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9/11 Consequences
Wednesday, July 21 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
The Veil Is Lifted, The Gloves Are Off: the outrageous sentencing of Lynne Stewartby Elaine Brower July 18, 2010 WorldCantWait.net Editor’s Note – on July 15, radical lawyer and War Criminals Watch Advisory Board member Lynne Stewart was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In February 2005, Lynne had been convicted on 7 counts of “conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and defrauding the U.S. government”.
Tuesday, July 20 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
Obama's War on the InternetThis article was brought to my attention via the long-running, excellent Newsletter from Information Clearing House, a daily wire (headlines only or brief blurbs) of the "News you won't find on CNN". Check 'em out!!
See also related story below, 73,000 blogs shut down as FBI probes Qaeda posts. – Ed.
By Philip Giraldi July 19, 2010 Campaign For Liberty The Ministry of Truth The Ministry of Truth was how George Orwell described the mechanism used by government to control information in his seminal novel 1984. A recent trip to Europe has convinced me that the governments of the world have been rocked by the power of the internet and are seeking to gain control of it so that they will have a virtual monopoly on information that the public is able to access. In Italy, Germany, and Britain the anonymous internet that most Americans are still familiar with is slowly being modified. If one goes into an internet café it is now legally required in most countries in the European Union to present a government issued form of identification. When I used an internet connection at a Venice hotel, my passport was demanded as a precondition and the inner page, containing all my personal information, was scanned and a copy made for the Ministry of the Interior -- which controls the police force. The copy is retained and linked to the transaction. For home computers, the IP address of the service used is similarly recorded for identification purposes. All records of each and every internet usage, to include credit information and keystrokes that register everything that is written or sent, is accessible to the government authorities on demand, not through the action of a court or an independent authority. That means that there is de facto no right to privacy and a government bureaucrat decides what can and cannot be "reviewed" by the authorities. Currently, the records are maintained for a period of six months but there is a drive to make the retention period even longer.
Monday, July 19 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
Post documents growth of intelligence since 9/11By The Associated Press July 19th, 2010 RawStory.com Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, top-secret intelligence gathering by the government has grown so unwieldy and expensive that no one really knows what it cost and how many people are involved, The Washington Post reported Monday. A two-year investigation by the newspaper uncovered what it termed a "Top Secret America" that's mostly hidden from public view and largely lacking in oversight. In its first installment of a series of reports, the Post said there are now more than 1,200 government organizations and more than 1,900 private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in some 10,000 locations across the U.S. Some 854,000 people -- or nearly 1 1/2 times the number of people who live in Washington -- have top-secret security clearance, the paper said.
Saturday, June 26 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden Question David Ray Griffin There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be "Obama's Vietnam."1 This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years. Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the "lessons of Vietnam"? The US government learned one: If you're going to fight unpopular wars, don't have a draft -- hire mercenaries! There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?
Sunday, June 20 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
Pentagon revives Rumsfeld-era domestic spying unitBy Daniel Tencer June 19th, 2010 RawStory.com The Pentagon's spy unit has quietly begun to rebuild a database for tracking potential terrorist threats that was shut down after it emerged that it had been collecting information on American anti-war activists. The Defense Intelligence Agency filed notice this week that it plans to create a new section called Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records, whose purpose will be to "document intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism and counternarcotic operations relating to the protection of national security." But while the unit's name refers to "foreign intelligence," civil liberties advocates and the Pentagon's own description of the program suggest that Americans will likely be included in the new database.
Monday, May 24 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
'Continuity of Government' Planning: War, Terror and the Supplanting of the U.S. ConstitutionThese remarks were presented by Dr. Scott at the Understanding Deep Politics conference, held May 14-16 in Santa Cruz, CA.
– Ed.
by Peter Dale Scott May 24, 2010 JapanFocus.org The Asia-Pacific Journal, 21-2-10
As part of its routine Iran-contra coverage, the following exchange was printed in the New York Times, but without journalistic comment or follow-up:
Both North's attorney and Sen. Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the Committee, responded in a way that showed they were aware of the issue:
But we have never heard if there was or was not an executive session, or if the rest of Congress was ever aware of the matter. According to James Bamford, "The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed."2 (Key individuals in Congress were almost certainly aware.)
Thursday, April 29 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
DHS Warns Returning Vets Potential TerroristsNapolitano stands by controversial report April 16, 2010 Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that she was briefed before the release of a controversial intelligence assessment and that she stands by the report, which lists returning veterans among terrorist risks to the U.S. But the top House Democrat with oversight of the Department of Homeland Security
said in a letter to Ms. Napolitano that he was "dumbfounded" that
such a report would be issued. Republicans rabid over right-wing report Republicans on Wednesday said a Homeland Security Department intelligence assessment unfairly characterizes military veterans as right-wing extremists. House Republican leader John Boehner described the report as offensive and called on the agency to apologize to veterans. The agency's intelligence assessment, sent to law enforcement officials last week, warns that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit members. The assessment also said that returning military veterans who have difficulties assimilating back into their home communities could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or might engage in lone acts of violence.
Saturday, April 17 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
WikiLeaks Video - The Greater HorrorApril 15, 2010 by Michael Collins Agonist.org ![]() There they are, the people who brought you every bit of the action in the WikiLeaks video and all of the other horrors flowing from invasion of Iraq. Madeleine Albright (far right, above), former Clinton Secretary of State, is a good place to start. From 60 Minutes:
Wednesday, April 7 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
Judge dismisses scores of Guantanamo habeas casesBy Carol Rosenberg April 5, 2010 McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has dismissed more than 100 habeas corpus lawsuits filed by former Guantanamo captives, ruling that because the Bush and Obama administrations had transferred them elsewhere, the courts need not decide whether the Pentagon imprisoned them illegally. The ruling dismayed attorneys for some of the detainees who'd hoped any favorable U.S. court findings would help clear their clients of the stigma, travel restrictions and, in some instances, perhaps more jail time that resulted from their stay at Guantanamo. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan wrote that he was "not unsympathetic" to the former detainees' plight. "Detention for any length of time can be injurious. And certainly associations with Guantanamo tend to be negative," he wrote. But the detainees' transfer from Guantanamo made their cases moot. "The court finds that petitioners no longer present a live case or controversy since a federal court cannot remedy the alleged collateral consequences of their prior detention at Guantanamo," he wrote.
Tuesday, April 6 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
Army Grapples with 'Epidemic' of SuicidesApril 6, 2010 SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2010, Issue No. 27 April 6, 2010 Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ The U.S. Army is still struggling to come to grips with the unusually high rate of suicide within its ranks. "The Army ratios are above the national average and in some months recently, there have been more suicides in the Army than combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan," observed Nancy Youssef of McClatchy News last week. "There is no pattern to suicides. One third who commit suicide have never served in combat; another third commit suicide while in combat; and yet another third do it once they return, according to Army statistics." Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh issued two directives on March 26 that are intended to further an understanding of the problem and to improve the availability of information to surviving family members.
Wednesday, March 31 2010 - 9/11 Consequences
US Recants Claims on 'High-Value' Detainee Abu ZubaydahTuesday 30 March 2010 by Jason Leopold Truthout The Justice Department has quietly recanted nearly every major claim the Bush administration had made about "high-value" detainee Abu Zubaydah, a Guantanamo prisoner who at one time was said to have planned the 9/11 attacks and was the No. 2 and 3 person in al-Qaeda. Additionally, Justice has backed away from claims intelligence officials working in the Clinton administration had also leveled against Zubaydah, specifically, that he was directly involved in the planning of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa. Zubaydah's name is redacted throughout the 109-page court document, but he is identified on the first page of the filing by his real name, Zayn Al Abidin Muhammad Husayn. He was the first detainee captured after 9/11 who was subjected to nearly a dozen brutal torture techniques, which included waterboarding, and was the catalyst, the public has been told, behind the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" program. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has publicly admitted that personally approved of Zubaydah's waterboarding. His torture was videotaped and the tapes later destroyed. The destruction of 90 videotapes of his interrogations is the focus of a high-level criminal investigation being conducted by John Durham, a federal prosecutor appointed special counsel in 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
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