Monckton: Secretive Copenhagen Treaty Creates Larcenous Global Government Tax
Text of agreement outlines plan for tax on all transactions in addition to 2 percent GDP tax, mandates globalist power grab on an “unimaginable scale,” by a “sinister dictatorship,” warns Monckton
Monckton: Secretive Copenhagen Treaty Creates Larcenous Global Government Tax 091209top
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Lord Christopher Monckton warns that the secretive draft version of the Copenhagen climate change treaty represents a global government power grab on an “unimaginable scale,” and mandates the creation of 700 new bureaucracies as well as a colossal raft of new taxes including 2 percent levies on both GDP and every international financial transaction.
Speaking with The Alex Jones Show, Monckton, who is in Copenhagen attending the UN climate summit, said that when he attempted to obtain a copy of the current draft of the negotiating text agreement, he was initially rebuffed before he threatened an international diplomatic incident unless the document was forthcoming.
“I insisted and it took about 10 minutes and they consulted each other with three or four of them arguing over it – none of them would produce the document….I said I know this treaty exists because this is what the conference is all about,” said Monckton.
Only after Monckton threatened repercussions was he handed the the current draft of the treaty, and the details it contained are perhaps a clue as to why the UN officials were so keen to keep it under wraps.
“Once again they are desperately trying to conceal from everybody here the magnitude of what they’re attempting to do – they really are attempting to set up a world government,” said Monckton, adding that the word “government” was no longer used but the process of further centralization of power into global hands was clearly spelled out in the treaty.
Monckton said that the new world government outlined in the treaty would be handed powers to, “Tax the American economy to the extent of 2 percent GDP, to impose a further tax of 2 percent on every financial transaction….and to close down effectively the economies of the west, transfer your jobs to third world countries – all of that is still in the treaty draft.”
As the leaked document out of Copenhagen reported on by the London Guardian revealed yesterday, this massive new system of global taxation will be paid not to the UN, but directly into the coffers of the World Bank.
“The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions,” reported the Guardian.
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Monckton illustrated the size of the new taxes being proposed by noting they amounted to at least half of the entire US defense budget.
“This is how they are going to fund this vast new government they’re setting up,” said Monckton, adding that he counted around 700 new bureaucracies that would be created as a result of the treaty, which would be bankrolled by taxpayers even outside of the raft of new taxes the treaty would create.
Monckton outlined how the new taxes would be enforced, stating, “They’re going to auction allowances to emit greenhouse gases and if you don’t buy an allowance to emit greenhouse gases, you won’t be allowed to emit them,” adding that the text contained a provision for a “uniform global levy of $2 dollars per ton of CO2 for all fossil fuel emissions,” as well as an additional tax on every commercial plane journey, except ones that go in or out of poorer countries.
There would also be a “global levy on international monetary transactions – that means every transfer of money across borders will be taxed,” said Monckton, adding that this would be on top of the GDP tax.
The treaty outlines, “Penalties or fines for non-compliance,” in developed countries and the creation of an international police force to “enforce its will by imposing unlimited financial penalties on any countries whose performance under this treaty they don’t like,” added Monckton, saying that it amounted to a total global government takeover on an “unimaginable scale”.
“We’re looking at a grab for absolute power and absolute financial control worldwide by the UN and its associated bureaucracies and 700 new bureaucratic bodies,” said Monckton.
Speaking about how such draconian measures were being forced through despite the recent scandal surrounding how key IPCC-affiliated scientists conspired to “hide the decline” in global warming, Monckton emphasized how the climate change establishment were still ludicrously attempting to downplay the significance of the climategate emails by merely repeating their already discredited propaganda about global warming.
“What has happened is that the mainstream media has done themselves terrible damage by signing up to this climate nonsense and then by servilely refusing to admit that climategate was happening, admit how serious it was and simply inform their readers of what was actually in these emails,” said Monckton, “Admissions that while they’re telling us, as the Met Office did just today, that today is the warmest decade since records began 150 years ago, privately what they’re saying in the climategate emails is ‘hey look we’ve got a temperature which has been falling and we can’t explain why and it’s a travesty that we can’t explain why’ – so they’re saying one thing to us publicly to maintain the scare that’s making them rich, and that’s what’s called fraud, it’s criminal fraud, and on the other hand they’re saying privately ‘oh dear oh dear we can’t account for the fact that there’s been no warming for the last 15 years’”.
Monckton said that the Copenhagen treaty meant America was in “immediate peril” of losing its freedom to a “sinister dictatorship” being formed under the contrived pretext of global warming.
Watch the five part interview with Monckton below.
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Gore Leaves Comfort Of 20 Bedroom Power Guzzling Mansion To Fearmonger About Polar Ice Caps 091209top2
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Having been forced to cancel his speech at the Copenhagen summit, carbon billionaire Al Gore found the time to leave the comfort of his 20 bedroom power-guzzling mansion to address the Climategate scandal, before letting loose another deluge of lies and spin in defense of his collapsing global warming fraud.
Gore claims that the ClimateGate emails have been taken out of context and that , “The most recent one is more than 10 years old.”
As Andrew Bolt documents, Gore repeated the claim that the emails were over 10 years old no less than three times.
“In fact, as Watts Up With That shows, one Climategate email was from just two months ago. The most recent was sent on November 12 – just a month ago. The emails which have Tom Wigley seeming (to me) to choke on the deceit are all from this year. Phil Jones’ infamous email urging other Climategate scientists to delete emails is from last year.”
“How closely did Gore read these emails? Did he actually read any at all? Was he lying or just terribly mistaken? What else has he got wrong?”
“Al Gore apparently has no command of the most basic details of anything related to Earth and climate,” writes Anthony Watts. “His last idiotic gaff in the media was that the temperature of the Earth 2 kilometers or so down was millions of degrees! Apparently, Slate editors who look equally like dufuses for printing this dreck didn’t notice his latest one either. Maybe all those trips around the world in the private jet have damaged his ability to tell the time and date? Too many trip across the International Dateline perhaps?”
Gore Leaves Comfort Of 20 Bedroom Power Guzzling Mansion To Fearmonger About Polar Ice Caps 121109banner2
In an interview with CNN today, Gore repeated the lie that the ClimateGate emails were all over ten years old, as well as running another one of his pimp games on the subject of the north pole ice cap.
“The north polar ice-cap is melting before our very eyes. It’s been the size of the continental United States for most of the last three million years and now suddenly 40 percent of it is gone and the rest of it is expected to disappear within five, 10, 15 years,” said Gore.
Of course, Gore’s fearmongering holds about as much credibility as that similarly spewed by climate alarmists last year, when they brazenly predicted that the north pole would be ice-free for the first time in history later that summer.
In reality, between summer 2007 and summer 2008, arctic ice at the North Pole grew by a staggering 30 percent, an area the size of Germany.
According to collated data from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Illinois, Arctic ice extent was at least 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007. This was a conservative estimate based on the map projection.
Gore Leaves Comfort Of 20 Bedroom Power Guzzling Mansion To Fearmonger About Polar Ice Caps 190808ice
An April 2009 north pole expedition by 20 scientists from the U.S., Canada, Italy, and Germany found that polar sea ice was 100% thicker than expected.
“Under normal conditions, the ice is formed within two years and ends up being slightly above 2 meters of thickness. “Here, the thickness was as high as four meters,” said the spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. According to the scientists, this conclusion seems to contradict the warming of the ocean water.”
As Scottish scientists confirmed in 2005, the melting and growing of sea ice at the north pole is a natural cycle and has nothing whatsoever to do with cows farting or indeed Al Gore flying around on his private jet or riding in his gas-guzzling limousine.
“After researching the log-books of Arctic explorers spanning the past 300 years, scientists believe that the outer edge of sea ice may expand and contract over regular periods of 60 to 80 years. This change corresponds roughly with known cyclical changes in atmospheric temperature. The finding opens the possibility that the recent worrying changes in Arctic sea ice are simply the result of standard cyclical movements, and not a harbinger of major climate change,” reported the Scotsman.
Obama’s TSA Nominee Targets Anti-Government Christians
Former FBI agent Southers says government should pay attention to political Americans
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Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
President Obama’s nominee to head the TSA and boss the naked body scanners now being installed at airports across the country says that white Christian “anti-government” types will be the primary target of suspicion for authorities.
Former FBI agent Erroll Southers has been under scrutiny following Republican efforts to block his confirmation after it emerged Southers had abused his power to run a database check on his ex-wife’s new boyfriend.
Back in October, Southers told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, both of whom voted on his confirmation, that he carried out the search because he was concerned for his wife and son. However, after the committees had approved him, Southers admitted that he had lied under oath by failing to reveal that he had personally conducted the search and had done so on more than one occasion, as well as sharing the information with the police (so they could harass the target of the search, according to the Ace of Spades blog).
Given that the potential future head of the TSA has abused his power in the past and then lied about it to Congress while under oath, how can we have any confidence that he will change the climate of corruption and thuggishness that pervades the TSA, as stories of innocent people being terrorized and harassed continue to appear on an almost daily basis?
In a video interview posted to You Tube yesterday, Southers states the the government and the TSA has to “pay attention” not to Muslim terrorists but to “anti-government, anti-abortion, survivalist types” who are “christian identity oriented,” before he links such individuals with neo-nazi white supremacists and people like Buford Furrow, a former Aryan Nations member who killed one and injured three during a shooting at the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center in August 1999.
Southers subsequently throws in Ben Smith, a spree killer who targeted members of racial and ethnic minorities in random drive-by shootings in Illinois and Indiana in July 1999.
“Those groups are groups that claim to be extremely anti-government and christian identity oriented,” added Southers.
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As we have exhaustively documented for years, even if there were hordes of Muslim terrorists planning to bomb airliners, the federal government is far more concerned with what politically active conservative and libertarian Americans are up to.
An infamous leaked report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center last year listed Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag and equated them with radical race hate groups and terrorists.
The 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment, produced by the Virginia Fusion Center, smeared anyone who is “anti-government,” “anti-abortion,” as potential terrorists, equated people who enjoy rifle shooting practice and hunting with terrorists, and demonized the use of the Internet and websites like You Tube, Fark and Slashdot as terrorist tools. The use of “e-protests” is also talked about in the context of terrorism.
The document also discusses “special interest groups” who “incorporate a political message” in its section about domestic terrorists, which could be defined as any mildly political organization whatsoever.
These are just two of a plethora of similar police and federal government reports stretching back well over a decade that identify politically active Americans as domestic terrorists and a target of domestic authorities.
Unless Southers’ ambitions to head up the TSA are stopped, incidents of TSA thugs harassing libertarians and conservatives at airports, such as the case where a Ron Paul treasurer was interrogated for carrying cash and campaign information, will only become more pre
More Lies From Al Gore As He Attempts To Dismiss ClimateGate
Shrugs off “silly” CRU emails as over a decade old while admitting to not having read them
Steve Watson,
Prisonplanet.com
Wednesday, Dec 9, 2009
Al Gore has responded to the Climategate emails scandal by doing what he knows best, skirting the truth and making statements that have no correlation to actual known facts.
In an interview with Slate, Gore responds to several questions over the damning leaked emails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University by lying and suggesting that the emails are all over ten years old.
Here is an excerpt:
Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?
A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus. But the noise machine built by the climate deniers often seizes on what they can blow out of proportion, so they’ve thought this is a bigger deal than it is.
Q: There is a sense in these e-mails, though, that data was hidden and hoarded, which is the opposite of the case you make [in your book] about having an open and fair debate.
A: I think it’s been taken wildly out of context.
[...]
These people are examining what they can or should do to deal with the P.R. dimensions of this, but where the scientific consensus is concerned, it’s completely unchanged. What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.
Of course, if Al Gore had bothered to read any of the emails or spend five minutes looking at any reports related to the greatest scientific scandal of the century, he would know that the emails cover a period of ten years, with the most recent being sent just one month ago on November 12th.
Some of the most damming emails, where the scientists debate being unable to account for a lack of warming, discuss how deceptive their figures may be, and advocate deleting all their emails to avoid freedom of information requests are less than one year old.
More Lies From Al Gore As He Attempts To Dismiss ClimateGate FOTR 340x1692
As for Gore’s insistence that the “consensus” remains unchallenged, try telling that to the 141 experts at The International Climate Science Coalition who have put their names to an open letter to the UN calling for convincing evidence on dangerous human-caused climate change.
Of course, what else should we expect from Gore? Not only is he is uninterested in debating the issue, he is also uninterested in discussing real solutions to the issue of the increased CO2 emissions that he admits have not been the driving factor behind global warming.
Gore is more at home with faking science to win oscars and photoshopping climate induced mass destruction in order to sell more books.
As we reported last week, Gore’s fragile credibility has been all but smashed by ClimateGate, forcing the world’s first carbon billionaire to cancel his scheduled “Climate Conclusion” event in Copenhagen this week.
Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have even called for Gore’s 2007 Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” to be rescinded.
Gore has also been relentlessly confronted in recent days by activists who have been spurred to speak out against the tyranny of carbon taxes by the Climategate developments.
Drumbeat to Boot Geithner Gets Louder, on Eve of Hearings on Disastrous Economic Crash
Danny Schechter
AlterNet
Wednesday, January 13, 2009
When a pitcher gets tired, starts throwing walks or being hit, most attentive managers take him out of the game. When policies break down, as in the case of the security system that failed to spot the alleged Christmas bomber, the president starts talking tough about the buck stopping here and orders to straighten out a failed system.
But when tens of thousands of workers, once again, lose their jobs, the people responsible get winked at, not wanked. The president is contrite, his rhetoric subdued, even as the recovery he keeps talking about goes south.
Yes, there needs to be a cabinet shake-up. It’s time to yank Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner from the game, along with economic adviser Larry Summers. Their pro-bank, pro-Wall Street policies are failing. Isn’t it obvious? According to an AP investigation, their road construction projects have had no impact on the jobs crisis.
The establishment will lean toward a Republican to replace him like FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, who has proven to be far more competent and outspoken than her counterparts.
Geithner acts like a stalking horse for the people responsible for the meltdown. It’s time to say sayonara, and appoint someone who has the people’s interests at heart. There is no shortage of capable and committed Democratic economists who can replace him. How about Elizabeth Warren or Joe Stiglitz or Brooksley Born or Simon Johnson or even, for op-ed’s sake, Paul Krugman?
Even Wall Streeters know Geithner is a dead man walking. Bruce Krasting, a foreign exchange and derivatives veteran writes on Naked Capitalism.com:
Tim Geithner has outlived his usefulness. He is too connected to the bailouts of ‘08. Bear, Lehman, AIG, TARP and even QE are all part of his legacy. That makes Tim a lightening rod. Too many Americans hate that part of our history.
I don’t think the current flap relating to the deliberate “non-disclosure” of information relating to AIG is that big a deal. When the full history of this period is finally told (it will take a while yet) this particular transgression of Mr. Geithner will look small by comparison. The things that we do not yet know about that we “agreed to” during the “crisis period” are going to cause us to roll our eyes and bow our heads when all is said and done.
Now, there will be hearings to see what Tim knew and when he forgot he knew it. Market Watch says he is “ankle deep in the AIG quicksand.” A deceptive defense is being crafted, as Bloomberg reports:
Timothy Geithner, the former Federal Reserve Bank of New York president, wasn’t aware of efforts to limit American International Group Inc.’s bailout disclosures because the regulator’s top lawyer didn’t think the issue merited his attention, according to a letter sent to lawmakers. “Matters relating to AIG securities law disclosures were not brought to the attention of Mr. Geithner,” Thomas Baxter, general counsel of the New York Fed, said today in a letter to Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican. “In my judgment as the New York Fed’s chief legal officer, disclosure matters of this nature did not warrant the attention of the president.”
Why is the media so quiet on the Geithner front? Cenk Uygur wrote about how right-wing channels are giving him a pass:
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Drumbeat to Boot Geithner Gets Louder, on Eve of Hearings on Disastrous Economic Crash 070110banner
If it was anyone else that had screwed up one tenth of what Geithner has, it would be running on a 24/7 loop on Fox News. Geithner gave away over $62 billion to the top banks in the country in secret, tried to cover it up and at the very least overpaid these banks by $13 billion. And that’s just the latest in a series of scandals, with all the same theme—Geithner gives away taxpayer money to the richest (and most culpable) guys in the country. Ah, there it is.
If the right-wing goes after Geithner, then they’re going after the banks and the billions in taxpayer money they received. The right-wing media in this country have no interest in attacking big money, big corporations or big banks. So, while they’ll talk about how Janet Napolitano should be fired for misspeaking for 10 straight days, Geithner is remarkably bulletproof. Why? Because they actually love what he’s doing.
And now the White House has joined the cover-up. Read this exchange between CNN’s Ed Henry and Obama news flack Robert Gibbs and weep:
Q: Robert, does the White House believe that Secretary Geithner should testify on the Hill, turn over any documents he has, to sort of clear this up?
GIBBS: Ed, I’d point you to the Treasury Department. I’m sure you’ve already talked to them. Secretary Geithner was not involved in any of these emails. These decisions did not rise to his level at the Fed. These are emails and decisions made by officials at an independent regulatory agency—
Q: But how do you know that he wasn’t involved? He was the leader of the New York Fed.
GIBBS: Right, but he wasn’t on the emails that have been talked about and wasn’t party to the decision that was being made.
Q: Well, Republican Congressman Issa says there are probably thousands of more emails and he may not be on some that some people have looked at. In the interest of transparency would the White House want more—I mean, you run AIG now, essentially—
GIBBS: I would point you to the Department of Treasury, which I think will tell you that—
Q: But what does the White House believe?
GIBBS: I just gave you what the White House believes.
What should we believe? Perhaps another investigation that gets underway this week may offer some answers. Its lacks the power and zeal of the independent Pecora Commission appointed by FDR to probe the causes of the Crash of ‘29, but it will at least raise some questions. It is, unfortunately, modeled on the 9/11 Commission that was subverted by the Bush administration and ended up raising more questions than it answered.
Reports the New York Times:
The commission, comprising six Democrats and four Republicans, has summoned four heads of big banks to testify on Wednesday at the panel’s first substantive hearing: Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley and Brian T. Moynihan of Bank of America.
“There is a deep hunger out there, on behalf of the American people, to understand what happened,” the commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, said in an interview on Friday. “It arises out of anger, confusion and anxiety about their own future. This will be, in a real sense, the only public forum for examination of this crisis.” Writes columnist Frank Rich, “Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin.”
But the Times also reports that the banks and their lobbying arms have been working overtime to prepare testimony that will defect all the blame away from them. Will the commission and the media challenge this disinformation? “Bank employees worked through the holidays preparing testimony and drawing up potential questions that will be asked of their chiefs. The hearings will occur in the middle of the 2009 bonus season, and executives are bracing for questions about the paychecks that many firms will dispense.”
They are also excitedly awaiting their latest round of bonuses, an announcement likely to stir pubic anger given that CEOs now make, on average, 245 times the annual wage of most workers. Bill Moyers reports they have set aside $200 billion to reward themselves.
And so it goes. Will the truth ever come out? Will the folks who screwed up our economy—in the government and on Wall Street—ever be held accountable? We seem to be in the ninth inning.
By Aaron Klein
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Posted: January 14, 2010
12:30 am Eastern
In a lengthy academic paper, President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, argued the U.S. government should ban "conspiracy theorizing."
Among the beliefs Sunstein would ban is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.
Sunstein also recommended the government send agents to infiltrate "extremists who supply conspiracy theories" to disrupt the efforts of the "extremists" to propagate their theories.
In a 2008 Harvard law paper, "Conspiracy Theories," Sunstein and co-author Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard law professor, ask, "What can government do about conspiracy theories?"
"We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories."
In the 30-page paper – obtained and reviewed by WND – Sunstein argues the best government response to "conspiracy theories" is "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups."
Continued Sunstein: "We suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity."
Read more about Cass Sunstein's agenda in "Shut Up, America!: The End of Free Speech"
Sunstein said government agents "might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."
Sunstein defined a conspiracy theory as "an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role."
Some "conspiracy theories" recommended for ban by Sunstein include:
* "The theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud."
* "The view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
* "The 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile."
* "The Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy."
* "That Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by federal agents."
* "The moon landing was staged and never actually occurred."
Sunstein allowed that "some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true."
He continued: "The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the CIA did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of 'mind control.'”
Sunstein's paper advocating against the belief that global warming is a deliberate fraud was written before November's climate scandal in which e-mails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University in the U.K. indicate top climate researchers conspired to rig data and keep researchers with dissenting views from publishing in leading scientific journals.
Sunstein: Ban 'right wing' rumors
Sunstein's paper is not the first time he has advocated banning the free flow of information.
WND reported that in a recently released book, "On Rumors," Sunstein argued websites should be obliged to remove "false rumors" while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such "rumors."
In the 2009 book, Sunstein cited as a primary example of "absurd" and "hateful" remarks, reports by "right-wing websites" alleging an association between President Obama and Weatherman terrorist William Ayers.
He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for "attacking" Obama regarding the president's "alleged associations."
Ayers became a name in the 2008 presidential campaign when it was disclosed he worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also was said to have launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers' apartment.
'New Deal Fairness Doctrine'
WND also previously reported Sunstein drew up a "First Amendment New Deal" – a new "Fairness Doctrine" that would include the establishment of a panel of "nonpartisan experts" to ensure "diversity of view" on the airwaves.
Sunstein compared the need for the government to regulate broadcasting to the moral obligation the U.S. had to impose new rules that outlawed segregation.
Sunstein's radical proposal, set forth in his 1993 book "The Partial Constitution," received no news media attention and scant scrutiny until the WND report.
In the book, Sunstein outwardly favors and promotes the "Fairness Doctrine," the abolished FCC policy that required holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner the government deemed "equitable and balanced."
Sunstein introduces what he terms his "First Amendment New Deal" to regulate broadcasting in the U.S.
His proposal, which focuses largely on television, includes a government requirement that "purely commercial stations provide financial subsidies to public television or to commercial stations that agree to provide less profitable but high-quality programming."
Sunstein wrote it is "worthwhile to consider more dramatic approaches as well."
He proposes "compulsory public-affairs programming, right of reply, content review by nonpartisan experts or guidelines to encourage attention to public issues and diversity of view."
The Obama czar argues his regulation proposals for broadcasting are actually presented within the spirit of the Constitution.
"It seems quite possible that a law that contained regulatory remedies would promote rather than undermine the 'freedom of speech,'" he writes.
Writes Sunstein: "The idea that government should be neutral among all forms of speech seems right in the abstract, but as frequently applied it is no more plausible than the idea that it should be neutral between the associational interests of blacks and those of whites under conditions of segregation."
Sunstein contends the landmark case that brought about the Fairness Doctrine, Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, "stresses not the autonomy of broadcasters (made possible only by current ownership rights), but instead the need to promote democratic self-government by ensuring that people are presented with a broad range of views about public issues."
He continues: "In a market system, this goal may be compromised. It is hardly clear that 'the freedom of speech' is promoted by a regime in which people are permitted to speak only if other people are willing to pay enough to allow them to be heard."
In his book, Sunstein slams the U.S. courts' unwillingness to "require something like a Fairness Doctrine" to be a result of "the judiciary's lack of democratic pedigree, lack of fact-finding powers and limited remedial authority."
He clarifies he is not arguing the government should be free to regulate broadcasting however it chooses.
"Regulation designed to eliminate a particular viewpoint would of course be out of bounds. All viewpoint discrimination would be banned," Sunstein writes.
But, he says, "at the very least, regulative 'fairness doctrines' would raise no real doubts" constitutionally.
Top Obama czar:
Infiltrate all 'conspiracy
theorists'
One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?
Barack Obama's 'rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially exclusive but they have also proved highly effective.'
Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky towards the Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for food and warm second-hand clothes. They come because desperation in this part of America has become a routine part of life.
More than a quarter of the families in Prestonsburg live in poverty; half of the children in Floyd County, where it is situated, are on food stamps. This Appalachian coal mining area has never been rich. But no one can remember when it has ever been this poor either. It sits on the old Route 23 – the country music highway of which Dwight Yoakam (a Floyd Country native) sang in Readin', Rightin', Route 23. It was the road that took people north to factory jobs in places such as Detroit and Cleveland and "the good life they had never seen". Now those cities are broke and there's nowhere left to go.
"We're getting more and more people coming here as time goes by," says Tom Price, who helps administer the church's Feed My Sheep pantry. "The bottom's just fallen out of it all." He blames it on Barack Obama. "Is there a direct correlation [between Obama's victory and the region's bad times]? I don't know. But I do know a lot of people are hurting."
Part 1, Meet the 9-12ers - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Link to this audio
A week may be a long time in politics. But a year has not been enough for the Democratic president to meet the expectations of his candidacy, deal with the situation he inherited or defuse the barbed charges of his detractors. For many the change that Obama promised when he was inaugurated a year on Wednesday has ended up being a change for the worse. Unemployment is rising, houses prices are falling, unpopular wars are still raging. After 100 days only Ronald Reagan had higher approval ratings for his first few months in office than Obama. But as his first year draws to a close nobody has had lower ratings at this stage since Dwight Eisenhower.
Part 2, Miner issue - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Keith Bartley, Floyd County's Democratic chairman, says one key reason why Obama's such a tough sell here is because of the effect of his cap and trade policy on the coal industry. Lt Governor Daniel Mongiardo, the Democratic frontrunner in Kentucky's senatorial race later this year, says he would not want Obama to come and stump for him on the campaign trail, particularly because of his environmental policies. "With some of the positions he has taken, especially on coal, no. He certainly can't come into eastern or western Kentucky and help. Nor would I want him to."
But the disenchantment goes beyond one region or one industry. The official narrative of Obama's inauguration – the fairytale most of the US media told itself and that the international community wanted to believe – was that after a rancourous campaign a divided country came together to celebrate the historic election of its first African-American president. The reality was always quite different. The editor of the Grayson County News Gazette in Leitchfield, a small town 230 miles west of Prestonsburg, recalls that the day after the election much of the area wore sombre faces. The week he was elected gun sales across the country leapt about 50% compared with the same period the year before.
For all of his aspirations for bipartisanship, after the first three months Obama had the most polarised early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The gap between how Democrats and Republicans rated him at this stage was greater than George Bush Jr's in 2001 and twice as high as Richard Nixon's during the height of the Vietnam war in 1969. This was partly because Democrats loved him so much – but it was also because so few Republicans were willing to give him a hearing. Obama didn't create that partisan divide, he inherited it. Not only has he not been able to cure it, but his presence seems to have exacerbated it.
Truth be told they never really liked Obama much in Floyd County. He won only 5% of the vote against Hillary Clinton's 94% in the primaries. But until recently they did love Democrats. In the 2004 election John Kerry won the county with a 25-point margin. In 2008, John McCain took it by 2 points – the first time a Republican had won Floyd in living memory. That's to say following hurricane Katrina, the failure in Iraq, the collapse of the economy and the unravelling in Afghanistan, a sizeable portion of Floyd's voters took a look at Obama and decided that this time, for the first time, they would turn their back on the Democrats.
Back at the Feed My Sheep food pantry Cindy Hernandez has just picked up her groceries and is rifling through the secondhand clothes. She has no doubts about why Obama struggled in a county that is 98% white.
"That's because Obama was black. Let's get real," she says with a laugh.
"You mean people are prejudiced in eastern Kentucky?" asks Tom Nelson, the church's pastor who seems genuinely upset by what she said.
"You do not believe that?" replies Hernandez.
"I know some are, but not altogether," says Nelson. Fearing I should get the wrong impression Nelson suggested I talk to Price.
"I voted for McCain," says Price. "Because, well I voted for the old white guy. At least he's American." A few days earlier, the chairman of the Republican party in Jackson County, Arkansas, insisted electing Obama is destroying America in the same way electing Nelson Mandela destroyed South Africa. "Handing it over to the wrong people."
To ask where racism ends and politics begins in all of this is to set up a false dichotomy – America's politics has always been steeped in race and racism is a political force. The psychic scars of centuries are not removed in one election or as a result of one person. Indeed they may be deepened and made even more raw as a result of them.
The movement that has emerged to oppose him is almost exclusively white. In Little Rock, Arkansas, a city that is 40% black in a state that is 80% white, an anti-tax Tea party rally of several hundred had not one black attendee – apart from an anti-abortion speaker. The doubts they have cast about his Christianity and his birthplace (some claim Obama wasn't born in America) are really proxies for race – a bid to cast him as the ultimate "other". At an anti-healthcare reform rally in Washington in September several racist placards were spotted. One bore a picture a lion and the words, "The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin' African"; another said "'Cap' Congress and 'trade' Obama back to Kenya".
But while racism might inform the intensity and shape the nature of the attacks on Obama they do not drive them. Obama's administration has raised taxes on the rich, expanded public spending, pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq and argued – if only halfheartedly – for universal healthcare. Conservatives have good reasons to be against him that have nothing to do with race.
"It's hard to specify a single source for the opposition," says Rev Wendell Griffin, a Baptist pastor and judge in Arkansas. "Part of the opposition to Obama is philosophical. There is in every society a strand of thought that glories in the myth of rugged individualism [and] he challenges that notion. He believes that the idea of a government is to have a concern not just for the individual but for the society as a whole. Some people don't like that." Griffin went on to list racism, economic desperation and the fact that he is no longer an underdog as other reasons.
His rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially exclusive but they have also proved highly effective. They have a populist message that excoriates Bush and the bank bailouts as well as Obama and a TV channel – Fox News – to which they are devoted and which is happy to promote their work. A recent poll showed that if the Tea party – a protest movement set up earlier this year to rally opposition to the stimulus bill and "big government" – were a party it would beat the Republican party.
Every week a "9/12" group meet at the non-alcoholic All Bar None in Lexington, Kentucky. This was an initiative started by Fox presenter Glenn Beck, in order to return America to the values of patriotism and godliness that he says America embraced the day after 11 September. Fourteen showed up the night I was there. A straw poll revealed that none of them blamed Obama exclusively for America heading in the wrong direction, with all preferring to blame the entire political establishment. Half believed Obama is a Muslim, just one thought he's a Christian and the overwhelming majority thought he was a communist, socialist and Marxist. None believe that he was born in America; most said they did not know.
"A lot of information about Obama's background is missing," says Abigail Billings. "The media in America is not doing any research. They're not asking any questions. They're not reporting any longer. They're now opinionated talk shows. They're no longer offering factual news coverage." They all watch Fox News.
Many on America's left are also disgruntled with Obama. They believe the healthcare reform, without a public option, will be inadequate, that the war in Afghanistan will unravel, the stimulus bill was insufficient to kick-start the economy and that his economic team is being run by Wall Street. But unlike the right they have so far failed to turn their disillusionment into a potent political force.
"I'd have thought in the past that if Charles Manson ran against a Republican in Floyd County he would win," says Bartley. "But Charles Manson could beat Barack Obama here right now. Thousands of miners out of work, the entire local economy in the tank. But he's got a couple of years where he could turn this round. If he does that he could win. If he doesn't, Charles Manson could come in and win."
Paul Joseph Watson, Alex Jones & Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, February 1, 2010
Calls to introduce a licensing system to police the Internet on behalf of a powerful UN agency represent the latest salvo in a long-running battle to kill free speech on the web and bring an end to the powerful digital democracy that has devastated the carbon tax agenda of the UN by exposing the Climategate scandal.
UN International Telcommunications Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure told the World Economic Forum in Davos this past weekend that global treaties need to be enacted in the name of stopping cyber warfare.
Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
“We need a kind of World Health Organization for the Internet,” he said.
“If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.”
Andre Kudelski, chairman of Kudelski Group, said that people should be forced to “have two computers that cannot connect and pass on viruses”. Since using the Internet requires a computer to connect to a network, it seems unclear as to how this would work without blocking off entire areas of the Internet altogether.
Globalists are invoking the threat of cyber attacks by nation states in order to accomplish their real agenda of stifling and regulating out of existence the last true outpost of free speech – the Internet. The establishment is furious at the level of influence individuals and small political groups have been able to wield by means of the world wide web, particularly over the last few years.
Climategate is a perfect example of the power of the digital democracy that authoritarian enemies of free speech want to crush. The Copenhagen global warming conference was completely devastated by the Climategate revelations which appeared just days before elitists convened to ram through their CO2 scam. As a result of bloggers feverishly pursuing the Climategate story, the entire foundation of the UN’s IPCC has been totally eviscerated and the global warming hoax is on its last legs.
The power to cripple entire branches of their control freak agenda within a matter of weeks has the globalists hopping mad, which is why their mission to eliminate real free speech on the web is accelerating.
“Don’t be surprised if it becomes reality in the near future,” writes ZD Net’s Doug Hanchard. “Every device connected to the Internet will have a permament license plate and without it, the network won’t allow you to log in.”
The graphic below illustrates how you would be blocked from using the Internet if your device had not obtained government permission to access the network.
Enemies Of Free Speech Call For Internet Licensing license and registration
Another method would be to make the use of fingerprint scanners that are included on a lot of new computer models mandatory. You would have to register your fingerprint at a central government data center and then scan each time you want to access the Internet. Misbehave online and your access will be denied.
“One thing is for sure,” concludes Hanchard, “A lot of money is going to be spent trying and sooner or later, everyone may have to pay with an Internet cop instant messaging you – “license and registration please”.
It seems certain that cyber security problems will be exploited or even manufactured to justify the move to Internet licensing. Authorities need to create a strong pretext to justify measures that would otherwise be rightly rejected for what they truly represent – government regulation and censorship of the web that would outstrip anything the Communist Chinese have attempted.
Internet censorship bills currently working their way into law in the UK, Australia and the U.S. legislate for government powers to restrict and filter any website that it deems to be undesirable for public consumption.
In the UK, legislation slated as the “Digital Economy Bill“, currently being debated in the House of Lords, would allow the Home Secretary to place “a technical obligation on internet service providers” to block whichever sites it wishes.
Under clause 11 of the proposed legislation “technical obligation” is defined as follows:
A “technical obligation”, in relation to an internet service provider, is an obligation for the provider to take a technical measure against particular subscribers to its service.
A “technical measure” is a measure that — (a) limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber; (b) prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use; (c) suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or (d) limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way.
In other words, the government will have the power to force ISPs to downgrade and even block your internet access to certain websites or altogether if it wishes.
The legislation comes in the wake of amplified UK government efforts to seize more power over the internet and those who use it.
For months now unelected “Secretary of State” Lord Mandelson has overseen government efforts to challenge the independence of the of UK’s internet infrastructure.
Mandelson also wants to impose harsh policies, via the Digital Economy Bill, that would see users’ broadband access cut off indefinitely, in addition to a fine of up to £50,000 without evidence or trial, if they download copyrighted music and films. The plan has been identified as “potentially illegal” by experts.
The legislation would impose a duty on ISPs to effectively spy on all their customers by keeping records of the websites they have visited and the material they have downloaded. ISPs who refuse to cooperate could be fined £250,000.
As Journalist and copyright law expert Cory Doctrow has noted, the bill also gives the Secretary of State the power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes, without Parliamentary oversight or debate.
This could include the authority to appoint private militias, who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files in addition to the blocking of websites.
Mandelson and his successors will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any digital transgression he deems Britons to be guilty of.
Despite being named the Digital Economy Bill, the legislation contains nothing that will actually stimulate the economy and is largely based on shifting control over the internet into government hands, allowing unaccountable bureaucrats to arbitrarily hide information from the public should they wish to do so.
Mandelson began the onslaught on the free internet in the UK after spending a luxury two week holiday at Nat Rothschild’s Corfu mansion with multi-millionaire record company executive David Geffen.
The Digital Economy Bill is intrinsically linked to long term plans by the UK government to carry out an unprecedented extension of state powers by claiming the authority to monitor all emails, phone calls and internet activity nationwide.
Last year the government announced its intention to create a massive central database, gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent, phone call made and website visited by everyone in the UK.
The programme, known as the “Interception Modernisation Programme”, would allow spy chiefs at GCHQ, the government’s secret eavesdropping agency, the centre for Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) activities (pictured above), to effectively place a “live tap” on every electronic communication in Britain in the name of preventing terrorism.
Following outcry over the announcement, the government suggested last April that it was scaling down the plans, with then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith stating that there were “absolutely no plans for a single central store” of communications data.
However, as the “climbdown” was celebrated by civil liberties advocates and the plan was “replaced” by new laws requiring ISPs to store details of emails and internet telephony for just 12 months, fresh details emerged indicating the government was implementing a big brother spy system that far outstrips the original public announcement.
The London Times published leaked details of a secret mass internet surveillance project known as “Mastering the Internet” (MTI).
Costing hundreds of millions in public funds, the system is already being implemented by GCHQ with the aid of American defence giant Lockheed Martin and British IT firm Detica, which has close ties to the intelligence agencies.
A group of over 300 internet service providers and telecommunications firms has attempted to fight back over the radical plans, describing the proposals as an unwarranted invasion of people’s privacy.
Currently, any interception of a communication in Britain must be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or a minister of equivalent rank. Only individuals who are the subject of police or security service investigations may be subject to surveillance.
If the GCHQ’s MTI project is completed, black-box probes would be placed at critical traffic junctions with internet service providers and telephone companies, allowing eavesdroppers to instantly monitor the communications of every person in the country without the need for a warrant.
Even if you believe GCHQ’s denial that it has any plans to create a huge monitoring system, the current law under the RIPA (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) allows hundreds of government agencies access to the records of every internet provider in the country.
In publicly announced proposals to extend these powers, firms will be asked to collect and store even more vast amounts of data, including from social networking sites such as Facebook.
If the plans go ahead, every internet user will be given a unique ID code and all their data will be stored in one place. Government agencies such as the police and security services will have access to the data should they request it with respect to criminal or terrorist investigations.
This is clearly the next step in an incremental program to implement an already exposed full scale big brother spy system designed to completely obliterate privacy, a fundamental right under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Similar efforts to place restrictions on the internet are unfolding in Australia where the government is implementing a mandatory and wide-ranging internet filter modeled on that of the Communist Chinese government.
Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy said the government would be the final arbiter on what sites would be blacklisted under “refused classification.”
The official justification for the filter is to block child pornography, however, as the watchdog group Electronic Frontiers Australia has pointed out, the law will also allow the government to block any website it desires while the pornographers can relatively easily skirt around the filters.
Earlier this year, the Wikileaks website published a leaked secret list of sites slated to be blocked by Australia’s state-sponsored parental filter.
The list revealed that blacklisted sites included “online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.”
The filter will even block web-based games deemed unsuitable for anyone over the age of fifteen, according to the Australian government.
The broad attack on the free internet is not only restricted to the UK and Australia.
The European Union, Finland, Denmark, Germany and other countries in Europe have all proposed blocking or limiting access to the internet and using filters like those used in Iran, Syria, China, and other repressive regimes.
In 2008 in the U.S., The Motion Picture Association of America asked president Obama to introduce laws that would allow the federal government to effectively spy on the entire Internet, establishing a system where being accused of copyright infringement would result in loss of your Internet connection.
In 2009 the Cybersecurity Act was introduced, proposing to allow the federal government to tap into any digital aspect of every citizen’s information without a warrant. Banking, business and medical records would be wide open to inspection, as well as personal instant message and e mail communications.
The legislation, introduced by Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) in April, gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.” The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president, according to a Mother Jones report.
During a hearing on the bill, Senator John Rockefeller betrayed the true intent behind the legislation when he stated, “Would it have been better if we’d have never invented the Internet,” while fearmongering about cyber attacks on the U.S. government and how the country could be shut down.
Watch the clip below.
The Obama White House has also sought a private contractor to “crawl and archive” data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place online where the White House “maintains a presence” – for a period of up to eight years.
Obama has also proposed scaling back a long-standing ban on tracking how people use government Internet sites with “cookies” and other technologies.
Recent disclosures under the Freedom Of Information Act also reveal that the federal government has several contracts with social media outlets such as Youtube (Google), Facebook, Myspace and Flickr (Yahoo) that waive rules on monitoring users and permit companies to track visitors to government web sites for advertising purposes.
The U.S. military also has some $30 Billion invested in it’s own mastering the internet projects.
We have extensively covered efforts to scrap the internet as we know it and move toward a greatly restricted “internet 2″ system. All of the above represents stepping stones toward the realisation of that agenda.
The free internet is under attack the world over, only by exposing the true intentions of our governments to restrict the flow of data can we defeat such efforts and preserve the last vestige of independent information.
Enemies Of Free Speech Call For Internet Licensing
See Video Below
Scott Brown Election Win A Massive Rebellion Against Big Government
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Scott Brown’s stunning underdog victory over Democrat Martha Coakley to become Massachusetts’ next U.S. Senator is a crushing blow for the Obama administration’s big government agenda – not because Brown has an R next to his name, and not because of Judas goats like Glenn Beck who will attempt to hijack genuine populism once again – but because his victory was thanks to the 51% of Independents who are now the majority in the state.
“The victory caps a dramatic surge in recent days as Brown, a state lawmaker from Wrentham once thought to have little chance of beating a popular attorney general, roared ahead of Coakley to become the first Republican senator elected from Massachusetts since 1972,” reports the Boston Globe.
“In a race that became the center of national attention, Brown’s win is widely seen as a vote against the president’s agenda from one of the most reliably Democratic states. And in a particularly ironic twist, Brown, in succeeding Edward M. Kennedy — the late liberal lion who deemed health care “the cause of my life’’ — may well be the 41st vote to prevent the Democratic-led plan from moving forward.”
However, most corporate media reports about Brown’s victory are absent the fact that 51% of Massachusetts voters are registered Independents. Additionally, for every Republican in Mass., there are three Democrats, illustrating that the outcome represents a wholesale rebellion of the Obama health care agenda from liberals who are now understanding its true intent – nothing more than a bailout for the insurance companies.
Scott Brown Election Win A Massive Rebellion Against Big Government 190110banner4
The manner of Brown’s victory proves that the result isn’t just a product of the two party monopoly see-sawing back and forth. Voters who are sick to the back teeth of government taking their liberties whether a Democrat or a Republican is in office are now slowly becoming the majority. The partisan sideshow of Democrat versus Republican is gradually starting to implode as Democrats and liberal Independents quickly wake up to the fact that Obama’s promises of hope and change were completely hollow and that the man is little more than another stooge for the military-industrial complex in the same vein as Bush.
Brown’s victory cannot be spun as anything other than a victory for self-governance and a complete rejection of the Obama administration’s nanny state agenda.
However, this bombshell sea change can only mean something in the long term if Judas goats like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others are prevented from hijacking genuine populism and diluting it down to more meaningless political partisanship, as they did with the tea party movement.
Big government media pimps are devastated by Brown’s victory because, as many observers are saying, it likely signals the death blow for Obama’s socialist health care agenda.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who last month hailed Communist ideologue and Stalinist Saul Alinsky as one of his heroes, made no attempt to hide his fury at the idea of Brown beating Coakley during a Hardball intro earlier this week.
“It’s that rare election where voters know exactly what they’re voting on. If they’re with Democrat Martha Coakley they get health care reform. If they go for Republican Scott Brown it’s deliberate, premeditated murder for health care!” screeched Matthews.
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged Wednesday that government agencies may kill U.S. citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are "taking action that threatens Americans."
Blair told members of the House intelligence committee that he was speaking publicly about the issue to reassure Americans that intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense "follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed" in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens.
Blair's unusually frank remarks come as the issue of targeting Americans for lethal action has attracted more notice. As the United States steps up its campaign against suspected terrorists overseas, it has become more apparent that some extremists may be U.S. citizens.
The most prominent case to date is that of a U.S.-born cleric, Anwar al-Aulaqi, who lives in Yemen and has been linked to the Army major who allegedly shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and to the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day.
Aulaqi is a member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate of the main al-Qaeda organization, and has been linked to the Fort Hood shooter as well as the Nigerian. He was thought to be meeting with regional al-Qaeda leaders at a compound in Yemen targeted by a Dec. 24 strike. He was not said to be the focus of the strike, and he was not killed. But U.S. officials said at the time that they thought he might have been killed.
"I just don't want Americans who are watching this to think that we are careless about endangering -- in fact, we're not careless about endangering American lives as we try to carry out the policies to protect most of the country," Blair said at the annual threat briefing before the panel. He did not specifically refer to the targeting of Aulaqi.
In response to questions from Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the panel's ranking Republican, Blair said: "We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community. If that direct action, we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that."
Hoekstra pressed for clarification of the policy, especially its threshold for targeting Americans for lethal action.
"The concern that I have today is that I'm not sure that . . . [it is] very well understood as to what you and the people in your organization can do when it comes to Americans who have joined the enemy," Hoekstra told Blair.
The director of national intelligence said the factors that "primarily" weigh on the decision to target an American include "whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans."
DHS Is Monitoring Social Media and Web Sites for Terror and Disaster Info
By JASON RYAN
Feb. 13, 2010
As the winter Olympics begin, the Department of Homeland Security has disclosed that it will be monitoring the comments and posts on websites and social media like Twitter for information on possible terror threats. Among the sites listed in a privacy impact statement filed Friday afternoon by DHS are the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, Twitter, Google and this web site, the Blotter.
Photo: DHS Monitors Social Media Websites for Olympic Security
Police patrol the area outside of the BC Place Stadium which will host the Winter Olympics opening... Expand
Police patrol the area outside of the BC Place Stadium which will host the Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, in downtown Vancouver on Feb. 7, 2010. As the winter Olympics kick off Friday the Department of Homeland Security has disclosed that they will be monitoring a variety of social media networks in the event of an emergency as part of their security efforts for the Winter Games. Collapse
The National Operations Center of DHS will watch the web for information, according to the statement, to "provide situational awareness" in the event of natural disaster, an "act of terrorism, or other manmade disaster."
"The Olympics are a potential target for such events," said the statement. The statement did not list all web sites and social media that the NOC will monitor, but provided 31 examples, many of them, like the Blotter, sites that cover breaking news, security, or terror.
Related
Americans Traveling to Vancouver Olympics Warned of Possible Terror Threats
Terror Threats to Olympic Games
DHS officials say they will not be monitoring the web sites extensively, but would use the sites as a reference and open source tool in the event of an incident or emergency. DHS officials also used the monitoring of social media sites in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake to aid rescue efforts.
In one instance a DHS employee noticed a message on a web site about a person trapped under rubble in Port-au-Prince and was able to direct a State Department team to help in the rescue.
One official told ABC News that monitoring the web sites during an emergency is like watching "a canary in a coal mine," since social media sites can have real-time information. The official said the raw information that is available on the sites can help first responders and law enforcement officials make quick assessments to help in their response to events.
By Lachlan Markay
Thu, 02/18/2010 - 21:58 ET
The liberal press is determined, it seems, to tie Joe Stack's apparent suicide in Austin today to the Tea Party movement. NewsBusters has reported on three such attempts, and now New York Magazine has thrown its hat in the ring.
Like Time Magazine, MSNBC, and the Washington Post, New York Magazine cherry-picked portions of Stack's apparent suicide note, which he posted online, in order to support the contention that he was acting out of a radical hatred of the IRS and the federal government in general.
Also like the those three bastions of media liberalism, NY Magazine did not include the final two lines of Stack's note. They are perhaps the most politically consequential lines in the entire note, yet they were suspiciously absent from the piece. They should also put to rest any notion that this man was in any way affiliated with the Tea Party movement.
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
Anyone who has ever been to a Tea Party knows that attendees revile Communism. Words like "communist," "socialist," "statist," and "collectivist" are considered epithets.
Yet according to a story on the New York Magazine website headlined "What Do We Know So Far About This Pilot Who Crashed a Plane Into a Building in Austin?" we know six things about Stack:
1. He is a software engineer.
2. He started off the morning by burning down his own house.
3. He then went to Georgetown Municipal Airport north of Austin at about 9:40 a.m. and took off in the Piper. He did not file a flight plan because the weather was clear enough for one not to be required.
4. He quickly directed his plane at a seven-story office building at 9430 Research Boulevard in northwest Austin, where, among other companies, about 200 employees of the Internal Revenue Service work.
5. He was mad at the IRS, and left what CNN reports was a suicide note on a local website, detailing his trials with the agency. In fact, a lot of his rhetoric could have been taken directly from a handwritten sign at a tea party rally...
6. Stack flew the plane low to the ground and veered for the lower floors just before impact. The act is being considered criminal, and not terrorist.
Despite the story being relatively short, NY Magazine managed to blockquote five paragraphs, none of which actually lead into each other in the note (as denoted by the suspension points between them). Nowhere, however, do they mention his praise for communism and scorn for capitalism.
We are … brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was "no taxation without representation." I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a "crackpot" traitor and worse.
While very few working people would say that they haven't had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainly that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.
The law "requires" a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that's not "duress" than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.
…
It also made me realize, not only how naïve I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their "freedom" … and they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.
Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes … isn't that a clever, tidy solution. … I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less.
To selectively quote like this then make such a specious claim despite obvious evidence to the contrary is simply dishonest.
It's one thing to be a partisan hack of a reporter. At least present the facts like, you know, a journalist.
FBI launches probe into schools accused of spying on kids through webcams
By Daniel Tencer
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 -- 12:57 pm
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laptopcomputer FBI launches probe into schools accused of spying on kids through webcamsVice-principal used cameras to confront student about drug use: claim
The FBI has launched an investigation into a Pennsylvania school district that has been accused of spying on students through webcams on laptops it issued to those students.
Lawyers for Harriton High School student Blake Robbins plan to ask a judge Monday to order the retention of all data on 2,300 laptops issued to students by the Lower Merion School District, near Philadelphia, the Associated Press reports.
The Robbins family launched the lawsuit after an assistant principal confronted Robbins with evidence of "improper behavior in his home," and showed him a picture from inside the home, taken by the webcam.
Robbins' lawyers say they need the data on the laptops to argue their case, but the data may also prove useful to an FBI investigation. CNN reports that the FBI is looking into the possibility the Lower Merion School District violated federal laws on wiretapping and computer intrusion by remotely activating webcams on student computers while the the computers were at home.
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The Montogmery County district attorney has said she is looking into the matter as well.
When news of the lawsuit broke last week, the school district issued a statement arguing it only used the ability to remotely turn on the webcam to find lost or stolen laptops, and not to discipline students over behavior in their home.
But that assertion contradicts what the Robbins family is saying. According to the Associated Press, the Robbins family says vice principal Lindy Matsko confronted Robbins about what he thought was the student's possible drug use. They say Matsko saw a candy through the webcam and mistook it for a pill.
In another statement, the school board said it had activated the remote cameras 42 times during the 2009-2010 school year to search for missing laptops. It says it recovered 18 laptops this way. The school district has since said that it has stopped using the remote webcam feature.
"I think what they're doing was absolutely terrible and scary," Blake told ABC's Good Morning America Monday. "They are invading my house. They might as well be sitting in my room watching me without my knowing."
Internet privacy lawyer Parry Aftab told ABC that the school district may have crossed the line from education to policing.
"Schools have very limited authority under the Constitution to deal with things that are off-premises after hours and have nothing to do with the school itself, so in this case I think the school was out of bounds, literally," she said. "Schools are schools, police are police, and they never should meet."
Lower Merion School District spokesman Doug Young told CNN that all students who were issued a school laptop had to sign an agreement that allowed the school to use remote activation if the laptop was lost or stolen. But he admitted it was a "mistake" not to overtly tell parents and students that the school district had this ability.
By Andrew McLemore
Saturday, February 27th, 2010 -- 11:23 pm
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barackobama20080821 b Obama gives Patriot Act another year with no privacy protectionsIf the Patriot Act hadn't been approved for another year, Sunday would have looked much different.
Sunday could have meant the government was no longer given permission to wiretap the phones of Americans and seize their records and property.
But since the bill was approved by Congressional Democrats earlier this week and signed into law by President Obama on Saturday, this Sunday is just another Sunday for Americans living with the Patriot Act.
To be fair, many Democrats asked for additional protections for the privacy rights of American citizens.
But Republicans said that would detract from the ability of the country's intelligence agencies to track down terrorists. Lacking a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate to pass the bill with the extra provisions, Democrats left them out.
Story continues below...
Democratic Rep. Jane Harman opposed the House's approval of the extension, citing abuses during the administration of President George W. Bush.
"While I strongly support using the most robust tools possible to go after terrorists, Congress must revise and narrow -- not extend -- Bush era policies," Harman said.
Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com had the following to say of the overwhelming support of the law's extension:
One of the strangest prongs of conventional Beltway wisdom is the lament that there is not enough bipartisanship. The opposite is true: many of the most damaging acts inflicted on the country by Washington are enacted on a fully bipartisan basis -- the most destructive political act of this generation, the invasion of Iraq, was fully bipartisan, as were most of the post-9/11 civil liberties abuses and other Bush-era initiatives-- and, at least in certain areas, the harmonious joining together of Republicans and Democrats continues unabated.
Most publications and politicians expected Obama to sign the Patriot Act.
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
On March 1, Ryan Singel, writing for Wired, accused the government of plotting to destroy the open and freedom-loving internet. Readers of Infowars and Prison Planet have known this for some time, but it is nice to know a quasi-establishment publication is now telling the truth and warning its readers about the threat to liberty posed by the government.
“The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence,” writes Singel. “McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.”
The former intel boss, now vice president of the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation (notorious for connections to 9/11 and a key DARPA client), has been trotted out to sell “Cybaremaggedon” (as Singel appropriately characterizes it) to the American people. McConnell insists the internet needs to be re-engineered:
We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options — and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.
“He’s talking about changing the internet to make everything anyone does on the net traceable and geo-located so the National Security Administration can pinpoint users and their computers for retaliation if the U.S. government doesn’t like what’s written in an e-mail, what search terms were used, what movies were downloaded,” writes Singel. “Or the tech could be useful if a computer got hijacked without your knowledge and used as part of a botnet.”
McConnell says the government needs to create a new Cold War, “one complete with the online equivalent of ICBMs and Eisenhower-era, secret-codenamed projects.”
Not directed against Muslims in remote backwater caves, mind you, but the real enemy — the American people who are increasingly aroused, thanks in large part to the internet.
The Bush era intel boss hyped the overblown Chinese hacker threat in “breathless” stories published in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. The world’s largest security companies McAfee and Symantec have downplayed the story. Singel points out that such fear-mongering is almost completely void of facts.
The anti-open internet echo chamber includes a speech delivered by Lawrence E. Strickling, Assistant Commerce Secretary:
In fact, “leaving the Internet alone” has been the nation’s internet policy since the internet was first commercialized in the mid-1990s. The primary government imperative then was just to get out of the way to encourage its growth. And the policy set forth in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was: “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”
This was the right policy for the United States in the early stages of the Internet, and the right message to send to the rest of the world. But that was then and this is now.
Now? The Pentagon wants to take out enemies with the online equivalent of ICBMs in order to prevent cyberattacks, privacy intrusions and copyright violations (and, of course, take out the real threat — the alternative media overshadowing the staid establishment corporate media).
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Cyberwar Scam Designed to Destroy Open Internet 190110banner4
“As anyone slightly versed in the internet knows, the net has flourished because no government has control over it,” writes Singel. “But there are creeping signs of danger.”
The primary creeping sign is the cybersecurity bill now in the Senate under the direction of the renown internet hater, senator Jay Rockefeller. If passed, Obama would have the ability to initiate “network contingency plans to ensure key federal or private services did not go offline during a counterattack of unprecedented scope,” according to Tony Romm of The Hill.
“Too much is at stake for us to pretend that today’s outdated cybersecurity policies are up to the task of protecting our nation and economic infrastructure,” Rockefeller said. “We have to do better and that means it will take a level of coordination and sophistication to outmatch our adversaries and minimize this enormous threat.”
Rockefeller and the government have but one serious adversary — the American people who are circumventing establishment propaganda via the internet.
The recently passed House cybersecurity bill and the Senate’s version now under considered are peddled as urgent action against Russian and Chinese hackers hellbent on taking down the power grid and the smart phone network.
In fact, all the fear-mongering is a smoke screen for the real purpose of this legislation — to close down the free and open internet and viciously attack those who dare tell the truth and organize opposition to a predatory and dictatorial government.Designed to Destroy Open Internet
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
On March 1, Ryan Singel, writing for Wired, accused the government of plotting to destroy the open and freedom-loving internet. Readers of Infowars and Prison Planet have known this for some time, but it is nice to know a quasi-establishment publication is now telling the truth and warning its readers about the threat to liberty posed by the government.
“The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence,” writes Singel. “McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.”
The former intel boss, now vice president of the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation (notorious for connections to 9/11 and a key DARPA client), has been trotted out to sell “Cybaremaggedon” (as Singel appropriately characterizes it) to the American people. McConnell insists the internet needs to be re-engineered:
We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options — and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.
“He’s talking about changing the internet to make everything anyone does on the net traceable and geo-located so the National Security Administration can pinpoint users and their computers for retaliation if the U.S. government doesn’t like what’s written in an e-mail, what search terms were used, what movies were downloaded,” writes Singel. “Or the tech could be useful if a computer got hijacked without your knowledge and used as part of a botnet.”
McConnell says the government needs to create a new Cold War, “one complete with the online equivalent of ICBMs and Eisenhower-era, secret-codenamed projects.”
Not directed against Muslims in remote backwater caves, mind you, but the real enemy — the American people who are increasingly aroused, thanks in large part to the internet.
The Bush era intel boss hyped the overblown Chinese hacker threat in “breathless” stories published in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. The world’s largest security companies McAfee and Symantec have downplayed the story. Singel points out that such fear-mongering is almost completely void of facts.
The anti-open internet echo chamber includes a speech delivered by Lawrence E. Strickling, Assistant Commerce Secretary:
In fact, “leaving the Internet alone” has been the nation’s internet policy since the internet was first commercialized in the mid-1990s. The primary government imperative then was just to get out of the way to encourage its growth. And the policy set forth in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was: “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”
This was the right policy for the United States in the early stages of the Internet, and the right message to send to the rest of the world. But that was then and this is now.
Now? The Pentagon wants to take out enemies with the online equivalent of ICBMs in order to prevent cyberattacks, privacy intrusions and copyright violations (and, of course, take out the real threat — the alternative media overshadowing the staid establishment corporate media).
Cyberwar Scam Designed to Destroy Open Internet 190110banner4
“As anyone slightly versed in the internet knows, the net has flourished because no government has control over it,” writes Singel. “But there are creeping signs of danger.”
The primary creeping sign is the cybersecurity bill now in the Senate under the direction of the renown internet hater, senator Jay Rockefeller. If passed, Obama would have the ability to initiate “network contingency plans to ensure key federal or private services did not go offline during a counterattack of unprecedented scope,” according to Tony Romm of The Hill.
“Too much is at stake for us to pretend that today’s outdated cybersecurity policies are up to the task of protecting our nation and economic infrastructure,” Rockefeller said. “We have to do better and that means it will take a level of coordination and sophistication to outmatch our adversaries and minimize this enormous threat.”
Rockefeller and the government have but one serious adversary — the American people who are circumventing establishment propaganda via the internet.
The recently passed House cybersecurity bill and the Senate’s version now under considered are peddled as urgent action against Russian and Chinese hackers hellbent on taking down the power grid and the smart phone network.
In fact, all the fear-mongering is a smoke screen for the real purpose of this legislation — to close down the free and open internet and viciously attack those who dare tell the truth and organize opposition to a predatory and dictatorial government.
