March 19, 2009
By Jennifer Mascia and Jason Grant
New York Times

On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the United States' invasion of Iraq, hundreds of protesters in New York City made it clear on Thursday that while they welcomed the change in American political leadership, they would not relent in urging President Obama to accelerate the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq.

The protests were perhaps more muted than the massive demonstrations of years past, but no less fervent.

In Union Square, where about 120 people huddled together under the awning of a subway station, staying out of the rain, some protesters said that Mr. Obama, the new president, who as an Illinois state senator had opposed the war, had continued some of the Bush administration's most controversial policies.

An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement from Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace

After six years of war and the historic election of a new President, we as veterans, military and Gold Star families felt an urgent need to reach out to the larger peace/anti-war movements to make our position on Iraq clear during this time of political and economic uncertainty. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace continue to stand together in our demand to Bring the Troops Home Now! We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause.

President Obama has announced a plan to gradually reduce troop levels in Iraq. Many in the peace/anti-war movements are breathing a sigh of relief, and suggesting that it is time for us to scale back our efforts to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq. But for our troops on the ground, their families and the Iraqi people, the nightmare continues. They need all of us to stay in the struggle. IVAW, MFSO and VFP have been long united in our call for an immediate and complete end to the occupation of Iraq and will not shift our stance under any circumstances.

[RELATED: Posse Comitatus Act ]

SAMSON, Ala. - The Army said Wednesday it opened an inquiry into whether federal laws were broken when nearly two dozen Soldiers were sent to a south Alabama town after 11 people died in a shooting spree last week.

State officials said the deployment of 22 military police officers and the provost marshal from Fort Rucker was requested neither by Republican Gov. Bob Riley nor the White House, which typically is required by law for Soldiers to operate on U.S. soil.

Col. Michael J. Negard of the Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va., said officials are trying to determine who ordered the Soldiers to Samson, who requested them, why they were sent and what they did there.

NIST's Half-Admission of Yet Another 9/11 Smoking Gun

The U.S. Senate will hold a confirmation hearing this week on the nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Gov. Gary Locke. This cabinet position oversees the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency responsible for investigating and reporting on the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7. NIST tried to avoid admitting that there was any freefall acceleration when the building came down on September 11, 2001. All the way to their draft final report on August 26, 2008, nearly seven years after the event, the NIST report's lead authors held firmly to their position that freefall did not occur.

Once NIST invited comments on its draft report, it was more or less forced to accept the indisputable explanations based on the publicly available videos proving that freefall had occurred. David Chandler, a high school physics teacher and AE911Truth researcher, provided the most compelling argument in a video seen widely on YouTube.

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

Charlie Giles and his family need our help. Charlie has been a huge advocate for the 9/11 First Responders. As a member of the FealGood Foundation, Charlie was not allowed to receive any assistance from the organization because it would have been seen as a conflict of interest. Sadly, and appropriately, the FealGood Foundation asked Charlie to resign so that he now can get help. John Feal released this statement:

Today the Fealgood Foundation lost board member Charlie Giles to his financial crisis. Charlie, a 9/11 responder who was seriously affected by 9/11,, was told he won his workmens comp case last week and received an award letter in the mail. His lump sum settlement would have been $40,000 plus payments every 2 weeks. The insurance company now has appealed it, and has left this hero with an eviction notice from his apartment which he moved into after losing his house last year. Charlie was asked to resign from the board because none of my board members can receive charity or any monies while sitting on the FGF board. ...

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Have a listen to a sample of Vic's work at Last FM and you'll want a copy of this CD -- Please support this talented, dedicated truth musician.

Blowback or Bloody Treason

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009, 9:00 am Pacific - 12:00 Noon Eastern - 16:00 GMT

Listen live at http://noliesradio.org (or http://67.18.54.205/~nolies)

Washington D.C. (March 16, 2009) -- Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) Friday sent a letter to Chairman Edolphus Towns of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requesting an immediate investigation into allegations made by the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the White House operated an 'executive assassination ring' that circumvented Congressional oversight.

Kucinich explains in the letter that, "Mr. Hersh made the allegation before an audience at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday, March 10, 2009. He stated, "Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving" It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. . .Congress has no oversight of it.'"

Kucinich adds, "If true, these operations violate longstanding U.S. policy regarding covert actions and illegally bypass Congressional oversight. . . Hersh is within a year or more of releasing a book that is said to include evidence of this allegation. However, we cannot wait a year or more to establish the truth."

In his recent TV appearance [reported on at Huffington Post, as reprinted below], Dick Cheney said "And now he [President Obama] is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

Some investigators of September 11th have concluded that Cheney himself played a key role in "letting 9/11 happen."

For example, David Ray Griffin in THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED (page 94) writes: "Accordingly, the Commission's treatment of Norman Mineta's testimony provides one of the clearest examples of its attempts to cover up the truth, which in this case involved Cheney's presence in the PEOC [Presidential Emergency Operations Center] during a crucial 45-minute period, during which he apparently confirmed a stand-down order." [emphasis added]

Cheney refused to testify under oath before the 9/11 Commission. If it is true that Cheney played a key role on 9/11, then his statement about "risk ... of another attack" could be seen a veiled threat about another attack--possibly now in the planning stage.

Sunshine Week, launched by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2005, is a national effort to inform the public about the importance of open government and the free flow of information.

This week, newspapers across the country will once again sponsor panel discussions, Webcasts and op-eds pushing the American ideals of a free press and citizen access to the inner workings of government. ...

Survey Of State Government Information Online

Most Americans can easily find videos of water skiing squirrels on the Internet but they’ll have less luck finding out whether their children's school buses and classrooms are safe, or if neighborhood gas stations are overcharging. The Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information online found that while more and more government records are being posted online, some of the most important information is being left offline. And in some cases governments are charging taxpayers to access records that they already paid for, such as death certificates. Read the report...

The bipartisan panel that investigated the terrorist attacks was widely praised. But did its final report rely on suspect information?

Philip Shenon
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Mar 23, 2009

Powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill are clamoring for creation of a bipartisan "9/11 style" commission to investigate the legality of the Bush administration's antiterrorism tactics--especially its use of harsh interrogation techniques.

President Obama has been notably cool to the idea. But the case for a "truth" commission was bolstered by the disclosure this month that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of the interrogations and confinement of Al Qaeda suspects. A dozen showed the use of "enhanced" techniques routinely described by human-rights groups as torture.

Lawmakers say the obvious model for such an inquiry would be the 9/11 Commission--an independent bipartisan body praised for its authoritative account of the attacks.

But as a reporter who covered the commission from start to finish and later wrote a history of its investigation, I wonder if Congress understands the deep irony of establishing a "new 9/11 Commission" on these issues. Former commission investigators have acknowledged to me over the past year that the panel had a serious blind spot on questions about torture.

"The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé"
A Book and Presentation by Dr. David Ray Griffin

April 11, 2009
Boston University - Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Ave.
7:00-9:00pm [doors open @ 6:30pm]

Dr. David Ray Griffin is a prominent theologian and scholar and professor emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology in California, where he taught for over 30 years (retiring in 2004). He has authored or edited over two dozen books including five books that expose the outrageous lies of the U.S. government explanations of the 9/11 attacks.

Thanks substantially to his own extraordinary personal dedication to the work of exposing 9/11 truth, Griffin is able to conclude that, "The 9/11 truth movement's exposé of the 9/11 cover-up has shown that virtually every dimension of the official account of 9/11 to be false beyond a reasonable doubt."

by Reprehensor
March 12, 2009
911blogger.com

"There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States." - Charles Freeman.

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