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Tom Watson interview: 'There is no
doubt in my mind that at least one
politician abused kids'The scourge of the phone hacker now has a new crusade: to get to the bottom of the claims of a Westminster paedophile ring. So what turned him into a private investigator? And why can’t he back Ed Miliband with the same enthusiasm?
Decca Aitkenhead, Friday 28 November 2014 08.30 EST, Article Source
Had Tom Watson been told 10 years ago that senior members of the establishment used to systematically abuse young boys in the 1980s, and that a powerful elite covered up their crimes, he wouldn’t have believed it for a minute.
“Oh no, I would have dismissed it. I was a very believing, small-‘c’ conservative individual who had trust in a lot of public institutions, and believed everything I was told by politicians.” Then came the phone-hacking scandal, however, in which Watson played a chief investigative role. “I lost faith in a lot of individuals, having come through that, and I’m a much more sceptical person at the end of it.” But even the bleakest cynic would have been staggered by the latest allegations to emerge last week about sex abuse in Westminster.
A middle-aged man known as “Nick”, who says he was repeatedly abused and raped by a network of VIPs and politicians, has told the police that he witnessed the murder of three other victims – one boy strangled by a Tory MP during an orgy, another killed in the presence of a Conservative minister, and a third deliberately run over by a car. Watson doesn’t yet know whether or not this is true. “But there is no doubt in my mind that sexual abuse by powerful figures took place.” Did they include politicians? “There is no doubt in my mind that at least one politician abused kids.” And there was a cover-up? “Well … ” He hesitates for a moment. “Something went on.”
The Labour MP is almost unrecognisable these days from the traditional party worker and trade unionist who was elected in 2001 with a reputation as an old-school fixer. In fact, when we meet this week, he no longer seems much like an MP at all, but more like the sort of private investigator you’ve seen in a million mid-budget TV shows: the deceptively shambolic maverick with an ex-wife for a private life, who looks like Robbie Coltrane but turns out to be a crime-fighting genius. And funnily enough, that’s not too far wide of the mark.
Two years ago Watson was lying on his sofa one Friday night, “flat out, knackered,” when an email arrived from a former child protection officer called Peter McKelvie, claiming that evidence of a powerful paedophile ring had been covered up in 1992. “He said he’d written to MPs in the 90s and not had responses, and had given up on politicians a long time ago. ‘But you’re that guy who interviewed Murdoch, we think you might be able to help us.’ It was,” Watson admits with a grin, “a very flattering and enticing email. But there was a parallel with the hacking inquiry that was just uncanny.”
Just as Metropolitan police officers had ignored Glenn Mulcaire’s incriminating notebooks about hacking, McKelvie told Watson that the police had discovered letters implicating powerful individuals in a paedophile network – and then abruptly, inexplicably, terminated all further investigation. Watson knows his critics tend to regard him as a credulous conspiracy theorist, and concedes that that the hacking scandal may have left him unduly susceptible to unthinkable allegations. “But I just believed him. I believed in him, and I believed what he told me.” And so, within a week of meeting McKelvie, Watson went public with the allegations in parliament.
“I just thought, it worked last time with the Met. If I surface this allegation publicly in the format of PMQs, then if the Met have got the evidence they’ll have to take a look at it again.”
It worked. The police suddenly found the letters. One surviving correspondent – Charles Napier, an English teacher and “lifelong paedophile”, former treasurer of the Paedophile Information Exchange, and half brother of the Tory MP John Whittingdale – pleaded guilty last week to 28 charges of indecent assault against boys, and is now in prison.
Napier himself had no connection to any Westminster paedophile ring. Until I bring up the fraternal relationship to Whittingdale, Watson doesn’t even mention it, for fear that the quite coincidental link could be misinterpreted. And the specific document McKelvie told Watson he had seen back in 1992, implicating a senior associate of the government, was now missing from the boxes of letters produced by the police. Nevertheless, ever since putting his parliamentary question, Watson has been overwhelmed by an “avalanche” of allegations against much more powerful men from “survivors who are very, very damaged and angry and upset”, had previously gone to the police and been disbelieved, and now saw him as a new gateway to justice.
“A slightly reluctant gateway,” he confesses. A “naturally disorganised person”, equipped with neither the skills nor the resources to process the deluge of allegations, at times Watson wondered what he had got himself into.
Does he believe what the accusers tell him? He looks awkward. “I’m not here to investigate, or to judge.” He has met the man known as Nick, but “it was a very, very traumatic and difficult conversation, as you would imagine. He only told me about one murder. He spoke very slowly, very intermittently, and I didn’t need to hear any more.” Did Watson trust the account? He sighs uneasily. “These allegations, they’re so enormous that you need critical faculties. What I’m certain of is that he’s not delusional. He is either telling the truth, or he’s made up a meticulous and elaborate story. It’s not for me to judge. What I was hoping to do was build a relationship with him and get him back into the system, so he could make his allegations to the police. And to make sure that he had a degree of protection,” he adds darkly. “With all the things that come from making these sort of allegations.”
What does he mean? “Well, I think he would certainly need his privacy protected. And I think he would need to be dealt with very sensitively by the police. I say that because there had been a previous case of an allegation of rape by a woman who alleged that a former minister raped her when she was a teenager. And she was very upset about one particular interview with the police, where it appeared to her, and to me when she explained what happened, that they had not followed the correct procedures. ‘You didn’t actually say no’ was one of the lines she was upset about.”
Is he talking about the woman who accused Leon Brittan of raping her when she was 19? “Yes.” She came to Watson after the police dismissed her allegation. “She felt very, very bruised and very, very upset. Very, very, very upset.” Does he share her distress? “Yes, I do, I do.”
Watson gets a bit jumpy when I ask if he knows the name of the senior Downing Street aide referred to in his original question to David Cameron. “Erm … he, he, he … er, yes.” Did he recognise the name? “Erm, yes. But it would be wrong of me to – honestly, please, don’t, it would be very wrong of me to give any context to who it might be. We definitely don’t want to go down the Lord McAlpine road.” The names of more than 10 current and former politicians have also been passed to the police, and lots of Watson’s colleagues badger him to whisper the identities – though not all. “I think some are sniffy about what I’m doing, and say it’s grandstanding. But,” he shrugs, “that’s politics.”
Watson can’t rule out the possibility that the Westminster paedophile ring is a wild invention containing not a shred of truth. I ask what odds he would give on this. “You’re pushing me beyond how far I want to go. But in one particular case of one person, there have been multiple allegations from unrelated people, some more credible than others, about severe cases of abuse. And in my mind I’m pretty certain that that person has broken the law and abused kids. But it doesn’t matter what I think, it’s what the police uncover.”
If the inquiries all conclude that that even the darkest allegations are true, what does he think that will do to relations between the public and the political class? “Well, there will obviously be absolute fury. And rightly so.”
Watson doesn’t even try to deny that public esteem for politicians has already sunk to dangerously low levels. He says Emily Thornberry’s calamitous tweet betrayed “arrogant contempt”, but that all three parties have become exclusive clubs for privileged elites. When I ask how the average voter could conceivably identify with a Hampstead intellectual and policy wonk like Ed Miliband, he admits: “Ermmm … well, a lot of them don’t. Which is Labour’s challenge.”
Watson resigned as Miliband’s campaign co-ordinator in 2013, due to a controversy over candidate selection in Falkirk. “So I’m not in the business of giving advice to Ed these days. But I’m sure he knows that his challenge is to go and face his doubters.” When we met last summer, Watson assured me that Miliband was only polling badly because voters hadn’t got to know him yet, but his proposed remedy – show them more Ed – doesn’t appear to have worked. In June, Watson urged his leader’s press team to “lift its game or move on”, but neither has happened, has it? “It certainly doesn’t look like it, no.”
Last week Michael Gove described Cameron as “the standout politician of our time”. Is that how Watson would describe Miliband? After an uneasy pause: “I would describe him as a potentially great Labour prime minister.” I ask the question again. “I tell you what I think. I think he’d be a much better PM than leader of the opposition. There’s some things you have to do as leader of the opposition –the retail bit, all the media stuff and campaigning – that are a totally different requirement to running a No 10 operation and taking the big decisions.” So Miliband is not very good at leading the opposition, but would be good at running the country? “Yeah. Like Churchill and Atlee. Who were both lousy politicians and would be condemned in every tabloid newspaper were they in politics today. But I still believe in Ed, and have faith in him to be an absolutely standout Labour PM.”
The shadow cabinet, however, is another matter. In the final six months of a fixed-term parliament, Watson argues heatedly: “There is nothing substantial going to come out legislatively. So positioning and speeches in Westminster are not going to cut it. We’ve got to do it totally differently. What should the shadow cabinet be doing? Getting out into the country and explaining Labour’s message! We know there are people out there who like the policies of Labour, but are slightly concerned about whether the team at the top are going to deliver it. Get out there and convince them! Get into the town halls, get on soap boxes, get out there and explain what Labour stands for!”
He cannot understand why the shadow cabinet seems so meekly silent, 160 days away from the election. “I’m very frustrated because I just want them to be fired up and get out there, because it’s a compelling offer we’ve got. So explain it! If I’m sounding frustrated it’s because I want us to win. And I want the shadow cabinet to want to win as well. I want it to be fired up and get out there, because there are people out there that need us!”
He checks himself, and grins. “Sorry, I’ve went off into a bit of a rant there.” He does sound, I agree, highly frustrated. Watson nods ruefully. “Yep. I’m turning into a middle-aged, curmudgeonly, overweight bloke.”
The Dictator ~ Sacha Baron Cohen ~ http://vimeo.com/47420554
Ten Steps To Close
Down an Open SocietyNaomi Wolf, 12/31/1969, Updated: 05/25/2011, Article Source
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.
It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.
Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.
1 Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda has noted, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."
Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.
It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.
2 Create a gulag
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.
At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.
This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.
Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.
But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.
By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.
3 Develop a thug caste
When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.
The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution
Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.
Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".
4 Set up an internal surveillance system
In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.
In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.
In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.
5 Harass citizens' groups
The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.
Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.
6 Engage in arbitrary detention and release
This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.
In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.
Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".
"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.
"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."
"That'll do it," the man said.
Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.
James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.
Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.
It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.
7 Target key individuals
Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.
Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.
Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.
Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.
Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.
8 Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.
Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.
Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.
Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.
You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.
9 Dissent equals treason
Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.
Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.
In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".
And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.
Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)
We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.
Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.
10 Suspend the rule of law
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.
Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."
Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.
Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.
Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.
It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".
What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.
What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.
Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.
We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.
From "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot," Chelsea Green Publishing, Sept 2007
Facebook & Peers Running
"Safe Haven" for TerroristsLee Rigby report blaming Facebook
further strains Silicon Valley-UK tiesDominic Rushe in New York, 26 November 2014, Article Source
Furious reaction greets official report accusing Facebook of failing to prevent jihadi-inspired killing near Woolwich barracks
Silicon Valley’s relations with the British government have hit a new low after an official report in the UK blamed Facebook for failing to prevent the jihadi-inspired murder of a British soldier.
Behind closed doors in the tech community – where relations are already strained following the revelations from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden – there is fury over the intelligence and security committee (ISC) report, published on Tuesday, which accused Facebook and its peers of running a “safe haven” for terrorists.
The ISC was investigating what the UK intelligence agencies knew about the two men who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in a street near his military barracks in Woolwich, London, in May 2013.
Five months before the attack, the report revealed, one of the two killers, Michael Adebowale, had described his intention to carry out a jihadi attack “in the most graphic terms and emotive manner” during an exchange with an Islamist militant based overseas. The report did not name the company involved, but it later emerged that it was Facebook.
While the report cleared the UK intelligence services of blame for failing to prevent the killing, despite a catalogue of errors, it was highly critical of the company for failing to flag up the information. Had it done so, the committee concluded, Rigby’s life might have been saved.
ISC’s chair, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and the prime minister, David Cameron, used the findings to accuse Silicon Valley of not doing enough to flag up potential terrorists using their networks to the UK authorities.
Facebook declined to comment beyond a statement at its horror at the attack. “We don’t comment on individual cases but Facebook’s policies are clear: we do not allow terrorist content on the site and take steps to prevent people from using our service for these purposes,” said a spokesperson.
Nor did its peers want to engage in a bitter spat with the UK authorities over the murder.
But off the record many saw the report as a cynical bid to steer blame away from the security services and to bolster controversial legislation to enhance online surveillance.
“Nice fucking timing,” said one Valley executive who did not want to be named.
“Given all the information they have, with and without our permission, it is outrageous that they should try and blame Facebook,” said another. “The conclusion of the report was: if only Facebook had been doing our job here.”
The UK is currently considering forcing tech companies to retain records that would identify people using a particular phone or computer. While the US is at least struggling to debate ways to protect privacy in the wake of Snowden’s revelations, they argue the UK is moving in the opposite direction.
Technology executives were particularly incensed by the report’s proposal that Facebook and its peers “should accept their responsibility” to review accounts immediately and pass information to the appropriate authority “when possible links to terrorism trigger accounts to be closed”.
“So who is next? Do the telecoms companies have to listen in to all our calls to spot potential wrongdoing? Should Google be reading all our Gmail? Should the postal service be reading people’s mail?” said one.
Privacy groups too were shocked at what they saw as the cynicism of the report’s conclusions. Eva Galperin, global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said she was no fan of Facebook’s terms and conditions (nor of the tech firms’ own attitudes to privacy) but it was clear they had policies in place to spot bad actors and it was not Facebook’s job to police its 1.3bn-strong community for the possibility of future crimes.
“They are not here to do your job for you. If you want data, you have to show up with a valid legal order,” she said. “The idea that Facebook should take the place of the surveillance state is a spurious one and frankly one that they wouldn’t even be likely to do very well.”
According to the report, Adebowale did not discuss a definitive plan on Facebook as to how he might carry out an attack. The contact, called Foxtrot by the report, made several suggestions to Adebowale and wanted to be kept informed of his ideas. “However, no evidence of further contact between them has been found,” according to the report. The information was provided after the attack by an unnamed third party (presumably from Facebook) who got in touch with GCHQ, the British intelligence organisation.
Facebook does do some active policing of its site but in general relies on reports from other users to highlight issues or requests from legal authorities. Before the murder Facebook had closed several accounts opened by Adebowale in accordance with its policies.
These state: “Safety is Facebook’s top priority. We remove content and may escalate to law enforcement when we perceive a genuine risk of physical harm, or a direct threat to public safety. You may not credibly threaten others, or organise acts of real-world violence.
“Organisations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity are not allowed to maintain a presence on our site. We also prohibit promoting, planning or celebrating any of your actions if they have, or could, result in financial harm to others, including theft and vandalism.”
GCHQ informed the committee that the old accounts had been highlighted by “automated techniques” which identify accounts that break Facebook’s terms of service.
“The company themselves only saw this information after the murder as part of a retrospective review of all 11 of Adebowale’s accounts. They had not been aware of the content of these accounts before as they did not routinely monitor content in this way,” the committee found.
Despite this the committee concluded that Facebook – and its peers – “should accept their responsibility” to review accounts immediately and pass information to the appropriate authority “when possible links to terrorism trigger accounts to be closed”.
The report said there was “considerable difficulty” in accessing online communications on sites belonging to US-based internet firms, which had cited a “need to protect users’ privacy”.
“Where there is a possibility that a terrorist atrocity is being planned, that argument should not be allowed to prevail,” the report said.
“If Adebowale’s exchange with Foxtrot had been seen by MI5 at the time, then we believe that the investigation would have increased to Priority 1, unlocking all the extra resources this would have entailed. This is the single issue which – had it been known at the time – might have enabled MI5 to prevent the attack.”
The comments echo those of GCHQ’s new boss, Robert Hannigan, who earlier this month accused US technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists, comments that have further strained relations between Britain and US tech companies.
But as tech executives have pointed out, both Adebowale and his accomplice Michael Adebolajo had been under surveillance by MI5 for years before the killing. There is no suggestion in the report that Facebook was asked to hand over information about the men before the attack.
What ISC is asking for was truly frightening, said Galperin. “They want these companies to survey all of our messages and then they want to be informed if there is anything suspicious. It’s the very definition of the surveillance state,” she said.
Facebook & Socnets
from ~@~
Please stop getting angry with me for not responding to your Socnet requests. I do not use that medium.
I am not ignoring, angry with, or avoiding you. It is not personal.
Yes, I have accounts on various Socnets from when they were initially established; however, it is possible you missed an email memo stating, "I went to those Socnets once, felt they asked for too much personal information, and never went back after signing up."
I do not trust Socnets for communication between family and friends.
Personally, I like knowing who my friends are, call them on a telephone when time permits, or email them directly.
I do not like the concept of collecting strangers as friends; which, in some cases, has proven to be dangerous.
Socnets are fine for business and announcements.
One might consider reading or re-reading 1984, Brave New World, or the Foundation Series and rethink what has happened to the world, when we were so clearly warned in advance of these possibilities.
One more thing. If you have not heard from me via email it is probably due to a computer crash that occurred many years ago, where I lost all my email addresses due to massive electrical surges at the ranch.
John Titor on Civil War
I remember 2036 very clearly. It is difficult to describe 2036 in detail without spending a great deal of time explaining why things are so different.
In 2036, I live in central Florida with my family and I'm currently stationed at an Army base in Tampa. A world war in 2015 killed nearly three billion people. The people that survived grew closer together. Life is centered on the family and then the community. I cannot imagine living even a few hundred miles away from my parents.
There is no large industrial complex creating masses of useless food and recreational items. Food and livestock is grown and sold locally. People spend much more time reading and talking together face to face. Religion is taken seriously and everyone can multiply and divide in their heads.
Life has changed so much over my lifetime that it's hard to pin down a "normal" day. When I was 13, I was a soldier. As a teenager, I helped my dad haul cargo. I went to college when I was 31 and I was recruited to "time travel" shortly after that. Again, I suppose an average day in 2036 is like an average day on the farm.
There is a civil war in the United States that starts in 2005. That conflict flares up and down for 10 years. In 2015, Russia launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States (which is the "other side" of the civil war from my perspective), China and Europe. The United States counter attacks. The US cities are destroyed along with the AFE (American Federal Empire)...thus we (in the country) won. The European Union and China were also destroyed. Russia is now our largest trading partner and the Capitol of the US was moved to Omaha Nebraska.
One of the biggest reasons why food production is localized is because the environment is affected with disease and radiation. We are making huge strides in getting it cleaned up. Water is produced on a community level and we do eat meat that we raise ourselves.
After the war, early new communities gathered around the current Universities. That's where the libraries were. I went to school at Fort UF, which is now called the University of Florida. Not too much is different except the military is large part of people's life and we spend a great deal of time in the fields and farms at the "University" or Fort.
The Constitution was changed after the war. We have 5 presidents that are voted in and out on different term periods. The vice president is the president of the senate and they are voted separately. ~ John Titor
#fuckAT&T
For Executives Only,
Hard Working, Seldom Praised, Service Employees Please IgnoreFuck You, AT&T, GIZMODO, Article Source ~ Fuck you AT&T, Stupid Evil Bastard, Article Source ~ Fuck AT&T, CafePress, Article Source ~ Fuck AT&T, YouTube, Video Source ~ Fuck At&t again..., Wackbag, Article Source ~ Man Fuck AT&T, NeoGAF, Article Source ~ Fuck AT&T "U-Verse", Twit Media Critic, Article Source ~ Fuck AT&T, reddit, Article Source ~ Fuck AT&T and their data plans!!, Facebook, Article Source ~ FUCK AT&T, Oppositelock, Article Source ~ Fuck AT&T, 'cause they're helping Bush spy on us, Corrente, Article Source ~ Fuck Frontier and fuck AT&T and fuck Cablevision, DSLreports, Article Source ~ FUCK AT&T, Twitter, Article Source ~ FUCK AT&T, MotownMuscle, Article Source ~ Fuck AT&T Uverse, DawgShed, Article Source ~ fuck AT&T, GetHuman, Article Source ~ What the Fuck?, snopes, Article Source
Sundance ~ Waahli aka Wyzah via Noé Sardet ~ http://vimeo.com/2179318
Facebook, Google and Apple
lobby for curb to NSA surveillanceA coalition of the biggest names in consumer technology have backed a US bill that would limit surveillance and prevent bulk email collection
Samuel Gibbs, Monday 17 November 2014 08.28 EST, Article Source
A coalition of technology and internet companies is lobbying to curb US National Security Agency surveillance powers and for more transparency on government data requests.
The Reform Government Surveillance coalition, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple, added its support for the race to pass a bill through the US Senate before the end of the year, which would inhibit mass data collection from emails and internet metadata.
“The Senate has an opportunity this week to vote on the bipartisan USA Freedom Act,” said the coalition in an open letter sent to the Senate. “We urge you to pass the bill, which both protects national security and reaffirms America’s commitment to the freedoms we all cherish.”
The bill would also allow technology companies to disclose the number and types of data demands from government as part of the continued transparency push from the industry.
If the USA Freedom Act fails to pass through the Senate before the end of the year the process will have to restart in January, and will be scrutinised by a new Congress controlled a Republican party more favourable to government surveillance.
The USA Freedom Act was passed through the House of Representatives in May with bipartisan support and is now set for a vote in the Senate after Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader Harry Reid filed a procedural motion to have the bill heard.
Privacy advocates and technology groups championed the bill originally but many revoked their support after compromises expanded the definition of what data the government can collect.
The Senate vote on 18 November will allow debate on amendments to begin on the bill, although whether enough senators will vote in favour is unknown.
‘Lost contracts with foreign governments worth millions of dollars'
Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents hundreds of technology companies globally and hosts the largest electronics trade show in the world International CES, wrote an open letter urging support for the bill.
“American technology companies have been hurt by reaction to the revelation of the US government’s bulk data collection,” wrote Shapiro. “Many companies have lost business, or face laws designed to restrict data flows, due to foreign governments’ fear that the US government can reach company-managed data at will.”
“Several companies, including members of CEA, have already lost contracts with foreign governments worth millions of dollars. Further, several governments may now limit the free flow of data across borders, damaging the utility and functionality of the internet,” he wrote.
Technology companies, including Apple and Google, retaliated to the NSA revelations by implementing end-to-end encryption and enhancing security on mobile devices, protecting personal data as standard.
Pushback from technology companies, including Microsoft and Facebook, saw a limited transparency deal struck with the US Justice Department in February, which the new bill will enhance allowing companies greater freedom to disclose security requests for user data.
The Reform Government Surveillance coalition also recommitted to reforms beyond the USA Freedom Act, describing it only as a step in the right direction.
“We will continue to work with Congress, the Administration, civil liberties groups and governments around the world to advance essential reforms that we set forth in a set of principles last year,” wrote the coalition. “Such reforms include: preventing government access to data without proper legal process; assuring that providers are not required to locate infrastructure within a country’s border; promoting the free flow of data across borders; and avoiding conflicts among nations through robust, principled, and transparent frameworks that govern lawful requests for data across jurisdictions.”
• Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Yahoo release US surveillance requests
Covering Lies With
Corporate & Political
Bull Shit?Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck In the Middle With Who
In Memory of our
very dear friend:
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine ~ VolunteerKeith Lampe
a.k.a. Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine
Tuesday, 11 November 2014
Keith Lampe ~ Co-Founder of YIPPIE
& Progressive Activist Groups ~ Video Channel
From: Lila & Chris
To: ~@~
Date: November 16, 2014
Subject: Memorial for PondoHi Curtis,
On Friday we got together to say goodbye to our friend.
We shared our stories, how we met Pondo and how he influenced our lives. I shared the main highlights of his life - it was hard, he had sooo many stories! Then proceeded to the one of his power spots, where we had done mantra sessions with him many times before, and chanted his vajra guru mantra. Then we had lunch listening to his favorite tunes and sharing more stories about Pondo. And finally drove to the house where he lived and spread his ashes in Yambala river by his house.
I've attached some videos.
We plan to gather again on the 49th bardo day, which I believe is on December 30th.
Warmest hugs, Lila
Keith Lampe Memorial via Chris Dale ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfC7hiA8Gwk
Keith Lampe Memorial via Chris Dale ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiGGYkagxHM
Keith Lampe Memorial via Chris Dale ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIb2oUyWvOc
Keith Lampe Memorial via Chris Dale ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yb_eq8hQWQ
From: ~@~
To: Lila & Chris
Date: November 16, 2014
Subject: pine updategm folks,
here are some comments i have received regarding pine:
from Ed Sanders:
Thousands of good memories in NYC (He had the idea for the Yip-In), Chicago ’68 (he was wielding a tennis racket!), Bolinas, Earth Read-Out, Woodstock, and his inspiring dailing compendium of action. He went out in a blaze of eloquence.
——
from Michelle Aldrich [forwarded by Paul Krassner]:
He was very unique and will always be remembered for his contributions to the movement.
——
from Michael Simmons:
A total ka-RACK-ta in the best sense and a sweetheart. He fought for justice and beauty until the end.
Cheers Keith — and thank you.
——
from Wavy Gravy:
Good grief. A big tree fell in heaven. TIMBER!!!
——
from Rick Davis aka Rice Farmer:
His indefatigable campaigning for the Earth was always — and shall continue to be — a great inspiration to me.
——
from Marliese Gabrielson:
I have many fond memories of him. He will always be remembered fondly. We shared many adventures. May he RIP.
——
from David West:
I first met Pondo in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 1997, when he was using an ancient manual typewriter to produce a monthly Earth Read-Out, which he then photocopied and mailed to a dozen people. I introduced him to the wonders of E-mail, and produced the first Earth Read-Out web page, which became the fore-runners of his more recent almost daily postings.
He became my mentor, and the first to introduce me to the idea that control of the world was not as stated in the history books. He introduced me to the late Gerard Holmgren, which allowed me to participate in the detailed investigations of the 9/11 data, where we discovered that there were no hijacked planes.
During a low period in 2000, Pondo and I were the only people at my Christmas Dinner table.
We had been in almost daily contact until he left Thailand in about 2003 to go to Ecuador, and I feel sure our friendship will extend beyond the physical plane. I have had a few friends die, but none have left such a huge hole to be filled. Although we hadn't physically met in the last ten years, we met spiritually quite often.
Pondo, if you decide on having another time around, I would love to share it with you In total respect and appreciation.
——
from Pat "Rose" Farrington
Whole Earth Game #1, A Proactive Memorial, Ponderosa Pine, 1931 - 2014 Ethical Eternal Service To All Species.
"We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat." - Terence McKenna
The world is aflame and we have elected ourselves as first responders.
Pine, your service is an inspiration.
——
we have not yet gotten over our sadness of the loss of this incredible hu-man-be-ing.
thank you, n’very best2u’n’urs, ~@~
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine ~ VolunteerHi Curtis,
Our friend Pondo died this morning in the hospital due to kidney failure among a few other complications. 3 of us were with him for his last hours in the hospital.
Pondo died very gracefully. I have never seen him in such peace. He was on no painkillers, only antibiotics and assisted breathing. The whole time I was there he was semi-conscious, eyes rolling back at times, big smiles on his face, and pleasant breathing. He was very euphoric and it was a pleasant experience for all of us, him included.
I will be going to his house today to tap into his emails and send the word out to his mailing lists. The other details we are working on.
peace and love,
Chris
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine ~ VolunteerView local page on Keith Lampe
We will sincerely miss you Pine
From: keith lampe
To: ~@~
Subject: For Curtis: A Day in the Life: 10/30-31/14
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 20:16:21 +0300Volunteers for Planetary Climate Action (VPCA)
+ Resolving the Atmospheric Emergency +October 31, 2014
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
First, my apologies to those of you who received Wednesday's edition in the recipients' field rather than the Bcc one.
I was utterly stupified that day. I've been severely ill for more than four weeks now. Especially difficult have been frequent episodes of convulsive/spasmatic coughing shaking the inside of my body quite painfully.
My main problem has been my lungs, which constantly fill with phlegm and when added to severe emphysema and asthma cause quite a problem.
I've had two mainstream doctors up here to my mountain retreat but they've been unable to improve my condition.
So Tuesday I asked for a visit from a local shaman whom I've known for a few years now and for whom I have great respect.
What he said is quite interesting.
Here's one of his most memorable lines: "Too much compassion for plants and animals causes a lung problem".
He said his father had been like this--and had died a month ago at age 72.
Then he said quite recently he'd also had a lung problem and just a couple days ago he'd gone to the local hospital for a chest X-ray--and it showed his lungs were clean. He even pulled out the X-ray and showed it to me.
So what I think we should take from this is that a much higher percentage of our current illnesses than we think are psychosomatic (or neurosomatic) rather than simply somatic.
For example, we may think we're sick from toxic chemtrails residues when actually we're sick from these plus the neural stress resulting from having to absorb the info that those controlling us are so evil that they perpetrate chemtrails.
Certainly the news of these past four weeks has been more horrendous than that of any similar period I can remember. One of my most aware readers commented a few days ago that "Hell has come to earth".
I've had information sickness several times before but always mildly: two or three days of deep fatigue, then back to okay again.
In any case, yesterday morning my housemate came up to my second-floor room just as I was waking and said: "I'm scared. I think you are dying."
That same thought had occurred to me just the day before as I wondered how I was going to make it through this at 83 if my friend's father had been taken out by the same malaise at 72.
On the positive side, it's certainly a respectable cause of death: Natural World Hyperconcern (NWH).
And I've already arranged for my death to instigate at least one more really good party. Forty-nine days following it, there'll be a Bardo Party for me at the Bolinas (CA) Community Center with excellent live music and excellent potluck food. Yeah, at least my death will have some value.
In recent years I've several times pointed out that there are a variety of daily practices which can gradually strengthen the nervous system so that gradually folks can absorb more bummer info before being sickened by it.
I'll paste one of these directly below. You can get into it by yourself merely by imitating what you hear in the accompanying audios and/or videos. I've been practicing it for nearly forty-four years now. It's not a panacea but it's quite helpful and also it enhances average mood.
Power to the Flora,
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine Volunteer
PS: NYC graffiti a few decades ago: Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
*
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/Keith_Lampe.html
Vocal Energy Health
Keith Lampe (Ponderosa Pine), Vocals and Doug Adamz, Tibetan BellPart One: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevesone.mp3
Part Two: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevestwo.mp3
With VEH (Vocal Energy Health), after a few sessions of imitating these sounds, one can start doing them alone or--even better--with others; creating an effective practice that requires no gear. - Ponderosa Pine
Videos:
Since he passed on Veterans Day, it is worthwhile to know Keith Lampe was an Army Lieutenant during the Korean War. ~@~
====================================
Listen to Keith Lampe at the
United State Cafe
Tuesday Night Class
July 29, 1975:http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/tuesnightclass7_29_1975.mp3
====================================
Obituaries
Pondorosa Pine, Keith Lampe:
¡Presente! Marking the Passing
of an Environmental Pioneerby Gar Smith
Saturday November 15, 2014 - 07:12:00 PM
http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2014-11-14/article/42723
Dear Friends of Ponderosa Pine,
(November 11, 2014)—I regret to say that our good friend and activist Pondo was laid to final rest November 10 @ 5am in Loja, Ecuador. He died from kidney failure among a few other complications. His health had been failing in the recent months and it came to its peaceful final closure.
Myself and a few other close friends were with him in his final hours to send him off with love and support. He died very peacefully with no pain and no painkillers. His last moments were very peaceful with many smiles from us and from him. He was not afraid and was sent away from this body easily.
Please let us share a moment and send him our blessings to wherever he has been sent to for his next mission. All the best to all his friends and family who cared much for our friend Pondo. This will be the last message from this address.
Kind regards,
Chris
Remembering a Memorable Environmental Activist
By Gar Smith / Friends of the Earth; Editor Emeritus, Earth Island Journal
The message from Ponderosa Pine's "Double Helix Office in the Global South White House" was not unexpected but it still hit with the force of a majestic redwood falling in the forest.
I had heard of Keith Lampe (aka Ponderosa Pine, aka Ro-Non-So-Te, aka Transition President of the Government of the USA in Exile) long before I had the pleasure of getting to know him as a friend and a colleague.
It was in 1969, as a staffer at the Berkeley Barb, that I first began reading Keith's unique self-syndicated fortnightly column, Earth Read-Out. It was the first "environmental column" to appear in the so-called Underground Press (or anywhere else, for that matter).
I eventually encountered Keith as few years later—appropriately enough, during an All Species Day Parade in San Francisco.
Spotting a fellow who stood out from the rest of the crowd, I was moved to ask: "Might you be Ponderosa Pine?" It was an easy guess on my part. The fellow I was talking to seemed to be the only marcher who was barefoot. He was certainly the only one dressed in an outfit fashioned entirely from tree bark. With a beaming smile and mischievous eyes peeking out between strips of tree-gleanings, he looked like a walking elm, both deciduous and impish.
Keith Lampe had a one-of-a-kind career arc—from reporter to soldier to activist to media mentor to social critic, philosopher, eco-guru, musical pioneer and much more.
From Randolph Hearst to Allen Ginsberg
In 1950, at the young age of 18, Keith scored a job as reporter for the Detroit Free Press. By 1957, he was based in Paris covering NATO as a correspondent for the Hearst empire's International News Service (INS). As he once recalled, "every time my byline appeared in the newspaper anywhere on the planet, a clipping of it was rushed to me by diplomatic pouch in order to feed my ego and keep me obedient to [Hearst's] right-wing corporate values."
Recognizing early that fame was an "ignominious" trap, Keith left INS and began freelancing. He devised the habit of writing under a number of pseudonyms so that "whenever one of them started showing up in corporate media too frequently, I could always slip into something more comfortable."
In 1964, while hiking through Scandinavia on his third globe-hopping journey, Keith learned of the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Grabbing a flight back to the States, he showed up at the door of the Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee in New York. He signed on to register voters in Mississippi and wound up working with Francis "Mitch" Mitchell, who was filling in for Julian Bond handling SNCC's press relations.
Keith became aware of global warming early, when Allen Ginsberg (whom he had met in Kolkata in 1962) passed along Gregory Bateson's warning that, within a few decades, the polar icecaps would begin to melt and continents would be flooded.
In late '65, during the Vietnam War, Keith co-founded Veterans and Reservists to End the War in Vietnam. (He had served as an Army officer during the Korean War, acting as an artillery forward observer.) In 1966, he was part of a team of anti-war veterans who lit up America's TV screens by publically setting fire to their discharge papers, service metals and campaign ribbons.
An Arresting Presence
Keith was no slouch when it came to activism. He regularly scolded Berkeley's Dave Brower (the legendary founder of Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute) for never having gone to jail as part of a pro-Earth protest.
Pondo's first arrest came in the Sixties when he was busted in front of Dow Chemical's New York Office for protesting the company's "obscene manufacture of napalm."
Over the next two years, he was arrested twice during Stop the Draft Week demonstrationss, jailed following a protest at an Army Induction Center and handcuffed for attempting to delay the departure of a Vietnam-bound Navy destroyer berthed in the Hudson River.
In September 1967, Keith was part of a group arrested in the Senate Gallery for tossing antiwar leaflets onto a chamber full of Washington politicians. A month later, Pondo was busted for protesting the war at the Pentagon—along with Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Terry Southern and fellow Yippies, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and Stew Albert.
In 1987, Pondo was tossed into jail for protesting the World Bank's plans to subsidize the construction of a large highway through the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
Naturally, Keith was on the ground in Chicago for the 1968 demonstrations in the streets outside the Democratic Party's nominating convention. He subsequently learned the New York City police had compiled a 40-page dossier on his activist history and provided it to the Chicago cops. The report identified him as "an especially dangerous leader" because he encouraged the rabble to disobey convention. Actually, Pondo pointed out, all he was saying was: "Do your own thing."
In 2000, Pondo, Bill McKibben, Granny D, and 30 others were arrested in the White House Rotunda for demanding campaign-finance reform.
Coasting West
It was in 1968 that Keith, along with wife Judy and daughter Issa, left Manhattan and relocated to Berkeley. It was only a matter of months before he joined with poet/activist Gary Snyder and others to risk arrest for taking a principled stand in defense of Nature. This time it was a matter of throwing his body "upon the gears and upon the wheels . . . upon the levers" to blockade a logging truck—or, in Pondo's more evocative translation, blocking "a truck carrying redwood corpses from a nearby tree-slaughter site." This radical act, many argue, marked the beginning of the modern US environmental movement.
In 1969, Keith gravitated to Woodstock, a transformative Counter Cultural event where, as Paul Krasner recalls, "Hippies became freaks. Negros became blacks. Girls became women. Richard Alpert became Baba Ram Dass. Hugh Romney became Wavy Gravy. . . . Yippie organizer Keith Lampe became Pondorosa Pine, and his girlfriend became Olive Tree."
Over the next decade-plus, Pondo was arrested numerous times for putting his body between the bulldozers and the redwoods. In 1991, Pondo responded to the bombing of Baghdad by founding the US Pro-Democracy Movement. He turned down an offer to have his collected environmental essays turned into a book when his publisher refused to pay extra to print the book on tree-free paper.
Looking back upon his long history of activism, it is easy to believe Pondo's estimation that he was likely responsible for "co-founding more movements and sub-movements than anyone else in Home Planet history."
A frequent resident of Chang Mai, Thailand, during the 80's, Pondo eventually settled in a beautiful mountain retreat in southern Ecuador. From his "Double Helix Office in the Global South White House," Pondo kept in touch by sending out daily dispatches of environmental news and opinion under the banner "A Day in the Life." These daily compendiums of global news regularly ran anywhere from a half-megabyte to 1.5 megabytes or more.
In September 2012, health problems compelled Pondo to dial back a bit. He revised his publishing schedule to one humongous dispatch every other day. His last edition of Day in the Life weighed in at a modest 238 kilobytes but it still managed to include more than 180 articles, ranging from reflections on the ebola virus, to climate engineering, attacks on free speech, labor protests in Rome, the militarizing of America's police, America's human rights abuses, the demonstration of a "self-running free energy device" and the threat of Artificial Intelligence.
Pondo lead off this final dispatch with his traditional introduction—a spontaneous exposition of his current concerns, observations, criticisms and prescriptions, by turns humorous and cranky.
But this one was different. Pondo knew he was dying and he wanted to share the moment with his many friends, fellow activists and readers around the globe.
Here is the introduction to Pondo's final dispatch:
Volunteers for Planetary Climate Action (VPCA)
Resolving the Atmospheric Emergency
October 31, 2014
Dear Sentinel Friends and Colleagues,
. . . I've been severely ill for more than four weeks now. Especially difficult have been frequent episodes of convulsive/spasmatic coughing shaking the inside of my body quite painfully. My main problem has been my lungs, which constantly fill with phlegm and when added to severe emphysema and asthma cause quite a problem.
I've had two mainstream doctors up here to my mountain retreat but they've been unable to improve my condition. So Tuesday I asked for a visit from a local shaman whom I've known for a few years now and for whom I have great respect. What he said is quite interesting.
Here's one of his most memorable lines: "Too much compassion for plants and animals causes a lung problem."
He said his father had been like this—and had died a month ago at age 72. Then he said quite recently he'd also had a lung problem and just a couple days ago he'd gone to the local hospital for a chest X-ray—and it showed his lungs were clean. He even pulled out the X-ray and showed it to me.
So what I think we should take from this is that a much higher percentage of our current illnesses than we think are psychosomatic (or neurosomatic) rather than simply somatic. For example, we may think we're sick from toxic chemtrails residues when actually we're sick from these plus the neural stress resulting from having to absorb the info that those controlling us are so evil that they perpetrate chemtrails.
Certainly the news of these past four weeks has been more horrendous than that of any similar period I can remember. One of my most aware readers commented a few days ago that "Hell has come to earth".
I've had information sickness several times before but always mildly: two or three days of deep fatigue, then back to okay again.
In any case, yesterday morning my housemate came up to my second-floor room just as I was waking and said: "I'm scared. I think you are dying."
That same thought had occurred to me just the day before as I wondered how I was going to make it through this at 83 if my friend's father had been taken out by the same malaise at 72.
On the positive side, it's certainly a respectable cause of death: Natural World Hyperconcern (NWH).
And I've already arranged for my death to instigate at least one more really good party. Forty-nine days following it, there'll be a Bardo Party for me at the Bolinas (CA) Community Center with excellent live music and excellent potluck food. Yeah, at least my death will have some value.
In recent years I've several times pointed out that there are a variety of daily practices which can gradually strengthen the nervous system so that gradually folks can absorb more bummer info before being sickened by it. I'll paste one of these directly below. You can get into it by yourself merely by imitating what you hear in the accompanying audios and/or videos. I've been practicing it for nearly forty-four years now. It's not a panacea but it's quite helpful and also it enhances average mood.
Power to the Flora,
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine
Volunteer
PS: NYC graffiti a few decades ago:
"Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down."
--- --- ---
Pondo on The Rights of Mother Earth
(April 20, 2010)—Info and commentary on the auspicious World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by Keith Lampe aka Ponderosa Pine, a founder of the US environmental movement in 1969.
--- --- ---
Some Offerings Selected from Pondo's Website
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/Keith_Lampe.html
Sing along with Pondo as he riffs on Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tamborine Man."
Pondo's Innovative Eastern/Western-Music-Mix
With Peter Rowan's "Break My Heart Again"
(November 12, 2012)—It's a new musical genre combining the intense pleasure of a great Occidental tune and the neural benefit of a well-practiced Oriental mantra. The current singer—selected randomly from a line-up of DLBHs (Dirty Little Barefoot Hippies) busted for being elated without a permit—is so-called Pondo.
If you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, please help us spread the word about this new music. In most regions of our planet these days, there are quite a few folks adept at one or more mantras. We urgently hope they'll start getting it together with local musicians able to appreciate how much can be added to the presentation of Western tunes by Eastern background vocalists. Indeed, let ten thousand E&W bands bloom.
Vocal Energy Health (VEH)
Keith Lampe (Ponderosa Pine), Vocals and Doug Adamz, Tibetan Bell
With VEH, after a few sessions of imitating these sounds, one can start doing them alone or—even better—with others creating an effective practice that requires no gear.Part One: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevesone.mp3
Part Two: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevestwo.mp3
The Yippie Movie Page
Here is a direct link to 1968 movie, Yippie for Pigasus, produced by Ed Sanders and Narrated by Keith Lampe:
http://yippiegirl.com/_Media/yippiemovie-mp4_300kbps.mp4
Note: In 1968, the Yippies nominated a pig (named "Pigasus") as their presidential candidate. During the Yippies' 1972 campaign, a Rock ran for President and Roll ran for Vice President. Dinner rolls were brought to the rallies. The Yippies followed up with the Birthday Party's "Nobody for President" campaign. Started in 1975, it continues today. "Out of all choices for President, Nobody is perfect!"
[If the above link does not work, here is a duplicate titled: Yippie! Party Video from 1968 via Stuart Levine]
Narrated by Keith Lampe--- --- ---
Live from Vilcabamba:
Pondo in Ecuador
VilcabambaTV, Ecuador
(October 24, 2009) – Pondo, aka Keith Lampe, venerable hippie activist and yogin. He has a famous daily newsletter about world news. One of the main characters of Vilcabamba. Distributed by Tubemogul.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
dr.samizdat1618@gmail.com
The Passing Of An Age:
Great Men I Have KnownKeith Lampe died earlier this week, in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, at the age of 83. Keith was also known as Ro-Non-So-Te, and affectionately as Pondo, short for ponderosa pine. And indeed he was strong and sturdy like a stout, towering pine tree.
I came to know Pondo only in the last months of his life, through the agency of a mutual friend, and then only by e-mail, though we both lived in Ecuador and had a number of friends and acquaintances in common.
Pondo was a Korean War veteran who subsequently took a radical turn towards peace, and spent the last 60 years as a radical advocate for peace and environmentalism. His commitment even extended to multiple acts of peaceful civil disobedience that resulted in his arrest and incarceration. Pondo was well known for his widely circulated, e-mail newsletter that dealt with a wide variety of environmental and political issues.
Though he had been in declining health for some time, I cannot help but feel that his transition somehow presages great changes that lie just ahead.
He was far more plugged in than most to what is going down on this planet. It occurs to me to think that he was perhaps called away to do important work on our behalf from a different vantage point, as we draw ever closer to a self-evident Great Change of the Ages, whether for better or for worse.
So God speed Pondo on his great transmutation, as he takes leave of this physical plane and makes his way to the next dimension(s).
Note that Dr. Brian O'Leary appears in the video at Pondo's side. Brian O'Leary was a former member of the NASA astronaut corps, training to go to Mars. Brian also lived and died in Vilcabamba in late July of 2011, the year after my arrival in Ecuador. He was a brilliant man, an intellectual and visionary thinker, who held multiple university degrees in astronomy and physics, and was a serious spiritual seeker. Brian and I also had a number of friends and acquaintances in common, though our paths never crossed in Ecuador. We did, however, meet in 1997 at the Leeds UFO Conference, in Leeds, England, where we both were speakers. I had a high regard for Dr. O'Leary and was saddened to hear of his death.
Four weeks after the death of Brian O'Leary, Chris Lenz died, which also was a big shock for me, as I assumed he would always just go on and on. But not so. Chris worked for many years for the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California, which was co-founded by Edgar Mitchell, the well-known Apollo astronaut. Edgar Mitchell and Brian O'Leary unquestionably must have known one another, since they were both in the Apollo astronaut corps and shared many common personal and professional interests, in space science and in their spiritual orientations. I presume that Chris Lenz probably also knew Brian O'Leary; he certainly knew and worked with and for Edgar Mitchell.
I knew Chris Lenz from his days as a trainer at the Monroe Institute, in Virginia, when I attended a training session for which he was co-facilitator. He was an unforgettable character, endowed with a superior intellect, a quick mind, phenomenal, machine-gun-like typing speed, and a very direct, self-assured, penetrating, personal affect. His eyes and voice were distinctive, I think from having spent so much time in profoundly altered states of deeply consciousness awareness. That changes a man; it's inevitable.
One of the stories that impressed me most about him was how he earned his degree from the University of Michigan: he took so many courses in so many different academic disciplines that he racked up enough credits for multiple degrees; and though he never applied for a diploma, the university simply mailed him a degree in psychology one day, along with a letter informing him that he had just graduated.
And now Chris Lenz is dead at the tender age of 69. I still can't wrap my head around his death at such a young age. I can only presume that he, like Pondo, was called upon to render extraordinary assistance to the Earth and humanity in a nearby, non-physical dimension.
I also want to mention the death of Larry Dodge, the following year, in 2012. Larry was trained as a social scientist, with a PhD in sociology, and was very active in American politics, though he was never widely-known nationally by the masses of the American people. I came to know him as I was completing my own PhD in political science, through his work with the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA).
Larry Dodge was a great help and inspiration to me, in many ways. His visits and advice were a tremendous solace, the perfect human gift from the big brother I always wished that I had had, and which Larry provided in his own inimitable way, at just the time when I most needed it. You cannot imagine the debt of gratitude I'll always owe him for that.
Those were the years when he and his wife, Honey, were plotting their departure from the USSA. They initially visited Albania and really liked it, but the Balkan wars of the Clinton years put the kibosh on that plan. They then decided to move to Panama, where Larry spent most of his remaining years. They were delighted there, and Larry invited me to visit. Though I very much wanted to, I never had the money to make the trip, even after I relocated to Ecuador.
And now Larry Dodge is dead, and Pondo, and Brian O'Leary and Chris Lenz.
You always think that things will go on and on, and you will meet again somewhere down the line, to reminisce about old times and people whom you know and used to know, places you've been together and experiences you've shared.
But it's just not so. It isn't like that. To everything there is a season, and this too, shall pass.
*******************************************************
Radio Control Models ~ Hobby Aviation and Robotics
Pleo and Phoenix fall in love ~ Jennero Rossi ~ http://vimeo.com/6197376
Rainbow Puddle ~ Stellar Light Shows
This guy and his collective do these in domes with five projectors and he’s got a couple dozen other ones up too. ... Hal
"This video is designed for projection onto a dome theater - a planetarium. Imagine that circle wrapped around your head, completely filling your field of view. Sit down, and hang on. It starts out gently floating through space, but by the end you'll be reeling."
Antinea's Secret ~ Music: AKSHAN, Visuals: Chaotic ~ http://vimeo.com/108202241
You Can't Fix Stupid
The Dictator ~ Sacha Baron Cohen ~ http://vimeo.com/47420554
We Did Stop (Government) ~ SNL/Miley Cyrus ~ http://vimeo.com/76314511
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck In the Middle With Who
Arc Angels ~ Shape I'm In ~ http://www.vevo.com/watch/arc-angels/Shape-Im-In/USUV70600374#0
Nobody
should have that much powerFor Stupid Denialists Only
All Others May Ignore This Post
Denial Is Not In Egypt[Click to read entire article]
So, you are going to re-elect Republicons who, with help from Democraps, originally stole your privacy and authorized laws that ultimately enslave you; once again, enacting a "Voting for Lesser of Evils" syndrome?
You really need to watch this video and read this or this in order to understand why: None of the Above should be a choice on Voter Ballots!
Bottom Line
You were sold out by Corporatists you support (& will continue using their products, web sites, or socnets). You were sold out by Politicians you elected (& will continue electing them); not realizing, fixing part of this problem could be as simple as: None of the Above being a choice on Voter Ballots!
Eric Von Zipper did not say,
"You Denialists!"
Click for entire article
Resist the Jeb Bush the
media wants to sell you
for 2016. It's a Jeb of liesIf another Bush runs for president against Hillary Clinton, we’ll never have a serious conversation about political dynasties again
Jeb Lund, theguardian, Thursday 30 October 2014 13.18 EDT, Article Source
This is not the face of a Jeb. I should know.
Photo illustration: DonkeyHotey / Flickr via Creative CommonsThe “Jeb Bush For President: 2016” campaign is having its moment. Everyone is having a 2016 moment, because no one wants to think about this moment, the “The Democrats hope that by standing for nothing they can cautiously back into maintaining some control of Congress” moment. Only they won’t maintain that control, so we’re all sitting around, waiting to see by how much the Democrats lose and instead indulging Jeb Bush’s moment.
I do not like this moment, which was kicked off by Jeb’s son. (His name is George, natch). I do not like what it means for Hillary. I do not like what it means at all.
I do not like his name.
Selfishly, I do not like it, because I do not like Jeb – and I do not like Jeb because he is a false Jeb. He is a Jeb of Lies. I don’t mean politically, mind you, although that is also true. I mean in the sense that his name is John Ellis Bush. That makes him “Jeb” in the way my initials make me “jittle,” which is to say: not at all. “Jeb” ruins Jeb for those of us with the decency to be born Jeb with the name neither short for anything else nor cobbled together by choice. He also sucks.
I know what you’re going to say. “There’s nothing wrong with that name.” To which, blessedly, I can reply by paraphrasing Office Space: “No, there was nothing wrong with that name, until I was about 16 years old and that no-talent assclown started running for governor of the state I lived in.”
Although there was nothing especially great with that name to begin with – growing up in San Francisco, kids put on bad southern accents and called me redneck. When I moved to North Florida, rednecks with names like Bobby Lee winked at me because they “knew” what my name meant.
Bush, on the other hand, wants that kind of winking recognition from rednecks –Civil War name affinity always plays well with the “states’ rights!” crowd. Plus there’s the hope that down-home country folk’ll see a name like Jeb and feel an utterly baseless sense of kinship with a scion of a Connecticut banking and oil speculating clan whose sons have gone on to be president (twice), vice-president, governor (twice), CIA director and senator.
Yes, I’ll grant that his family has perhaps always called him Jeb, but you are where you came from – and no amount of going by “Jeb” effaces his patrician roots, just like my citing a quarter century of Florida residence will never fully wipe away my featureless NorCal accent and Bay Area food snobbery.
The most dislikable feature of Jeb’s name, however, is his last: it comes with enough baggage to fill several staterooms on whatever geopolitical Titanic he might wish to send steaming toward the Middle East after 2016. But “Bush” acts as full counterweight to “Clinton” in the he-said, she-said structure of modern objective reporting: the moment one dynasty faces another on a ballot, the political value of attacking the idea of a “dynasty” becomes totally neutralised.
It shouldn’t.
Whatever your feelings about Hillary Clinton,
Congress spent 55 million tax payer dollars to discover if Monica swallowed
and ONLY 3 million on the 9/11 cOMMISSIONher career clearly presents a greater record of individual achievement than, say, the ultimate failing-upward trajectory of someone like George W Bush. That nepotism attaches to her is indisputable, but it’s a more striving nepotism than the Bush clan’s, as she’s without the benefit of two preceding generations of wealth and elected service. Whatever gains she reaped from being at her husband’s side also derives from the work she did to help him get elected – to say nothing of her work in the law before or as a senator and Secretary of State after.
Still, we should ask whether the level of nepotism in government and its watchdogs is less the result of “bright people growing up around various players and learning the game sooner and better” or a return to Gilded Age system of government as the client state of various clans. As income inequality expands ever more disastrously and political change becomes beholden less to elections than to wealth – as men like Rick Scott can cripple regulation by circumventing buying officials and instead indulge in buying office – we should conduct more conversations about dynasties.
Nepotism in other settings rankles people without much effort – from Jakob “Son of Bob” Dylan and the Wallflowers to the entire cast of Girls to Chelsea Clinton’s NBC News contract (or an episode of MSNBC’s The Cycle with Abby Huntsman and Luke Russert). But the easy derision for those public figures probably grows from the sense that music, acting and even reporting all are easy pursuits.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to assume that government is hopelessly complex, Washington is an unnavigable mire and nepotism is value added: This is a callow youth whose entire resume consists of following his or her parents to parties with the right people, but think of how he or she must have learned behind the scenes! It’s a head start!
Thus you can witness unironical celebrations of Rand Paul as an original thinker, despite the fact that his every core policy proposal reads like a distorted Xerox of an older Xerox of his father’s decades of rant-pamphleteering. His first successful electoral campaign apparatus and a lot of his funding core was lifted from his father’s 2008 presidential run. Considering the wealth of original material his father generated, probably the only unique thing Rand Paul has accomplished is plagiarism.
Paul has exceeded his father in accomplishment, while Jeb Bush had been the favoured son until he lost his gubernatorial race in 1994 and his brother won. If Jeb’s moment extends to the 2016 primaries, he will bring with him that brother and their father with national political profiles exceeding his own. All the attendant drama will obfuscate everything that makes a Clinton candidacy just as problematic.
I can hate Jeb Bush for reasons all my own. I can hate potentially spending four-to-eight years telling people on the phone, “No, not Jeff. It’s Jeb, like the ... (exhausted sigh) ... like the President.” I can hate that he and Confederacy-worshipping racists attach a disgusting tradition to the good and noble name my parents gave me as a piss-take about a Watergate co-conspirator. But that’s personal stuff.
What should worry you is that a Bush candidacy or a Clinton candidacy without the other – even with Rand Paul spiraling away in a tornado of loudly whistling racial keywords and self-important obliviousness – might finally provoke a long overdue national discussion about how much we are willing to accept the sons and daughters of official privilege stomping citizens and human beings into irrelevancy. But the moment they face off, that worry disappears in the clamour of the horse race, of equal sides, of sins crossing each other out, of who you got and who’s gonna win?
The Mother of World DominnationNo “serious Beltway thinker” will condemn one side for doing what the other does. They won’t even consider it a problem, lest it hamper the future careers of their children, Madison (unisex), Avery (unisex) or Hunter (also unisex).
If that happens, there will be no discussion for you. One candidate or another will have to serve your interests, and you’ll have to at least flip the coin to be sure which. What are you going to do, vote for a third party? Sure, throw your vote away.
I Can't Believe I'm Still Fucking Protesting This Shit!Should we drop
daylight savings time?Last week the UK changed the clocks, and this weekend it's time for the US to do the same. But a substantial amount of research suggests daylight saving time may not be beneficial – and in fact, might be harmful. Is it worth keeping?
theguardian.com, Friday 1 November 2013 14.30 EDT, Article Source
Is daylight savings time outdated? Photograph: Darren Staples/ReutersShould we no longer have daylight savings time?
68% = YES and 32% = NOThis poll is now closed
Nobody should have
that much power
American Dream ~ George Carlin/L.I.L.T ~ http://vimeo.com/72719973For Stupid Denialists Only
All Others May Ignore This Post
Denial Is Not In Egyptby Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck In the Middle With Who
So, you are going to re-elect Republicons who, with help from Democraps, originally stole your privacy and authorized laws that ultimately enslave you; once again, enacting a "Voting for Lesser of Evils" syndrome?
You really need to watch the above video and read this or this in order to understand why:
None of the Above
should be a choice on Voter Ballots!
I vote Republican to keep Foreigners, Minorities, Women,
Socialists, Gays, and Liberals from ruining my life.I vote Republican to keep this moron from realizing
I'm the only one ruining his life.
Voting Democrat because you are voting for the lesser of evils?This is why NONE of the ABOVE should be a choice
on Voter Ballots.
9 Reasons Wired Readers
Should Wear Tinfoil HatsBy David Kravets, November 24, 2011, Article Source
There's plenty of reason to be concerned Big Brother is watching.
We're paranoid not because we have grandiose notions of our self-importance, but because the facts speak for themselves.
Here's our short list of nine reasons that Wired readers ought to wear tinfoil hats, or at least, fight for their rights and consider ways to protect themselves with encryption and defensive digital technologies.
We know the list is incomplete, so if you have better reasons that we list here, put them in the comments and we'll make a list based off them.
Until then, remember: Don't suspect a friend; report him.
Warrantless Wiretapping
The government refuses to acknowledge whether the National Security Agency is secretly siphoning the nation's electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges. The lawsuit was based on evidence provided by a former AT&T technician Mark Klein that showed that AT&T had installed a secret spying room in an internet hub in San Francisco. The spying got so bad that Attorney General Ashcroft threatened to resign over it.
When a federal judge said a lawsuit on that issue could go forward, Congress passed legislation stopping the case in its tracks. Two American lawyers for an Islamic charity did, however, prevail in their suit that they were wiretapped without warrants, but the Administration is appealing. Much of the program was legalized in 2008 by the FISA Amendments Act.
The FBI has also built a nationwide computer system called the Digital Collection System, connected by fiber optic cables, to collect and analyze wiretaps of all types, including ones used in ultra-secret terrorism investigations.
Warrantless GPS Tracking
The Obama administration claims Americans have no right to privacy in their public movements. The issue surfaced this month in a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court to determine if law enforcement agents should be required to obtain a probable-cause warrant in order to place a GPS tracking device on a citizen's car. The government admitted to the Supreme Court that it thinks it would have the power to track the justices' cars without a warrant.
The invasive technology allows police, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to engage in covert round-the-clock surveillance over an extended period of time, collecting vast amounts of information about anyone who drives the vehicle that is being tracked. The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with "great frequency," and GPS retailers have told Wired that they've sold thousands of the devices to the feds.
Tracking Devices in Your Pocket
That mobile phone in your pocket chronicles almost everything. Once-secret software developed by a private company pretty much chronicles all you do on your smartphone and sends it to the carriers. The carriers themselves keep a wealth of information, such as text messages, call-location data, and PINs -- though none of them disclose to their customers what data they store or how long they keep the data.
Law enforcement can get at much of that historical data -- and often get real-time tracking information without proving probable cause to a judge.
Fake Cell Phone Towers
You make a call on your cellphone thinking the only thing standing between you and the recipient of your call is your carrier's cellphone tower. In fact, that tower your phone is connecting to just might be a boobytrap set up by law enforcement to ensnare your phone signals and maybe even the content of your calls.
So-called stingrays are one of the new high-tech tools that authorities are using to track and identify you. The devices, about the size of a suitcase, spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower.
The government maintains that the stingrays don't violate Fourth Amendment rights, since Americans don't have a legitimate expectation of privacy for data sent from their mobile phones and other wireless devices to a cell tower. While the technology sounds ultra-new, the feds have had this in their arsenal for at least 15 years, and used a stingray to bust the notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick in 1995.
The Border Exception
The Fourth Amendment doesn't exist along the U.S. border. You know that if you're a close supporter of WikiLeaks or a friend of alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning. You're no doubt very familiar with the U.S. government's laptop border search policy, which allows Customs and Border Protection agents to seize and search a laptop belonging to anyone crossing a border into the U.S.
Agents can search through files on a traveler's laptop, phone or other mobile device, read e-mail or view digital snapshots to uncover incriminating evidence, and they don't need any reason to do so.
The government argues, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court agrees that searching through a person's laptop for copyright violations is no different than looking through their suitcase for cocaine -- and thus fits squarely with what is known as the 'border exception' to the Fourth Amendment. That means a border agent doesn't need reasonable suspicion, probable cause or even a hunch to open your laptop, seize it and make copies of your data.
At least three supporters of WikiLeaks, including security researcher Jacob Appelbaum. have been subject to the policy and had devices seized and searched as they re-entered the U.S. from foreign trips. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seem to particularly like searching Appeblaum's devices and questioning him, despite the fact that Wikileaks has never been charged with a crime in the U.S.
The "6 Months and It's the Government's" Rule
If you're already not wanting a dose of Prozac, consider that the law allows the government to obtain Americans' e-mails, without a warrant, if it's stored on some other company's servers for more than six months. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, adopted in 1986, turned 25 this year. When written, the law assumed e-mails left on a server for that long were abandoned.
In the age of Gmail, that's simply ridiculous. A proposal to demand a court warrant for any and all e-mail never got a Senate hearing and was opposed by the Obama administration.
The Patriot Act
No paranoia list would be complete without including the Patriot Act, the now 10-year-old law adopted in the wake of September 11. The act, which has remained largely the same since former president George W. Bush signed the legislation six weeks after 9/11, gives the government, among other things, the power to acquire phone, banking and other records via the power of a so-called "national security letter," which does not require a court warrant.
National security letters, perhaps the most invasive facet of the law, are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, financial institutions and others to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, bank records and arguably websites you have visited.
The FBI need merely assert, in writing, that the information is "relevant" to an ongoing terrorism or national security investigation. Nearly everyone who gets a national security letter is prohibited from even disclosing that they've received one. More than 200,000 letters have been issued by the FBI, despite a series of stinging reports from the Justice Department's internal watchdog, who found FBI agents weren't just routinely sloppy; they also violated the law.
Moreover, a decade after Bush's signature, information is sketchy about how the law is being used in practice. For instance, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) claims the government applies a far broader, and classified, legal interpretation of the Patriot Act's power to let the government seize most anything it deems relevant to an investigation (Section 215).
"We're getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says," the Senate Intelligence Committee member said in a recent interview with Wired. "When you've got that kind of a gap, you're going to have a problem on your hands."
Government Malware
It's little known, but governments have their own malware/spyware that it deploys against suspected lawbreakers. The FBI's version, the last time we checked, was called CIPAV. Once an FBI agent convinced a target to install it (by clicking an e-mail attachment or link on the web), the spyware reports back everything that computer does online.
German states recently came under fire for misusing a similar program that reportedly could turn on a computer's camera and take screenshots. And a recent Wall Street Journal story catalogs a surveillance software company which trumpeted its ability to infect users via a fake iTunes update. The company sells its wares to governments around the world.
Known Unknowns
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took an unfair amount of abuse for his deployment of the phrase "known unknowns." And it's these known unknowns that might be the most disturbing part of the list. For instance, does the government think the Patriot Act allows it to force Google to turn over information about anyone who has searched for certain keywords using orders that come with a gag order? Is the NSA sucking up everything we say on our phones and that we do online, under the theory it pushed in a court case that it's not a search until a human actually looks at the data? How often do police investigating a crime ask wireless providers to give them a list of all the people whose phones were in use in the area when they think a crime was committed? What kind of sweeping surveillance orders have been issued under the 1998 law that Congress passed to legalize much of the warrantless wiretapping of Americans? And finally, how long is the government storing all this data, and how can we be sure that our future governments won't start using this data to target Americans based on activities protected by the First Amendment?
And no -- a tinfoil hat
won't help you at all.
THE PATRIOT ACT
Ashcroft holds a sign saying,"The Bush Jihad Against The Bill of Rights"
and says, Freedom is Slavery!Brought to you by Republicans,
Supported by Democrats,
and Nobody Read ItIn an attempt to show Democrap & Republicon politicians lie, the following information was originally presented 13 years ago.
It is alleged the first major Spying on US Citizens was specifically done on media personnel & politicians previous to Bush becoming president during 2000.
The Patriot Act was never read by Republicon or Democrap politicians and was voted into law on October 26, 2001.
PERMMALINK for this information:
The PATRIOT ACT excretes on the fourth amendment.
Simply, anyone doing anything "criminal" can be treated as a "terrorist."
Sounds innocuous until you realize that speeding on the highway, on your way to work, is considered to be "criminal."
The Patriot Act Is Not About Terrorism, It Is About Control of United States Citizens.
No mercy in Republicon Ashcroft's brand of justice
[Broken Link, Copy Below]Ashcroft's Power Grows
In Terrorist Witch Huntby Helen Thomas, August 16, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn't have enough to do, hunting down terrorists.
With the help of a rollover Congress, he now has a new and bigger club to go after federal judges who impose lighter sentences in criminal cases than he would like.
As a faithful lord high executioner of the administration's much touted "compassionate conservatism," Ashcroft wants to clamp down on those judges.
At issue are the sentencing guidelines laid down by a federal commission that Congress created in 1984. Under pressure from Ashcroft, Congress voted in April to restrict the flexibility of federal judges to depart from the guidelines.
The new law also makes it easier for prosecutors to appeal more cases when they don't like the court-imposed prison sentences.
As it stands now, the attorney general must report within 15 days to Congress the identity of any federal judge who deviates from the rules and the reasons why. And the department must report within five days whether it intends to appeal.
The empowered attorney general then issued an order on July 28 to federal prosecutors, directing them to report all "downward departure" sentencing decisions in criminal cases.
Previously, the prosecutors were required to report to the Justice Department only those sentences that they had objected to and wanted to appeal.
The overall effect is to give Ashcroft more control and the final say on whether to appeal a sentence. And it reduces the powers of the prosecutors in the field, the people who know more about the defendant and the circumstances of the case than does anyone in Washington.
It looks to me as if Ashcroft has designed a new program to intimidate federal judges.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused Ashcroft of an "ongoing attack on judicial independence" and said he was requiring federal prosecutors to establish a "black list" of judges who diverge from the guidelines.
Department lawyers say the new rules are in the interest of uniformity. But Ashcroft obviously was miffed that some judges weren't handing out the tough sentences that he wanted.
The sentencing commission has statistics showing that 35 percent of the sentences handed down in federal court in the 2001 fiscal year fell below the guidelines.
Many of those sentences were the results of plea-bargaining and had the approval of the prosecutors.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said many judges have denounced the guidelines for producing "unduly long sentences" and hampering the courts' ability to fashion punishments to fit the crimes.
Ashcroft wants judges to treat defendants as "statistics rather than individuals," Turley added. In all fairness, Congress shares the blame for giving him even more power to do so.
In his new order to the prosecutors, Ashcroft cited a May 5 speech by Chief Justice William Rehnquist who acknowledged that it was up to Congress to establish guidelines on sentencing policies.
But Ashcroft conveniently failed to mention that Rehnquist also used the same speech to criticize the sentencing restrictions as "an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their official duties."
Rehnquist also complained to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that limiting judicial discretion "would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable sentences."
In a speech last Saturday to the ABA convention in San Francisco, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative, criticized mandatory minimum sentencing and said prison terms were too long. He told the lawyers "our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long."
He branded the guidelines as "not wise, not just."
An even more dramatic protest against the guidelines came from U.S. District Judge John S. Martin. He quit the bench in Manhattan in June and charged that Congress was attempting "to intimidate judges."
U.S. District Judge Irene M. Keeley of Clarksburg, W.Va., who heads the ABA's National Conference of Federal Judges, supports the critics of the guidelines.
She said the jurists would continue to "evaluate each sentence on a case-by-case basis." A study of the facts will show there is no evidence that judges have been bending the sentencing rules, she said.
Obviously Ashcroft's sense of justice is not the kind that is touched by the quality of mercy.
Ashcroft says, Uh, yah ...
I still need more emergency powers. Our Republic remains endangered.Target: 'Narco-Terror'
Broken Link was originally at:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/
WorldNewsTonight/victory_act030820.htmlABCNEWS.com has obtained a draft of the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003, or VICTORY Act, which could be introduced to Congress this fall, and which appears to have been prepared by the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Provisions in the draft would:
Raise the threshold for rejecting illegal wiretaps. The draft reads: "A court may not grant a motion to suppress the contents of a wire or oral communication, or evidence derived there from, unless the court finds that the violation of this chapter involved bad faith by law enforcement."
Melba says,
Edith, I hear the Government can tap our phones whenever they damn well want to!!
Ashcroft who is illegally listening to the conversation says,
That's not true, Edith-It's only to catch terrorists!
Edith questions by asking, Melba is a terrorist?Extend subpoena powers by giving giving law enforcement the authority to issue non-judicial subpoenas which require a person suspected of involvement in money laundering to turn over financial records and appear in a prosecutor's office to answer questions.
Ashcroft, while devouring United States Citizens' CIVIL LIBERTIES, demands MORE.Extend the power of the attorney general to issue so-called administrative "sneak-and-peak" subpoenas to drug cases. These subpoenas allow law enforcement to gather evidence from wire communication, financial records or other sources before the subject of the search is notified.
Mr. Ashcroft wants people who go into American homes to snoop while they're there.
~ USPS, FEDEX, UNITED PARCEL, ACME EXTERMINATORS, & ED'S PLUMBING are depicted ~
At the door a woman says, I'm sorry Alice, I'll come back later I didn't know you had snoops.Allow law enforcement to seek a court order to require the "provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service" or a financial institution to delay notifying a customer that their records had been subpoenaed.
Ashcroft says, IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED....
and is about to blow-up American CIVIL LIBERTIES"This bill would treat drug possession as a 'terrorist offense' and drug dealers as 'narco-terrorist kingpins,' " the aide argued. "To say that terrorist groups use a small percentage of the drug trafficking in the United States to finance terrorism may be a fair point, but this bill would allow the government to prosecute most drug cases as terrorism cases."
John Ashcroft's War on Terrorists
A large eye watches a couple in bed, who are trying to sleep.Concluded the aide: "It really seems to be more about a political agenda to jail drug users than a serious attempt to stop terrorists."
WAR ON TERROR thugs destroy a home, hold a gun on a dog, and look at women's
underwear during a raid. Not finding anything terror related, one thug says,
So...As long as we're here... Does your evil kid smoke dope?
Terror Alert ~ Have You Seen This Man (Ashcroft) ? Targets May Include:
* Your privacy rights * Your right to know what your government's up to
* YOUR PROTECTIONS UNDER THE JUSTICE SYSTEM:Ashcroft's Little Secret
Ashcroft cuts the bell ringer off a Liberty Bell with CIVIL LIBERTIES written on it,
while shushing Americans.Quite simply, Ashcroft's campaign and leadership PAC broke the law by giving and receiving a contribution that exceeded the federal contribution limit by at least 10 times and possibly by more than 200 times, and by failing to disclose the contribution in the first place.
[Broken Link - copy below] ARTICLE COPY:
Alliance for Democracy v. FEC
Is Our Chief Law Enforcement Officer a Criminal?by Lisa Danetz, August 28, 2003
As the top law enforcement officer of the federal government, the Attorney General of the United States has a moral duty to act with honesty and integrity, and to guard his reputation as a law-abiding citizen. This means the Attorney General must -- at the very minimum -- make sure the political committees connected to him follow the nation's campaign finance rules. Respect for the law demands no less.
So why is John Ashcroft stonewalling about charges that his 2000 Senate campaign broke the federal campaign finance law?
A coalition of voters and campaign finance reform groups filed a complaint in March 2001 with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), alleging that Ashcroft's leadership PAC, "Spirit of America," illegally contributed a fundraising list of 100,000 donors to his 2000 Senate campaign in Missouri. Neither the PAC nor the campaign committee reported the contribution.
Spirit of America developed the list of donors between 1997 and 1999 at a cost of more than $2 million, according to a press report. Upon receiving the list at no charge, the Ashcroft campaign allegedly rented the list out and made over $100,000.
If this is true, Ashcroft's PAC and campaign are in hot water on a number of counts. PACs are prohibited from contributing more than $10,000 to federal candidates in an election cycle, and campaigns are likewise prohibited from receiving such contributions. That limit includes the non-monetary donations, like the fundraising list. Further, all PAC contributions must be reported by both the contributing PAC itself and the recipient campaign committee.
Quite simply, Ashcroft's campaign and leadership PAC broke the law by giving and receiving a contribution that exceeded the federal contribution limit by at least 10 times and possibly by more than 200 times, and by failing to disclose the contribution in the first place.
Two and a half years later, the FEC has not resolved the matter, and its file remains secret -- but Ashcroft could ask to open the file to the public. Almost a year ago, a Washington federal judge ruled that plaintiffs could seek consent from Ashcroft's campaign and his leadership PAC to unseal the FEC file. If they agreed, the FEC could release the file.
The plaintiffs wrote letters asking for written consent to allow the documents in the FEC file to be released. They were ignored. Mr. Ashcroft's office also ignored numerous inquiries from the media. In response to a follow-up phone call two months after the letters were sent, Mr. Ashcroft's office confirmed he had received the letter, but again refused to respond.
A month ago, the same federal judge ordered the FEC to explain its delay in handling the matter. The judge's order sets the stage for the case to finally move forward.
Even when the issue is resolved, though, the vast majority of the FEC's file will remain secret unless the Ashcroft groups provide written consent for disclosure. Recognizing this harm, a coalition of campaign reform groups has once more called on the Attorney General to authorize the release of the FEC file. But -- no surprise here -- they, too, were ignored.
If Ashcroft is truly loyal to the rule of law, he will direct his campaign committee and Spirit of America to allow the FEC file to see daylight. Unless, of course, he has something to hide.
© 2003 Lisa Danetz
Lisa Danetz is a staff attorney at the National Voting Rights Institute and the lead counsel for the plaintiffs in Alliance for Democracy v. FEC, a case challenging the Federal Election Commission's failure to act on campaign finance violations committed by political committees controlled by Attorney General Ashcroft.
Is this criminal Ashcroft in Jail?
OF COURSE NOT, HE'S AN EFF'N POLITICIAN!
Republican criminal John Ashcroft representing
United States Government as Santa saying,You'd better watch out, You'd better not cry, You'd better not pout, I'm telling you why, He Taps Your Phone & Reads Your E-Mail Too.... He's making a list, He's checking it twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice, He's Got A File On Everything You Do. He sees when You are sleeping, He knows when You're awake, He knows if You've been bad or good, So Be Good, For Goodness' Sake! [... of course, with exception to Corporations, who have bought and paid for Politicians.]
It is true Obama originally voted Yes on the Patriot Act, and he and Congress voted to keep the illegal Patriot Act in tact during both of their Administration terms; justifying Republicon & Democrap labels!
Republicons, with Democrap help, gave a
Free Pass to Telecoms who knowing broke
laws that are now used against US Citizens:Violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution
Violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution
Unlawful electronic surveillance or disclosure or use of information obtained by electronic surveillance in violation of 50 U.S.C. §1809.
Unlawful interception, use or disclosure of Class communications in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2511
Unlawful solicitation and obtained disclosure of the contents of communications in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a)(1) or (a)(2)
Unlawful solicitation and obtained disclosure of non-content records or other information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a)(3)
Violation of the Administrative Procedures Act
Violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers
Senate Approves Telco
Amnesty, Legalizes Bush's
Secret Spy Programby Ryan Singel 02.12.08 2:59 PM, wired.com
The Senate overwhelming voted Tuesday evening to legalize President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and grant amnesty to the phone companies that helped out with the domestic spying..
The 68 to 29 vote is a major step in radically re-configuring 30 year-old limits on how the nation's spying services operate inside America's borders. The vote also deals a severe blow to civil liberties groups that are suing companies such as AT&T and Verizon for turning over millions of American's phone records to the government, and for helping the government wiretap American's phone and internet communications without a court order.
The bill, which expires in six years, allows the government to install permanent wiretapping outposts in telephone and internet facilities inside the United States without a warrant. However, if those wiretaps are used to target Americans inside or outside of the country, the government would have to get a court order. However, if the target is a foreigner or a foreign corporation, and they call an American or an American calls them, no warrant is required.
Prior to this summer, the intelligence community was forbidden by law from wiretapping phone and internet switches inside the United States, unless they had a particular target in mind and applied for a court order from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court largely rubber stamps such applications -- it approved 2,072 in 2005 and required modifications to only 61 of those.
But government spies say the paperwork is too onerous and that the process is ill-fitted to the wider surveillance the president launched in October 2001.
Before the changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act becomes law, however, the Senate must reconcile it with a corresponding bill from the House.
Currently the House bill, known as the Restore Act, more sharply limits the government's authority to spy inside the United States without a warrant. It also does not include a telecom amnesty provision. The House now faces the option of adopting the Senate's version, or horse-trading immunity for more limits on the nation's spooks.
Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut), one of the bill's most outspoken opponents, had vowed to filibuster the bill, but that opportunity was lost Tuesday with a cloture vote that limited debate on the final bill to just four hours. Dodd's filibuster threat worked to delay passage in December, but on Tuesday, he told reporters it was time for the debate to move to the House.
"You run out of string on these things," Dodd said.
"I'd just as soon have this go to the House floor. I'm going to move this thing along. We are not getting anywhere here," Dodd said, referring to the Democrat-controlled Senate where his amendment to remove immunity needed 20 more votes to pass.
This summer the Congress reacted to extreme statements from the Administration and gave the government wide powers to spy inside America with the passage of the Protect America Act in August.
But that bill was set to expire on Feb.1., and through a short term extension early this month, now expires on Feb. 16.
Republicans and the White House oppose another extension and hope the time crunch will force the House to abandon its bill and simply adopt the Senate version as its own.
Immunity opponents, such as Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kevin Bankston, hope the House will stand firm.
"It's time for Speaker Pelosi to draw a line the sand, and make clear to the president that this House of Representatives is never going to pass any bill that includes immunity for lawbreaking telecoms," Bankston said.
The administration says that its surveillance program that targeted Americans and foreigners using facilities and services based in the United States was legal. Administration lawyers cite as justification, both the Authorization to Use Military Force to attack Al Qaeda and the president's war-making powers under the Constitution.
Opponents and even former Justice Department lawyer Jack Goldsmith says those arguments are flimsy, and that the president's wartime powers to wiretap inside the United States are curtailed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Though the administration initially admitted that the existence of the wiretapping program after a December 2005 story in the New York Times, it has refused to disclose the extent of the operation. Officials have repeatedly denied the program is a "dragnet" that searches communications for keywords.
But statements from administration figures over the past year suggest the program is closer to a vacuum cleaner that sucks in communications and stores them in bulk. Those statements suggest many of the sucked-in communications aren't ever looked at but are available for data-mining and social networking analysis -- and inspection by NSA analysts based on that analysis or other evidence.
Under the bill passed by the Senate today, the government could order companies such as AT&T or Google to turn over all phone calls and emails where one party is reasonably believed to be outside the United States.
The Senate also shot down a proposal from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to include strong language affirming that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was the only way that the government could spy on Americans. That amendment got 57 votes, but due to an agreement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) that amendment had to get 60 votes to pass.
If the immunity provision is passed into law, the Attorney General can write a letter to the judges overseeing the anti-warrantless wiretapping suit and have them dismissed. Once that happens, expect that the plaintiffs, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, will challenge the immunity provision as unconstitutional. Full vote tally. ~ Source
Congress votes to immunize
lawbreaking telecoms, legalize
warrantless eavesdroppingYet again, George Bush and Dick Cheney get everything they want from the Democratic-led Congress, this time to put a permanent, and harmless, end to their illegal spying scandal.
By Glenn Greenwald, Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008 11:11 AM PDT, Salon.com
(updated below – Update II)
The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill -- approved last week by the House -- to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. John McCain wasn't present for any of the votes, but shared Obama's support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.
Prior to final approval, the Senate, in the morning, rejected three separate amendments which would have improved the bill but which, the White House threatened, would have prompted a veto. With those amendments defeated, the Senate then passed the same bill passed last week by the House, which means it is that bill, in unchanged form, that will be signed into law -- just as the Bush administration demanded.
The first amendment, from Sens. Dodd, Feingold and Leahy, would have stripped from the bill the provision immunizing the telecoms. That amendment failed by a vote of 32-66, with all Republicans and 17 Democrats against (the roll call vote is here). The next amendment was offered by Sen. Arlen Specter, which would have merely required a court to determine the constitutionality of the NSA spying program and grant telecom immunity only upon a finding of constitutionality. Specter's amendment failed, 37-61 (roll call vote is here). The third amendment to fail was one sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, merely requiring that the Senate wait until the Inspector General audits of the NSA program are complete before immunizing the telecoms. The Bingaman amendment failed by a vote of 42-56 (roll call vote here). Both Obama and Clinton voted for all three failed amendments.
The Senators then voted for "cloture" on the underlying FISA bill -- the procedure that allows the Senate to overcome any filibusters -- and it passed by a vote of 72-26. Obama voted along with all Republicans for cloture. Hillary Clinton voted with 25 other Democrats against cloture (strangely, Clinton originally voted AYE on cloture, and then changed her vote to NAY; I'm trying to find out what explains that).
With cloture approved, the bill itself then proceeded to pass by a vote of 69-28 (roll call vote here), thereby immunizing telecoms and legalizing warrantless eavesdropping. Again, while Obama voted with all Republicans to pass the bill, Sen. Clinton voted against it.
Obama's vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama's spokesman -- in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama's views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement -- issued this emphatic vow:
To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.
But the bill today does include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Nonetheless, Obama voted for cloture on the bill -- the exact opposition of supporting a filibuster -- and then voted for the bill itself. A more complete abandonment of an unambiguous campaign promise is difficult to imagine. I wrote extensively about Obama's support for the FISA bill, and what it means, earlier today.
With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country. As I noted earlier today, Law Professor and Fourth Amendment expert Jonathan Turley was on MSNBC's Countdown with Rachel Maddow last night and gave as succinct an explanation for what Democrats -- not the Bush administration, but Democrats -- have done today. Anyone with any lingering doubts about what is taking place today in our country should watch this:
What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.
Yet again, the Democratic Congress ignored the views of their own supporters in order to comply with the orders and wishes of the Bush administration. It is therefore hardly a surprise that, yesterday, Rasmussen Reports revealed this rather humiliating finding:
Congressional Approval Falls to Single Digits for First Time Ever
The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.
The Congress, with a powerful cast of bipartisan lobbyists and the establishment media class lined up behind telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping, looked poised to pass this bill back last December, but a large-scale protest was organized -- largely online -- by huge numbers of American who were opposed to warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity, and that protest disrupted that plan (the movement borne of opposition to this bill is only beginning today, not ending, here). Today, Sen. Chris Dodd, the leader of the opposition effort along with Russ Feingold, said this on the Senate floor:
Lastly, I want to thank the thousands who joined with us in this fight around the country -- those who took to the blogs, gathered signatures for online petitions and created a movement behind this issue. Men and women, young and old, who stood up, spoke out and gave us the strength to carry on this fight. Not one of them had to be involved, but each choose to become involved for one reason and one reason alone: Because they love their country. They remind us that the "silent encroachments of those in power" Madison spoke of can, in fact, be heard, if only we listen.
Today, the Democratic-led Senate ignored those protests, acted to protect the single most flagrant act of Bush lawbreaking of the last seven years, eviscerated the core Fourth Amendment prohibition of surveillance without warrants, gave an extraordinary and extraordinarily corrupt gift to an extremely powerful corporate lobby, and cemented the proposition that the rule of law does not apply to the Washington Establishment.
* * * * *
I was on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning debating the FISA bill with former Clinton National Security Advisor Nancy Soderberg (who favors the bill). Because of some technical difficulties, I wasn't on the show until roughly 7:30 in. That debate can be heard here. Tomorrow, at 10:00 a.m. EST, I'll be on NPR's On Point to discuss the Obama campaign and the FISA vote. That can be heard here.
UPDATE: The ACLU announced today that it will challenge this bill in court as soon as it is passed on the ground that its warrantless eavesdropping provisions violate the Fourth Amendment:
In advance of the president's signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.
"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."
EFF, the other non-profit organization behind the telecom lawsuits, announced the same, emphasizing the unconstitutionality of the grant of immunity. That challenge will likely be on the ground that by resolving these pending lawsuits in favor of the telecoms, Congress has usurped the judicial function -- one which the Constitution, in Article III, assigns to the courts, not to Congress or the President ("The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish").
The effort to target those responsible for this travesty is here.
Those wishing to donate to the campaign (the objectives and strategies of which I detailed here) in advance of the August 8 Money Bomb can do so here.
UPDATE II: Democrats generally, and especially the vocal minority of all-justifying Obama supporters, defend behavior such as today's vote by arguing that it prevents the Republicans from depicting them as "weak" (see, for instance, this classic in that genre). Here are the headlines which, as usual, Democrats generated today with their full-scale complicity and capitulation:
Will Democrats ever learn that the reason they are so easily depicted as "weak" isn't because they don't copy the Republican policies on national security enough, but rather, because they do so too much, and thus appear (accurately) to stand for nothing? Of course, many Democrats vote for these policies because they believe in them, not because they are "surrendering." Still, terms such as "bowing," "surrendering," "capitulating," and "losing" aren't exactly Verbs of Strength. They're verbs of extreme weakness -- yet, bizarrely, Democrats believe that if they "bow" and "surrender," then they will avoid appearing "weak." Somehow, at some point, someone convinced them that the best way to avoid appearing weak is to be as weak as possible. http://www.salon.com/2008/07/09/fisa_vote/
Then there was this:
Call For New Corporate
Top-level domain: .nsaMost people mistaking believe the NSA was responsible for current surveillance ... and that is an outright lie!
The NSA was following orders your EFF'n Republicon and Democrap politicians established.
Examples of Possible Second-level domain names:
google.nsa | apple.nsa | microsoft.nsa | facebook.nsa | aol.nsa | at&t.nsa | yahoo.nsa | snapchat.nsa | sunmicrosystems.nsa | verizon.nsa | paltalk.nsa | skype.nsa | twitter.nsa | youtube.nsa | gnu/linux.nsa | freeBSD.nsa | solaris.nsa | apple/darwin.nsa | etc.
Integrity ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy, in that integrity regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs.
Hypocrisy ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.
Judas Iscariot ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Judas Iscariot is infamously known for his kiss and betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief Sanhedrin priests in exchange for a payment of thirty silver coins. His name [Judas] is often used to accuse someone [or a corporation] of betrayal.
SELinux Background ~ Researchers in the National Information Assurance Research Laboratory of the National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) to develop a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture based on Type Enforcement, a mechanism first developed for the LOCK system. The NSA and SCC developed two Mach-based prototypes of the architecture: DTMach and DTOS. The NSA and SCC then worked with the University of Utah's Flux research group to transfer the architecture to the Fluke research operating system. During this transfer, the architecture was enhanced to provide better support for dynamic security policies. This enhanced architecture was named Flask. The NSA integrated the Flask architecture into the GNU/Linux® operating system to transfer the technology to a larger developer and user community. The architecture has been subsequently mainstreamed into GNU/Linux® and ported to several other systems, including the Solaris™ (Sun Microsystems/Oracle) operating system, the freeBSD® operating system, and the Darwin (Apple) kernel, spawning a wide range of related work. ~ Source
Images Via Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWhy?
Because Loyal Users Should Know
it was Politicians and Corporatists
Who Sold Them Out
Not the NSAThe National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants.
The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under [Republican] President Bush and renewed under [Democrat] President Obama in December 2012 ~ via Dahbud Mensch
US tech giants knew of NSA
data collection, agency's
top lawyer insistsNSA general counsel Rajesh De contradicts months of angry denials from big companies like Yahoo, Apple, Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Facebook
Spencer Ackerman in Washington, theguardian.com, Wednesday 19 March 2014 14.40 EDT, Article Source
De said communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA
occurred with the knowledge of the companies. Photo: KeystoneUSA-Zuma/RexThe senior lawyer for the National Security Agency stated unequivocally on Wednesday that US technology companies were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data, contradicting months of angry denials from the firms.
Rajesh De, the NSA general counsel, said all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies – both for the internet collection program known as Prism and for the so-called “upstream” collection of communications moving across the internet.
Asked during a Wednesday hearing of the US government’s institutional privacy watchdog if collection under the law, known as Section 702 or the Fisa Amendments Act, occurred with the “full knowledge and assistance of any company from which information is obtained,” De replied: “Yes.”
When the Guardian and the Washington Post broke the Prism story in June, thanks to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, nearly all the companies listed as participating in the program – Yahoo, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL – claimed they did not know about a surveillance practice described as giving NSA vast access to their customers’ data. Some, like Apple, said they had “never heard” the term Prism.
De explained: “Prism was an internal government term that as the result of leaks became the public term,” De said. “Collection under this program was a compulsory legal process, that any recipient company would receive.”
After the hearing, De said that the same knowledge, and associated legal processes, also apply when the NSA harvests communications data not from companies directly but in transit across the internet, under Section 702 authority.
The disclosure of Prism resulted in a cataclysm in technology circles, with tech giants launching extensive PR campaigns to reassure their customers of data security and successfully pressing the Obama administration to allow them greater leeway to disclose the volume and type of data requests served to them by the government.
Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said he had called US president Barack Obama to voice concern about “the damage the government is creating for all our future.” There was no immediate response from the tech companies to De’s comments on Wednesday.
It is unclear what sort of legal process the government serves on a company to compel communications content and metadata access under Prism or through upstream collection. Documents leaked from Snowden indicate that the NSA possesses unmediated access to the company data. The secret Fisa court overseeing US surveillance for the purposes of producing foreign intelligence issues annual authorisations blessing NSA’s targeting and associated procedures under Section 702.
Passed in 2008, Section 702 retroactively gave cover of law to a post-9/11 effort permitting the NSA to collect phone, email, internet and other communications content when one party to the communication is reasonably believed to be a non-American outside the United States. The NSA stores Prism data for five years and communications taken directly from the internet for two years.
While Section 702 forbids the intentional targeting of Americans or people inside the United States – a practice known as “reverse targeting” – significant amounts of Americans’ phone calls and emails are swept up in the process of collection.
In 2011, according to a now-declassified Fisa court ruling, the NSA was found to have collected tens of thousands of emails between Americans, which a judge on the court considered a violation of the US constitution and which the NSA says it is technologically incapable of fixing.
Renewed in December 2012 over the objections of senate intelligence committee members Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, Section 702 also permits NSA analysts to search through the collected communications for identifying information about Americans, an amendment to so-called “minimisation” rules revealed by the Guardian in August and termed the “backdoor search loophole” by Wyden.
De and his administration colleagues, testifying before the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, strongly rejected suggestions by the panel that a court authorise searches for Americans’ information inside the 702 databases. “If you have to go back to court every time you look at the information in your custody, you can imagine that would be quite burdensome,” deputy assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann told the board.
De argued that once the Fisa court permits the collection annually, analysts ought to be free to comb through it, and stated that there were sufficient privacy safeguards for Americans after collection and querying had occurred. “That information is at the government’s disposal to review in the first instance,” De said.
De also stated that the NSA is not permitted to search for Americans’ data from communications taken directly off the internet, citing greater risks to privacy.
Neither De nor any other US official discussed data taken from the internet under different legal authorities. Different documents Snowden disclosed, published by the Washington Post, indicated that NSA takes data as it transits between Yahoo and Google data centers, an activity reportedly conducted not under Section 702 but under a seminal executive order known as 12333.
The NSA’s Wednesday comments contradicting the tech companies about the firms’ knowledge of Prism risk entrenching tensions with the firms NSA relies on for an effort that Robert Litt, general counsel for the director of national intelligence, told the board was “one of the most valuable collection tools that we have.”
“All 702 collection is pursuant to court directives, so they have to know,” De reiterated to the Guardian. Read more at Telecom Crimes & Punishment
Republicons & Democraps
Sold Out 'The People' and
Country: Nobody Cares!For the Apathetic Inclined
Although it has been said before, here is a final attempt to show why things are, the way they are today, using recorded history.
In my opinion this whole pissing match called government started a very long time ago, but ignited when Democrat President Harry S. Truman fired Republican supporter General Douglas MacArthur for breaking protocol.
There is a tradition in American government that the military is subordinate to the civilian leaders. Generals do not make statements about policy without first clearing them with their superiors. But MacArthur, used to ruling in Japan, ignored the chain of command, and began writing letters about what the United States should do in Korea. He sent a letter to the Veterans of Foreign Wars saying that Formosa would be a fine place to launch an aggressive campaign against China. After the Chinese entered the war -- something MacArthur had assured Truman would never happen -- MacArthur wrote to Speaker of the House Joe Martin saying the United States could only win by an all-out war, and this meant bombing the Manchurian bases. So Harry Truman fired him, and evoked a firestorm of criticism from conservatives who believed Truman to be soft on communism. But there is no question that Truman was absolutely correct. Whether his overall policy was right or wrong, the American Constitution commits control of foreign policy to the president and not to the military. As Truman explained, avoidance of World War III while containing aggression was a difficult line to walk, but that was the policy the United States had decided upon. No soldier, not even a five-star general, could unilaterally challenge that policy without disturbing an essential element of democratic government. [This quote was originally located at ~ http:// usinfo. state. gov /usa /infousa /facts /democrac /58.htm ~ and has been removed]
On 11 April 1951, U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands for making public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then the commander of United Nations forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil-military relations. [Click to Continue Reading at Wikipedia]
I became interested in the above background when General Alexander Haig said, "I am in control here" [of the United States] after President Ronald Reagan had been shot and was laying on the operating table; "indicating that, while President Reagan had not "transfer[red] the helm", Haig was in fact directing White House Crisis Management, "giving the impression a military coup of the United States had occurred! [Click to Continue Reading at Wikipedia]
Every 'Brass' has their 'pretty boy' and staff. MacArthur's pretty boy was 2nd Lieutenant Alexander M. Haig.
As a young officer, Haig served on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur in Japan. In the early days of the Korean War, Haig was responsible for maintaining General MacArthur's situation map and briefing MacArthur each evening on the day's battlefield events. Haig later served (1950–51) with the X Corps, as aide to MacArthur's Chief of Staff [Click to Continue Reading at Wikipedia]
Since then, I have been trying to figure out what really happened and here is what I come up with, so far.
General MacArthur hated Truman and had many Republican friends in 'high places'.
As the [Korean War] crisis intensified and public backing for the war eroded, MacArthur stepped up his private and public criticisms of the administration. Predicting catastrophe unless dramatic action was taken, MacArthur recommended full-scale military action against the People's Republic of China, including a coastal blockade of the Chinese mainland, intensive bombing of industrial centers in Manchuria and northern China, and the unleashing of at least 50,000 of Chiang's Nationalist troops on the Korean peninsula. He also suggested using atomic weapons against China, although he put forth no precise plan for deployment. By the spring of 1951 he advocated a second major offensive north of the thirty-eighth parallel to unify the two Koreas. His pronouncements found an especially receptive audience among conservative Republicans--including House Minority leader Joe Martinof Massachusetts, California Representative Richard M. Nixon, and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy--who had vigorously attacked Truman for over committing U.S. power to Europe and giving short shrift to Asia. MacArthur had established a political power base with these Republicans and had never hid his own presidential ambitions. [This quote was originally located at ~ http:// www. lexisnexis. com /academic /2upa /Aph /truman_docs /guide_intros /tru20.htm ~ and has been removed]
There is another person in this group that MacArthur, Martin, Nixon, and McCarthy were friendly with who can be associated with dirty tricks due to his Secret 'Enemies' List; sometimes referred to as the "D List," and that is J. Edgar Hoover, who was known in some circles as Lil' Queenie.
Late in life and after his death Hoover became a controversial figure, as evidence of his secretive actions became known. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI. He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten sitting Presidents.
According to President Harry S. Truman, Hoover transformed the FBI into his private secret police force; Truman stated that "we want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him". [Click to Continue Reading at Wikipedia]
Even before he became director of the FBI, Hoover was conducting secret intelligence operations against U.S. citizens he suspected were anarchists, radical leftists or communists.
On Jan. 1, 1920, Hoover sent out the arrest orders, and at least 6,000 people were arrested and detained throughout the country. "When the dust cleared, maybe 1 in 10 was found guilty of a deportable offense."
"Hoover is the inventor of the modern American national security state."
"When it came down to bugging bedrooms, you had to be careful not to get caught, but there wasn't anything to stop him. He decided up to a point ... where the boundaries of the law [were] when it came to black bag jobs, break-ins, bugging, surveillance, the constitutionality of gathering secret intelligence on America's enemies — both real and imagined." [Click to Continue Reading at NPR]
The scariest person listed above, besides President (I AM NOT A CROOK) Dick and J. Edgar, was Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The hunt for subversives started during the war itself, and was furthered by congressional committees that often abused their powers of investigation to harass people with whom they differed politically. Then in February 1950, an undistinguished, first-term Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, burst into national prominence when, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he held up a piece of paper that he claimed was a list of 205 known communists currently working in the State Department. McCarthy never produced documentation for a single one of his charges, but for the next four years he exploited an issue that he realized had touched a nerve in the American public. Resolved, That the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in clearing up matters referred to that subcommittee which concerned his conduct as a Senator and affected the honor of the Senate and, instead, repeatedly abused the subcommittee and its members who were trying to carry out assigned duties, thereby obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate, and that this conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is contrary to senatorial traditions and is hereby condemned. [This quote was originally located at ~ http:// exchanges. state. gov /education /engteaching /pubs /AmLnC /br60.htm ~ and has been removed]
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.
The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents. [Click to Continue Reading at Wikipedia]
Enter Republican President 'Ike' Eisenhower
[Click for Wikipedia page on Dwight D. Eisenhower][Ed. Note: I liked Ike ~ Click to Read my favorite Ike quote ~ Dahbud Mensch]
During World War I, Eisenhower (nicknamed "Ike" as a boy) served at several military training camps, establishing himself as a first-rate organizer and trainer of men. He spent two years as executive officer to Gen. Fox Conner, military commander at Camp Gaillard in the Panama Canal Zone. With Conner's help, Eisenhower was admitted to the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1926, he graduated first in his class of 275, going on to attend the Army War College in Washington, D.C. He advanced in his career, holding various posts, including aide to General Douglas MacArthur, then Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Going with MacArthur when the General was named military adviser to the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935, Eisenhower helped establish the Philippine Air Force and the Philippine Military Academy. He obtained a pilot's license at age 47. [This quote was originally located at ~ http:// wondersmith .com /clipart /presidents /Dwight _D _ Eisenhower .htm ~ and has been removed]
IKE'S TOP 5 DISLIKED CONTEMPORARIES
1. Senator Joseph McCarthy, 2. Harry S. Truman, 3. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, 4. John F. Kennedy, 5. General Douglas MacArthur, and special mention Lyndon B. Johnson. [This quote was originally located at ~ http:// www .nps .gov /eise /5accomp4 .htm ~ and has been removed]
Enter Republican President (I'm not a crook) Nixon
Nixon blamed the country's economic and other problems on Democratic President Truman's administration and argued that things were much improved under the outgoing Republican administration of Eisenhower. [Click to Continue Reading at CNN]
Then there was the "Cold War" and the "Bay of Pigs"
There are some who believe the "Bay of Pigs" was the beginning of a Coup of the United States Government and part of the reason for Democrat President John Kennedy's assassination.
Quick review:
Democratic President Truman totally angers Republican General Douglas MacArthur.
Republican President Eisenhower warns of "The Military Industrial Complex," is quickly shuffled out of media limelight, and ends up playing golf for the remainder of his term.
Kennedy becomes President, defeating Nixon and totally angers the 'Intelligence Community'. (Most 'Intelligence personnel' have a military background and some of them belong to organizations / orders / societies they entered as students.)
At this point, you have to ask yourself what made a difference during these times and the answer is, 'Military controlled' atomic bomb; which annihilated the "Right to Bear Arms" and made things historically 'one sided'; in that, the wealthy 1% of the population that controlled the remaining 99% lost control to their 'Royal Guard'.
The "Cold War" link above could be used as an outline.
Enter Republican President Ronald Wilson Reagan a.k.a. 666, because each of his three names contained six letters.
I put a UFO link for Reagan because when he started talking about UFOs it was about the same time one stopped seeing him in public and on corporate media.
There was a story floating around about Reagan when he was president with no historical reference:
Apparently, because Reagan was a 'favorite son' of military, the Brass decided to show him contents of a secret location and it, using a Hippie term, "blew his mind," to the point where he could not stop talking about it (see above UFO link for speeches).
More interesting during these times was one hardly saw Vice President George H. W. Bush; except for Vice Presidential functions, during the entire Reagan era. What was he doing, running the country from behind the curtain?
Enter Republican President George H. W. Bush
The powerful men of Skull & Bones genuinely believe that they have a strategic and moral "right" to control world affairs. Consequently, they take upon themselves the authority to crush any frivolous threat to U.S. imperial leadership, whether by current allies, such as Japan, Germany or Great Britain, or by Cold War adversaries, like the Soviet Union. The members of the Order, due to their narrow WASP upbringing, view with particular suspicion the maneuverings of Zionist Israel and its affluent, influential lobby in the United States.
Bush, his fellow Bonesmen and their like-thinking elitist allies in the American Establishment see themselves as New World Order warriors, an American samurai caste of sorts, whose mission is restoring American greatness. They intend to utilize the institutional networks of the U.S. government and key private agencies, such as the New York Council on Foreign Relations, to advance their purpose.
The fulcrum for the policy of constructive chaos is, at present, the Middle East situation. Although U.S. military action in the region has for the time being subsided, America's military power will remain a critical determinant in the future of that vital zone of conflict. American military power is aimed at securing undisputed control over the vast reservoir of oil -- not at necessarily fostering any permanent alignment of local states or combinations of regional interests. [This quote was originally located at ~ http:// davidicke .www .50megs .com /icke /magazine /vol10 /articles /skullboneswp .html ~ and has been removed]
Skull and Bones is an undergraduate senior secret society at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. It is the oldest senior class landed society at Yale. The society's alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association, owns the society's real estate and oversees the organization. The society is known informally as "Bones", and members are known as "Bonesmen".
The group Skull and Bones is featured in conspiracy theories, which claim that the society plays a role in a globalist / corporatist conspiracy for world control. Theorists such as Alexandra Robbins suggest that Skull and Bones is a branch of the Illuminati, or that Skull and Bones itself controls the Central Intelligence Agency. [Click to Continue Reading at Wikipedia]
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Gonzalez] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Speaker, last week I showed that this administration, President Bush's administration, deliberately and not inadvertently helped to arm Iraq by allowing United States technology to be shipped to the Iraqi military and to the Iraqi weapons factories. Throughout the course of the Bush administration, United States and foreign firms were granted export licenses to ship United States technology directly to Iraqi weapons facilities, despite ample evidence showing that these factories were producing weapons.
I also showed how the President misled the Congress and the public about the role United States firms played in arming Iraq.
Today I will show that the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the President himself, had specific knowledge of Iraq's military industrialization plans, and despite that knowledge, the President mandated the policy of coddling Saddam Hussein as spelled out in National Security Directive 26 (NSD-26) issued in October 1989. This policy was not changed until after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, by which time the Bush administration had sent Saddam Hussein billions of dollars in United States financial assistance, technology and useful military intelligence information.
I will also show how the President's policy of appeasing Saddam Hussein was at odds with those in the administration who saw Iraq as a major proliferation threat. [Click to Continue Reading Congressional Record]
Bush's Impending Watergate By Harvey Wasserman May 23, 1991
George Bush should be impeached. Whether he will be impeached depends on the intestinal fortitude of Congress. But the evidence is clearly sufficient to begin proceedings.
The idea that Ronald Reagan and George Bush could have conspired to prolong the torment of U.S. hostages dwarfs the miasma that was Watergate on both a moral and political scale. Ultimately its impact will depend on the willingness of Congress to investigate the facts and act on what it finds. It is time for Congress to once again assume its role in the balance of powers. Impeachment means bringing to trial. The evidence is clearly sufficient to begin the process. [Click to Continue Reading]
Bush Administration Uses CIA To Stonewall Iraqgate Investigation by Jack Colhoun (Early 1990s)
In House floor speeches, Rep. Henry Gonzalez has documented how pre-Gulf War U.S. policy helped Iraq develop weapons of mass destruction. But President George Bush, taking a page from one of the darkest chapters of the Nixon presidency, has enlisted the CIA as part of his campaign to derail the Texas Democrat's Iraqgate investigation. The CIA is investigating Gonzalez for revealing allegedly secret intelligence information, which it claims has harmed U.S. national security interests. [Click to Continue Reading] ~ [This quote was originally located at ~ http:// mediafilter .org /MFF /BushCIAstonewall .html ~ and has been removed]
About two of every seven licenses for the export of "dual use" technology items approved between 1985 and 1990 by the U.S. Department of Commerce "went either directly to the Iraqi armed forces, to Iraqi end-users engaged in weapons production, or to Iraqi enterprises suspected of diverting technology" to weapons of mass destruction, according to an investigation by House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez. Confidential Commerce Department files also reveal that the Reagan and Bush administrations approved at least 80 direct exports to the Iraqi military. These included computers, communications equipment, aircraft navigation and radar equipment
He cautioned that the DIA "would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival." The Reagan administration did not stop aiding Iraq after receiving reports affirming the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilian.
Joost R. Hiltermann says that when the Iraqi military turned its chemical weapons on the Kurds during the war, killing approximately 5,000 people in the town of Halabja and injuring thousands more, the Reagan administration actually sought to obscure Iraqi leadership culpability by suggesting, inaccurately, that the Iranians may have carried out the attack. [Click to Continue Reading at Wikipedia]
When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators by Tom Regan
[The Lie] "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die." [Click to Continue Reading at The Christian Science Monitor]
At this point, we will take a short break due to current short attention span and continue in a few days with the 'meat of this article', when this line disappears; however, here is another link one can read showing a number of U.S. Presidents who should have been placed in jail; but then again, THEY are politicians.
List of federal political scandals in the United States and if one wants to see one perspective of how and why, take the time to read this.
Bottom Line:
You were sold out by Corporatists you support (& will continue using their products, web sites, or socnets). You were sold out by Politicians you elected (& will continue electing them); not realizing, fixing part of this problem could be as simple as:
None of the Above
being a choice on Voter Ballots!
... And finally, Eric Von Zipper
did not
say, "You Denialists!"
Myths of Mass Deception
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Is A
Celebration of Genocide
The End of American Thanksgivings
The Black Commentator ~ Issue 66Nobody but Americans celebrates Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history and the intent of "the founders" as the supremely white American holiday, the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year - a pure glorification of racist barbarity.
We at [Black Commentator] are thankful that the day grows nearer when the almost four centuries-old abomination will be deprived of its reason for being: white supremacy. Then we may all eat and drink in peace and gratitude for the blessings of humanity's deliverance from the rule of evil men.
Thanksgiving is much more than a lie - if it were that simple, an historical correction of the record of events in 1600s Massachusetts would suffice to purge the "flaw" in the national mythology. But Thanksgiving is not just a twisted fable, and the mythology it nurtures is itself inherently evil. The real-life events - subsequently revised - were perfectly understood at the time as the first, definitive triumphs of the genocidal European project in New England. The near-erasure of Native Americans in Massachusetts and, soon thereafter, from most of the remainder of the northern English colonial seaboard was the true mission of the Pilgrim enterprise - Act One of the American Dream. African Slavery commenced contemporaneously - an overlapping and ultimately inseparable Act Two. [Continue reading at]: Source
Thanksgiving, Celebration of Genocide
Native American Holocaust Absolution by PilgrimsSkipping past the signing of the Mayflower Compact, the first concerns of the new arrivals were finding something to eat and a place to settle. After anchoring off Cape Cod on November 11, 1620, a small party was sent ashore to explore. Pilgrims in every sense of the word, they promptly stumbled into a Nauset graveyard where they found baskets of corn which had been left as gifts for the deceased. The gathering of this unexpected bounty was interrupted by the angry Nauset warriors, and the hapless Pilgrims beat a hasty retreat back to their boat with little to show for their efforts. Shaken but undaunted by their welcome to the New World, the Pilgrims continued across Cape Cod Bay and decided to settle, of all places, at the site of the now-deserted Wampanoag village of Patuxet. There they sat for the next few months in crude shelters - cold, sick and slowly starving to death. Half did not survive that terrible first winter. The Wampanoag were aware of the English but chose to avoid contact them for the time being.
In keeping with the strange sequence of unlikely events, Samoset, a Pemaquid (Abenaki) sachem from Maine hunting in Massachusetts, came across the growing disaster at Plymouth. Having acquired some English from contact with English fishermen and the short-lived colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River in 1607, he walked into Plymouth in March and startled the Pilgrims with "Hello Englishmen." Samoset stayed the night surveying the situation and left the next morning. He soon returned with Squanto. Until he succumbed to sickness and joined his people in 1622, Squanto devoted himself to helping the Pilgrims who were now living at the site of his old village. Whatever his motivations, with great kindness and patience, he taught the English the skills they needed to survive, and in so doing, assured the destruction of his own people. [Continue Reading at]: Source
Native American Issues & Causes & NDN News Website - http://www.ndnnews.com/The Thanksgiving Myth
by John Two-HawksLet me begin by stating that thousands of years before the 'official' Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by Governor Winthrop of the Massachussetts Bay Colony in 1637, North American Indigenous people across the continent had celebrated seasons of Thanksgiving.
'Thanksgiving' is a very ancient concept to American Indian nations. The big problem with the American Thanksgiving holiday is its false association with American Indian people. The infamous 'Indians and pilgrims' myth.
It is good to celebrate Thanksgiving, to be thankful for your blessings. It is not good to distort history, to falsely portray the origin of this holiday and lie about the truth of its actual inception. Here are some accurate historical facts about the true origin of this American holiday that may interest you [Continue Reading at]: Source
Develop Your Mind, Not Sacred Sites
In an 1868 treaty, drafted at Fort Laramie in Sioux country, the United States established the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for exclusive use by the Sioux people. However, after the discovery of gold there in 1874, the United States confiscated the land in 1877. To this day, ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the U.S. government and the Sioux.
I'm Sorry You Have Taken
So Long to Say You're Sorry
by David Pego"I think America clearly knows the atrocities - the holocaust, the land theft, the boarding school experience completely wiping out the language and cultures of our Native brothers and sisters." ~ Source
Podcasts:
Robbie Basho ~ Wounded Knee
Click-to-play
Laura Allan ~ Ceremonial Song
Cree Prophecy
Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
Notes from ~@~
Carlin Step ~ DJ Steve Porter & Eli Wilkie ~ http://vimeo.com/21162532
The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) ~ http://vimeo.com/6518109
One Day ~ Matisyahu ~ http://vimeo.com/11520225
Unsung Hero ~ Still Anonymous ~ http://vimeo.com/90853494
Remembering the United State Cafe
Ozzy Osbourne sings John Lennon's "How?" ~ http://vimeo.com/18479498
Rock Of Ages ~ DJ Schmolli / Video: Panost ~ http://vimeo.com/44298418
End of Age Scenario for Couth Kith
Those Without Personal Experience
Will Not Understand
by C. Spangler
Lord, If There Is A Harder Way, Please Show It To Me, Because It Must Be Blissful
One perspective shows that in this place reality is simple, only exists in duality, and (as presented by the Einstein~Podolsky~Rosen Paradox) is telepathic.
Duality separated from the proverbial You can be observed like sunrise and sunset and is nothing more than an age old struggle of darkness vs. light or negative vs. positive and can be viewed as a "there's that one again" scenario; allowing one to obtain 'observer' mode, which I highly approve of ... as opposed to a 'caught up in' mode.
The upcoming aeon transition (begins during 2050 and aligns 2150 by my calculation) was known far in advance; however, here is where a problem lies. There is no previous experience recorded (currently known) that one can call on for guidance. In other words, everything is new for all facets of this conversion, where light overpowers darkness, people finally get along, and there is no more war.
In the past, here is how I have attempted to described what is to occur when this aeon change happens.
If one looks at a Yin/Yang symbol (above graphic), ... on one side there is a vast amount of dark with a little light spot and on the other side there is a vast amount of light with a little dark spot.
When the 2050 conversion occurs, those in the smaller dot of light will move to the larger side of light and those currently in the larger side of darkness will move to the small dark spot, where they will be constantly observed and kept in check. There is an obscure old saying that relates to this, "You have made your bed, now sleep in it."
Because this is duality there are specific rules that grant powers to the dark side allowing THEM to obtain souls for their new realm, and in order to do this, they will exert massive amounts of negativity in order to create fear; thus obtaining slaves for their new reign in their small dot of darkness. This is nothing new because it has always been like this and is, proverbially, the 'same old, same old' ... stuff.
In realms of astral and casual realities; remembering one definition of Hiranyaloka is a subtle astral heaven where souls of the astral and casual planes are able to converse, it is noted "things do not change, people do" ... meaning, ... until the recording called life plays through perfectly, without incident, this cycle will constantly repeat itself, no matter where this scenario is experienced or played out. For example, Jesus said, "In my father's house there are many mansions" suggesting Earth is not our only home.
Without being aware of it, the general population attempts to achieve liberation; which is, 'freedom from the cycle, of birth and death'.
Most folks I know are in a state of devotional liberation; having achieved freedom from this cycle, and return to the carnal world to help those seeking liberation as an act of Seva or selfless service.
Needless to say, negative aspects of this dualism scenario are well aware of this conversion and make a tremendous amount of noise in order to divert attention from those souls attempting to obtain liberation.
There is no set guide or path to achieve this state of awareness other than one's personal experience; however, here is where selfless service or meditation enter the picture as a calming and growing aid.
Although not specific to what is presented above, and as a temporary conclusion for now, here is a related story as told by someone else on a similar path, and in my opinion food for thought for preparing for this aeon change.
Be Aware: The Nexus Approaches!
Posted on October 10, 2010 by mayasoma
10-10-10 Star Gate Portal
"The human race is headed towards a great change, many spirits will return to the stars and something magnificent is going to happen!" Astral Walker
Can you feel it? The race is on, the diaspora has begun and souls are scrambling to make sense of the intensifying energies on Planet Earth. If only our history books had documented the truth of the astrological cycles as the Maya, and many other indigenous tribes, have long done for their own people, then there would not be so much uncertainty and fear. Unfortunately, that is not how this part of our homo-sapien history is to be played out. At present, the 3D world is going crazy and the only way to manuever these times is to understand the facts. And so, without further ado, here is some of our history…
26,000 years ago, the galactic center of the Milky Way emitted an enormous energetic wave better known as the Nexus. It does this every 26,000 years, as they say, there is nothing new under the sun. This emissions are what have caused the tumultuous transitions from each of our previous world eras. If you are not familiar with these facts, simply research indigenous tribes and their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and soon to be 5th worlds.
What was released all that time ago will soon reach our earth in full strength. The Nexus has its own personal rhythm and does take some time to cross the galaxies and skies. I believe its arrival correlates to the Mayan Long Count End Date of December 2012. Afterall, the center of the Milky Way is where the Maya believe their Creator Hunab Ku resides. Our Creator has sent out an energy impulse, this Supreme Being is blowing us/creation a kiss. Unfortunately, our consciousness resides too far away from our original empowered selves to simply receive that kiss in bliss.
That incoming energy is meant to completely change our world, in other words, to wake us all up to who we are: infinite Gods and Goddesses with incredible abilities and powers. This incoming beam of bluish-white light will alter and restore our DNA from its current state which only uses 3% of its capacities to a renewed state of 100% remembrance. Translated: 97% of what scientist call junk DNA will be reactivated. WoW…a jolt of electricity that courses through our veins, awakening our souls and minds. No one is going to escape this phenomena. Thank you Hunab Ku!
Our main problem lies then with the Dark Lords who currently control the 3D world. They are also fully aware of the approaching Nexus and have set out a program to depopulate the Earth as much as possible. Why would they do that? Who are these Dark Lords? It's an old story, again, much of our missing history, but the short and long version of it is there is an inter-galalctic battle on right now, a war that is being waged for souls. If the Dark Lords, negative Et's, have their way, the coming earth catastrophes will take people into fear and fear is a place where they can trap one's soul, one's consciousness, forevermore. On a distant planet, in a distant place, maybe somewhere that looks exactly like our Earth, a new slave race can be created with the trapped souls. The Dark Lords know, full well, that their "time" on Planet Earth is over. A new era has cometh… the age of peace and enlightenment…and they must flee. They intend to flee with as many captives as possible. Sound like a bad sci-fi movie? I wish it were, but these are our current events and the facts are unknown to almost everyone. How frightening! Wake up, please, before you are whisked away to another dimension without personal agreement to do so.
"Right now the realm of darkness is not interested in this (peace). They are organized to block it. They seek to unbalance the Earth and its environment so we will be unready for the alignment in 2012." Carlos Barrios, Mayan Datekeeper
Take a look around…. ecological disasters leading to worldwide famines and extinction, environmental catastrophes that destroy the lives of millions, economical collapses that create a fearful, dependent race and threats of terrorism and world wars loom over our existence. Is this the four horsemen spoken of in the Book of Revelations? It clearly is the workings of the Dark Lords and its about to get more intense, after all, these are their death throes.
"From that 1987 date until now, Mr. Barrios says, we have been in a time when the right arm of the materialistic world is disappearing, slowly but inexorably. We are at the cusp of the era when peace begins, and people live in harmony with Mother Earth. We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition.
As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth changes. All this, Mr. Barrios says, was foreseen via the simple, spiral mathematics of the Mayan calendars. It will change, Mr. Barrios observes. Everything will change. He said Mayan Daykeepers view the Dec. 21, 2012 date as a rebirth, the start of the World of the Fifth Sun. It will be the start of a new era resulting from ~ and signified by ~ the solar meridian crossing the galactic equator, and the earth aligning itself with the center of the galaxy." Carlos Barrios, Mayan Datekeeper
Meanwhile, the Family of Light is exerting every effort for a mass awakening, for gathering, for consciously uniting as we know on some level that everything is dependent on us to do so. We are supposed to be creating an astral force field around the planet and ourselves in the shape of the Flower of Life (see Drunvalo Melchizedek's work on this matter for more information). This symbol can and will prepare us for the enormity of the approaching Nexus. We are supposed to be clearing our fields as much as possible of debris, creating no new karma, so that we are a crystal clear channel for receiving the Nexus energy. We must give praise and thanks as we have received, and will continue to receive, so much help from the Galactic Federation of positive Et's.
I ask myself though, have enough souls awoken to make this transition happen with ease? Can geological earth disasters be diminished? The Dark Lords are earnestly working hard to create as many earth catastrophes as possible in these last days in order to capture their slave race of unaware humans. Many will succumb to this fate due to fear, many will go to the stars as their earth contracts are complete, and a handful of ascended beings will remain on the New Earth.
If you happened to be a person who was to die in shock and fear, your consciousness would be lost and confused on the astral plane for a moment. It is in those crucial moments that the negative Et's can and will capture your essence in a containment vehicle if you are not aware. As quickly as you come into consciousness, get to the benevolent blue light. I have been warned not to be drawn down any tunnels or caves, nor gravitate to any bright yellow-red lights and by no means go with any beckoning ET's.
The benevolent ET's, the light ones, are calling us home and their bioluminescent blue-white light is the signal. You can feel this with your heart. They have said Operation Victory is at hand. They have stated that the Dark Lords cannot succeed and all disasters will be minimized (let's hope so as some seriously dangerous threats are presenting themselves on the earth right now). They have also said the Dark Lords are at their most dangerous as they face defeat, so it is crucial to be fully present! Be aware! Vaccines? Genetically modified foods? Chemical spraying? Understand, these are some of their tools for mind control and keeping the masses asleep. Whatever cometh, wherever you find yourself in these last days where we count days, simply remember, you have only one thing to do: get to the bluish-white light, reach out for the Nexus. If you do, your full consciousness will be re-instated and you will be safe and empowered.
Let us recall the last sign in the Hopi prophecy which states that a blue planet from the Heavens will crash into Earth causing earth destruction, this last sign is what all elders are awaiting as our entry into the 5th world. Possibly, it is not a planet, but an energy wave: the Nexus?
Lightwalkers, we are going home now. We have felt the Nexus approaching for years, even if we could or could not put words to it. Our Creator desires our remembrance and this collective shift to magnificence is welcome. Stay in your heart and the Dark Lords will lose power. It is promised and all is well!
Navajo, awaiting portal 11-11-11 and 12-12-12 to the Nexus!
http://mayasoma.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/be-aware-the-nexus-approaches/
Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard...It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. And there's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. So I dedicated this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silenced. ~ Tom Smothers
ISIS Posts Photo of Their Members
Chilling With Senator John McCain[Click Here for complete article]
Senator McCain "chillin'" with ISIS Leaders in SyriaWhy do Congress, Senate, and Politicians like John "Hot-dog" McCain Continue To Support Israel's Murder and Maiming of United States Naval Personnel?
A Question Of Honour
A Question Of Honour ~ Sarah Brightman ~ http://vimeo.com/20989311
Closing Argument
Alan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.
Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.
Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.
And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.
In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretapping's, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.
There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people seem to notice.
Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we've lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.
Stop for a second and try to fathom that.
At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.
This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?
*Alan sits down abruptly in the witness chair next to the judge*
Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. That's a chair for witnesses only.
Alan: Really long speeches make me so tired sometimes.
Judge Robert Sanders: Please get out of the chair.
Alan: Actually, I'm sick and tired.
Judge Robert Sanders: Get out of the chair!
Alan: And what I'm most sick and tired of is how every time somebody disagrees with how the government is running things, he or she is labeled un American.
U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Evidentially, it's speech time.
Alan: And speech in this country is free, you hack! Free for me, free for you. Free for Melissa Hughes to stand up to her government and say "Stick it"!
U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Objection!
Alan: I object to government abusing its power to squash the constitutional freedoms of its citizenry. And, God forbid, anybody challenge it. They're smeared as being a heretic. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American!
Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. Unless you have anything new and fresh to say, please sit down. You've breached the decorum of my courtroom with all this hooting.
Alan: Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29 year old, but the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism."
Today, it's the cloak of anti-terrorism. Stevenson also remarked, "It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
I know we are all afraid, but the Bill of Rights - we have to live up to that. We simply must. That's all Melissa Hughes was trying to say. She was speaking for you. I would ask you now to go back to that room and speak for her.
Boston Legal ~ Stick It, Season 2, Episode 19 [Video at link] Written by David E. Kelley & Janet Leahy ~ Directed by Adam Arkin.
American Dream
Until there is a solution for this, Nobody will continue to bring Peace to Our Times, feed the hungry, care for the sick, bake apple pie better than Mom, and believes:
None of the Above
should be a choice on Voter Ballots
American Dream ~ George Carlin/L.I.L.T ~ http://vimeo.com/72719973Nobody should have that much power
Oh, I hope that I see you again I never even caught your name As you looked through my window pane ~ So I'm writing this message today I'm thinking that you'll have a way Of hearing the notes in my tune ~ Where are you going? Where have you been? I can imagine other worlds you have seen ~ Beautiful faces and music so serene ~ So I do hope I see you again My universal citizen You went as quickly as you came ~ You know the power Your love is right You have good reason To stay out of sight ~~ But break our illusions and help us Be the light ~ The Promise by Mike Pinder
Without love in the dream, it will never come true. ~ Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. ~ John Lennon
Turn It Off, Tune It Out, Re-learn to Go Outside & Play.
Internet (1991~2013): A virus forced into prostitution by
greedy corporations & used as a tool to Divide & Conquer.
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear.
So the man yelled "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen.
The man looked around and said, "God let me see you" and a star shined brightly. But the man did not notice.
And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle" and a life was born. But the man did not know.
So the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are there"
Whereupon God reached down and touched the man. But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.
Don't miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way you expect.
