Is that who we are now?

"Oh no … really? Is that who we are now? Blind, unquestioning, warlike? Are we that violent, that childish, that silly, that shallow? Are we that afraid of others? Of ourselves? Of the possibility of genuine change? Are we that easily swayed, that capable of defending “American interests”, whatever “American interests” means? Are we that racist, that terrified, that protective of an idea that we don’t even question what the idea has come to represent?"
  
"There’s another way I look at the Twin Towers that’s perhaps more specific to myself. Every time I look at where they used to be, I try to think about New Yorkers in the 1960s and 70s who were horrified when they were built. The towers that were going up must have destroyed not just the skyline but, in their minds, also what the downtown stood for. So, I guess, historically speaking, I feel sad about the towers being there in the first place, although architecturally they were pleasant enough to look at from my late-70s forward perspective. And if nothing else, the Twin Towers helped the direction-impaired (me) know which way was north and south. And there were some great, wild dance parties at the rooftop restaurant. It was a moment and that moment is gone. But I am being nostalgic here and romantic." 

 "Someone asked me, “Do you think children born after, say, 1994, will ever feel the same things about 9/11 that people born before then feel?” More and more, what we “feel” about collective history seems like something manufactured, and kind of pumped into us, rather than a real emotion. It’s all so framed by the sense that reality doesn’t exist any more, or at least not in a way that is alterable or questioning. 

-- Michael Stipe - the former REM frontman on Douglas Coupland’s 9/11-inspired artwork and the images that still haunt the US

Good Riddance

Hillary Clinton has given her farewell speech; she is to be replaced by another warmongering imperialist. Good riddance.

The one thing Hillary did do and Obama admitted, is try to keep his image as well as empire's intact abroad. The world expected something different than what they got.

Just as her husband compartmentalized his (sex) life, Hillary talked the peace talk and acted as arbitrator in world conflicts - but she promoted business with warmongers; Lockheed Martin, for one - the maker of F35's, the death machines that the governor, mayor, congressman and senators want to come to BTV.

There's a wonderful blog, Undernews, I've read for years. The blogger owner lived right in the midst of the DC scene for years, but now has retired to Maine. He's collected quite a dossier on the ex-Madam Secretary and her sleazeball husband. Take some time and look here.

Party on, folks

A Happy New Year gift from Barack Obama - he gives Americans and civil liberties the shaft by signing the NDAA just passed by our congress. (No surprise, it just codifies what he was doing anyway - indefinite detention of terrorist suspects.) However, with this signing, Americans can say good-bye to half the Bill of Rights. Amendments 4-9 have been nullified. If he had reservations, why the fuck did he sign it? .

McVeigh then and McVeigh now

Timothy McVeigh's one-time defense lawyer, Jeralyn E. Merritt of Talk Left writes,

"Liberals are shooting themselves in the foot if they think they can may hay with connecting McVeigh to current times. What they will get is more anti-terror laws that we don't need, more government surveillance and less freedom -- and it won't make the country one bit safer.

"Our civil liberties must be assiduously protected. Once they start to slip, they go quickly. Once we remove them for one group, it becomes easier to do it for the next group. Once we begin making exceptions for catastrophic events, the exceptions will become the rule."

Dutch legal: Security vs. Privacy

NRC/International reports that a Dutch student has gone to court to get a passport without having his fingerprints added to a police data base.

And on the war on drugs, DutchNews.nl writes that a judge has told police to stop scanning car number plates in order to solve drugs crimes.

Russia Today - Foiled Underwear Bomber is Intelligence Patsy

I always thought there was something fishy about this "incident" about the flight from A'dam to Detroit last week. Starting the New Year right....another staged provocation

From RT

Fully Controlled at All Times (Updated)

Scroll down for Update.
_______________

"They could get lucky... they could have easily got a hand gun... they could get lucky, you just never know. Who knows with these guys... just because they may be incompetent, doesn't mean something couldn't have happened. We shouldn't exaggerate the threat coming from home-grown groups." -- Lydia Khalil, former counter terrorism analyst for the NYPD from 2006 to 2008, on the Riverdale plotters, in NPR's The Takeway morning program segment, "New York City Terrorism and Security."

Here's Ethan Brown's diary in TalkLeft, talking about "thin, informant-driven" past terror plots (Sears Tower, Fort Dix and the 34th Street subway station in Manhattan) which resulted in guilty verdicts. The TL piece ends with:

These so-called "preemptive indictments"--in which defendants are charged based on their intentions and not their actions--are a perversion of justice and a cruel joke, every bit of a joke as the theory of "preemptive war" that led us to Iraq. And yet it is this legal theory that drives our anti-terror strategy in the U.S.

From Medialens Message Board [emphasis Medialens]:

Questions about the "Temple Plot"

The FBI and and media are going ape over this alleged "Temple bombing" plot in which four men from Newburgh, New York, planted what they thought were bombs outside a Jewish temple. Also, these "domestic terrorists" were planning to obtain Stinger missiles to shoot down U.S. military planes.

Interestingly, we see that the entire "plot" was hatched by an FBI informant:

The defendants, in their efforts to acquire weapons, dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, authorities said. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants, a federal complaint said.

In June 2008, the informant met Cromitie in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military forces, officials said.

Folks, let's take a hard look at this one, please. It is not as though C-4 explosives and Stinger missiles are available at every neighborhood drug store. Had any of the four "terrorists" ever obtained explosives or anything similar on their own? Somehow, I seriously doubt it. The New York Times pretty much gives it away, although unintentionally:

A federal law enforcement official described the plot as “aspirational” — meaning that the suspects wanted to do something but had no weapons or explosives — and described the operation as a sting with a cooperator within the group.

“It was fully controlled at all times,” a law enforcement official said.

Indeed, this Freudian slip perhaps is the most truthful line in the entire article.

More from the same Medialens MB thread:

Like Miami 7, New York Terror Plot Funded And Uncovered By The FBI

At the top of today’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez reported:

"We know that they had been working with an FBI informant for quite awhile. And they purchased inactive missiles and inert C-4 explosives from them. I wonder where they got the money. Who's funding these things?...Would you say that home-grown terrorists are a bigger threat now to us than foreign terrorists?"

Again, an FBI informant led these “home-grown” “Al-Qaeda-Wanna-Be” losers to purchase explosives and probably provided the money and the expertise, as they did in the Miami Seven “terror plot” to blow-up the Sears Tower.

In other words, these “terror cells” have been created, engineered and funded by the FBI.

In the Miami Seven case, defense attorneys said the group had no links to al-Qaida and were probably set up by a government informant.

After two hung juries, 5 of the Miami 7 were found guilty this month. To make their case, the government would have tried these losers twenty times until they got a conviction. They can afford to do it with our money.

These Miami 7 losers were promised money by an FBI informant to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, and despite the fact that they did nothing but try to extract money from the informant, the Jury convicted 5 of the remaining 6 defendants, one had been acquitted in an earlier trial.

I expect to see the same exact story line develop in the New York case.

Without the help of the FBI, there would have been no terror plot.

The Bush machinery is still in place “creating” terror to keep Americans in constant fear and to give Dick Cheney more credence while he defends torture.

The ML thread ends with exerpts from an article in the Independent:

Kim Sengupta: Official hype on terrorism will only stoke Islamic resentment

… The suspects were Muslim converts who had talked loosely about carrying out attacks. But they were also petty criminals who had no links with known terrorists and had no expertise or weaponry to carry out such acts. The C-4 plastic explosive "bombs" they placed outside the synagogues in the Bronx were duds, as were their Stinger missiles. They all were supplied by the FBI, who monitored the "plot"throughout.

This kind of official hype regarding terrorism is hardly confined to the other side of the Atlantic. Last month, the arrest of 12 terror suspects in the north of England took place amid massive media coverage and the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, declaring that Britain faced a "very big" threat. All that unravelled fairly swiftly and embarrassingly with the admission that no evidence of terrorist plotting had been found.

What these cases do, however, is heighten public fear about Islamist terrorism.

…The four men arrested in New York have been charged with, among other things, conspiracy to use "weapons of mass destruction" – ironic in the context of the falsehoods used to justify the Iraq invasion, which a senior British diplomat called "a recruiting sergeant" for insurgents.

Commissioner Kelly described the FBI sting operation as showing "Our concern about homegrown terrorism".

…By treating the hapless New York plot as a huge domestic chapter of global jihad, the authorities risk fuelling the sense of resentment which may, indeed, help create the homegrown terrorism they say they are seeking to counter.

Update

Ethan Brown at TL:

The New York Post has a useful little primer on the informant at the center of the alleged plot to bomb a Bronx synagogue. According to the Post, the informant is an upstate New York motel owner named Shahed Hussain.

Hussain became an informant after being busted on fraud charges; Hussain worked as a translator for the DMV and helped immigrants cheat on driver's tests. His bid to become an informant, according to the Post, was driven by a desire to win leniency on the fraud charges and avoid being deported to Pakistan. [MORE]

With two astute TL commenters [my emphasis]:

"[S]pending a year talking some clowns into doing something violently stupid isn't preventing terrorism in the slightest...like the rest of our anti-terror policies, its only to make us feel better or safer...nothing is being accomplished. It's illusionary "feel good" nonsense that does more harm than good."

"But this way they get to time the arrests to fill a need in keeping the public scared of terror attacks and thinking the techniques being used (spying on us all, and torture) are keeping us safe."

(Cross-posted at Antemedius.)

Killing them softly

Antemedius

[...] Obama's surge in Afghanistan will ensure a steady supply of "collateral damage", even though sane military voices condemn "democracy at gunpoint" and Taliban "tacticians" mock Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency tactics.

The Bush "war on terror" has been rebranded as "overseas contingency operations" (OCO) by the Obama administration.

Pepe Escobar argues everything remains the same, but with a new twist: Washington selling OCO in AfPak to US public opinion not as an American war - but as a Pakistani war.

Surveillance State

Talk Left

Police Creating "Terror Tip Sheets" for National Database

Meet the new "Operation Pipeline." The brainchild of the LAPD, it's being used by police dpeartments [sic] nationwide to create a new national database of people engaging in suspicious behavior.

[...]

"Operation Pipeline" is the drug interdiction profiling program used on highways to search cars stopped for traffic violations when certain indicators are present. Some of the indicators... are laughable, others are completely inconsistent. In the first category: fast food wrappers in the car. In the latter: there was no visible luggage or there was too much visible luggage.

The LAPD takes the insanity one step further in an attempt to identify would-be terrorists via suspicious activity reports, called SARS.

[Continue reading about this absurdity here.]

Waterboarding of detainees used to link Saddam & 9/11

Craig Murray

I have just learnt something which has convinced me that Bush, Cheney and Rice are indeed evil in the sense that Hitler was evil. I did not actually believe that until today.

The excellent and much-respected Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild of the USA and Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has discovered that waterboarding was first approved in July 2002 by Condoleeza Rice, specifically to force confessions of links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

Everybody in the intelligence and security worlds knew there were no such links - Bin Laden and Hussein were enemies. Only torture could yield "intelligence" of such links to provide a justification of the invasion of Iraq. There could be no clearer indication that these evil people wished to launch an illegal war of aggression for their other reasons.

If it is not evil to use torture to try to create a pretext for launching aggressive war, then what is evil?

Here is the full text of Marjorie's article.

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.

Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a newly released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That link was never established.

The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding on July 17, 2002 “subject to a determination of legality by the OLC.” She got it two weeks later from Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.

Team Bush claimed - and still claims - that it had to use harsh techniques to protect us from the terrorists. They really sought to create evidence to rationalize an illegal, unnecessary, and tragic war.

That is absolutely stunning in its implications. How much of this did Blair and Straw also know?

The Depth of Torture, War and US Imperialism

Counterpunch

By Chris Floyd, April 22, 2009

You cannot disentangle the torture program from the war of aggression in Iraq – nor from the illegal wiretapping program, the corrupt war profiteering, and all the other degradations of liberty and law that have been so accelerated in the past eight years. They are all of a piece, part and parcel of a plan to expand and entrench America's "unipolar domination" of world affairs with a thoroughly militarized state led by an unaccountable, authoritarian "Unitary Executive."

This is one reason why Barack Obama is so obviously reluctant to tug on the torture thread too hard. If you tear it out, with full-scale prosecutions and top officials locked up behind bars, the whole rotten skein would fall apart. Once you start genuinely subjecting government officials – including security apparatchiks and military brass – to the full extent of the law, there would be no end to the unraveling: senators, contractors, representatives, bureaucrats, generals, lobbyists, judges, corporate chiefs – the whole edifice of Establishment power would be shaken to the core as its leading lights went down, one after the other.

Thus the mere act of applying the ordinary, bourgeois laws of the land as they stand right now would constitute a world-shaking revolution, an overthrow of the existing order every bit as radical as any ideologue's dream of mass uprising. It would be, in effect, a re-founding of the Republic – and the end of the empire, which cannot survive without continual war, lawless rule and endless corruption.

N.S.A.’s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by Congress

Erich Lichtblau and James Risen, writing in today's New York Times

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.

The legal and operational problems surrounding the N.S.A.’s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees and a secret national security court, said the intelligence officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because N.S.A. activities are classified. Classified government briefings have been held in recent weeks in response to a brewing controversy that some officials worry could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts.

The Justice Department, in response to inquiries from The New York Times, acknowledged Wednesday night that there had been problems with the N.S.A. surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.

As part of a periodic review of the agency’s activities, the department “detected issues that raised concerns,” it said. Justice Department officials then “took comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance” with the law and court orders, the statement said. It added that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. went to the national security court to seek a renewal of the surveillance program only after new safeguards were put in place.

In a statement on Wednesday night, the N.S.A. said that its “intelligence operations, including programs for collection and analysis, are in strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems but said in a statement that “when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them.”

The questions may not be settled yet. Intelligence officials say they are still examining the scope of the N.S.A. practices, and Congressional investigators say they hope to determine if any violations of Americans’ privacy occurred. It is not clear to what extent the agency may have actively listened in on conversations or read e-mail messages of Americans without proper court authority, rather than simply obtained access to them.

Certainly, a lot more Americans have been wire-tapped than we know.

From the above Times article (my emphasis): The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems but said in a statement that “when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them.”

I won't hold my breath. Telecoms being held accountable? Heh. These are abuses that have been continuing in the past months, not just during the Bush era. Richard Seymour/Lenin's Tomb:

Glenn Greenwald points out that Obama's position on state secrecy and torture not only adopts the most authoritarian and extreme positions of the Bush administration, but goes farther by claiming a radical kind of 'sovereign immunity' to ensure that torture victims get no redress and no one ever finds out about it. He also notes that the Department of Justice under Eric Holder now wants total immunity from wiretapping prosecutions.

Thomas Tamm, the whistleblower who exposed the warrantless wiretaps, and Glenn Greenwald are interviewed on Democracy Now! today - check the site mid-day for the video of the program.

VERMONT: MICHAEL COLBY ON MARK JOHNSON'S SHOW

UPDATE: Michael Colby will be on the Mark Johnson program tomorrow at 10:15 a.m. EDT.
Michael Colby emailed me this morning to say that he's appearing on Mark Johnson's radio call-in program tomorrow, Tuesday 17 March. Tune in on WDEV AM 550 or FM 96.1 or listen to the live stream during the show's 9-11 a.m. time slot. Alternatively, you can listen later to the podcast.

While residents of the Queen City get their panties in an uproar over Burlington city council president's calling the cops on two elected councilors at last Thursday's city council meeting, what seems to be lost on residents and provoking very little discussion is the landmark ruling last week by the Vermont Supreme Court. Charges were dropped against Michael and his cohort Boots Wardinski for interrupting a speech given by John Negroponte at his son's graduation from St Johnsbury Academy (VT) in June, 2006.

Photo credit: AP/Toby Talbot.

A VERMONT VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH & CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Victory!

In June, 2006, Boots Wardinski and Michael Colby had been arrested for disorderly conduct (it was really civil disobedience) in interrupting a speech given by warmonger John Negroponte at his son's graduation from St Johnsbury Academy (VT).



This morning Michael emailed me to say that in the case State vs. Colby and Boots Wardinski, the Vermont Supreme Court dismissed the charges. The court says the activists were acting within their free speech rights. Michael was ecstatic in his email, "Look out world, our record is clean..."

For now. Michael and Boots take their activism seriously.

Michael (owner of the blog Broadsides) writes, This is fantastic news for activists. It means that the state cannot arbitrarily arrest and prosecute those who simply stand to voice their political opinions. It sends a clear and unequivocal message to all levels of law enforcement to think twice before engaging in the speech-chilling activities exhibited by the multiple levels of police that day.
Read all of it here.

Kudos also to their attorney, David Sleigh.

The Vermont Supreme Court's ruling can be read here.

Media coverage so far: from VPR, Fox44 and on the Free Press blog, Blotter. Next stop, WDEV's Mark Johnson Show?

Photo credit: AP/Toby Talbot.

(Crossposted at Antemedius.)

OUR 'LIVE FREE OR DIE' NEIGHBORS TO THE EAST

Executions have been taking place since the human species has been placed on earth. The use of a firing squad has been commonly used in times of war. Now, a bill has been introduced in the New Hampshire legislature to restore executions by firing squad. The sponsor of the bill argues that this form of execution is humane. I don't know where this legislator's moral compass has gone, but no form of capital punishment is humane!

WEAPONS PROGRAMS REBRANDED AS JOBS PROGRAMS

The military have been kicking this around even under Bush. As you'll see on the Real News Network clip above, Barney Frank has been raising holy hell about it for quite some time. However, with the failing economy, will our Dear Leader and his supporters in congress cave in?

Then, there's this from BBC News: US army 'wants more immigrants'.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL

Playmobil Security Check Point

Read the product reviews: priceless!

KILLING THEM SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG

While the pimping Obamablogs were jubilant last week over the swearing-in of their modest Anti-War Leader, he celebrated his inauguration as President Killer.

IRAQ

DutchNews.nl

Monday 19 January 2009

Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende's contuing refusal to agree to a public inquiry into events surrounding Dutch support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is beginning to look like the petulant behaviour of a stubborn teenager.

There are a number of questions which need to be answered about the Dutch position, and continually repeating the same tired arguments is not working.

There is evidence that civil servants had their doubts about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, doubts which the government of the day - led by Balkenende himself - ignored. The Dutch also ignored the fact there was no UN mandate for action. [read the rest]

AL-ZAIDI TORTURED BEFORE HE APOLOGISED FOR THROWING SHOES

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush was tortured into writing a letter of apology, his brother said today.