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Lefty OBAMA,helping FBI coverup,starting CIA secret torture sites,hurting labor..oh yeah real lefty


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LEFTY OBAMA ??? ONLY FOR THOSE WHO CANT THINK

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DOJ casts serious doubt on its own claims about the anthrax attack

Submitted by Orangutan. on Tue, 07/19/2011 - 10:27am

anthrax

Dr. Bruce Ivins

Glenn Greenwald

salon

Tuesday, Jul 19, 2011

By Glenn Greenwald

"President Obama... actually threatened to veto the entire intelligence authorization bill if it included a proposed bipartisan amendment (passed by the House) that would have mandated an independent inquiry into the FBI's anthrax investigation."

Ever since the FBI claimed (for a second time) that it had discovered in 2008 the identity of the anthrax attacker -- the recently-deceased-by-suicide Army researcher Bruce Ivins -- it was glaringly obvious, as I documented many times, that the case against him was exceedingly weak, unpersuasive and full of gaping logical, scientific, and evidentiary holes. So dubious are the FBI's claims that serious doubt has been raised and independent investigations demanded not by marginalized websites devoted to questioning all government claims, but rather, by the nation's most mainstream, establishment venues, ones that instinctively believe and defend such claims -- including the editorial pages of the nation's largest newspapers, leading scientific journals, the nation's preeminent science officials, and key politicians from both parties (led by those whose districts, or offices, were most affected by the attacks). To get a sense for the breadth and depth of the establishment skepticism about Ivins' guilt, just click on some of those links.

Since that initial wave of doubt, the FBI's case against Ivins has continuously deteriorated even further. In February of this year, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences released its findings solely regarding the bureau's alleged scientific evidence (independent investigations of the full case against Ivins have been successfully blocked by the Obama administration), and found -- as The New York Times put it -- that "the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by" Ivins; the Washington Post headline summarized the impact of those findings: "Anthrax report casts doubt on scientific evidence in FBI case against Bruce Ivins."

But the biggest blow yet to the FBI's case has just occurred as the result of an amazing discovery by PBS' Frontline, which is working on a documentary about the case with McClatchy and ProPublica:

The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins. . . . On July 15 [], Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.

The government said it continues to believe that Ivins was "more likely than not" the killer. But the filing in a Florida court did not explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that the lab "did not have the specialized equipment’" in Ivins' secure lab "that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters."

The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder. . . .

In excerpts from one of more than a dozen depositions made public in the case last week, the current chief of of the Bacteriology Division at the Army laboratory, Patricia Worsham, said it lacked the facilities in 2001 to make the kind of spores in the letters.

Two of the five letters, those sent to Democratic U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Thomas Daschle of South Dakota, were especially deadly, because they were so buoyant as to float with the slightest wisp of air.

Worsham said that the lab's equipment for drying the spores, a machine the size of a refrigerator, was not in containment.

"If someone had used that to dry down that preparation, I would have expected that area to be very, very contaminated, and we had non-immunized personnel in that area, and I would have expected some of them to become ill," she said.

In its statement of facts, the government lawyers also said that producing the volume of anthrax in the letters would have required 2.8 to 53 liters of the solution used to grow the spores or 463 to 1,250 Petri dishes. Colleagues of Ivins at the lab have asserted that he couldn't have grown all that anthrax without their noticing it.

That Ivins lacked the means, ability and equipment to produce the sophisticated strain of anthrax used in the attacks -- especially to do so without detection and leaving ample traces -- has long been one of the many arguments as to why it is so unlikely that he was the culprit (or at least the sole culprit). That the DOJ itself -- in order to defend against a lawsuit brought by an anthrax victim alleging that Fort Detrick was negligent -- would admit that Ivins lacked the means to commit this crime in his lab, particularly without detection, is extraordinary. Just like the NAS findings that cast doubt on the FBI's genetic analysis (once deemed to be the strongest part of the case even by skeptics), this admission further guts the government's claim to have solved this case.

It should be unnecessary to explain why the anthrax attack was so significant, and why discovering the perpetrators with confidence is so vital. As I've argued before, the anthrax attack was at least as important as (if not more important than) the 9/11 attack in creating a climate of fear in the U.S. that spawned the next decade's War on Civil Liberties and Terror and posture of Endless War; multiple government officials used ABC News' Brian Ross to convince the nation that Saddam was likely behind those attacks (as but one example, The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, in 2008, cited the anthrax attacks as his primary reason for supporting the attack on Iraq; in October, 2001, John McCain said on David Letterman's program that there is evidence linking Iraq to the anthrax attack). Even if one believes the FBI's case, it means that one of the most significant Terrorist attacks in American history was launched from within the U.S. military. As Alan Pearson -- Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation -- put it:

If Ivins was indeed responsible for the attacks, did he have any assistance? Did anyone else at the Army lab or elsewhere have any knowledge of his activities prior to, during, or shortly after the anthrax attacks? . . . It appears increasingly likely that the only significant bioterrorism attack in history may have originated from right within the biodefense program of our own country. The implications for our understanding of the bioterrorism threat and for our entire biodefense strategy and enterprise are potentially profound.

Indeed, Cohen claimed that "a high government official" told him shortly after the 9/11 attack to carry cipro as an antidote against anthrax. The Editors of Nature added: "This case is too important to be brushed under the carpet. The anthrax attacks killed five people, infected several others, paralysed the United States with fear and shaped the nation's bioterrorism policy."

But, of course, in the U.S., the nation's most powerful political and financial factions -- especially those who control the National Security State -- are immune from meaningful scrutiny and investigation. As a result, President Obama -- in what I think is one his most indefensible acts -- actually threatened to veto the entire intelligence authorization bill if it included a proposed bipartisan amendment (passed by the House) that would have mandated an independent inquiry into the FBI's anthrax investigation. Democratic Rep. Rush Holt, whose New Jersey district was the site where the letters were allegedly mailed and one of the bill's sponsors, said at the time he was appalled that "an Administration that has pledged to be transparent and accountable would seek to block any review of the investigation in this matter."

Indeed, the veto threat issued by the Obama White House was refreshingly (albeit unintentionally) candid about why it was so eager to block any independent inquiry: "The commencement of a fresh investigation would undermine public confidence in the criminal investigation and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions." That would happen only if the FBI's claims could not withstanding independent, critical scrutiny. But -- as is even more apparent now than ever -- the White House is fully aware that it cannot. In a rational, non-corrupt environment, that would be a reason to insist upon -- not take extraordinary steps to block -- an independent investigation into one of the most consequential crimes ever committed on U.S. soil. But that, manifestly, is not the world in which we live, and thus -- despite continuously mounting evidence that we do not know anywhere close to the full story of who perpetrated this attack -- the country's political leadership continues to stonewall any efforts to find out.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/19/anthrax/ind...

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Thom Hartmann & Jeremy Scahill: The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia

BREAKING INTERNATIONAL LAW,JUST LIKE BUSH

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Obama edges closer to political cliff with support for 3 NAFTA-like trade deals

http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2011/06/obama-ed...

June 28, 2011

Obama Edges Closer to Political Cliff With Deal to Combine Program to Aid Workers Losing Jobs to Trade With Three Bush-Era NAFTA-Style Trade Pacts Projected to Cause More Job Loss

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

snip

For most Americans, what’s newsworthy is not that the administration is pushing Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which effectively is a job burial insurance program, but that pushing a deal on TAA is being used as political cover to move more NAFTA-style trade agreements that will kill more American jobs in the first place, especially given our high unemployment rates.

Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of the American public – across stunningly diverse demographics – is opposed to NAFTA-style trade deals and that members of Congress vote for them at their peril. Earlier this month, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, whose job is to sell these trade deals and who helped former President Bill Clinton sell NAFTA to a skeptical Congress, recognized that workers “lose from these agreements” and implied that campaigning against FTAs could even be an electoral advantage. (The Washington Post, “White House’s Daley seeks balance in outreach meeting with manufacturers,” June 16, 2011.)

The point that’s gotten lost in all this wrangling over TAA is that the three leftover Bush trade deals are bad in and of themselves. Even an official government study finds that the Korea deal will increase our trade deficit, and we know up front that it will kill jobs and undermine our national security. The Colombia deal will eliminate any leverage the U.S. has to combat the forced displacements and murders of unionists, Afro-Colombians, human rights defenders and others – problems that have gotten worse since this deal was signed in 2007. The Panama deal will make it harder for the U.S. government to penalize tax-dodging multinational corporations. The supplemental deal on autos for Korea, the labor “Action Plan” for Colombia, and the tax information exchange agreement for Panama are all toothless and do nothing to alleviate the aforementioned problems, as Public Citizen has extensively documented. They were all part of a political-cover kabuki dance.

Moreover, the fact remains that all three deals have the same damaging provisions we all remember from NAFTA: limits on financial services regulation, foreign investor privileges that promote offshoring, weak labor standards, limits on imported food safety and inspection, and the ridiculous private investor-state enforcement system that empowers multinational corporations to go around our domestic courts and directly challenge our state and federal laws before foreign tribunals and demand compensation from our tax dollars for claimed violations of the trade deal.

As the New York Times has reported, TAA has proven to be almost useless for today's laid-off American workers, a fig-leaf to sell job-sucking trade deals to the public.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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OBAMA = GREAT DEFENDER OF CIVIL LIBERTIES (yeah ,right)

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Obama Administration's "Secret Law" to Spy on Americans

During last spring's run-up to the reauthorization of three expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) charged that the administration and the FBI was relying on a "secret" interpretation of law to vacuum-up exabytes of data, including cell phone location records and internet data mining that target Americans.

In March, a written statement to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security by Justice Department official Todd Hinnen confirmed that the administration had used Section 215, the so-called "business records" section of the Act "to obtain driver's license records, hotel records, car rental records, apartment leasing records, credit card records, and the like."

Further confirmation of Wyden's charges came from an unlikely source: a White House nominee for a top counterterrorism position.

Last week Wired reported that Matthew Olsen, the administration's pick to head the National Counterterrorism Center "acknowledged that 'some of the pleadings and opinions related to the Patriot Act' to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approves snooping warrants 'are classified'."

If confirmed, Olsen will replace Michael E. Leiter, the Bushist embed who told the Senate last year during hearings into 2009's aborted plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day: "I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another."

What those reasons are for wanting a terrorist to board a packed airliner were not spelled out to Senate nor were they explored by corporate media. This raises an inevitable question: what else is the administration concealing from the American people?

White House Stonewall

Back in May, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department "demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight."

So far, the administration has refused to release the memos.

According to the civil liberties' watchdogs, a report last year by the DOJ's own Inspector General "revealed how the FBI, in defending its past violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), had come up with a new legal argument to justify secret, unchecked access to private telephone records."

"The Obama administration," The Washington Post reports, has continued "to resist the efforts of two Democratic senators to learn more about the government's interpretation of domestic surveillance law, stating that 'it is not reasonably possible' to identify the number of Americans whose communications may have been monitored under the statute."

In a letter to Wyden and Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), Kathleen Turner, the director of legislative affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), claimed that a "joint oversight team" has not uncovered evidence "of any intentional or willful attempts to violate or circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA, which was amended in 2008."

Turner went on to say that "with respect to FAA" [FISA Amendments Act of 2008, the statute that "legalized" Bushist surveillance programs and handed retroactive immunity to spying telecoms like AT&T], "you [Wyden] asked whether any significant interpretations of the FAA are currently classified. As you are aware, opinions of the FISA Court usually contain extensive discussions of particularly sources, methods and operations and are therefore classified."

Throwing the onus back on political grifters in the House and Senate, Turner wrote: "Even though not publicly available, by law any opinion containing a significant legal interpretation is provided to the congressional intelligence committees."

With circular logic Turner claims that because "FISA Court opinions are so closely tied to the facts of the application under review that they cannot be made public in any meaningful form without compromising the sensitive sources and methods at issue."

At best, her statement is disingenuous. After all, it is precisely that secret interpretation of the law made by the White House Office of Legal Counsel that Wyden and others, including EFF, the Electronic Privacy Information Network (EPIC) and journalists are demanding the administration clarify.

Justice Department Shields NSA's Private Partners

The FBI isn't the only agency shielded by the Justice Department under cover of bogus "state secrets" assertions by the Obama administration.

On July 13, EPIC reported that a U.S. District Court Judge issued an opinion in their lawsuit (EPIC v. NSA), "and accepted the NSA's claim" that it can "neither confirm nor deny" that the agency "had entered into a relationship with Google following the China hacking incident in January 2010."

The privacy watchdogs sought documents under FOIA "because such an agreement could reveal that the NSA is developing technical standards that would enable greater surveillance of Internet users."

According to EPIC, the administration's "Glomar response" to "neither confirm nor deny" a covert relationship amongst giant media corporations such as Google and secret state agencies "is a controversial legal doctrine that allows agencies to conceal the existence of records that might otherwise be subject to public disclosure."

This issue is hardly irrelevant to internet users. CNET News reported last week that "Google's Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns."

And given the government's penchant to vacuum-up so-called "transactional data" without benefit of a warrant, would media giants such as Google, high-tech behemoths such as Apple or Microsoft, beholden to the federal government for regulatory perks, resist efforts by the feds demanding they cough-up users' locational data?

Investigative journalist Declan McCullagh found that the cars "were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago."

According to CNET, "the French data protection authority, known as the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recently contacted CNET and said its investigation confirmed that Street View cars collected these unique hardware IDs. In March, CNIL's probe resulted in a fine of 100,000 euros, about $143,000."

On Friday, CNET reported that Microsoft too, is in on the geolocation spy game.

Declan McCullagh wrote that "Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web."

A security researcher confirmed that the "vast database available through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets."

Such information in the hands of government snoops would prove invaluable when it comes to waging War On Terror 2.0, the so-called "cyber war." Which is why the administration is fighting tooth and nail to keep this information from the public.

On the cyber front, EPIC is suing the White House to obtain the top secret National Security Presidential Directive that sets out the "NSA's cyber security authority," and is seeking clarification from the agency about so-called internet vulnerability assessments, "the Director's classified views on how the NSA's practices impact Internet privacy, and the NSA's 'Perfect Citizen' program."

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, "Perfect Citizen" is a $100 million privacy-killing program under development by the agency and defense giant Raytheon. Published reports informed us that the program will rely on a suite of sensors deployed in computer networks and that proprietary software will persistently monitor whichever system they are plugged into.

While little has been revealed about how Perfect Citizen will work, it was called by a corporate insider the cyber equivalent of "Big Brother," according to an email obtained last year by The Wall Street Journal.

New Report Highlights "Transparency" Fraud

The refusal by the White House to divulge information that impact Americans' civil liberties and privacy rights, along with their expansion of repressive national security and surveillance programs launched by the Bush regime, underscores the fraudulent nature of Obama's so-called "transparency administration."

A new report published by the American Civil Liberties Union, Drastic Measures Required: Congress needs to Overhaul U.S. Secrecy Laws and Increase Oversight of the Secret Security Establishment, documents how "out-of-control secrecy is a serious disease that is hurting American democracy."

Authors Jay Stanley and former FBI undercover agent turned whistleblower, Michael German, write that "we are now living in an age of government secrecy run amok."

According to the report, "reality has not always lived up to the rhetoric" of the Obama regime. Since the administration took office, the White House:

• Embraced the Bush administration's tactic of using overbroad "state secrets" claims to block lawsuits challenging government misconduct.

• Fought a court order to release photos depicting the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody and supported legislation to exempt these photos from FOIA retroactively. Worse, the legislation gave the Secretary of Defense sweeping authority to withhold any visual images depicting the government's "treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained" by U.S. forces, no matter how egregious the conduct depicted or how compelling the public's interest in disclosure.

• Threatened to veto legislation designed to reform congressional notification procedures for covert actions.

• Aggressively pursued whistleblowers who reported waste, fraud and abuse in national security programs with criminal prosecutions to a greater degree than any previous presidential administration.

• Refused to declassify information about how the government uses its authority under section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect information about Americans not relevant to terrorism or espionage investigations. (Mike German and John Stanley, Drastic Measures Required, Washington, D.C., The American Civil Liberties Union, July 2011, pp. 7-8)

Amongst other findings in the report we learn that more than 2.4 million personnel, "official" denizens of the secret state which include the 16 agencies of the so-called "Intelligence Community" and outsourced private contractors hold top secret and above security clearances.

Although the Government Accountability Office (GAO) disclosed that the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010 "required required the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to calculate and report the aggregate number of security clearances for all government employees and contractors to Congress by February 2011," as of this writing "the DNI has so far failed to produce this data."

Last year, The Washington Post's "Top Secret America" series revealed that "some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States," and that "the privatization of national security" has been made possible by a "nine-year 'gusher' of money."

The Post's reporting on America's security outsourcing mania echoed critical investigations by other journalists, including those by Tim Shorrock, who has reported extensively on intelligence privatization in his essential book Spies For Hire and by James Bamford in The Shadow Factory, which explored how NSA was turned loose on the American people.

In a follow-up piece last December, investigative journalists Dana Priest and William M. Arkin described how "the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators."

"The government's goal," Priest and Arkin wrote, "is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States."

As the Post reported, "technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America."

This is a pernicious development. As I reported three years ago, one such program were efforts by the Department of Homeland Security, partnering-up with the Pentagon, to train America's fleet of top secret surveillance satellites on the American people.

That program, since killed by DHS, the National Applications Office, would have provided state and local authorities access to geospatial intelligence gleaned from military spy satellites and would have done so with no congressional oversight or privacy controls in place and would have handed over this sensitive data to selected law enforcement partners.

Local Police Control Ceded to the FBI

Along with intrusive techniques and highly-classified programs, Priest and Arkin wrote that the FBI has built "a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously."

What constitutes "suspicious behavior" of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and can constitute anything from taking photographs on a public street to organizing and participating in protests against America's endless wars.

Just recently, the San Francisco Bay Guardian revealed that local cops "assigned to the FBI's terrorism task force can ignore local police orders and California privacy laws to spy on people without any evidence of a crime."

Investigative journalist Sarah Phelan discovered that even after a "carefully crafted" set of rules on intelligence gathering had been in place "since police spying scandals of the 1990s," were "bypassed without the knowledge or consent of the S.F. Police Commission."

John Crew, a police practices expert with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California told the Bay Guardian that the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding by S.F. cops and the FBI means that "Police Commission policies do not apply" and that it "allows San Francisco police to circumvent local intelligence-gathering policies and follow more permissive federal rules."

Despite serious concerns over the Bureau's long-standing practice of spying on political dissidents and its "War On Terror" racial profiling policies, in a follow-up piece the Bay Guardian reported that Police Commission President Thomas Mazzucco, a former federal prosecutor, seemed "more concerned about defending federal practices and officials ... than worrying about the role and authority of the civilian oversight body he now represents."

The ACLU's Crew noted that when the FBI came to the SFPD with a new MOU, "there was no review by the City Attorney, and no notice to the police commission."

"Now, we didn't know about that MOU because it was kept secret at the insistence of the FBI for four years," Crew told Sarah Phelan. Crew also noted that "when ACLU and ALC [Asian Law Caucus] met with the SFPD in 2010, they were suddenly told that the police department couldn't talk about these issues without FBI permission.

"That set off a warning sign," Crew observed, "noting that in early April, when the ACLU and ALC finally got the MOU released, their worst suspicions were confirmed."

"There was no public discussion of transforming the SFPD into a national intelligence gathering association," ALC attorney Veena Dubal told the Bay Guardian. "The problem is that the FBI changed the deal, and the SFPD signed it, without telling anyone."

Neither the Bay Guardian nor the ACLU of Northern California have released the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding. However, the secrecy-shredding web site Public Intelligence has posted a sample MOU that makes for interesting reading indeed.

According to the document, local police agencies who participate in JTTFs will adhere to loose rules covered by the "Attorney General's Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations." As Antifascist Calling reported last month, those rules will soon be loosened even further by "constitutional scholar" Barack Obama's Justice Department.

But here's the kicker; local police participating in JTTFs will be subject to rules crafted in Washington. State and municipal policies which sought to limit out-of-control spying on local activists by notorious police "Red Squads," are annulled in favor of "guidance on investigative matters handled by the JTTF" that "will be issued by the Attorney General and the FBI."

Such "guidance" we're told governs everything from "the Use of Confidential Informants" to "Guidelines Regarding Disclosure to the Director of Central Intelligence and Homeland Security Officials of Foreign Intelligence Acquired in the Course of a Criminal Investigation."

In other words, police participating in JTTFs become the CIA's eyes on the ground!

We are informed that "in order to comply with Presidential Directives, the policy and program management of the JTTFs is the responsibility of FBI Headquarters (FBIHQ)." As readers are well aware, more often than not those "Presidential Directives" arrive with built-in poison pills in the form of top secret annexes concealed from the public.

Such questions are not academic exercises.

More than three years ago, author and researcher Peter Dale Scott wrote in CounterPunch that "Congressman Peter DeFazio, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the House that he and the rest of his Committee had been barred from reviewing parts of National Security Presidential Directive 51, the White House supersecret plans to implement so-called 'Continuity of Government' in the event of a mass terror attack or natural disaster."

"The story," Scott wrote, "ignored by the mainstream press, involved more than the usual tussle between the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. Government. What was at stake was a contest between Congress's constitutional powers of oversight, and a set of policy plans that could be used to suspend or modify the constitution."

Should something go wrong, the onus for civil or criminal penalties resulting from lawsuits for illegal acts by JTTF officers rests solely with local taxpayers who may have to foot the bill. This is clearly spelled out: "The Participating Agency acknowledges that financial and civil liability, if any and in accordance with applicable law, for the acts and omissions of each employee detailed to the JTTF remains vested with his or her employing agency."

Got that? You violate someone's rights and then get caught, well, tough luck chumps.

Intelligence Spending, No End in Sight

While the administration and their troglodytic Republican allies in Congress are planning massive cuts in social spending as a result of a manufactured "deficit crisis," the President's fiscal year 2012 budget proposes a five-year freeze for "all discretionary spending outside of security."

Indeed, according to the Associated Press, the Defense Department will reap a windfall some $727.4 billion and DHS $44.3 billion. But these numbers only tell part of the story.

Back in March, Secrecy News disclosed that figures provided by ODNI and the Secretary of Defense "document the steady rise of the total U.S. intelligence budget from $63.5 billion in FY2007 up to last year's total of $80.1 billion."

Americans are told they face "hard choices" when it comes to America's fiscal house of cards and that they--and they alone--not the capitalist thieves who destroyed the economy, must shoulder the burden.

But as economist Michael Hudson warned last week in a Global Research article, the American people are "being led to economic slaughter."

Hudson writes that "whenever one finds government officials and the media repeating an economic error as an incessant mantra, there always is a special interest at work. The financial sector in particular seeks to wrong-foot voters into believing that the economy will be plunged into crisis if Wall Street does not get its way--usually by freeing it from taxes and deregulating it."

However, when it comes to the secret state and the corporate interests they serve, regulators, in the form of congressional oversight or the public, seeking answers about illegal government programs, need not apply.

After all, as ODNI securocrat Kathleen Turner told the Senate, "the questions you pose ... are difficult to answer in an unclassified letter."

And so it goes...

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

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Obama campaign promise of High transparency Government ??

link http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/14/rescind-barack-obama-obama-transparency-award

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Rescind President Obama's 'Transparency Award' now

The Obama administration's record on secrecy and surveillance is a disgrace and should not be sanitised by unearned prizes

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 June 2011 18.00 BST

Article history

Bradley Manning: signatories regard his abusive treatment in a military brig as a warning to government whistleblowers from the Obama administration. Photograph: AP

On 28 March 2011, President Obama was given a "transparency award" from five "open government" organisations: OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and OpenTheGovernment.org. Ironically – and quite likely in response to growing public criticism regarding the Obama administration's lack of transparency – heads of the five organisations gave their award to Obama in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House. If the ceremony had been open to the press, it is likely that reporters would have questioned the organisations' proffered justification for the award, in contrast to the current reality:

• President Obama has not decreased, but has dramatically increased governmental secrecy. According to a new report to the president by the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) – the federal agency that provides oversight of the government's security classification system – the cost of classification for 2010 has reached over $10.17bn. That's a 15% jump from the previous year, and the first time ever that secrecy costs have surpassed $10bn. Last month, ISOO reported that the number of original classification decisions generated by the Obama administration in 2010 was 224,734 – a 22.6% jump from the previous year (see The Price of Secrecy, Obama Edition).

• There were 544,360 requests for information last year under the Freedom of Information Act to the 35 biggest federal agencies – 41,000 requests more than the year before. Yet the bureaucracy responded to 12,400 fewer requests than the prior year, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

• Obama has invoked baseless and unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor. The list of this president's invocations of the "state secrets privilege" has already resulted in shutting down lawsuits involving the National Security Agency's illegal wiretapping – Jewel v NSA and Shubert v Obama; extraordinary rendition and assassination – Anwar al-Awlaki; and illegal torture – Binyam Mohamed.

• Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama's presidency has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers. President Obama's behaviour has been in stark contrast to his campaign promises, which included live-streaming meetings online and rewarding whistleblowers. Obama's department of justice is twisting the 1917 Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national security leaks – more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous administrations combined.

• The Obama justice department's prosecution of former NSA official Thomas Drake, who, up till 9 June, faced 35 years in prison for having blown the whistle on the NSA's costly and unlawful warrantless monitoring of American citizens, typifies the abusive practices made possible through expansive secrecy agreements and threats of prosecution.

• President Obama has set a powerful and chilling example for potential whistleblowers through the abuse and torture of Bradley Manning, whose guilt he has also publicly stated prior to any trial by his, Obama's, military subordinates.

• Obama is the only president who has reenacted Fahrenheit 451 by actually having his agency collect and burn a book due to a never-justified classification excuse: Lt Col Tony Shaffer's Operation Dark Heart.

• Under President Obama, the FBI has launched a series of raids and issued grand jury subpoenas targeting nearly two dozen antiwar activists. Over 2,600 arrests of protesters in the US have been made while Obama has been president, further encroaching on the exercise of first amendment rights.

• President Obama has initiated a secret assassination programme, has publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and has attempted to assassinate at least one, Anwar al-Awlaki.

• President Obama has maintained the power to secretly kidnap, imprison, rendition, or torture, and he has formalised the power to lawlessly imprison in an executive order. This also means the power to secretly imprison. There are some 1,700 prisoners outside the rule of law in Bagram alone.

• The Obama administration is also busy going after reporters to discover their sources and convening grand juries in order to target journalists and news publishers.

• President Obama promised to reveal White House visitors' logs. He didn't. In response to outrage over his refusal to reveal the names of health insurance CEOs he had met with and cut deals with on the health insurance reform bill, he announced that he would release the names going forward, but not those in the past. And going forward, he would withhold names he chose to withhold. White House staff then began regularly meeting lobbyists just off White House grounds in order to avoid the visitors' logs.

• President Obama has sent representatives to aggressively pressure Spain, England and Germany to shut down investigations that could have exposed the crimes of the Bush era, just as he has instructed the US justice department to avoid such matters. This includes his refusal to allow prosecutions of the CIA for torture, following a public letter from eight previous heads of the CIA informing him that he had better not enforce those laws.

The "transparency award" in question was described as "aspirational", similar to the rationale for awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize early in his presidency when he had done nothing yet to further the cause of peace. Participants admitted they used the private meeting in March to try and lobby Obama to do more to earn their award. If the president doesn't change course as a result of the lobbying and "award", there are some who would shrug and say, "no harm, no foul".

The giving of an unmerited award, however, whether for transparency or peace, is not entirely benign. No one knows better how destructive secrecy is for maintaining systems of justice, ethics and democracy than these self-proclaimed "open government" watchdogs. Especially when such a false accolade emanates, as in this case, from those who are supposed to serve as counters to secrecy and to retaliation against government whistleblowers, such appearance of approval will tend to cover up and mask the reality of the executive's increasingly undemocratic and illegal use of secrecy.

Therefore, the undersigned call on these organisations: OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and OpenTheGovernment.org, to publicly take back their "transparency award", as difficult as that may be, from Barack Obama. The watchdog organisations should, of course, continue to promote aspirations for open, democratic government, reduced secrecy and adherence to the rule of law, in more genuine, legitimate ways than giving unmerited awards to the executive. Such false awards only stand to backfire and hurt the cause of open government.

Drafted by FBI whistleblowers Sibel Edmonds and Coleen Rowley

Whistleblowers:

Raymond L McGovern, former analyst, CIA

Colonel Ann Wright, US Army Reserve (ret) and former US diplomat

Daniel Ellsberg, former official, department of defence and department of state

Lt Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, US Air Force (ret), veteran policy analyst, department of defence

Lt Colonel Tony Shaffer, senior intelligence officer (Operations), DIA

Jesselyn Radack, former attorney, department of justice

John M Cole, former veteran intelligence operations specialist, FBI

David "Mark" Conrad, agent in charge (ret), internal affairs, US Customs

P Jeffrey Black, air marshal (ret), Federal Air Marshal Service, department of homeland security

Bogdan Dzakovic, former red team leader, FAA

Russ Tice, former senior intelligence analyst, NSA

Sandalio Gonzalez, special agent in charge (ret), DEA

John Vincent, veteran special agent, counterterrorism, FBI

Bill Bergman, financial market analyst, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Steve Jenkins, intelligence analyst, NGIC, US Army

Linda Lewis, policy analyst (ret), US department of agriculture

David MacMichael, PhD, former senior estimates officer, CIA

William H Russell, computer specialist, R&E Division, NSA

William Savich, special agent, bureau of diplomatic security, department of state

Julia Davis, customs and border protection officer, department of homeland security

Tom Maertens, counterterrorism official (ret), department of state

Joseph Carson, PE, nuclear safety engineer, department of energy

Gabe Bruno, manager (ret), flight standards services, FAA

Dr Jeffrey Fudin, founder, VA Whistleblowers Coalition

Organisations:

National Security Whistleblowers Coalition

National Whistleblowers Centre

Green party of the US

Citizens for Legitimate Government

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Campaign for Peace and Democracy

September 11th Advocates

Code Pink

Consumers for Peace

Fellowship of Reconciliation

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

WarIsACrime.org

OSC Watch

Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence

Socialist party of Central Virginia

Environmentalists Against War

High Road for Human Rights

Broken Covenant Campaign

Bring Our Troops Home Coalition

Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains

United for Peace and Justice

Americans Who Tell the Truth

Veterans for Peace Chapter 27

Committee to Stop FBI Repression

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very much related, lefty ?????????? OBAMA ???????????????

link http://smashabanana.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-does-doj-refuse-to-prosecute-crimes.html

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXooooXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Simple question,If this is left,what is right ? :blink:

link http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/10/now_obama_wants_to_kill_alt-we.php

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very much related, lefty ?????????? OBAMA ???????????????

link http://smashabanana.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-does-doj-refuse-to-prosecute-crimes.html

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXooooXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Simple question,If this is left,what is right ? :blink:

link http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/10/now_obama_wants_to_kill_alt-we.php

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVooooooooVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

===================================+==================================

related link http://uruknet.com/?p=m83747&hd=&size=1&l=e

(Please see article below)

Obama: The Trust-Buster Who Never Busted a Trust

December 8, 2011 - Obama claims that bailing out the banks "infuriated" him. Lucky for them. "When Obama supposedly got furious at the banks, he put the whole government and the Federal Reserve at their beck and call and funneled more than $16 trillion into their accounts." We could all profit by becoming the objects of Obamas rage. He also imagines hes Teddy Roosevelt except for the fact that Obama, as president, has never shown the slightest inclination to bust up monopolies...

Obama: The Trust-Buster Who Never Busted a Trust

Glen Ford

December 8, 2011

Obama claims that bailing out the banks "infuriated" him. Lucky for them. "When Obama supposedly got furious at the banks, he put the whole government and the Federal Reserve at their beck and call and funneled more than $16 trillion into their accounts." We could all profit by becoming the objects of Obamas rage. He also imagines hes Teddy Roosevelt except for the fact that Obama, as president, has never shown the slightest inclination to bust up monopolies.

"Apparently, it pays big time to get Barack Obama 'infuriated."

President Obama thinks he can win reelection by running the same hoax on his Democratic base as he did in 2008: flavoring his speeches with progressive sounding rhetoric while tightening the bankers grip on government and continuing his pursuit a "grand bargain" with the Republicans. In his speech on Tuesday in Kansas, Obama depicted himself as the reincarnation of President Teddy Roosevelt, known as a corporate "trust-buster" at the turn of the 20th century. But Obama is no trust-buster. He has never busted a corporate monopoly. His administration approved the merger of Comcast and NBC, consolidating even an bigger monopoly and giving the lie to his 2008 campaign promise to reinvigorate anti-trust enforcement.

The Obama m.o. is to talk a progressive game and then do just the opposite. He claims he found it "infuriating" to rescue the banks from collapse when he came to office. If thats the case, then the best thing that could happen to Black people would be for Obama to get absolutely furious at us and then the trillions would flow. When Obama supposedly got furious at the banks, he put the whole government and the Federal Reserve at their beck and call and funneled more than $16 trillion into their accounts. Apparently, it pays big time to get Barack Obama "infuriated." If he gets mad enough at you, hell open up the windows at the Federal Reserve and hand out trillions of dollars in interest-free loans. Then, if youre a bank that hes really mad at, you can take the peoples money and buy U.S. Treasury bonds and get a healthy return on your cost-free investment.

"Obamas own pitiful program to keep families in their homes was a colossal failure that helped only a fraction."

In Kansas, Obama claimed that his so-called banking reform legislation will funnel money to "families who want to buy a home or send their kids to college." Weve seen no evidence of that happening. But Obama did make sure that his "reforms" did nothing to upset the Wall Street derivatives casino that is now notionally valued at at least $600 trillion about the same as it was before the 2008 meltdown and bailout. $600 trillion is roughly ten times the value of all the yearly goods and services produced by every man woman and child in the world. It is a ticking time bomb that will inevitably bring down the real world economy if it is not defused. Apparently, that makes Obama absolutely paralyzed with rage.

Obama says the banks "should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis, and working to keep responsible homeowners in their home." Its nice to hear what he thinks banks "should" be doing, but he didnt use his presidential clout to compel them to do much of anything to change their ways, even when he could, back when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress. And Obamas own pitiful program to keep families in their homes was a colossal failure that helped only a fraction. Perhaps Obama is now infuriated with himself.

Throughout his Wizard of Oz Kansas speech, Obama attempted to put moral and philosophical distance between himself and the Republicans. But this is not 2008. Anyone with eyes and ears and a memory now knows that Obama is a true believer in the old time deficit cutting religion, a disciple of austerity, a man who wants nothing more than to join hands with the GOP to gut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Obama is a charlatan who cites the deeds of dead presidents but pursues policies that are directly the opposite. In other words, he is a very elaborate xxxx.

For Black Agenda Radio, Im Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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birds of a feather flock together

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101437315

=============================+==========================================

========================================================================

Robo-Signing Bank Settlement is a Criminal Sell Out

Feb 9 2012 - 7:06am (Better Markets Blog)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Let me help a few victims I created by ripping them off and illegally throwing them out of their homes by false court filings that I swore were true." That's what the so-called mortgage settlement talks are really all about: fraud, perjury and crimes. That's what these banks did and that's what they are trying to buy their way out of.

The settlement discussions are the same: eliminate all or almost all liability for the bank and, most importantly, all bank officers and employees in exchange for a loan forgiveness or modification program. Think about this: the banks engaged in a years-long pattern and practice of what can only be described as fraudulent if not criminal conduct that would put anyone else in prison for years if not decades, yet banks get to buy off the cops with some money to help the victims they created.

Worst of all, there is no requirement in any of these talks that I'm aware of that require the banks to come clean, publicly release all the relevant documents and provide sufficient information on their conduct so that anyone can evaluate whether the sell-out, I mean, pay-off, oops, I mean, "settlement" is anywhere near adequate.

And they get to buy their way out of prosecution for chump-change. It’s reported that the settlement is going be $25 billion, with only $5 billion in cash and $20 billion in “loan forgiveness.” That’s nothing. There are more than 10 million homes under water where the amount they owe on their mortgages is more than the house is valued, i.e., could be sold for. $20 billion doesn’t make a dent in that: 1 million homes at $20,000 loan forgiveness is it. And, remember, $20 billion in "loan forgiveness" to the banks is not equal to $20 billion in cash. It is more like $10 billion, if that, due to accounting, prior write-downs and other shenagigans.

There is also the risk of a tacit conspiracy here. The banks want to "put this behind them" (gee, who wouldn't) and escape from real liability (criminal and civil) and the prosecutors (many of them politicians) and the administration want to claim victory. You will hear that the settlement was the largest, one of the largest or the greatest settlement in history that will help millions or billions or trillions of people who need help - you get the point: no hyperbole will be spared.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, the most egregious aspect of all this may be the reporting: stories repeatedly use innocuous words that obscure what really happened here. For example, so-called "robo signing" is massive, systematic, fraudulent, criminal conduct. This is where banks themselves or their contractors sign legal documents to file in court swearing under oath that the facts are true and therefore support the legal application to take someone's home away from them, i.e., foreclose.

Can you think of anything more despicable? Lying under oath to get someone thrown out of their home and onto the street. That's what robo-signing means and what it obscures every time that word is used. Then, there's always someone saying, basically, no harm, no foul because it's just a "paper work" problem and these people are all delinquent and "deserve" to be thrown out on the street. Really? Since when does saying "trust us" while we lie to you under oath make illegal conduct acceptable?

And, the fraudulent if not criminal conduct occurred throughout the boom as well as the bust (when the robo-signing and other criminal conduct occurred). For example, there are unending examples of mortgage brokers changing income, job history and other material terms in mortgage applications without the person having any knowledge of it. Another example is putting large amounts of unqualified mortgages into packages that were securitized in violation of the required representations and warranties.

Anywhere else this would be called lying, cheating and stealing and it’s past time it gets called by the right name. And, everyone should insist on no settlements by anyone that includes the elimination of liability for a corporation or any of its officers or employees unless it also includes a requirement that all documents related to the conduct are all publicly disclosed on a central, searchable website. That won't happen because they the conduct of the prosecutors and politicians in the sellout, er, settlement could be evaluated along with the conduct of the banks - see the problem here?

If they are getting any legal immunity, which is what they are demanding, then the American people deserve to at least know what laws they violated and how they did it so everyone knows what they are getting immunity for. That simply must be a price for forgiving what has been years of unconscionable fraudulent and almost certainly criminal conduct that has victimized tens of millions of American families, hollowed out neighborhood after neighborhood, and stuck millions more homeowners with underwater mortgages through no fault of their own.

==================================+=============================================

==================================v=============================================

Exclusive: Obama to pitch lower corporate tax

By Kim Dixon | Reuters – Fri, 10 Feb, 2012

WASHINGTON (Reuters) President Barack Obama will call for cutting the top 35 percent corporate tax rate as early as this month, according to two sources close to the administration.

The president is likely to propose a rate closer to an average of that seen in peer nations, the sources said.

This would jibe with remarks made last year by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who suggested the United States should be moving to a rate more in line with its major trading partners in the high 20-percent range.

Obama outlined tax measures - including closing tax loopholes for companies that move facilities and jobs overseas - in his State of the Union speech in January, and will lay out principles for revamping corporate taxes by the end of February, a senior administration official said.

...

link http://ca.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-obama-pitch-lower-corporate-tax-sources-222544743.html

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Monday, March 19, 2012

-------------------------------------

Obama’s Latest Executive Order: Martial Law, Confiscation of Private Property and Forced Labor

======================

March 19, 2012

On Friday, March 16, Obama issued another unconstitutional executive order. The National Defense Resources Preparedness EO allows the government to confiscate your property without due process under the direction of Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security.

Obama’s EO allows the president to “take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements” in the event of a “potential threat to the security of the United States.”

Obama’s latest EO demonstrates once again that the executive will continue to violate the Constitution, in particular Article I, Section 1, which states: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

Any enactment of law by the executive is made in Excess of Jurisdiction and is by definition treason.

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Fascist Executive Orders

Obama’s latest EO underscores and reemphasizes Bill Clinton’s EO 12919, signed on June 6, 1994.

Clinton’s 12919 followed a number of earlier executive orders allowing the government to steal your property – and also force you to be a slave laborer – during a vaguely declared “national emergency.” The government has given itself the authority to seize all communication (from television stations to CB radios), confiscate all food resources (including farms and farm equipment), take control of all transportation (including your family car), and compel you at gunpoint “under federal supervision” to work as a slave.

National Defense Resources Preparedness is a textbook example of fascism. It allows the government to steal privately owned property and publicly owned infrastructure and hand it over to its preferred corporate partners under the guise of a national emergency: “(B) provide for the modification or expansion of privately owned facilities, including the modification or improvement of production processes, when taking actions under sections 301, 302, or 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, 2092, 2093; and © sell or otherwise transfer equipment owned by the Federal Government and installed under section 303(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(e), to the owners of such plants, factories, or other industrial facilities.”

Fascist philosopher and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini used his principle of a “nation in arms” to steal private property from citizens. Obama’s latest EO declares the right to do the same. Mussolini devised fascist corporatism – the philosophy of the “corporative state” – and Obama under the direction of his Goldman Sachs and transnational corporate and bankster controllers has updated this corporate-statist doctrine, including the ability to steal privately earned and held wealth under the pretense of a national emergency.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Martial Law

Previous administrations installed the groundwork for Obama’s authoritarian move. Under Reagan, executive agencies were granted sweeping emergency powers to not only grab infrastructure and private property, but also round up citizens and put them in concentration camps and force them into slave labor brigades.

During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, it was revealed that the program was a secretive “scenario and drill” developed by the federal government to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, assign military commanders to take over state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens determined by the government to be “national security threats.”

Obama’s NDAA was established to provide the legal mechanism for tasking the military to round up activists and others targeted by the government. Prior to the NDAA, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and other related programs, the government devised Rex 84 and in particular Operation Garden Plot, an operational plan to use the Army, USAF, Navy, and Marine Corp. in direct support of civil disturbance control operations. It has since added numerous elements under the rubric of Continuity of Government, the overall war on terror, civil disturbance and emergency response.

With the scantily covered National Emergency Centers Establishment Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the recent NDAA sailing through Congress, and a raft of lesser legislation and unconstitutional directives, we are beginning to see the contours of the police state.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Corporate Media Ignores National Defense Resources Preparedness

A Google News search produces virtually no mention of Obama’s latest assault on the Constitution from the establishment media. The alternative media began covering the latest Obama executive order from the moment it was posted on the White House website on Friday, but the corporate media remains silent.

Obama’s EO should be headline news. It is a direct assault on the Constitution and further empowers an executive branch dictatorship and allows it to exploit a “full spectrum of emergencies” and permits it to confiscate private property and turn citizens into slaves.

As John Adams noted, the very basis of the Constitution rests on the concept of private property. “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God,” Adams wrote, “anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.”

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.fr/2012/03/obamas-latest-executive-order-martial.html

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I didn't see anything in the EO about seizure of property or forced labor. As for treason according to the Constitution, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii

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I didn't see anything in the EO about seizure of property or forced labor. As for treason according to the Constitution, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In a stunning move, on March 16, 2012, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order stating that the President and his specifically designated Secretaries now have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. The EO also states that the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military. The EO also contains a vague reference in regards to harnessing American citizens to fulfill “labor requirements” for the purposes of national defense.

Not only that, but the authority claimed inside the EO does not only apply to National Emergencies and times of war. It also applies in peacetime.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, what may be shocking is the fact that Section 601 also provides for the mobilization of “labor” for purposes of the national defense. Although some subsections read that evaluations are to be made regarding the “effect and demand of labor utilization,” the implication is that “labor” (meaning American workers) will be considered yet one more resource to be seized for the purposes of “national defense.” The EO reads,

======================================================================

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29835

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Please post the text of the EO that supposedly allows "the President and his specifically designated Secretaries [to] have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. " etc.

#####################################################

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globalresearch link

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However, what may be shocking is the fact that Section 601 also provides for the mobilization of “labor” for purposes of the national defense. Although some subsections read that evaluations are to be made regarding the “effect and demand of labor utilization,” the implication is that “labor” (meaning American workers) will be considered yet one more resource to be seized for the purposes of “national defense.” The EO reads,

Sec. 601. Secretary of Labor. (a) The Secretary of Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of other agencies, as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, shall:

(1) collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation's workforce needs for purposes of national defense;

(2) upon request by the Director of Selective Service, and in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, assist the Director of Selective Service in development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services;

(3) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order, consult with that agency with respect to: (i) the effect of contemplated actions on labor demand and utilization; (ii) the relation of labor demand to materials and facilities requirements; and (iii) such other matters as will assist in making the exercise of priority and allocations functions consistent with effective utilization and distribution of labor;

Notice that the language of the EO does not state “in the event of a national emergency.” Instead, we are given the term “purposes of national defense.” This is because the “authorities” assumed by the President have been assumed not just for arbitrary declarations of “national emergency” but for peacetime as well. Indeed, the EO states this much directly when it says,

The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 107(B)(1) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2077(B)(1), to take appropriate action to ensure that critical components, critical technology items, essential materials, and industrial resources are available from reliable sources when needed to meet defense requirements during peacetime, graduated mobilization, and national emergency.

Presidential Executive Orders have long been used illegally by Presidents of every political shade and have often been used destroy the rights of American citizens. Although history has often come to judge these orders as both immoral and unconstitutional, the fact is that the victims of the orders suffered no less because of the retroactive judgment of their progeny. It is for this reason that we must immediately condemn and resist such obvious usurpation as is currently being attempted by the U.S. government.

Nevertheless, some have no doubt begun to wonder why the President has signed such an order. Not only that, but why did he sign the order now? Is it because of the looming war with Iran or the Third World War that will likely result from such a conflict? Is it because of the ticking time bomb called the economy that is only one jittery move or trade deal away from total disintegration? Is it because of a growing sense of hatred of their government amongst the general public? Is there a coming natural disaster of which we are unaware? Are there plans for martial law?

=================================

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TO CONTINUE "LEFTY OBAMA THREAD"

== === === === == == ==

Obama supports natural gas fracking (real environmentalist ,no? no.)

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-25/obama-backs-fracking-to-create-600-000-jobs-vows-safe-drilling.html

Fracking not so good for people.

http://desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/danger.html

FRACKING knowledge around long time (pun)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/05/1003613/-Fracking-Contamination-Proven-Decades-Ago-

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#####################################################

-----------------------------------------------------

globalresearch link

----------

However, what may be shocking is the fact that Section 601 also provides for the mobilization of “labor” for purposes of the national defense. Although some subsections read that evaluations are to be made regarding the “effect and demand of labor utilization,” the implication is that “labor” (meaning American workers) will be considered yet one more resource to be seized for the purposes of “national defense.”

A fruit loop blogger claiming that something is true and it in fact being true a quite different propositions

The EO reads,

Sec. 601. Secretary of Labor. (a) The Secretary of Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of other agencies, as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, shall:

(1) collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation's workforce needs for purposes of national defense;

Federal agencies "collect[ing] and maintain[ing] data..." does NOT equal 'the mobilization of “labor” for purposes of the national defense' let alone "forced labor"

(2) upon request by the Director of Selective Service, and in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, assist the Director of Selective Service in development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services;

Federal agencies "Regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services" does NOT equal 'the mobilization of “labor” for purposes of the national defense' let alone "forced labor".

(3) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order, consult with that agency with respect to: (i) the effect of contemplated actions on labor demand and utilization; (ii) the relation of labor demand to materials and facilities requirements; and (iii) such other matters as will assist in making the exercise of priority and allocations functions consistent with effective utilization and distribution of labor;

Federal agencies "consult with [other] agenc[ies] with respect to..." the points listed above does NOT equal 'the mobilization of “labor” for purposes of the national defense' let alone "forced labor".

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

oooooooooooooooooo+oooooooooooooooooo

TO CONTINUE "LEFTY OBAMA THREAD"

== === === === == == ==

Obama supports natural gas fracking (real environmentalist ,no? no.)

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-25/obama-backs-fracking-to-create-600-000-jobs-vows-safe-drilling.html

Fracking not so good for people.

http://desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/danger.html

FRACKING knowledge around long time (pun)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/05/1003613/-Fracking-Contamination-Proven-Decades-Ago-

This is disturbing even though he also pushed for renewable energy in the same speech. He is still the best (or least bad) option. All the GOPers, including Paul, are far to right of Obama concerning energy and the environment.

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