Homeland Security

I Was a Victim of the Government’s Absurd and Over-Hyped War on Terror

dlindorff — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:37:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I was injured thanks to the government’s ridiculous airport
security program last week on a US Air flight from Chicago to
Philadelphia. I also saw how pointless the whole thing is, if the
supposed goal is really to prevent airline hijackings.

First, my injury. Because of a silly fear that I might blow up a
plane with explosives tucked into my running shoes, I, along with
everyone else in the security checkpoint line at O’Hare, including
two-month-old babies wearing little booties, had to doff my footwear.
Clad in just socks, I tried to maneuver my way around a metal counter
that held those plastic trays carrying my laptop, my shoes, my belt and
change and keys, and my carry-on bag, and in the process my unprotected
big toe hit a sharp piece of metal protruding from the table.

The metal sliced right under my toenail, making a painful and
bloody cut into the soft tissue under the nail. Cursing and bleeding, I
made my way through the metal detector, and collected my goods.

Now, inside my bag, unbeknownst to the Transportation Security
Administration inspectors, was a bottle of mouthwash. It was larger
than the approved 2-oz size, and it was not in an approved sealed
plastic bag. But TSA inspectors looking into their video screens at the
X-Ray machine didn’t see it, because I made sure that it was vertical
as it passed through. All they saw was a little circle of plastic.
Likewise, on an earlier flight, I had made my way aboard with a Swiss
Army knife. By standing it in my carry-on bag so that it would be
vertical for the X-Ray, I was able to slip it through and onto the
plane.

Now clearly I’m not a terrorist (though for a time, thanks to my
anti-Bush, anti-war journalism, and an expose about the TSA’s “no-fly”
list abuses, I was on the watch list, and would get a circled “S”
written on my boarding passes that ensured that I would be pulled aside
to have my carry-on luggage hand searched). But if I were a terrorist,
I sure wouldn’t try to commandeer a plane with a jackknife. I’d want
something bigger. But that would be simple. One could easily carry on a
10-inch blade the same way. If one were nervous about doing that, it
could be a ceramic or better, a Plexiglas blade—plenty dangerous, but
invisible to X-rays and metal detectors.

For that matter, if I were into suicide bombing and wanted to
manufacture a liquid explosive, why on earth would I try to do it by
smuggling on two large jars of ingredients, when I could just put them
in plastic baggies and carry them aboard in my pockets? Unless you
happen to be singled out for special handling, nobody at the security
checkpoints pats you down. They just have you walk through the metal
detectors while TSA inspectors are busy patting down randomly selected
elderly nuns and racially profiled people, like unfortunate Sikh men
wearing turbans.

Any dedicated terrorist hijacker could figure out numerous ways to
get explosives and weapons onto a plane past these security
arrangements.

And that’s not even counting having the weapons smuggled into an
airport gate area along with all the goods that are offered for sale
there, where they could be picked up after a hijacker had already
cleared security. There is no way that all the newspapers, magazines,
clothing, trinkets, bottles of booze and personal hygiene products,
etc., are screened adequately as they are brought in each day to fill
the concession stands for the day’s business. First of all, one would
have to open and check every bottle and box offered for sale.

If you were genuinely worried about protecting against hijackers,
you would have those inspections at the entrance to each plane, not at
the entrance to the terminal, and you wouldn’t have all that commerce
inside the security zone. Ah! But what a roar of outrage we’d hear from
the business community if that lucrative business venue were eliminated!

Which brings me to the real question: Why do we have all this
pointless and easily breached security, not to mention a list that
contains an astonishing one million names of suspected “terrorists”?

Clearly, the security program is not about protecting the flying
public, or the nation’s tall buildings. That could be done much more
cheaply by putting air marshals on all flights, the way they do at El
Al, the Israeli airline that has never had a successful hijacking.

No, this is all about heightening the fear level of the American people, to routinize us to living in a police state.

The truth is, nobody is really interested in trying to hijack
planes anymore. First of all, the “crash into buildings” tactic is
dead. Pilots are now flying armed in armored cockpits that cannot be
easily entered, and would not accede to a terrorist’s demands any
longer, knowing what happened last time. And passengers would not sit
passively in a cabin takeover attempt, either. As a result, we don’t
have to worry about such things any longer.

The ease with which security could be breached, and the fact that
it hasn’t happened now for seven years, is evidence enough that nobody
is even trying to do it.

So let’s do away with all this time-consuming, costly, and politically motivated nonsense before I injure my other big toe.
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Support a Progressive Candidate!

ghost122 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:19:18 -0400

Born in 1963 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Rebecca Schneider grew up in rural western Pennsylvania in a middle class neighborhood. Rebecca graduated from Mars High School in 1982 and Slippery Rock University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. During the course of attending College and working two, sometimes three jobs to pay her way, she set the course of her career when she began working in the library and currently works as a Library Supervisor for Arizona State University.

Rebecca has a long history of working within and with government entities to achieve success for the organizations and communities by which she has been employed. She has experience managing budgets as well as personnel as part of her management of a Maricopa County Branch Library in addition to her current supervisory position at ASU. Schneider brought together business, government and private foundation groups to raise the funds necessary to build a new library building in Sun Lakes, Arizona. She will use those same skills to bridge the aisle in Congress and foster relationships that will enact legislation that doesn't undermine our Constitutional rights while providing true security to our nation.

In her own words:

Our government has been broken by those who have been in power these past eight years. We have lost many of our constitutional rights and we have lost our way in the world. This is completely unacceptable, and it is my passion and my calling to restore what has been stolen. WE, the people, should be watching our government. They should NOT be watching us. While they were watching us, they were not watching our economy, our infrastructure, our security, our children's health and education, our ports and chemical plants, our energy production and certainly not our environment. They’ve neglected our internal welfare while they were pretending to be concerned about our nation.

Mr. Flake has gone unopposed in his past two elections. With your help, we can make sure that this time around he has a run for his money! Let's at least be able to offer District #6, and by extension, all of Arizona and the United States, a choice. A progressive choice!!

We must demand a strong America that offers broad prosperity to all its citizens, a better future for YOU and all of us. We require a more effective government without all the waste and terrible planning. We must have mutual responsibility between government, the people and business for the betterment of this nation. I want to encourage an economy that doesn't neglect the worker and focus solely on big gains for the CEOs and shareholders. We need a strong voice in Congress that will stand up to partisan bullying and do what is right. I will be that voice.

I am dedicated to improving all our lives by creating an environment of hope and unity. I promise to work tirelessly to affect positive change in the world around us and to work with the citizens of Congressional District #6...YOU...to create a community, a state, a nation that serves us all. I will not waiver in the conviction that we can create a better world for all citizens now and for the future.

I pledge to do everything in my power to return our government and our nation to the people; to restore our rights as promised by our Constitution; to renew our standing in the world by demonstrating the strength and goodness America has always stood for; to LISTEN to the people and enlist everyone’s help in transforming the country into one we can be proud of again. I will endeavor to bring dignity and fiscal responsibility back to Washington. We will have a healthy, vibrant nation once again where there are opportunities to achieve the American Dream for all instead of the few.

Help build that dream for yourselves by electing me to be your Representative in Congress. The time for the old way of doing things is past. It is time we, the people, took charge of our government, instead of special interests and big corporations remaining in control. Now is the time for the power of the people to shout from the rooftops, “WE are in charge!”. Permitting me to be your voice is a great step towards that freedom! We CAN bring back our dignity, our prosperity, our innovation and our American Dream. Join me, won’t you, in making it a reality. Truly, the time is NOW!!

Please check out my website at: www.schneider2008.com Then, make a donation of $20, $50, $100 or more to help me defeat Mr. Flake: the same Mr. Flake who never brings our fair share of our tax monies back to our district; the same Mr. Flake who has voted over and over again to undermine or take away our Constitutional rights; the same Mr. Flake who has supported George Bush for 8 years, yet has voted against helping our troops and our children.

If the status quo of borrow and spend, war and rising healthcare costs isn’t what you want anymore, please give your support NOW so that we have a true choice for change in November.

Thank you!!

Rebecca

A Manchurian Candidate in the White House?

dlindorff — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:34:28 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and “compassionate conservatism,” an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government.

What did we actually get?

Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president’s first National Security Council meeting, attended by Vice President Dick Cheney (the man holding Bush’s controller), Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal (who later spilled the beans about the session).

Bush also famously ignored all warnings about the imminent attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How much he and the rest of the administration knew about that attack in advance, or whether elements within the administration may have even helped it along, remains the subject of considerable interest and investigation and may never be answered, but it is clear that there were ample warnings about it, and he did nothing—even rudely blowing off a briefer who tried to alert him to the danger. Moreover, it is known that Israeli Mossad agents (who we know have close ties to both the US intelligence apparatus and to the Neocons who infest the Bush White House) did indeed have advance knowledge, and were set up across New York Harbor with a video camera to tape the attack on the Twin Towers (they were subsequently arrested by New Jersey police, only to be later released and sent back to Israel, through intercession by the US government). As well, we know that unidentified people made a killing by placing negative bets, called “puts,” on the stocks, several days before 9-11, of the two airlines that were hijacked, American and United, and of two investment banks that would be seriously hurt by the building collapses, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. (The puts were placed through an investment bank, Alex Brown, which until a year earlier had been headed by a man who moved over to become the number three person in the CIA.) It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Certainly instead of rallying the public and defending the nation’s democratic traditions and its Constitution, Bush and his handlers after 9-11 immediately set in motion a concerted scare campaign to undermine both. While urging the public to buy sheets of plastic and duct tape to construct “safe rooms” in their homes, they rammed through Congress a deceitfully named measure, the so-called Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT Act), which effectively undermined most of the articles of the Bill of Rights (and which appeared, suspiciously, fully drawn up in bill form, only days after the attacks).

At the same time, the president, only one week after the attacks, obtained an Authorization for Use of Military Force for a military attack on the Taliban government in Afghanistan and on Al Qaeda forces in that country, which he subsequently interpreted broadly as an authorization for a global “war” on terror which he then claimed made him effectively a dictator with absolute power both at home and abroad (the so-called “unitary executive” theory). Under this claim of absolute power as commander in chief in time of war, Bush went on to order the use of torture against captives, foreign and domestic, including US citizens, to strip even US citizens of the right of habeas corpus—that is, the right to have their arrest and detention brought before a federal court—and to establish secret torture centers around the globe and on military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

As well, even before the 9-11 attacks, the president began a sweeping program of electronic spying, run through the super-secret National Security Agency, on Americans’ telephone and internet activities. It was and remains a program that deliberately avoids seeking warrants and court approval even by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court—a body that has only rejected some five requests for warrants out of hundreds of thousands sought since its establishment in 1978.

Finally, in a perhaps fatal undermining of the Constitution, the president after 9-11 began a practice of simply refusing to enact or obey laws passed by the Congress, effectively rendering the legislative branch an impotent debating club.

Not content to simply explode or dismantle the legal foundations of the American government and rule of law, Bush and his handlers also went about systematically destroying the country’s basic institutions and even its economy.

The education system was fatally ensnared in a test-driven system called “No Child Left Behind,” which has in short order dumbed down public education to an extent shocking even to this already anti-intellectual society, with many schools simply giving up the teaching of art, literature or history, in order to focus desperately on math and reading in order that their students would do well enough on standardized tests to keep the schools from losing their funding.

The dollar has been cast adrift to become the new Lira as the government has gone on an unprecedented borrowing spree to fund endless war and ever-larger military budgets, while erasing the taxes on the wealthy, the super-rich, and corporations. Banks were given free rein to enter into all manner of risky ventures, leading to the current collapse in credit. Corporations were encouraged to ship their production and jobs overseas. Homeowners were encouraged to spend, spend, spend and to mortgage their homes to the hilt and then some. Towns, cities and pension funds were encouraged to invest in fantastic “structured” products that were actually towering card houses. Domestic car manufacturers were encouraged to build every larger, ever more voraciously gas-guzzling vehicles, pumping out ever larger quantities of carbon into the already overstressed atmosphere.

The nation’s infrastructure—its roads, dams, bridges, levies, airports, veterans hospitals etc.--were left to decay, with predictable results, the most dramatic of which was the loss of an entire city, New Orleans, to a routine Category 3 hurricane (after which, the president did nothing to rescue the survivors or fund a recovery).

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation—one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state—today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs. A nation that once was the envy of the world for its free society now has scientists afraid to report their findings, university professors afraid to support outspoken colleagues, members of Congress afraid to defend their Constitution, citizens afraid of their neighbors, journalists afraid of government criticism, lawyers afraid to defend clients...

Hey, this place starts to look and feel an awful lot like the China I lived in back in 1991!

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country.

The truth is this: If at the end of their second term, Bush and Cheney were to hop on a plane and fly off to a hideout in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border, leaving a "Nya-nya!" note on the White House dining room table, few people would really be very surprised.
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Bush's Protect America Bill Bull

dlindorff — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:01:54 -0500

By Dave Lindorff,

President Bush has turned to the cheapest lies in an effort to protect himself from being exposed as a criminal in the ongoing campaign to have the National Security Agency spy at will on Americans.

Claiming—without a scintilla of evidence to back him up—that there are people planning a “much worse attack” than 9-11 on America, he says he must not only have free rein to unleash the NSA
spymasters on American telephone and internet communications, but also a grant of complete immunity from prosecution for such spying for the telecom industry.

The Senate, of course, with solid backing from Republicans and critical backing too from a significant number of treacherous Democrats (some of whom, like Intelligence Committee head Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have gotten significant donations from the telecom industry), has already given the president the bill he wants. It now is before the House, where some Democrats and a few Republicans who still remember there’s supposed to be a Bill of Rights, are resisting passage of the cynically named Protect America bill.

The obvious lie that the president is spreading is made evident by the fact that there is no heightened alert status—not at airports, not at the border, not at city police and fire departments.

But furthermore, if nothing were passed, it would have no impact at all on the NSA’s current spying and monitoring activities. If there really were evidence of some kind of attack in preparation, the NSA would already be monitoring it under existing authority, and would be able to continue that activity without a warrant at least until next September! And even if the authority to monitor without a warrant were not granted at that point, the administration has from now until then to obtain a warrant, which it could do anytime it wants to by going to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

So the president’s false drama of staying home from his trip to Africa is just a sham. There is no urgency to this at all.

Then there’s the whole insistence on retroactive telecom immunity. The White House claims that if immunity for past, current and future warrantless spying by the telecom industry on behalf of the NSA is not granted, it would deter the industry from cooperating with the NSA in the future.

That is yet another fraud. If the White House or NSA were to obtain a warrant for its spying, no telecom executive would or even could refuse to comply. It’s the warrantless spying that one or two phone companies, notably Quest, had objected to in the past. The answer is easy: the NSA should seek warrants for its spying. The only explanation for the administration’s refusal to seek warrants from a court that since 1978 has only rejected a handful of requests out of hundreds of thousands submitted to it, is that it knows its request would be rejected—and that should tell us all we need to know about what he is up to.

What is really clear is that the administration has done some things that it really does not want the public to know about. That is the reason it’s seeking retroactive immunity. What it fears is that class action lawsuits, some of which have already been filed, against the phone companies, will lead to discovery which would reveal who it was actually spying on over the last eight years (and this illegal spying program, we now know, began in early 2001, shortly after Bush and Cheney took office, and well before the 9-11 attacks).

The claim that such discovery could lead to release of information that could alert terrorists to the fact that they are being monitored is laughable. No federal judge would allow such a thing to happen. The federal government would only have to assert such a threat, and any judge in the federal court system would agree to review the evidence before releasing it in open court.

So what is it that the White House and the NSA have been up to all these years that Bush and Cheney are so frightened to have outed?

The answer seems painfully clear, especially given that we know the program began before Sept. 11, 2001—a period when Bush and Cheney were famously uninterested in investigating terrorism.

They had to have been spying on us—-most likely on the groups that had protested Bush’s election fraud, the Democratic opposition, possible leakers in his own administration, and then, in the wake of 9-11, the questioners of the official story of that tragic event, the growing anti-war movement, the impeachment movement, critical journalists, etc.—-in short, the same kinds of people that President Nixon, back in the 1970s, unleashed the NSA on, and which led to passage of the FISA law and the FISA court in the first place.

There is a growing shrillness to the president’s lies and to the administration’s efforts to get this protective legislation passed. With a Democratic blowout possible this November, he has to worry that all this nefarious activity could come pouring out next year, leaving both him and Vice President Cheney, by then out of office and without protection from prosecution, open to attack from both criminal prosecutors and citizen lawsuits for damages.

The House, which has been a shameless lapdog of the administration for the past year since the Democrats took control of that body, has a chance here to show it still has at least one vertebra left in its severely decalcified spine, It should refuse to pass any extension of NSA warrantless spying authority, and should refuse immunity for the telecom industry.

Let the president dangle in the wind on this one. Call your representative (202-225-3121) and let her or him know you want them to really protect America, by not passing the so-called Protect America bill!

________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative reporter and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

As if the US needs any more economic problems…

Heather Wokusch — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:36:00 -0500

There’s a time bomb ticking over here in Europe, and it’s completely off the radar where it will hit the hardest: the US.

The Bush administration is pushing for radical new regulations on airline travel including:

- Armed guards on all US-airline flights from Europe to the US
- More personal data on all air passengers FLYING OVER (not even landing in) the US
- Europeans will need new permits and a lengthier permission-application process before even booking a ticket to the US
- "Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on non-travellers - for example family members - who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, a demand the airlines reject as ‘absurd’".

Under the radar, but an important developing story. Why? The tourism industry is incredibly important to the US and this paranoid development doesn’t help. Doesn’t win the hearts and minds of our allies abroad either.

Bureaucrats in Brussels are debating all of this right now and, as usual, will probably cave on many points. But big conventions, the tourism industry etc. are already going ballistic, diverting future plans away from the US.

Ominous development…

Read more about it here in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/11/usa.theairlineindustry

They're Scaring Us to Death

dlindorff — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:21:38 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Well, now we know. Scientists have documented that the Bush/Cheney administration has been a greater threat to Americans’ health and safety than Osama Bin Laden and his terror band.

Specifically, The New York Times, in its science section today, reports that a new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry has found that while the risk to Americans of dying at the hands of a terrorist was roughly equal to the chance of “drowning in a toilet,” the risk of cardiovascular disease among people who are frightened about the threat of terrorism is 300-500% higher than for people who are not worried.

What this means is that the Bush/Cheney administration, by constantly hyping the nation’s fears of terror through the use of everything from daily color-coded terror alerts, to absurd inspection procedures at airline terminals and parcel post restrictions, is actually scaring some of us to death.

And for what?

From the moment those planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon back in September 2001, Bush, Cheney and their allies—Republican and Democrat—in Congress and the media have been peppering us with warnings that the “bad guys” are out to kill us, to destroy our way of life, and to defeat America.

It has been a ludicrous idea from the start. The idea that small gang of guys from the Middle East could bring the mightiest nation that the world has ever known to its knees, or even significantly threaten the safety and security of the people of the United States is simply absurd and laughable. Why, even the detonation of a small smuggled nuclear device in or near an American city, should such a thing ever come to pass, would be less of a threat to the nation as a whole than the eruption of one of our many active volcanoes—say Mt. Rainier or Mt. Hood, or the Yellowstone caldera—or an 8 or 9-point earthquake in San Francisco or Los Angeles. And those natural disasters are probably more likely than the explosion of a terrorist nuke.

Yet Bush, Cheney and other charlatans like Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and the former senator and now Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Rick Santorum continue to do the scare routine, warning that we are in grave danger—from Al Qaeda or Iran getting The Bomb, to Venezuela buying military aircraft from Brazil, to Cuba manufacturing dangerous biological weapons.

I have been stunned at the response of my fellow Americans to this blatant nonsense. Shortly after the Twin Towers went down, my local school district announced the cancellation for the entire year of all school trips! There was a fear among parents and members of the local school authorities that the buses carrying them to museums or the zoo might pose tempting targets for terrorists! Our kids were also treated to scary “intruder lockdowns” where they’d be locked with their teachers in their classrooms while local cops dressed in black SWAT gear and armed with assault rifles played army in the hallways looking for imaginary terrorists.

I’ve gone on plane flights where I’ve had to wait in line for an hour while Transportation Security Administration guards check the tiny shoes of six-month-old infants to make sure they weren’t shoe bombs, and have had to surrender countless bottles of mouthwash and drinking water and tubes of toothpaste, all suspected of being smuggled explosives. (I was also honored with an “S” mark on my boarding pass a couple of times, which meant I was pulled aside for special inspection for fear I might be a terrorist myself.)

All of this nonsense, however, is coming with a price. I can laugh because I know it’s nonsense. But some people aren’t laughing. They’re living in fear. And that fear is causing them to suffer cardiovascular disease, according to this new study.

Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, really, when it comes to the cost of the Washington terror scam.

American businesses have spent literally tens of billions of dollars—maybe hundreds of billions of dollars—on security measures, fearing terror attacks on their installations, or on their communications, or on Wall Street. Thousands of foreign science students and scientists have been banned from the US—or even deported--for fear they might be terrorists in training. Municipalities and states have spent billions in taxpayer dollars on security that they simply don’t need. My little town of Upper Dublin, just north of Philadelphia, with just some 26,000 people, has its own police SWAT team, for Pete’s sake, complete with a large gray SWAT vehicle—a panel truck loaded with heavy combat firepower capable of repelling a small third-world army. I wonder how many teachers that money could have hired? Maybe they wouldn’t have had to let the elementary music program go down the tubes.

I haven't mentioned the whole $1-2 trillion War in Iraq, which was all the result of presidential and vice presidential scare mongering.

And of course, that’s just the financial cost of scare mongering. We’ve also given up most of our Bill or Rights, and even some more ancient rights, like the right of Habeas Corpus. And we’re about to give up our entire right to privacy if the government gets its way and introduces a national identity card. How far away are we from having to get injected with identity chips?

All this panic and fear, and yet we still sing this national anthem that calls America “the home of the brave”?

I don’t think so. "Home of the scared shitless" might be more appropriate.

The good news is that maybe this new report on the health threat posed by government scare mongering will cause people to do something about it. If there’s one thing Americans get worked up about, it’s threats to their health. Look how anxious people get about Bird Flu, West Nile Virus, Anthrax, Bubonic Plague, AIDS, etc. Maybe now that we’re learning that worrying about terror can kill us, we’ll demand that officials and politicians in Washington just shut the hell up about it.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t think about terrorists. The chances that I’m going to be the victim of a bombing, plane hijacking or mall attack is so minimal it can’t be measured.

I’m much more worried that the country that I grew up in has been hijacked by a bunch of power-mad war-mongers bent on destroying the Constitution and bringing to an end the free and free-wheeling society we’ve been building for over 200 years.

I hope that worrying doesn’t end up giving me a heart attack…
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Video Discussion of HR 1955 Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

davidswanson — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 15:23:10 -0500

Host: Tina Richards, Press TV
Sue Udry, Defending Dissent Foundation
David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org
CLICK HERE, and then click "6 Dec 2007"

Who is Clay Johnson?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:55:25 -0400

CNN is reporting DHS Mike Chertoff will be nominated for Attorney General, and Clay Johnson III will be nominated to replace Chertoff.

Who is Clay Johnson?

Johnson is currently working in obscurity as Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget.

The Deputy Director for Management provides government-wide leadership to Executive Branch agencies to improve agency and program performance.

Yeah and what a great job he has done - can you say FEMA and Hurricane Katrina?

Prior to this he was the Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel, responsible for the organization that identifies and recruits approximately 4000 senior officials, middle management personnel and part-time board and commission members.

In other words, he's the guy that filled the Executive Branch with "loyal Bushie" ideologues like Monica Goodling.

From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Johnson worked with Governor George W. Bush in Austin, first as his Appointments Director, then as his Chief of Staff, and then as the Executive Director of the Bush-Cheney Transition.

So he managed Bush's initial appointment of criminals like Rove, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft. And he's very close to the whole Texas mafia of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Joe Allbaugh, Jim Baker, and the rest of the gang of thieves and war criminals.

But despite his clout, Johnson only made news during the 1999 scrubbing of J.H. Hatfield's unauthorized biography of George W. Bush, Fortunate Son. Amy Goodman summarized the story in August 2003:

In the book, Hatfield charges that Bush was arrested in 1972 for cocaine possession. Why wasn’t the future President charged? Hatfield writes that Bush’s father used his political connections to have his son’s record expunged.

Soon after publication of Fortunate Son the Dallas Morning News received information about Hatfield’s criminal past.

The media jumped all over it and Hatfield’s reputation and credibility were ruined.

St. Martins Press promised to turn Fortunate Son into “furnace fodder.” It withdrew 70,000 copies from bookshelves and destroyed them. But a small publisher Soft Skull Press reprinted the book with the banner “The Book They Burned is Back.”

Hatfield had previously refused to reveal the source of his information about Bush’s alleged cocaine arrest. He now to decided to name him. He claimed it was none other than Karl Rove, Bush’s closest political adviser.

If Rove did indeed leak the information, he couldn’t have leaked it to a better subject. Soon after publication of the Fortunate Son, Hatfield’s credibility came under fierce attack.

The media followed the trail laid out for them. They diverted inquiries about Bush’s drug history to stories about Hatfield’s checkered past. He lost two other book contracts and faced financial ruin and obscurity.

The character assassination finally took its toll. In July 2001, Hatfield was found dead of an apparent suicide in a hotel room in Springdale, Arkansas. He was 43 years old. Police said he left notes for his family and friends that listed alcohol, financial problems and Fortunate Son as reasons for killing himself. He is survived by a wife and daughter.

Hatfield's cocaine revelation relied on two sources besides Karl Rove, namely Clay Johnson and Bush's Austin minister Jim Mayfield. Sander Hicks of Soft Skull Press reported how he finally got Hatfield to name his sources:

Two months after the bloody October of Hatfield’s public destruction, it was a crisp sunny winter day in New York City. Although Hatfield had the flu, he taped his portion of 60 Minutes early in the morning, and I went in later. Leslie Stahl, the elegant host of the program, had pointedly asked me on tape if I knew the sources. I said no, but that Hatfield had promised to reveal them to me.

After the taping, we walked through the Lower East Side. I had taken Hatfield and his lawyer, and my coworker to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I needed to hold Jim Hatfield to his promise to share the sources with me; I needed to see the phone and travel records. I needed to know the whole thing wasn't a big sick joke. I needed to be 100% sure. My gut had me already believing in Jim Hatfield. He believed in what we were doing. He stood behind all his research. He admired me for making a maverick decision, and attempting to redeem his battered book.

Hatfield stopped on the corner of Ludlow and Rivington and turned to me in the bright light. His hands were stuffed deep into the pockets of his Navy peacoat. He looked tired, but determined. He looked down the street.

"You've got to take this information with you to your grave. You've got to swear."

I swore not to repeat it to anyone. I also knew that the truth is bigger than one person. We would both choose to reveal the sources publicly when the time was right, when we had no other choice. When we no longer had anything left to lose.

"The Eufaula Connection? That was Karl Rove. The other top Bush advisor was Clay Johnson. The Bush confidante, was his minister, Mayfield. Now you know. Remember, you’ve got to swear now...."

Does George Bush really want to subject Clay Johnson to national scrutiny? Back in 1999, Karl Rove could kill a story like this by driving Hatfield to commit suicide. But when progressive bloggers discover this story, it will be impossible for Bush to kill it.

Stay tuned!

Update 1 12 p.m.: CNN is now reporting Chertoff is just one of many names being floated for A.G. Boy that was quick!

Update 2: Keith Olbermann interviewed Jim Moore about Johnson's Andover/Yale frat ties to Bush. Moore explained that no sane person wanted to move to Washington to join the disastrous Bush administration in its final year, so the only people Bush can count on are those who cut themselves and exchanged blood as teenagers.

What We Choose to Ignore

Chip — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 14:15:45 -0400

An Open Letter to Peter DeFazio

like7new — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:56:27 -0400

NOBLE RESOLVE - OPEN LETTER TO PETER DEFAZIO author: fear no terror

NOBLE RESOLVE is too dangerous to allow in Oregon. This exercise, drilling War of Terror scenarios in Oregon, comes just as the media is filling up with warnings of a new 9/11 and the recent Presidential Executive Orders: NSPD 51, 5/10/07, "... allows the sitting president to declare a "national emergency" without Congressional approval..."

It's looking more and more like a perfect storm of terror, treason and totalitarianism. Drills like these have a history of going live (e.g. 09/11/01 & 07/07/05) and now we have NSPD 51 — the equivalent of Hitler's Article 48.

NO NOBLE RESOLVE FOR OREGON

July 24, 2007
Rep. Peter DeFazio
2134 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-3704

Eugene, OR 97401

Dear Congressman DeFazio:

The Oregonian recently reported on your investigation of President Bush's "continuity of government" Executive Order, and on how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) thwarted your request for details. As I am sure you are aware, DHS will be leading two emergency response drills in Portland over the next 3 months: "Noble Resolve" in August and "Top Off" in October. Just as you rightly sought details on the Bush Executive Order, Oregon citizens need and deserve information about these military exercises.

We are concerned that federal, state and local agencies will not plan and conduct these "terrorism drills" with sufficient transparency and public oversight. To address this need for local awareness of, agreement to, and participation in exercises ostensibly designed for local security, safety and welfare, we propose the immediate formation of a Portland Citizens' Oversight Committee to represent citizens' interests.

We request your endorsement of this reasonable request and hope you will assist us in establishing such an oversight committee. We hope you will agree that when a Federal agency such as DHS seeks to conduct exercises in Oregon, full transparency to the public and oversight by Oregon citizens is essential.

Our initial research on the Top Off exercise revealed contradictory statements and a disturbing lack of openness on the part of local officials. We do know that Portland will receive $2 million for the Top Off exercise alone. No such figure has been publicized regarding Noble Resolve. The Top Off drill, which DHS calls a "terrorism drill" (but local officials refer to as an "emergency preparedness exercise") will begin on approximately 10/5/07, to last for 9 to 10 days. Though Noble Resolve is scheduled for August, no similar details or schedule have been released. We therefore have a series of immediate concerns about this exercise:

* what will be the precipitating event?
* will there be enhanced police presence?
* will the National Guard be involved?
* will there be contractors involved (e.g., Blackwater)?
* and will either or both drills involve rehearsals of local and federal response to a "catastrophic emergency," as defined under NSPD 51, up to and including the declaration of martial law?

With the Bush track record on disaster response and media manipulation, Oregonians are not naive enough to trust the Federal government to adequately inform and interact with Portland residents prior to these terrorism drills. Case in point, as of now, there has not even been an announcement about Noble Resolve, and it is due to take place in August, just days or weeks from now.

Another general concern is that the Mayor's office seemed almost unaware of the recent Presidential Executive Orders: NSPD 51, 5/10/07, "... allows the sitting president to declare a "national emergency" without Congressional approval, leading to the de facto closing down of the Legislature and the militarization of justice and law enforcement"; and the amended International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 7/17/07, "allowing the US regime to seize the property of anyone found to be interfering with the reconstruction of Iraq." In correspondence with both the Mayor's office and Commissioner Sam Adams' office, I have provided material to round out their knowledge of these Presidential directives.

We would be glad to discuss this matter with you or your staff further, and/or supply resources in addition to those referenced below, that will corroborate the concerns expressed in this letter. We will copy this letter to other Congresspersons, Senators Wyden and Smith, Governor Kulongowski, Mayor Potter, members of City Council, and a variety of local press and online media, to raise awareness of these drills and our urgent proposal for enhanced transparency and public involvement, given the current political climate. We hope to receive your response this week, given the exigency of the August drill. Please inform your staff that we will make a follow up call on this matter if we do not hear back from you.

Thank you and we look forward to talking with you or a representative.

Best regards,
Informed Dissent

CC:
Office of Mayor Tom Potter,
Sam Adams,
Erik Sten,
Dan Saltzman,
Randy Leonard,
Governor Ted Kulongoski,
Senator Ron Wyden,
Senator Gordon Smith
Representative Earl Blumenauer,
Representative Darlene Hooley,
Representative David Wu,

~~Media
Oregonian
Willamette Week
KBOO
KPOJ / Air America

REFERENCES:
NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51 - http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
Message to the Congress of the United States Regarding International Emergency Economic Powers Act - http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-4.html
USJFCOM gears up for Noble Resolve - http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2007/pa033007.html
JFCOM brings virtual world closer to home - http://www.fcw.com/article98147-04-04-07-Web
------------------------------------------------------
Bush Directive for a "Catastrophic Emergency...", Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=6134
The "Use of the Armed Forces" in America under a National Emergency... - Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=6169
Brzezinski Suggests False Flag Event Could Kick-Start Iran War - http://www.nowpublic.com/brzezinski_suggests_false_flag_event_could_kick...
Wake-up Call: Watch for Another 911/WMD Experience, Paul C. Roberts - http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070718_wakeup.htm
Impeach Bush and Cheney Now, Paul C. Roberts -
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070715_impeach.htm