Obama Administration Threatened Britain To Suppress Torture Evidence

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Obama administration has been caught in a fresh torture controversy after it emerged that America threatened to cease all intelligence ties with Britain if it revealed that a British suspect held at Guantanamo Bay had been tortured into confessing to being part of a dirty bomb plot.

“Two senior British judges have expressed their anger and surprise that President Barack Obama’s Government has put pressure on Britain to suppress evidence of torture in US custody,” reports the London Times.

“Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said they had been told that America had threatened to stop co-operating with Britain on intelligence matters if evidence were published suggesting that Binyam Mohammed, a British resident held at the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, had been tortured into confessing crimes.”

In their ruling, the judges, acting on behalf of the Foreign Office & Commonwealth Office, scorned the hypocrisy behind the Obama administration’s actions.

“We did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials . . . relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be,” they stated.

“We had no reason . . . to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States Government that it would reconsider its intelligence-sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports.”

Binyam Mohammed has been held at Guantanamo Bay since September 2004 after being kidnapped at the behest of U.S. authorities in Pakistan in 2002. He claims he was tortured and mistreated into confessing to being part of a dirty bomb plot. Reports written by U.S. intelligence officials apparently confirm Mohammed’s claims.

The British judges declined to publish the reports after America’s threat, but lambasted America for bullying Britain to conceal information that posed no threat to America’s national security.

“Championing the rule of law, not suppressing it, is the cornerstone of a democracy,” said the ruling.

“The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials (in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security) would be inimical to the rule of law and the proper functioning of a democracy.”

The controversy follows the revelation that Obama, despite his superficial moves against torture which have been given much attention by the establishment media, has in fact signed an executive order that will ensure a continuance of the practice of “rendition,”the secret capture, transportation, and imprisonment of so called “enemy combatants” in countries renowned for carrying out torture.

Secret rendition “black sites” hit the headlines in late 2005 when U.S. and foreign intelligence officials blew the whistle on the CIA’s practice of hiding and interrogating “al Qaeda” captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.

The secret facility was revealed to be part of a covert CIA prison system, set up after 9/11, that at various times included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The Washington Post refused to name the European countries involved after pressure from senior U.S. officials.

Horror stories of brutality and psychological torture of detainees at the secret prisons emerged soon after.

Many on the political left were fast and loose with their praise for Obama after he made moves to shut down Guantanamo Bay, but the real torture black sites and the process by which suspects are kidnapped and taken to them will remain in place thanks to Obama’s executive order.

Research related articles:

1. British authorities colluded to have man tortured, shipped to Guantanamo, rules judge.
2. Court gags ex-SAS man who made torture claims
3. Top Bush Administration officials pressured underlings to use torture tactics at Guantanamo
4. Former SAS man condemns British role in Iraq and Afghanistan torture
5. Obama & Biden To Protect Bush Administration Criminals
6. Duncan Hunter: Torture Provided ‘Enormously Valuable Information That Saved American Lives’
7. Scalia: “Absurd” to Suggest that the U.S. Shouldn’t Torture Supposed Terrorists
8. Wikileaks Proffers Photo Evidence of Bizarre U.S. Torture
9. Obama advisers: Bush era war criminals will walk
10. Iraqi group files 200 lawsuits against Rumsfeld, US security firms for torture
11. Bush administration gave nod for CIA waterboarding: report
12. Obama administration warns public to expect rise in US casualties

A US Dollar conspiracy theory?

Global Research, February 4, 2009

Russia Today - 2009-01-30 While the world economy collapses the American dollar continues to strengthen its position in the world, to little wonder – it’s getting back to its basics as the backup currency on every continent except Antarctica. Yet since the U.S. has debts two times exceeding the world’s GDP one cannot help but ask oneself – what’s next? The web is flooded with lots of theories and rumours about what would happen to the American currency whether, when and where it would fall – or what else. Some of them look like senseless fantasies, others resemble futurologist’s predictions, but the conspiracy theories of all kinds and colours are firmly on top of all. “Dollar will crash soon”, “U.S. will change currency”, “Dollars will be sold by weight” – as some smart Russian blogger put it – who creates such buzz and is there a rational reason for the slightest of anxieties? Well, there is a fact that poses a question, with a big Q. Dollar monetary stock worldwide has grown two-fold over the last half-year and this printing press does not seem to be slowing down. Would this financial pyramid eventually collapse (since these lots of green paper are not based neither on gold or something equally solid nor collateralized to be collateral)? No one from the U.S. Federal Reserve System so far has intelligibly explained what they are planning to do with the paper, and this mystery probably holds the key answer to the question posed above.  The unimaginable trillions of dollars of national debt make the currently realised $US 700 billion bailout plan look pale in comparison – as well as the $US 850 billion next one currently being discussed. The truth is that all this money just does not exist. You can print banknotes but you cannot necessarily call them “money”. Imagine this money distributed equally among every living person and fancy what would happen if they all decided to buy goods simultaneously – there’d not be enough goods on this planet. What’s next? Guess for yourself. So, the devaluation of the dollar is probably not far away but what could happen before this event? Here are just some of the most fabulous yet entirely possible worst-case scenarios. Option 1. Have you heard about Amero? Not yet?! Well, that’s how most probably will be called the currency of the united economic zone of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Unimaginable? You’d better imagine what to do with the green paper stockpiled throughout the world if the exchange rate is 1:10 or even 1:100. Option 2. This world is infested with forgers and false dollars (most of them not in the U.S.) When the hour comes and the new (let’s say red) dollar is produced, all the rest of the world would face the problem of how to use the green ones. Beware! The print is toxic and you’d die anyway when trying to burn them in your fireplace once you survive the heart attack of hearing the news itself. Option 3. Everyone knows that the U.S. is a cheap country. Americans do not hellishly spend popular $US 100 banknotes as often as the rest of us. No use – no need. Why don’t they call them off altogether? They are nearly all false, anyway. Option 4. The U.S. declares itself technically bankrupt. Impossible? There are RULES, you’d say? Everything’s possible for the country that has changed the rules of the game countless times to become the biggest consumer sponging on the rest of the world. Option 5. Uncontrollable printing of the dollar banknotes alone would collapse the dollar system that would make the debt returning for the U.S. Federal Reserve System a task somehow much easier than it is nowadays. There are economists that do hope that a number of regional unified currencies would emerge within the near future in Asia, Latin America, and Arab world, and even among post-Soviet countries. The euro is a spectacular example, but you do not need to be an economist to understand that such processes expand for decades (consider again the euro example) while the crisis has already stepped in and mushroomed as straight and tall as an atomic cloud. That is why the more probable seems an Option 6, which is a good old receipt when some countries are busy exterminating each other’s population while the other countries are just accepting arms contracts from both warring parties. Just keep in mind we live in a nuclear age. Again unthinkable? Than take a closer look at the Islamist-torn Pakistan and India and their relations after the Mumbai massacre. Nuclear weapons? They have them both.  If they wage war against each other, they’d be no such thing as Asian, Arab or even European financial markets at all and nobody would care what the hell happened to the dollar.

Too much television can make children ‘mentally ill’

Telegraph
February 2, 2009

Excessive exposure makes a child materialistic, which in turn affects their relationship with their parents and their health.

That is one of the conclusions of a new wide-ranging survey into British childhood, produced for the Children’s Society.

It says that children are part of a new form of consumerism, with under 16 year-olds spending £3 billion of their own money each year on clothes, snacks, music, video games and magazines.

The report claims that some advertisers “explicitly exploit the mechanism of peer pressure, while painting parents as buffoons” and that in its most extreme form, advertising persuades children that “you are what you own”.

In addition the “constant exposure” to celebrities through, TV soaps, dramas and chat shows is having a detrimental effect.

It says: “Children today know in intimate detail the lives of celebrities who are richer than they will ever be, and mostly better-looking. This exposure inevitably raises aspirations and reduces self-esteem.”

It adds the way celebrities are portrayed "automatically encourages the excessive pursuit of wealth and beauty."

This "media-driven consumerism" is having a negative effect on a child's wellbeing, the report says.

It highlights a study into the effect of consumerism on the psychological wellbeing of 10-13 year-olds.

That study found: "Other things being equal, the more a child is exposed to the media (television and Internet), the more materialistic she becomes, the worse she relates to her parents and the worse her mental health."

The Good Childhood inquiry, compiled by more than 35,000 contributors is independent of the Church of England affiliated society but has been endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams.

It takes an in-depth look at the changing face of childhood and family life in Britain, and the challenges facing youngsters today.

The report has found that only a quarter of children with mental health problems get any specialist help, and one in 10 five to 16-year-olds now have mental health issues, ranging from anxiety or depression to conduct disorders such as destructive behaviour.

It claims that the upward trend of violence in the media in general, is making children violent and causing tension within the family.

The report says: "We know from controlled studies that exposure to violence can breed violence.

"So it seems likely that the upward trend in media violence is helping to produce the upward trend in violent behaviour – and also the growth of psychological conflict in family relationships."

The report also notes that commercial pressures have led to the "premature sexualisation" of young people.

It notes that young people are having sex earlier because of "many forces", including "more privacy when both parents work, more contraception, commercial pressures toward premature sexualisation, and fundamental changes in attitude".

The report recommends that sex and relationships, and understanding of the media should be a compulsory part of the personal, social and health curriculum.

And it says advertising of unhealthy foods and alcohol should be banned before 9pm.

Read full article here

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Wars And Economic Failure Have Been Marching Us Towards One World Government

Enemies one of the benefits of war, do they think we will beg for one world government? Wars and the daisy chain of fraud, free trade, globalization, off shoring, outsourcing, and financial turned into weapons and toxic wast, intentional regulatory failures, they were never errors but plans all along

The US and Israel are on parallel paths.  Each is now a base of operations for the Illuminati, and each will be discarded as a nation-state entity once their usefulness to the cause of the New World Disorder has been served, or at least that is the plan.  Our nations have become a den of vipers.  The corruption lies not with the common folk, but with their bought-and-paid-for or compromised leadership, while the common folk are kept in the dark by a corrupt media that is owned and controlled exclusively by the Illuminati.

Both the US and Israel have created the best enemies that money can buy, because the objective is to cause as much bloodshed and destruction as possible, for as long as possible, in order to provide fun and profits for the benefit of their respective military-industrial complexes.  After all, you need a scapegoat on which to blame the destruction and loss of life that is necessary to rake in trillions of dollars in war profits, to implement genocides and population control agendas, to exert your political will, to rob other nations of their resources and to satisfy the limitless bloodlust of the satanic, megalomaniacal, trillionaire sociopaths who run the shadow governments in both the US and Israel.  

The Illuminati, however, have conspired to achieve their objectives while simultaneously preventing the US and Israel from becoming too powerful, prosperous and independent to want to surrender their sovereignty in favor of world government.  After all, why would the people of any free and prosperous nation with superior military and economic prowess on a global basis ever succumb to a one-world, Marxist-fascistic, Orwellian police state of feudality?  That is why our respective militaries have been forced to suffer nothing but losses, stalemates and incomplete victories since the end of WWII.  This process of implementing wars for profit without achieving too much military power and economic independence has been achieved by hamstringing US and Israeli military operations with incomplete or scaled-back objectives, moronic rules of engagement, insufficient manpower and equipment and implementation of defective military strategies which ensure that operations will devolve into a complete cluster-f--k, thus always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
  Why did Roosevelt provoke the Japanese, and allow them to destroy our battleships in Pearl Harbor, while the carriers were conveniently on maneuvers off shore?  Was is because he was worried the Japanese might find out we had broken their code, or was it to hamstring our navy to make sure the war would drag on in the Pacific for years to ensure that the Illuminist military-industrial complex made mega-profits and took us out of the Depression which the Illuminists themselves had caused?  Couldn't we have prevented the attack, saved several thousand lives and used the old ships until the new ones were built, and still have beaten the snots out of the Japanese?  Did Admiral Kimmel have to be disgraced?  Why did we ship defective weapons to nationalist forces in China, thus allowing the communist forces to take over after WWII?  Why was General Patton assassinated by our own military when he sought to push the soviets back to their own borders, and why did we then set communist Russia up with a new kingdom in the Yalta sellout of Eastern Europe? Why did we abandon the Hungarian freedom fighters at the last second in 1956 and allow the communists in Soviet Russia to slaughter them?  Why did we not bomb the Chinese troops in North Korea for a sure victory as desired by General MacArthur, who was later disgraced by the evil Illuminist puppet, Harry Truman, instead settling for a division of Korea into North and South sectors by a demilitarized zone which we still occupy to this day?  Why did we cut short the TET Offensive in Vietnam, which would have brought us to a complete victory according to the leading North Vietnamese General who admitted he and his troops would have been done for, thus settling for a later loss instead after a long, bloody and expensive war?  Why did we stop short of taking Baghdad in the First Gulf War?  Was it because we were winning too speedily with too few casualties for the Illuminists to make their usual gargantuan war profits? Was there not enough bloodshed to quench their thirst the Illuminati's thirst for blood?   Why did we use depleted uranium in both Gulf Wars so as to sicken and kill our own troops?  Was it to make the medical and pharmaceutical industries flush with cash and to cut pensions short, thus saving hundreds of billions of dollars?  Was it to reduce the number of patriotic veterans who might violently object to the implementation of world government?  Why did it take more time to beat a bunch of rag-head terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan numbering in the mere tens of thousands than it took to win WWII?  Why did we use a small fraction of the number of troops recommended by our senior military commanders for the so-called War on Terror?  Why were our troops continually ill-equipped and running excessively long tours of duty?  Was it because we wanted to extend the war and wear out our military in order to reduce the number of US troops, and the potential for objection to world government by our patriotic veterans, by replacing them with mercenary killers who could care less?  Why did we cause a civil war on top of the war to remove Saddam, due to the supposed errors in judgment that were made in our strategies for conquest?  Was it to extend the war while channeling hundreds of billions to Illuminist contractors and mercenaries via no-bid contracts?  Why did Clinton give our nuclear secrets to the Chinese?  Are you beginning to get the picture?

In 1947 to 1948, Israel was sold out by Britain as it gave up possession of Palestine, which left them with indefensible borders and a country less than ten miles wide in some sections, thereby ensuring continual conflict with the Arabs.  This vicious redrawing of borders to foment conflict is something the British Black Nobility are experts at after centuries of practice.  They thought that the Arabs would destroy Israel which was becoming a thorn in their side because they wanted a piece of the Middle East oil action, and Israel was putting a crimp in their plans.  But then Israel won miraculously in the face of an overwhelming attack by several Arab nations simultaneously, and Truman saw his chance to use Israel to gain a foothold in the Middle East, a base of operations for Illuminists of the US faction.  Incidentally, Britain lost virtually its entire empire after screwing Israel, a nice bit of poetic justice and divine retribution for their treachery.  But Israel did not press its advantage, winning by simply surviving, in its first war with the surrounding Arab states.  Many of the Palestinians left the Palestinian territories bordering on Israel during this conflict, thinking that Israel would be easily defeated and that they would get to take over all the Israeli lands, as well as get their own back.  Their desire to get this abandoned land back is the basis for the so-called "right of return."  Frankly, in attacking Israel, the Arabs forfeited their rights to their own lands by failing to respect Israel's borders, as did the Palestinians by cooperating in the war to destroy Israel.  The surrounding Arab states could and should have taken all the displaced Palestinians in, but instead left a good portion of them along Israel's new occupied lands as a hemorrhoid for Israel to deal with, allowing their Arab brethren to live in poverty and squalor rather than take them in after telling them to leave and then losing the war.  They use the Palestinian territories as a base from which they can terrorize Israel and eventually destroy them.  They have no intention of giving Israel peace, but instead want to take them apart piece by piece via the corrupt Oslo process and the so-called Roadmap to Peace, which should be termed the Roadmap to Israel's Destruction.

In its 1967 Six Day War, which was a preemptive strike by Israel in an act of self-preservation against Arab states massing troops along its miniscule borders, Israel could have been more aggressive, but they pulled back and started negotiating with the Arabs after less than a week of fighting, when they could have extended their borders and made them more defensible.  Why?  Was it because the US insisted to protect its US oil interests with the Arabs?  Was it because, in any case, the US Illuminists did not want Israel to become too powerful and extend their borders too far, because they wanted to destroy Israel when they had finished using it as a base of operations for Middle East conquest?  Why did the US withhold aid from Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War until it was almost too late, thereby almost destroying Israel in the process?  Was it because Kissinger, Nixon's Secretary of State, wanted to bloody Israel's nose to show them who was boss, and that they had better do as they were told, or else?  Why, after Israel blew through Lebanon in the First Lebanon War and surrounded Arafat and his PLO, did they allow him to escape to Libya?  Why did they tolerate the PLO for so many years when they could have easily eliminated them?   Why did they allow Hamas to be eligible for elective office when they are sworn to the destruction of Israel?  In the second Lebanon War, why did they use a tiny fraction of the forces used in the First Lebanon War against an enemy that was far more entrenched and dug in than in the first war?  Was it because they were not supposed to win at the insistence of the US?  Were they told to keep Hezbollah in place to keep fomenting terror and trouble, thus generating profits for the US and Israeli military-industrial complexes?  Why does the US fund Saudi Arabia which then funds Hamas' operations?  Is it not convenient for oil companies to have an excuse to gouge consumers every time the Middle East ignites in conflict?  Is not the whole peace process just a way to dismantle Israel after US and Israeli Illuminists are finished with it?  You better believe it!!!  Are you starting to get the picture again?  

The fact that the US is the top-ranked military power in the world, and that the Israeli military is the top-ranked military in the Middle East, is no coincidence.  Israel, of course, derives much of its strength from money and aid provided by the US, and it is, in essence, a satellite base for the Illuminist operation to create a region of oil hegemony in the Middle East where oil is the cheapest, and therefore the most profitable, to extract.  Additionally, the control of this crucial resource provides great political clout and the opportunity for economic extortion in the great play for power. Russia is currently doing something similar with natural gas.  Once the Illuminati have control of the world's most prolific and profitable oil supply, they can use it to force other nations, as well as their own people, to accept one-world government by turning off the taps, by driving the price up to extortionate levels or by driving the price down to levels that are economically unsustainable for competing nations who would prefer to pass on a one-world system.

In addition to the manufactured wars for profit and the attempt to put a stranglehold on critical commodities and other resources, is the Illuminist economic destruction agenda which is being played out right before your eyes in the US and around the world.  This destruction was brought about by the intentional creation of a conspiratorial daisy chain of fraud throughout the mortgage and consumer loan industries via derivatives traded in the unregulated OTC derivatives market, accompanied by intentional regulatory failures by the Fed and the elitist bootlickers in our government along with legislative machinations that opened the Pandora's Box previously closed and locked by Glass-Steagall, AND NOT BY UNINTENTIONAL MISCALCULATIONS OR ERRORS IN JUDGMENT --- THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING!!!

The products spawned by that daisy chain of fraud were spread throughout the world like a deadly poison, only to be cut off unexpectedly and serendipitously by Meredith Whitney of Oppenheimer when she exposed Citigroup's subprime derivatives as being toxic waste weapons of mass financial destruction.  In addition, here in the US, the Illuminati have used free trade, globalization, off-shoring and outsourcing, along with both legal and illegal immigration, to bust our unions, and to destroy our domestic manufacturing sector by shipping it overseas, along with the productive, good-paying jobs produced by that sector.  In place of those jobs in the manufacturing sector, we now peddle toxic waste derivatives, flip hamburgers and greet people entering department stores.  These are the new "wonderful" jobs driving our new economy.  The idea here was to knock the snots out of everyone around the globe, and especially in the US, so they will beg for a one-world solution, which will of course be offered in true Hegelian Dialectic fashion.

(original article)

Facebook plans to 'offer up' users as marketing tool for corporations

John Byrne
Published: Monday February 2, 2009

150 million users are an appealing lure.

In a move likely to stir privacy advocates' ire, the company's 24-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the platform's ability to poll specific groups of users and be used as a marketing tool at the Davos World Economic Forum.

Later this year, Facebook intends to introduces "corporate polls" targeted at certain portions of the user base as a new means of making money.

Zuckerberg's demonstration didn't use corporate sponsors as examples -- instead, he used a more moderated approach, tempting the audience with polls on Obama, Palestine and Israel, "relaying the results back to the audience within minutes."

"Giving consumer brands the chance to use such a wide audience to get a quick response to targeted questions would do away with, or at least reduce their reliance on, expensive and time-consuming focus groups," the Guardian wrote Sunday. "the company has been experimenting with analysis of user sentiment, tracking the mood of its audience through what they are doing online. Such information is potentially very interesting to large brands, which are always seeking to measure what their customers think about their own or competitors' products."

"Zuckerberg said 2009 will be Facebook's 'intense' year as it tries to justify some of the mammoth valuations that have been placed upon it by making some serious revenues through advertising. He was even seen sporting a tie, a sartorial extra which the Harvard drop-out has so far eschewed," the paper added.

Massive social networking and social news services -- such as Digg, Twitter and Facebook -- are increasingly attempting to capitalize on their large user bases and prove profitability. A deal to sell Digg in the purported neighborhood of $200 million fell through last year after vetting by Google.

Facebook's technology already allows advertisers to target specific categories of users, in much the same way that Google allows companies to target users based on keywords. The site is said to be logging an additional 450,000 users a day.

Polls are expected to launch broadly in the spring, and have been tested by companies like AT&T and Careerbuilder.com.

AT&T is already the target of privacy advocates; a company whistleblower alleges that the company hosted an National Security Agency spy room and allowed the agency to tap into its network to track phone calls. 

More Disturbing Legislation Emanating From Congress

Bill Lindner
American Chronicle
Thursday, January 29, 2009

It has become increasingly clear over the past several years — it’s just become more blatantly obvious since the appointment of the Bush administration to the White House — that the U.S. Congress that is supposed to protect and speak for the people they’re elected to represent has been doing quite the opposite, once again introducing potentially unconstitutional legislation that tramples rights and liberties.

After the attacks of 9/11 — that could and should have been prevented by the Bush administration, but weren’t — the American public was repeatedly served with illegal, unconstitutional ‘legislation’ by a corrupt, complicit Congress designed to destroy Democracy, rights and freedoms. The Bush administration is finally gone, although it will take years to rid the government of the leftover trash, the illegal, unconstitutional legislation isn’t. It’s not surprising when you consider the fact that many in Congress were bought off by large corporations and lobbyists years ago.

Almost a year ago, The San Francisco Chronicle had a report entitled “Rule by fear or rule by law?” that detailed how, since 9/11, seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

One has to wonder what kind of ‘new programs’ require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house millions of people.

Since 1999, the U.S. government has employed a series of single-bid contracts with Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations inside the U.S. The same KBR who is responsible for electrocuting U.S. troops in Iraq as well as giving them contaminated supplies that made several of them sick. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, allegedly to transport detainees.

Diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott says the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan entitled ENDGAME that sets as its goal the removal of all removable aliens and potential terrorists.

Section 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), that never became law, says “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies,” gives the executive the power to invoke martial law, meaning that for the first time in over a century, the president could authorize the use of the military in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition deemed necessary by the President in a situation where its determined that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.

Slow and Methodical Destruction Of Democracy, Rights and Freedoms

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, ramrodded through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, “to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes,” allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of “terrorist” organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies. It calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

In 2007, the Bush administration quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51(NSPD-51) to ensure “continuity of government” in the event of what is vaguely called a “catastrophic emergency.” According to the directive, if the president determined that such a state of emergency occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure “continuity of government,” including everything from canceling elections to launching a nuclear attack.

Senator Jane Harman (D-CA) authored another draconian piece of legislation — that fortunately never became law — known as the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives by a 404-6 margin, that would set up a commission to “examine and report upon the facts and causes” of alleged violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

There is also the egregious USA PATRIOT ACT whose intent is “to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.”

You’ll notice that all the draconian ‘terrorism’ legislation is intentionally loosely defined, leaving plenty of room for the words to be twisted around to suit a particular need. All the ‘legislation’ mentioned above has resulted in nothing more than destroying Democracy, rights and freedoms while slowly and methodically shifting the U.S. towards becoming a police state.

Congress Wants To Authorize & Legalize FEMA Camp Facilities

Apparently the ‘legislation’ mentioned above hasn’t already done enough damage and destruction to America and all who live here.

Lee Rogers from Rogue Government reported on new legislation designed to authorize and legalize FEMA camp facilities. A new bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives called the National Emergency Centers Act or H.R. 645, that if passed into law, will direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers otherwise known as FEMA camp facilities on military installations.

The proposed legislation is incredibly disturbing since there is already an apparatus in place to setup nationwide martial law. Even though there are already FEMA detention centers in place, Congress now wants to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency.

Section 2 of the legislation determines that the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations to provide temporary housing, medical and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster, to provide centralized locations for training and ensuring coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders, to provide centralized locations to improve coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations and to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

More Dangerous, Loosely Worded ‘Legislation’

Notice there is plenty of leeway and no definition of appropriate needs, other than ‘as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.’ That could for all intents and purposes, mean anything. Note that the legislation says the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations, which implies that they can setup as many FEMA camps as they want as long as there are 6 of them.

Taxpayers will only have to pay $180,000,000 per year for the facilities that could end up treating them as criminals or worse. It appears from the language of the bill that it’s meant to legalize what they’ve already been doing and the rationale behind the legislation is most likely to serve as a mechanism of control if the authorities need facilities to hold large amounts of dissenting people.

After everything Congress has put the people through these past eight years, it’s unlikely that the bill is meant to help people. As noted by Rogers from Rogue Government, one only needs to take a look at what happened during Hurricane Katrina to see how obvious it is that the government doesn’t care about the people, or for that matter, what they think. These proposed facilities and the proposed legislation will most likely not be utilized for the people’s interest.

These so-called ‘national emergency’ centers would be used in a national emergency only if the national emergency requires a large number of people to be rounded up and detained. If that isn’t the case, why have national emergency facilities built in military installations?

What does Congress know that they aren’t telling us? Haven’t they already inflicted enough damage with their egregious, unconstitutional ‘legislation?’ As noted by The San Francisco Chronicle, what could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

It’s time for the ruling by fear to stop and the ruling by law to begin and it’s time for the rule of law to apply to everyone, including politicians who violate it, not just the rest of us.

Research related articles:

1. New Legislation Authorizes FEMA Camps In U.S.
2. Treasury Sends to Congress Legislation to Buy Troubled Assets
3. Rangel To Push Universal Military Draft Legislation Once More
4. Congress Should Rescind the State of Emergency Declared by Bush
5. Congress Ends 9/11 Workers’ Health Care Bill
6. Kucinich: Demand that Congress Issue Subpoenas for Continuity of Government Plans
7. US National Debt Limit Raised Ahead of Budget Busting Bailout Legislation
8. Author: Some in Congress calling for war crimes trials
9. The Do-Something Congress
10. Who is Putting “Intense Pressure” on Bush and Congress to Pass the Bailout?
11. 573,639: The disturbing number of Britons with no criminal record but now registered on Labour’s DNA database
12. McCain Adviser: Treasury Doesn’t Need Congress for Bailout

Change We Can Believe In: Obama to Expand CIA Rendition Program

February 2nd, 2009

I guess there’s no need for the secret prisons if the victims just happen to die during “rendention.”

Via: Chicago Tribune:

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.

Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as an “illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

“Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing legal reasoning behind the decision. “The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”

One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”

Research Credit: cptmarginal

Top Forbes editor calls Employee Free Choice Act 'pro-slavery'

RAW STORY
Published: Sunday February 1, 2009

Intensifying the polarized rhetoric surrounding the Employee Free Choice Act, a top Forbes magazine editor called the bill "anti-free choice" and "pro-slavery" on Fox News Saturday.

Appearing on Forbes on Fox, Forbes national editor Mike Ozanian also said the bill "would be bad for the economy, bad for jobs, and bad for consumers. It would essentially allow unions to bully people into joining them."

In fact, as the House Committee on Education and Labor says on its website, the Employee Free Choice Act would make the choice between the National Labor Relations Board's secret ballot election process and a card sign-up process "a majority choice of the employees, not the employer."

During the Forbes on Fox discussion, Forbes.com contributor John Rutledge said, "Banning secret ballots, that is a terrible idea. This is a Gestapo tactic."

On-screen text during the segment featured the sentences "Union Membership Soaring; Why Ban Secret Votes at Work?" and "Unions Push to Ban Secret Votes at Work as Membership Soars."

But the bill would not "ban" secret-ballot elections. Rather, it would in part allow workers to decide whether to hold a secret ballot election or a majority sign-up process when dealing with the question of unionization, Media Matters said Saturday.

U.S. union membership actually increased in 2008, but Employee Free Choice act supporters say the bill is needed to allow workers to freely unionize. U.S. business leaders remain staunchly opposed to the measure.

(original article and video)

Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning

Neil Comment: An example how on how you condition people to make them more positive to cloning.

Aaahhh... Isn't it cute... Oh we can't be against this can we, it's just so cute.

An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue

By Richard Gray and Roger Dobson

Young Spanish ibex (Capra pyrenaica), Sierra de Gredos, Spain Photo: Jose Luis GOMEZ de FRANCISCO/naturepl.com

The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain.

Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen.

Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.

Sadly, the newborn ibex kid died shortly after birth due to physical defects in its lungs. Other cloned animals, including sheep, have been born with similar lung defects.

But the breakthrough has raised hopes that it will be possible to save endangered and newly extinct species by resurrecting them from frozen tissue.

It has also increased the possibility that it will one day be possible to reproduce long-dead species such as woolly mammoths and even dinosaurs.

Dr Jose Folch, from the Centre of Food Technology and Research of Aragon, in Zaragoza, northern Spain, led the research along with colleagues from the National Research Institute of Agriculture and Food in Madrid.

He said: "The delivered kid was genetically identical to the bucardo. In species such as bucardo, cloning is the only possibility to avoid its complete disappearance."

Pyrenean ibex, which have distinctive curved horns, were once common in northern Spain and in the French Pyrenees, but extensive hunting during the 19th century reduced their numbers to fewer than 100 individuals.

They were eventually declared protected in 1973, but by 1981 just 30 remained in their last foothold in the Ordesa National Park in the Aragon District of the Pyrenees.

The last bucardo, a 13-year-old female known as Celia, was found dead in January 2000 by park rangers near the French border with her skull crushed.

Dr Folch and his colleagues, who were funded by the Aragon regional government, had, however, captured the bucardo the previous year and had taken a tissue sample from her ear for cryopreservation.

Using techniques similar to those used to clone Dolly the sheep, known as nuclear transfer, the researchers were able to transplant DNA from the tissue into eggs taken from domestic goats to create 439 embryos, of which 57 were implanted into surrogate females.

Just seven of the embryos resulted in pregnancies and only one of the goats finally gave birth to a female bucardo, which died a seven minutes later due to breathing difficulties, perhaps due to flaws in the DNA used to create the clone.

Despite the highly inefficient cloning process and death of the cloned bucardo, many scientists believe similar approaches may be the only way to save critically endangered species from disappearing.

Research carried out by Japanese geneticist Teruhiko Wakayama raised hopes that even species that died out long ago could be resurrected after he used cells taken from mice frozen 16 years ago to produce healthy clones.

But attempts to bring back species such as woolly mammoths and even the Dodo are fraught with difficulties. Even when preserved in ice, DNA degrades over time and this leaves gaps in the genetic information required to produce a healthy animal.

Scientists, however, last year published a near-complete genome of the woolly mammoth, which died out around 10,000 years ago, sparking speculation it will be possible to synthesise the mammoth DNA.

Professor Robert Miller, director the Medical Research Council's Reproductive Sciences Unit at Edinburgh University, is working with the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland on a project to use cloning on rare African mammals including the northern white rhino.

They have set up the Institute for Breeding Rare and Endangered African Mammals in the hope of using breeding technologies to conserve species including the Ethiopian wolf, the African wild dog and the pygmy hippo.

Professor Millar said: "I think this is an exciting advance as it does show the potential of being able to regenerate extinct species.

"Clearly there is some way to go before it can be used effectively, but the advances in this field are such that we will see more and more solutions to the problems faced."

A number of projects around the world are now attempting to store tissue and DNA from endangered species. The Zoological Society of London and the Natural History Museum have set up the Frozen Ark project in a bid to preserve DNA from thousands of animals before they disappear entirely.

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool

The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.

By Greg Miller 
February 1, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."

Despite concern about rendition, Obama's prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the "transitory" technique.

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism. 

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed a public hearing in an official court. "Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance," Malinowski said.

CIA veterans involved in renditions characterized the program as important but of limited intelligence-gathering use. It is used mainly for terrorism suspects not considered valuable enough for the CIA to keep, they said.

"The reason we did interrogations [ourselves] is because renditions for the most part weren't very productive," said a former senior CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

The most valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda came from prisoners who were in CIA custody and questioned by agency experts, the official said. Once prisoners were turned over to Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere, the agency had limited influence over how much intelligence was shared, how prisoners were treated and whether they were later released.

"In some ways, [rendition] is the worst option," the former official said. "If they are in U.S. hands, you have a lot of checks and balances, medics and lawyers. Once you turn them over to another service, you lose control."

In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they "do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture," or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties.

The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be mistreated.

(full article)