Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/39587prs20090513.html

The Obama administration announced today that it is reversing its promise to make public photos depicting detainee abuse by U.S. personnel overseas. The Department of Defense had told a federal judge that it would release a "substantial number" of photos in response to a court ruling in an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

"The Obama administration's adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president's stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government. This decision is particularly disturbing given the Justice Department's failure to initiate a criminal investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration." - Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU

Link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/prison-awaiting-hostile-bloggers/

Proposed congressional legislation would demand up to two years in prison for those whose electronic speech is meant to “coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person.” The proposal by Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Los Angeles, would never pass First Amendment muster, unless the U.S. Constitution was altered without us knowing. So Sanchez, and the 14 other lawmakers who signed on to the proposal, are grandstanding to show the public they care about children and are opposed to cyberbullying. The meaasure, H.R. 1966, is labeled the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act. It’s designed to target the behavior that led to last year’s suicide of the 13-year-old Meier. In response to Meier’s suicide, prosecutors turned to an anti-hacking statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and prosecuted Lori Drew. She was accused of violating MySpace’s terms of service agreement in what prosecutors said was a complex conspiracy to harass Meier via a fake MySpace online profile.

Link: http://www.knowthelies.com/?q=node/3577

Submitted by SadInAmerica on Mon, 02/02/2009 - 6:20pm.
Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) speaking at DC’s annual Stand Up For a Safe America event sponsored by the Brady Center says if your name is on the terrorist no fly list you should not be allowed to own a gun. Why are there so many names on the U.S. government’s terrorist list? ~ In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.1 (See also this new March 2008 report.2 )http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/plus/a0816/final.pdf By those numbers, the list now has over one million names on it. Terrorist watch lists must be tightly focused on true terrorists who pose a genuine threat. Bloated lists are bad because: * they ensnare many innocent travelers as suspected terrorists, and * because they waste screeners’ time and divert their energies from looking for true terrorists.

Link: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10603

Two French students, working on the real origins of bird flu, were murderedin London. Both were savagely tortured and between the them stabbed over two hundred times More ... The two researchers had discovered that the alleged bird flu vaccine, H-7, which was designed to neutralize and stop the H5N1 avian flu virus, had been spliced using DNA to actually create a vaccine and an illness producing virus at the same time. The French students had also discovered that the bird flu vaccine, i.e. a virus, had links to U.S., British and Israeli laboratories associated with the noted Mossad agent, Dr. Philip M. Zackerie. Israeli microbiologist Zackerie, known as “Dr. Zack,” worked for the U.S. bio-weapons lab at Ft. Detrick, Md., where he was photographed handling the strain of anthrax used in the post 9-11 attack according to published reports. He was a consultant at the FBI linked company Gilead Sciences Inc. of Boulder, Colo. Gilead Sciences has been linked to the 9-11 anthrax strain and to the bird flu vaccine. The two French students, who had their apartment broken into one week before their brutal assassination, also had their lap-top computer stolen and their apartment fire-bombed. The operation has been traced to a team of 10 Israeli Mossad and British MI5 agents.

Link: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KD24Ak01.html

It's a script worthy of Freddie Krueger, the fictional character from the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Nearly five years after the irruption of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, here's another chamber of horrors, another glimpse of how The Dark Side really works. But the George W Bush torture memos released by the Barack Obama administration last week, written in legalese by Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury, are just a preview. Many will relish the newspeak. ("We conclude that - although sleep deprivation and use of the waterboard present more substantial questions in certain aspects under the statute and the use of tile waterboard raises the most substantial issue - none of these specific techniques, considered individually, would violate the prohibition in sections 134:0•2340A.") As for the whole movie - a 21st century remix of a D W Griffith epic - it could be called Death of a Nation. The US Senate report, also just released, reads like deja vu all over again: the US establishment under Bush was a replay of the Spanish Inquisition. And it all started even before a single "high-profile al-Qaeda detainee" was captured. What Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assorted little inquisitors wanted was above all to prove the non-existent link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda, the better to justify a pre-emptive, illegal war planned by the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s. The torture memos were just a cog in the imperial machine.

Link: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10607

An award-winning Texas scientist was given a standing ovation after he advocated the extermination of 90 per cent of the Earth's population by an airborne Ebola virus. The University of Texas evolutionary ecologist, Dr Eric R. Pianka, was addressing the 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, in early March, after the academy had named him 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. Present at Pianka's speech was Forrest M. Mim III, a popular science writer and editor of the bi-weekly journal, The Citizen Scientist.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aColIYAe.RaU&refer=home

Give money away. That was a solution to the housing crisis mortgage giant Fannie Mae hit on last year. Faced with growing numbers of homeowners unable to make mortgage payments, Fannie decided to fund loans to borrowers that were instant losers. The point was to buy time. Even though those loans resulted in a $453 million loss, they helped keep troubled homeowners from defaulting. That meant Fannie for now didn’t have to make good on loan guarantees that may have cost it as much as $2.4 billion. The big game of kick the can strikes at a deep-seated fear among many investors -- that banks and others faced with mounting housing losses are finding all manner of dubious ways to push a day of reckoning into the future.

Link: http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/a-must-read-the-crash-of-09-the-collapse-of-10/

My dear Muhammad Ali - I told you that it’s a funny world getting funnier. Many American analysts are saying that America’s real economic collapse could come by the end of this year. “It will come to known as The Crash of 09,” they say. Others, especially a Russian political analyst, are predicting its physical collapse too. There’s no doubt that the country is up the dirtiest of imaginable creeks without a paddle. But what’s amazing is that America remains mired in stunning denial, continuing to make bad situations worse with useless bailout plans and messing around with the world instead of facing up to the reality that its time as a hyper-power is up, that’s its economic system has failed and that its only recourse is to end its adversarial doctrine and get out of its lost wars as painlessly and honorably as possible. There’s no point in going on flogging dead horses. The only sensible thing that survival demands is to craft a new moral economic and financial system and a moral foreign policy.

Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/14/surveillance/index.html

Right-wing polemicists today are shrieking in self-pitying protest over a new report from the Department of Homeland Security sent to local police forces which warns of growing "right-wing extremist activity." The report (.pdf) identifies attributes of these right-wing extremists, warning that a growing domestic threat of violence and terrorism "may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration" and "groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority."

Link: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3614

The tiny desert town of Abeche, in eastern Chad, offers a curious sight: Sandwiched between the mud huts that most people call home and the compounds belonging to international aid workers is a humble Chinese restaurant catering to Chad's growing population of Chinese engineers and managers. Significantly, no equivalent American-style restaurant is to be found. The same holds true across the resource-rich, institution-poor developing world, in countries as remote as East Timor and as dangerous as Somalia. While much of the military establishment in Washington continues to plan for a possible conventional war with China, Beijing is studiously avoiding a direct confrontation, instead expanding its influence through means other than traditional warfare. Principal among them is the deployment of Chinese technocrats abroad on profit-seeking missions for the world's third-largest economy.04/18/09

Link: http://www.aclu.org/pizza/

The government and corporations are aggressively collecting information about your personal life and your habits. They want to track your purchases, your medical records, and even your relationships. The Administration's policies, coupled with invasive new technologies, could eliminate your right to privacy completely. Please help us protect our privacy rights and prevent the Total Surveillance Society. Government programs such as MATRIX and Carnivore are destroying our privacy. We live in a democratic society and government-controlled data systems are a dangerous step toward establishing a 24-hour surveillance society. Recently Northwest Airlines provided the names, addresses, travel plans and credit card numbers of its customers to a NSA project in complete violation of its own privacy policy. In another example, JetBlue provided information from over a million of its customers to the Transportation Security Administration, also in violation of its own privacy policy. Tell Congress to enact privacy laws that protect us from these intrusions into our private lives. If you want to protect your personal privacy, take action right now, tell your friends and family.

Link: http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/mexican-drug-lord-officially-thanks-american-lawmakers-keeping-drugs-illegal

Guzman Loera thanks US presidents for making him a billionaire.Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes' yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, "I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you."

Link: http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/02/news/economy/food_stamps.reut/index.htm?section=money_topstories

A record 32.2 million people -- one in every 10 Americans -- received food stamps at the latest count, the government said Thursday, a reflection of the recession now in its 16th month. Food stamps, the major U.S. anti-hunger program, help poor people buy groceries. The average benefit was $112.82 per person in January. The January figure marks the third time in five months that enrollment set a record. "A weakened economy means that many more individuals are turning to SNAP/Food Stamps," said the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group, using the acronym for the renamed food stamp program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Link: http://www.foxnews.com:80/politics/first100days/2009/03/23/fusion-centers-expand-criteria-identify-militia-members/

Do you like Ron Paul or oppose abortion? You may be a member of a militia, according to a new report by a government information collection agency. If you're an anti-abortion activist, or if you display political paraphernalia supporting a third-party candidate or a certain Republican member of Congress, if you possess subversive literature, you very well might be a member of a domestic paramilitary group. That's according to "The Modern Militia Movement," a report by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), a government collective that identifies the warning signs of potential domestic terrorists for law enforcement communities.

Link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/

The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution. We're officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

Link: http://fdralloveragain.blogspot.com/2009/03/soon-illegal-to-grow-your-own-food.html

Congress is about to make it illegal to grow your own food, or for any farm not to purchase and use government mandated chemicals, additives, and pesticides on all food consumed in the United States, violations are subject to a $1,000,000 dollar fine. HR 875 Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
(sponsored by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto) (growing an organic tomato in your backyard is now illegal) oprah.com

Link: http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=109037&catid=3

STARK COUNTY -- A story that already has people talking nationwide is certain to get more attention with a billboard that encourages former female inmates to report jail abuse. The billboard along Route 62 near Root Avenue in Stark County was put up as a result of the civil lawsuit brought by Hope Steffey against Stark County Sheriff Tim Swanson. Steffey's clothes were forcibly removed by both male and female deputies and she was left completely naked inside the Stark county jail for six hours. Sheriff Swanson says Steffey was considered suicidal so her clothes had to be removed for her own safety. Steffey has denied she was suicidal. The woman's lawyers discovered during the lawsuit that at least 128 women between 1999 and 2007 were strip-searched or forced to remove their clothing or placed on suicide watch, homicide watch or "naked detention." This Stark County Sheriff Tim Swanson is like a concentration camp commandant. When asked about the ethics of stripping prisoners - young women, naked in his jail Swanson justified his 'Abu Ghraib' style treatment of human beings by stating that he has hundreds of prisoners that are stripped naked in his jail. Swanson thinks the large scale of the crime somehow legitimizes it. Sheriff Swanson should know that many thousands of Jews were also stripped naked in concentration camps and it didn’t make the dehumanizing practice any less of an atrocity. In fact it made it much worse.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/patriot/38979prs20090311.html

The American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive report today examining widespread abuses that have occurred under the USA Patriot Act, a law that was rushed through Congress just 45 days after September 11. In the almost eight years since the passage of the controversial national security law, the Patriot Act has led to egregious government misconduct. “From the gagging of our nation’s librarians under the national security letter statute to the gutting of time-honored surveillance laws, the Patriot Act has been disastrous for Americans’ rights,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “In the panic following the events of 9/11, our nation’s lawmakers hastily expanded the government’s authority to a dangerous level and opened a Pandora’s box of surveillance.”

Link: http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/federal-loan-guarantees-0204.html

Bailout estimates for failed projects could range from hundreds of billions to more than a trillion. The nuclear power industry is pressuring Congress to dramatically expand federal loan guarantees for building new plants, which would put taxpayers and ratepayers at significant financial risk, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Congress already has authorized $60 billion for loan guarantees in which the federal government would shield utilities and private investment firms from the risk of default on loans for building new electricity generation plants. The Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated $18.5 billion of that money for new nuclear plants over the next few years. Given the average projected cost of building one reactor is currently $9 billion, the industry is clamoring for considerably more. To date, the DOE has received $122 billion in applications for loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants.

Link: http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:_XSDPC4u2KgJ:www.blackcommentator.com/309/309_col_lavena_johnson_raped_murdered_military_base_iraq_printer_friendly.pdf+LaVena+Johnson:+Raped+and+Murdered+on+a+Military+Base+in+Iraq+The+Black+Commentator&hl=en&ct=clnk&

Have you heard about the story of LaVena Johnson? Well, maybe you should read on. LaVena Johnson, a high school honor student, decided to enlist in the Army in order to pay for college. On July 19, 2005, after serving eight weeks in Iraq, she was killed, just eight days short of her twentieth birthday. Private Johnson, posthumously promoted to Private First Class - was found dead on a military base in Balad, Iraq, in a tent belonging to military contractor KBR, a spinoff and former subsidiary of Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s company. She was the first woman from Missouri to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. And the U.S. Army officially ruled her death a suicide, she shot herself in the head, case closed. But this is where the story begins. Johnson’s family knew something was wrong. They had talked to her on the phone a few days earlier, and she was in a great mood as usual, and was planning to come home for the holidays, earlier than expected. Questions were raised when LaVena’s family viewed her body. There were suspicious bruises, and while the military claimed that this right-handed soldier had shot herself in the head with an M-16 rifle, the gunshot wound was on the left side of her head. Others who committed suicide were murdered in Iraq: LaVena Johnson | Ted Westhusing | Alyssa Peterson | Sgt Melissa Valles | Jennifer A. Valdivia | Pat Tillman | US Army Cover-Up of Rape and Murder?