Wednesday, December 14 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

December 14, 2011

Last week Elizabeth Woodworth, Coordinator and Co-Founder of the 9/11 Consensus Panel joined host Jack Etkin on "Face to Face" for a 30-minute interview. The show aired four times this week in the Victoria, BC area and is now available online. Here's more.

Description from YouTube (user channel of ictvvictoria):

This week our guest is retired medical librarian Elizabeth Woodworth, who coordinates a newly formed panel calling itself "Consensus 9/11" -- which recently announced the release of statements constituting 13 Consensus Points" challenging the official government account of the events of September 11, 2001. Co-chaired by Elizabeth and scholar David Ray Griffin, the points were produced using a version of a methodology designed to identify best evidence known as the Delphi method. According to Woodworth, "The strength and credibility of the Delphi method is based on the fact that respondents are blind to one another through several rounds of review, during which feedback is continually refined until consensus is reached." The Consensus 9/11 panel conducted "three survey rounds with 22 respondents, and reached an average consensus of 94% on 13 points of evidence that directly contradict the fundamental claims of the official account of September 11th."

 

Wednesday, December 14 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

December 13, 2011
ConsortiumNews.com

By politicizing who is and who is not a "terrorist" -- pinning the label on American adversaries and sparing purported American friends -- the U.S. government created confusion at FBI headquarters that contributed to the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks, reports ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley.

By Coleen Rowley

Glenn Greenwald's critique -- regarding the recent U.S. indictment of 38-year-old Iraqi Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa (currently in Canada) -- is spot on about "terrorism" coming to simply mean opposing United States' interests or resisting U.S. military invasions.

U.S. authorities have now dropped any requirement that the "terrorists" target or kill civilians as part of a political objective, the classic definition of terrorism. Isa stands accused of "providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy" because he allegedly backed a 2008 attack in Mosul, Iraq, killing five U.S. soldiers.

 

Monday, December 5 2011   -   9/11 A/V Galleries



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 2011
ANobleLie.com

New Film, A NOBLE LIE: Oklahoma City 1995, asks questions about the Oklahoma City Bombing

Produced in Oklahoma, this newly-released documentary by FREE MIND FILMS and Director James Lane takes a fresh and in-depth look at the circumstances surrounding the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

But instead of accepting at face value the Federal Government's deeply-flawed investigation, A NOBLE LIE features groundbreaking information and eyewitness testimonies that refute the official story.

 

Sunday, December 4 2011   -   9/11 Consequences

December 3, 2011
By Ray McGovern
Consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: Though the 9/11 attacks occurred more than a decade ago, Congress continues to exploit them to pass evermore draconian laws on "terrorism," with the Senate now empowering the military to arrest people on U.S. soil and hold them without trial, a serious threat to American liberties, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and was just passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of the "extraordinary measures" introduced by the Nazis after they took power in 1933.

And the relative lack of reaction so far calls to mind the oddly calm indifference with which most Germans watched the erosion of the rights that had been guaranteed by their own Constitution. As one German writer observed, "With sheepish submissiveness we watched it unfold, as if from a box at the theater."

The writer was Sebastian Haffner (real name Raimond Pretzel), a young German lawyer worried at what he saw in 1933 in Berlin, but helpless to stop it since, as he put it, the German people "collectively and limply collapsed, yielded and capitulated."

 

Saturday, December 3 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

By Spencer Ackerman
December 1, 2011
Wired.com/dangerroom

Here's the best thing that can be said about the new detention powers the Senate has tucked into next year's defense bill: They don't force the military to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial. They just let the military do that. And even though the leaders of the military and the spy community have said they want no such power, the Senate is poised to pass its bill as early as tonight.

There are still changes swirling around the Senate, but this looks like the basic shape of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Someone the government says is "a member of, or part of, al-Qaida or an associated force" can be held in military custody "without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force." Those hostilities are currently scheduled to end the Wednesday after never. The move would shut down criminal trials for terror suspects.

But far more dramatically, the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn't limited to foreigners. It's confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas' Robert Chesney -- a nonpartisan authority on military detention -- "U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority."

 

Wednesday, November 30 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

Levin-McCain bill would create a presidential dictatorship. Where is the outrage?
by Justin Raimondo
November 30, 2011
Antiwar.com

Buried in the annual defense appropriations bill is a provision that would give the President the power to use the military to intern anyone -- including American citizens -- indefinitely, and hold them without charges or trial, anywhere in the world, including on American soil. The provision essentially repeals the longstanding Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the military from engaging in law enforcement on US territory -- the greatest fear of the Founders. Approved by a Senate subcommittee in secret hearings, the provisions open the road to a military dictatorship in this country -- and for that we can thank Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, who introduced the measure. Both the FBI and the Pentagon came out against the Levin-McCain monstrosity, and Senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado) introduced an amendment striking the provision: the amendment was defeated in the Senate, 37-61.

The mind reels. As the ACLU's Chris Anders puts it:

"I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn't anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?"

Why now, indeed -- and the answer is not hard to fathom. With the US banking system making very loud creaking noises as the eurozone descends into the economic abyss, and a total meltdown staring us in the face, the Powers That Be want to make sure they have their hands on the reins of power -- and on the whip they won't hesitate to use.

 

Wednesday, November 30 2011   -   9/11 Consequences

November 29, 2011
Steven Aftergood
Secrecy News Blog
fas.org/blog/secrecy

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that was supposed to provide independent oversight of U.S. counterterrorism policies remains dormant and out of service because its members have still not been named and confirmed.

In a report that was newly updated this month, the Congressional Research Service traced the origins of the Board from a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission through its initial establishment as a White House agency to its reconstitution as an independent agency chartered by statute in 2007.

The Board was assigned two overriding missions: It was supposed to "analyze and review actions the executive branch takes to protect the Nation from terrorism, ensuring that the need for such actions is balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties"; and to "ensure that liberty concerns are appropriately considered in the development and implementation of laws, regulations, and policies related to efforts to protect the Nation against terrorism."

 

Tuesday, November 29 2011   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

By Andrew W. Griffin
Red Dirt Report, editor
November 28, 2011
RedDirtReport.com

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Ten years after 9/11 and 16 years after the Oklahoma City bombing, it appears the federal government continues to view some Americans who embrace their First Amendment rights -- press and speech, primarily -- as a danger to the State, and as a result they are listing certain investigative websites as extremist and a terroristic threat to the "homeland."

One, labeled as "extremist" and therefore a threat to the U.S. Government, includes a well-known site, once operated by a truth-seeking Oklahoma state legislator, working to expose anomalies related to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing -- OKCbombing.net. A link to the document can be seen here.

This shocking designation is indeed troubling, particularly to the local documentary film production company Free Mind Films, which is also releasing an explosive documentary about the Oklahoma City bombing, A Noble Lie.

 

Monday, November 28 2011   -   Editorials

November 28, 2011
Dr. Paul Rea
911Truth.org

Dr. Lynn Margulis was always an iconoclast--and now, even after her tragic passing, she continues to teach us a great deal. While many know that Lynn Margulis was once married to astronomer Carl Sagan, in scientific circles she was best known for her theory of symbiogenesis. This theory proposes that inherited variation does not come from random mutations in genes but from long-lasting interaction between organisms.

Steve Goodwin, Dean of Natural Resources at the University of Massachusetts, understands that his colleague would "take the theory of evolutionary biology and see how far she could push it." Given the prevailing Darwinian dogma, her challenge was very gutsy indeed. Strict Darwinists, Margulis pointed out boldly, "miss bacteria, protoctista, fungi, and plants. They take a small and interesting chapter in the book of evolution and extrapolate it into the entire encyclopedia of life."

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Research/Evidence

November 23, 2011
David Ray Griffin
911Truth.org

The family of Lynn Margulis has announced that she died at home on Tuesday, November 22, at the age of 73. She had suffered a serious hemorrhagic stroke on Friday, November 18 - so serious that there was no chance of recovery.

Having authored dozens of books and scientific papers, Margulis was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1999.

In 2004, she began looking into the evidence against the official account of 9/11. She not only accepted it but also -- always known for her courage - announced her views, writing in 2007:

"Whoever is responsible for bringing to grisly fruition this new false-flag operation, which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as unprecedented assaults on research, education, and civil liberties, must be perversely proud of their efficient handiwork. Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization. I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Other Important News

by Glenn Greenwald
November 23, 2011
Salon.com

A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation's former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of "crimes against peace" and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal -- which featured an American law professor as one of its chief prosecutors -- has no formal enforcement power, but was modeled after a 1967 tribunal in Sweden and Denmark that found the U.S. guilty of a war of aggression in Vietnam, and, even more so, after the U.S.-led Nuremberg Tribunal held after World War II. Just as the U.S. steadfastly ignored the 1967 tribunal on Vietnam, Bush and Blair both ignored the summons sent to them and thus were tried in absentia.

The tribunal ruled that Bush and Blair's name should be entered in a register of war criminals, urged that they be recognized as such under the Rome Statute, and will also petition the International Criminal Court to proceed with binding charges. Such efforts are likely to be futile, but one Malaysian lawyer explained the motives of the tribunal to The Associated Press: "For these people who have been immune from prosecution, we want to put them on trial in this forum to prove that they committed war crimes." In other words, because their own nations refuse to hold them accountable and can use their power to prevent international bodies from doing so, the tribunal wanted at least formal legal recognition of these war crimes to be recorded and the evidence of their guilt assembled. That's the same reason a separate panel of this tribunal will hold hearings later this year on charges of torture against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others.

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Legal Response to 9/11

Historical Judgment of Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal

by Cynthia McKinney
November 22, 2011
Global Research

Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal
Bush, Blair Defense Relies On 9/11/01
That's why we need an independent investigation of 9/11.

While the prosecution of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for the crime of aggression, crimes against the peace, took two days to present because the docket was so full of important evidence, including their own books written after the Iraq War, the Defense (by way of Amicus Curiae) sought to conclude its proceedings by invoking the emotionalism of the tragedy that took place on 11 September 2001. Amid multiple rebukes by the Chief Justice of the Tribunal to avoid emotionalism, the Defense team could not help itself.

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Get Involved

By Stephen C. Webster
November 23, 2011
RawStory.com

The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (Protect IP) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) "are like two peas in a pod," Sen. Ron Wyden, the bills' most vocal opponent in the U.S. Senate, explained to Raw Story in an exclusive interview.

"These are Web blacklisting bills, Web censorship bills, and anybody with a Web site would be vulnerable," he said, a tone of urgency prevailing in his voice.

"Had I not put a hold on it in May, it would have simply passed at that time," Wyden continued. "I put a hold on the previous version back in December, and had I not put a public hold on it then, that version would have passed."

Now, the Protect IP Act and SOPA are back, and this time seemingly with enough momentum to make it through Congress -- but that could be changing.

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Other Important News

November 23, 2011
WashingtonsBlog

I have repeatedly demonstrated that -- despite the false divide-and-conquer tactics of the mainstream parties and mainstream media -- the overwhelming majority of Americans agree on the most important issues facing our country. And see this.

NO MORE BAILOUTS!

As I've noted since 2008, Americans are united in their overwhelming disapproval for bailouts to the big banks.

This has remained true right up to today.

As Rassmussen found only last month (as summarized by KXLF news):

Today's Rasmussen Reports survey finds that most Americans don't like bailouts for financial institutions.

read more

 

Wednesday, November 23 2011   -   Research/Evidence

by Peter Dale Scott
November 22, 2011
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 9, Issue 47 No 2)

I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." -- Senator Frank Church (1975)

I would like to discuss four major and badly understood events - the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. I will analyze these deep events as part of a deeper political process linking them, a process that has helped build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy.

In recent years I have been talking about a dark force behind these events -- a force which, for want of a better term, I have clumsily called a "deep state," operating both within and outside the public state. Today for the first time I want to identify part of that dark force, a part which has operated for five decades or more at the edge of the public state. This part of the dark force has a name not invented by me: the Doomsday Project, the Pentagon's name for the emergency planning "to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis."¹

My point is a simple and important one: to show that the Doomsday Project of the 1980s, and the earlier emergency planning that developed into it, have played a role in the background of all the deep events I shall discuss.

More significantly, it has been a factor behind all three of the disturbing events that now threaten American democracy. The first of these three is what has been called the conversion of our economy into a plutonomy - with the increasing separation of America into two classes, into the haves and the have-nots, the one percent and the 99 percent. The second is America's increasing militarization, and above all its inclination, which has become more and more routine and predictable, to wage or provoke wars in remote regions of the globe. It is clear that the operations of this American war machine have served the one percent.²