. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images) Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) authored the original Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and previously served as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
Andrea Peterson: What is the USA Freedom Act? Sensenbrenner: It does several things. And it also deals with reforming the FISA Court? The two other things are that we are proposing reform of the FISA Court, where we recognize there are things that have got to be classified. One of the former FISA Court judges who is retired wrote an op-ed — I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, but I'm not sure about that. I know you had some very interesting, and I thought quite amusing comments, about other proposals at the Cato Institute event — I already reported on the "fig leaf" comment ... I read that. Do you have any other thoughts about the proposals?
Majority Of Americans Okay With NSA Dragnet... Or, Wait, Not Okay With It; Depending On How You Ask. Results of a recent survey have just been released by the Pew Research Center and its discoveries are a bit surprising and a bit disappointing. After seeing a large surge in the percentage of people who were unwilling to sacrifice more civil liberties to fight terrorism (last month's post-Boston Bombing TIME/CNN poll), today's poll release swings back in the other direction. According to Pew's poll, a majority of Americans think the NSA's phone records dragnet is perfectly fine in the context of fighting terrorism.
A majority of Americans – 56% – say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism, though a substantial minority – 41% – say it is unacceptable. Republicans and Democrats have had very different views of the two operations. There, in bold black and white, is one of the most damning indictments of the two party system and its attendant illusion of choice. Why James Clapper Should Be Impeached For Lying To Congress. We've already covered how Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not only lied to Congress, but has now admitted he lied by claiming he told the "least untruthful answer" he could think of, which was extremely untruthful, in that it was untruthful. He was asked whether or not the NSA collects any type of data on millions of Americans and he said no.
The full collection of records on every phone call for the past seven years (at least) proves that statement was categorically false. Derek Khanna has an excellent and detailed opinion piece up on how this clearly constitutes an impeachable offense in the form of lying to Congress. The whole thing is worth reading, but after going through the background leading up to the question and answer, followed by an explanation that Wyden clearly wasn't fishing, but was asking from direct knowledge of what the NSA was doing, Khanna gets to the point of why this is so horrific for a functioning democracy: We've gone through this before. Author Of The Patriot Act Says NSA Surveillance Is An Abuse And Must End. U.S. Supreme Court: Donald Rumsfeld can't be tried for torture. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against two men seeking to sue former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture they endured in Iraq during the Iraq war. The ruling prevents Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, or anyone, from suing Rumsfeld for torture.
The two men, veterans of the U.S. Navy, said they were tortured at Camp Cropper in Baghdad and the methods used included sleep deprivation and other inhumane methods. They argue that because Rumsfeld approved the torture methods he is responsible for their injuries and abuses. Read more... Easterbrook's final lower court ruling was broad, applying to all military officials involved, including those who committed the illegal acts of torture. Pentagon agrees to publish Manning rulings. Following multiple FOIA requests from journalists and pressure from human rights group, the Pentagon Wednesday published 84 judicial orders and rulings from the court-martial proceedings for Bradley Manning.
Up until now the only access to these documents has come second-hand. As the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington described it, the refusal to publish the documents, “has led to an Alice in Wonderland world where [presiding military judge Denise] Lind has read out documents in court, which are then reported in the media.” Via Pilkington: The 84 documents released by the army include court rulings on defence and government motions, and orders that set the scheduling of the trial that is currently earmarked to begin on 3 June. But the batch constitutes only a tiny portion of the huge mountain of paperwork that has already been generated in the proceedings, including some 500 documents stretching to 30,000 pages.
Following the Pentagon’s announcement Wednesday, CCR issued a statement noting: Obama Signs Extension Of Bush Warrantless Wiretap Program Into Law. WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed into law a five-year extension of the U.S. government’s authority to monitor the overseas activity of suspected foreign spies and terrorists. The warrantless intercept program would have expired at the end of 2012 without the president’s approval. The renewal bill won final passage in the Senate on Friday. Known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the law allows the government to monitor overseas phone calls and emails without obtaining a court order for each intercept. The law does not apply to Americans. When Americans are targeted for surveillance, the government must get a warrant from a special 11-judge court of U.S. district judges appointed by the Supreme Court.
Doctors: Blood Clot Located In Clinton’s Head Obama: Sandy Hook Shooting Worst Day Of My Presidency [VIDEO] Homeland Recap: If Nothing Else. Faith in Homeland: restored. Just when I started to worry that the show had written itself into a corner in the season finale, that it would have been better off as a one-season wonder, and that it would break faith with viewers by extruding the Brody-as-sleeper-agent string until the show stopped being agreeably farfetched but gripping and became pathetic, wham! We got “New Car Smell,” written by series co-producer Meredith Stiehm (who scripted the show’s finest episode to date, “The Weekend”) and directed by David Semel. And now it’s a different show — and a better one, I hope. Brody as double agent? That’s where we seem to be going.
Fingers crossed, because that would be unbearably tense, and tons of fun to watch. This poor guy has enough trouble keeping up one false front — and Damian Lewis is never more appealing than when Brody is trying to hide his poker hand and failing. “It reeks, you know,” she told him. “My confusion?” “Your bullshit.” Things got messier from there. Odds and ends. The 9/11 Truth Movement - 911truth.org. 911 International Inquiry. In addition to the main presentations in the Herbst Theatre, there were presentations, films shown, public dialogues with speakers on topics raised in the program, tabling of resource materials on the second floor of the building. There were also additional meeting rooms for Inquiry Participants/Speakers engaged in deepening their understanding of 9-11.
Truth be told, we had so many film-makers at the event that a few rooms were converted into studios for interviews and over 50 hours of video was recorded from the main presentations/interviews/actions/dialogues, and a Press Conference that preceded the event and that continued until 4 PM Friday Afternoon. Here is more information about the processes we used Open Space.
Below are the main Presentations held in the Herbst Theatre which were all recorded (audio and visual) and the audiotapes are already available for purchase via T.U.C. Radio, We want to include links to where video and audio have been posted on the web. March 26 (9:30-? Alfred W. McCoy: Impunity at Home, Rendition Abroad. How Two Administrations and Both Parties Made Illegality the American Way of Life Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com After a decade of fiery public debate and bare-knuckle partisan brawling, the United States has stumbled toward an ad hoc bipartisan compromise over the issue of torture that rests on two unsustainable policies: impunity at home and rendition abroad. President Obama has closed the CIA’s “black sites,” its secret prisons where American agents once dirtied their hands with waterboarding and wall slamming. But via rendition -- the sending of terrorist suspects to the prisons of countries that torture -- and related policies, his administration has outsourced human rights abuse to Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.
In this way, he has avoided the political stigma of torture, while tacitly tolerating such abuses and harvesting whatever intelligence can be gained from them. This “resolution” of the torture issue may meet the needs of this country’s deeply divided politics. Italian Supreme Court head calls for international 9/11 inquiry. Fernando Imposimato, the President of the Italian Supreme Court, has raised the call for a criminal investigation of 9/11, comparing the terror attacks to the declassified "false flag" incidents carried out by the CIA in Italy under Operation Gladio. "The 9/11 attacks were a global state terror operation permitted by the administration of the USA, which had foreknowledge of the operation yet remained intentionally unresponsive in order to make war against Afghanistan and Iraq," Imposimato declared in a letter published on Sunday by the Journal of 9/11 Studies.
As a former state prosecutor, Imposimato has extensive experience investigating high-profile crimes, including the kidnapping and assassination of Italian Prime Minster Aldo Moro and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. He also worked on the Anti-Mafia commission as a Senator, giving him a wealth of knowledge on the inner workings of organized crime syndicates. Read more... 9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out | Watch Colorado Public Television Presents Online. White House Yanks Anti-TSA Petition From Website. By Mary L. G. Theroux For a former community organizer, President Obama certainly seems to support anti-democratic activity with zeal—from his disproportionate use of Executive Orders, to this most recent action: According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, At approximately 11:30 am EDT [Thursday], the White House removed a petition about the TSA airport screening procedures from the White House “We the People” website.
White House The Wired article is also well worth a read, “Court Demands TSA Explain Why It Is Defying Nude Body Scanner Order.” A year ago, the U.S. The three-judge appellate court, which is one stop from the Supreme Court, said that the Transportation Security Administration breached federal law in 2009 when it formally adopted the Advanced Imaging Technology scanners as the “primary” method of screening. The petition, even if allowed to remain on the White House website, would have made no difference anyway. About the author: Mary L. Mary L. Visit Mary L. Tony Blair At the Leveson Inquiry: No Surprises (Almost) A documentary filmmaker, David Lawley-Wakelin, broke into the long-running Leveson Inquiry as former Prime Minister Tony Blair was testifying and accused him of being paid by JP Morgan Chase when he sent British troops to support the American forces during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Lawley-Walkin shouted “This man should be arrested for war crimes” and called Blair a “war criminal.” Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson told Blair that he was “sorry for that” and that he did not have to respond to the protester; Blair denied the accusations, commenting that it was his “experience that if you had 1,000 people in an event and somebody got up and shouted something, then it’s as if the other 999 needn’t have bothered showing up.” The morning intrusion in the court lasted only about a half a minute of the seven hours set aside for the former Labour leader to testify. As the New York Times commented, the intrusion “seemed also to show how Mr. Blair on Murdoch, the Press and Politicians. Pennsylvania Wiretap Act: Leave it alone. By Reggie Shuford In the 2002 science fiction film “Minority Report,” the government eliminates crime by arresting people for “pre- crime.”
Humans with the ability to see the future detect crime before it happens, allowing police to arrest a person for a crime before it occurs. Apparently, some prosecutors in Pennsylvania seem to think the film was a documentary. Proposed changes to the Pa. Wiretap Act would make it easier to film people without their consent. JOHN C. WHITEHEAD/The Patriot-News They are urging the General Assembly to pass revisions to the commonwealth’s Wiretap Act that would allow Pennsylvanians to secretly record each other when they think they will find evidence of a past, present or future crime. This exception to what’s known as “two-party consent” is one of multiple proposed changes to state law that, in totality, would disintegrate the privacy protections in current state law and would move Pennsylvania closer to becoming a surveillance society. Reggie Shuford. How government spending has changed in the last fifty years [graph]
Everyone has an opinion when it comes to spending at the federal government level, whether it’s a matter of priorities, amount or a combination of the two, so it’s worth a moment to consider how this spending has changed since the 1960s. Using numbers from the Office of Management and Budget, Lam Thuy Vo at NPR compiled this graph, but one interesting tidbit to throw in is that government spending has grown with the economy, with federal spending being 18% of GDP in 1962 and 24% in 2011.
Defense still takes up a huge chunk of change, but spending on Medicare, Medicaid and safety net programs have risen significantly in the last half century, but particularly because of the recent recession. Full story at NPR. Get the news at NPR. Hiding 9/11's last secrets - Terrorism.