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Is Terrorism the New Boogeyman?
Below is the Merriam Webster dictionary definition of two words. Please keep in mind their meaning when reading the article. There is a relationship between the two words:
Boogeyman: a monstrous imaginary figure used in threatening children
Terrorism: Systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. This word also rhymes with absurdism.
The boogeyman is the fictitious monster that haunts kids particularly when they are going to bed. In my case, he hid underneath my bed ready to grab my ankles and pull me under. To avoid him, I leapt into bed to avoid his reach. To avoid seeing him in case he came out, I covered my eyes with the blanket. I think my feelings and childhood fears of this imaginary creature are common.
Use of a boogeyman in the case of children could be to persuade them to go to bed early or eat their vegetables. “If you don’t do this, the boogeyman might get you”! None of as children wanted that, so we did as we were told. A boogeyman is also useful in the case of adults. In the past 75 years adults in the United States have been under the influence of three or more scary boogeymen. The media outlets and the US government kindly supply us with ever-scarier boogeymen. Whether intended or not, the use of a boogeyman works well in persuading and obtaining compliance (getting adults to do something).
The boogeyman 75 years ago was scary. However, he lived less than ten years, and we eliminated him. The boogeyman I refer to was one for my parents and grandparents: he was called the Nazis and he lived in Germany. He was a threat to the freedom and constitutional rights of Americans. He invaded countries and killed our friends (read allies). For some years my parents actually feared being bombed or invaded by that boogeyman. Note they lived in the Midwest and not the East coast. Had they thought it through, they too would have realized that was not possible due to logistical limitations then present in military aircraft (today they can refuel midair). Today it seems rather absurd that people could believe such a thing back then, but it was real to them.
Nonetheless, the government fanned the flames of fear (maybe use of terrorism) ,and almost all people believed what they were told by media and government back then. The citizenry, young and old alike, complied with government requests and did what they could do to help eliminate the threat. That boogeyman disappeared through a war that ended in 1945.
Only a few years passed before a new, more global, boogeyman emerged. He was the communists and the threat of communism. If we did not stop this boogeyman, he too, might take our liberty and freedom like the one before. We stared to fear this boogeyman shortly after World War II and into the 1980s. The communists were good boogeyman for decades, and represented the opposite of what we stand for. We were told they have no liberty or freedom, and this boogeyman does not want people of the world to have such inalienable rights like that.
Who would doubt this and not want to comply with government support in the elimination of this boogeyman? We largely complied, trillions of dollars were spent, and thousands of people were killed. We fought wars to ward off this boogeyman (Korea Vietnam, and other armed conflicts of smaller duration). We even helped some friends (read allies) fend off this boogeyman-Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, to name some examples.
The government softened its stand (ended the terrorism) on this boogeyman, and people don’t perceive it a threat any more. This might be due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the despair we are told of in Cuba, and widespread trading with China and Vietnam In fact, it does not seem to matter that China is a communist country, we can travel there, trade with them, but for some reason, Cuba is off limits.
The boogeyman of the modern era is terrorism. He came out in the late 1990’s and made his real debut on September 11, 2001. He is more nebulous than the former boogeymen, as he does not have a permanent address or place where we can easily find him like the Nazis or the communists. However, being so nimble and fast moving, he can be under your bed, like the boogeyman of childhood. He can be down the street and could be your neighbor. This new monster serves better than those of the past to incite fear and compliance. Lacking an address, we are inspired to chase him down in many places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and down the street from your house. He might even be in your home or office now. We even look for him at the airport every day.
The modern boogeyman has more places to hide, and a better strategy than his predecessors. This new boogeyman might even be friends of our friends (allies, or friends), as President George Bush warned us in his address on September 20, 2001 to a Joint Session of Congress
We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. – Bush, George W. (September 20, 2001). “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People”. The White House. Retrieved 2008-09-19.
Our government finds the current boogeyman scarier than his predecessors, as we have parked our constitution to pursue him. We have spent much money to catch him, and many are currently willing to be spied on to avoid him. As former President Bush said to congress, if you keep company with the boogeyman, we consider you an enemy. Obviously we are very serious about this newer boogeyman, and even willing to give up some things we fought boogeymen in the past for. That being our freedom and parts of the constitution (read Patriot Act).
Let us return to the definition of terrorism: It is systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Where did the latest boogeyman come from? Who is creating the fear and the real terrorist? Who wants to bring about a political objective?
Our prior two boogeymen were created by non-United States entities: German and Russian political movements. Maybe the current boogeyman was created because of our past and current follies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, etc. Is it really a boogeyman, or are the good folks that promote him (read terrorists) making him larger than he need be.
Maybe stopping our forays into other parts of the world will eliminate the current boogeyman. However, those wanting to make terror will not have an excuse to bring about a political objective and need this boogeyman. You decide- who are the real terrorists, and who wants political change? Who is who in this game? Is this not all absurdism?
‘Our Liberty Cannot Be Guarded but by the Freedom of the Press’
Attorney General Eric Holder. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
Democrats and Republicans working together in Washington to address abuses of basic liberties? Bipartisan responses to the challenges that arise in the gray area where balances are struck between constitutional guarantees and national security demands? Impossible. Can’t happen. There is no way in these days of fury and scandal-mongering.
Actually, there is a way.
A genuine left-right coalition has developed over the past several days in response to the revelation that the Department of Justice seized Associated Press telephone records in its recent investigation of a CIA leak. And that coalition is likely to strengthen in light of the news that the DOJ investigated the reporting activities of Fox News’s chief Washington correspondent as a potential crime—“solicitation” of leaks. The latter development, in many senses more troubling than the former, calls into question whether basic protections for both reporters and whistleblowers are crumbling after more than a decade of Patriot Act abuses, Bush and Obama administration excesses and the politicization of debates about what were once accepted standards for protecting the public’s right to know and the privacy rights that underpin it.
In moments so rigorously partisan as these, many members of Congress will retreat to their corners, mounting attacks or making excuses. But there are some serious legislators, libertarian-leaning Republicans and progressive Democrats, who understand the urgency of the moment.
They get that the revelations about DOJ overreach reveal a threat not just to freedom of the press but to the most necessary of press functions: the work of revealing for citizens the details of what their government is doing in their name but without their informed consent. None of these members are foolish or casual in their approach; they understand that it is necessary for the government to protect against the leaking of information that could endanger people. But they also understand that it is possible to provide that protection within a constitutional context.
Perhaps most importantly, they get that the best way to protect the First Amendment guarantee of a free press is to protect the Fourth Amendment guarantee of privacy. Journalists do not need—and should not seek—an array of special protections to do their jobs. But journalists and their sources do need to know that information can be shared without the threat of unwarranted—and self-serving—government surveillance of necessary conversations.
It is with this in mind that four very different members of Congress (Michigan Republican Justin Amash, South Carolina Republican Mick Mulvaney, California Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Colorado Democrat Jared Polis) have proposed a precise and appropriate response to the overreach by the Department of Justice. While the White House and key members of the Senate are backing a Shield Law, which protects journalists from being required to reveal sources, the House members are going deeper—to protect not just journalists but all citizens from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” They seek a Telephone Records Protection Act, which requires court approval when the government demands telephone records from service providers.
“The Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records—likely without the sign-off of a single judge—raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns,” says Amash, who has emerged as a hero to libertarian-leaning conservatives. “Regardless of whether DOJ violates the legitimate privacy expectations of reporters or ordinary Americans, we deserve to know that the federal government can’t seize our records without judicial review.”
Polis, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says, “Americans of all political stripes were shocked to find out that the Department of Justice had been accessing telephone records of reporters at the Associated Press. The Department of Justice claims that they operated within the confines of the law, which makes it abundantly clear that we need to provide a higher level of protection against government intrusion into an individual’s private records.”
This is an essential equation for all Americans who value the right to privacy outlined in the Fourth Amendment. But it is especially essential when it comes to constructing a press system that serves the intention expressed by the founders: to inform citizens so that they can, with their votes, steer the affairs of state.
This is what Thomas Jefferson recognized more than 227 years ago when he wrote to John Jay, “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”
In the same letter, Jefferson wrote: “No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.”
Associated Press President Gary Pruitt updated the Jeffersonian premise when he explained that the Justice Department’s actions were not just “unconstitutional” but destructive to the public’s right to know, insofar as such monitoring of media makes sources less willing to talk to journalists and reduces the likelihood that citizens will learn what their government is up to.
“If they restrict that apparatus [of newsgathering about controversial government actions] the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know and that’s not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment,” explained the head of the country’s largest news service.
Pruitt’s right. No matter what action is taken, or not taken, journalists will continue to clog the corridors of the Capitol and crowd into White House press briefings. The question is whether those journalists will be present to challenge the status quo or as mere stenographers to power.
That’s a distinction that members of Congress who take seriously their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States understand. Indeed, it is the distinction that James Madison, the essential player in the drafting of the core document and of the Bill of Rights, was getting at when he said, “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
Justin Amash and Jared Polis are not going to agree on most issues. Neither are Mick Mulvaney and Zoe Lofgren.
But they can agree on the basic outlines of the American experiment and how it must operate.
This is as the founders of that experiment intended: a free press providing a free people with the information they need to be their own governors.
John Nichols is the author (with Robert w. McChesney) of the upcoming book Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America. Hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as “a fervent call to action for reformers,” it details how the collapse of journalism and the rise of big-money politics threatens to turn our democracy into a dollarocracy.
VIA
Read more: ‘Our Liberty Cannot Be Guarded but by the Freedom of the Press’ | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/174450/our-liberty-cannot-be-guarded-freedom-press#ixzz2WjdF5PEe
Follow us: @thenation on Twitter | TheNationMagazine on Facebook
NSA Director – “We Stopped Over a Thousand Terrorist Attacks”
WASHINGTON DC – NSA director Keith Alexander defended the NSA practice of recording all Americans’ phone calls, tracking their locations by cellphone GPS, copying emails, and downloading web browser site visits and IP statistics with backdoor access built into software. In his appearance before the US Senate Appropriations Committee, he testified that lawlessness and utter contempt for the fourth amendment was necessary in the fight against terrorism.
Senators asked about al-Qaida being “decimated” according to White House press releases, and then requested an explanation for why the NSA keeps spying on every single Americancitizen. According to White House statistics, there have been zero confirmed Terrorist Attacks since President Obama took office. In fact, many senators believed it was time to repeal the Patriot Act and eliminate numerous executive powers which had been enacted for the “War on Terror.” However, it was made clear by the NSA that only unaccountable bureaucrats led by an executive branch with absolute power could protect America.
Keith Alexander (NSA Director): Since Obama has been in the White House, there have been eight to twelve terrorist attacks on American soil each month. We never call them Terrorist Attacks … that’s all. Nidal Hasan’s murder of 13 Americans at Fort Hood in 2009 has been declared “workplace violence,” but everyone knows he took orders from al-Qaida. The FBI had him on the same tracking list that the Boston Marathon Bombers were on. He showed a PowerPoint presentation on “It’s OK to Murder Americans” at a US Army base. We were reading all of his emails to terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, but we still classified him as having no connection to terrorism. If we can’t use Gestapo-like tactics on law-abiding citizens — the terrorists win.
The senators asked for list of the “thousands of terrorist attacks”; however, Director Alexander declined, saying “I can’t show you … it’s all TOP SECRET.” Throughout the testimony, self-contradictions and denials were fairly common. When asked if the NSA had the ability to read Americans’ email, he replied “No, we cannot read people’s email … not even if we were sitting beside them, looking at their computer screen.” There was also a ten minute period where Alexander denied having any knowledge of “the Patriot Act” or “anyone named Barack Hussein Obama.”
Questions were raised about NSA policy on hiring High School Drop-Outs, and although answers seemed evasive, a few “non-discrimination rules” were revealed:
- In accordance equal-opportunity regulations, the National
Security
- Administration (NSA) may hire idiots, a__holes, paranoid-delusional-drug-addicts, shellfish, and mafia muscle.
Further investigation into human relations at NSA led to the discovery of descriptions for employment positions. Under the job of NSA Director was a list of skill requirements:
- Applicants for NSA Director must be able to lie, and lie for extended time
periods
- . Really big lies are important, with balls-in-your-face-sky-is-green lies as a minimum lying capacity.
via The Spoof : NSA Director – “We Stopped Over a Thousand Terrorist Attacks” funny satire story.
WATCH: Jeremy Scahill Uncovers US Dirty Wars Around the Globe
In his latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield (Nation Books, April 2013), Nation journalist Jeremy Scahill takes us inside America’s new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture, or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies. How did the president come to hold this much power in his hands, and what can be done about it?
Join Nation Books and The New School on Friday, May 31 at 7pm EST for a special presentation, Jeremy Scahill in conversation with Spencer Ackerman, a national security reporter and blogger for Wired magazine. Tune in here to watch the full live stream.( Click link below(
WATCH: Jeremy Scahill Uncovers US Dirty Wars Around the Globe | The Nation.
“Our Liberty Cannot Be Guarded but by the Freedom of the Press”
Attorney General Eric Holder. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
Democrats and Republicans working together in Washington to address abuses of basic liberties? Bipartisan responses to the challenges that arise in the gray area where balances are struck between constitutional guarantees and national security demands? Impossible. Can’t happen. There is no way in these days of fury and scandal-mongering.
Actually, there is a way.
A genuine left-right coalition has developed over the past several days in response to the revelation that the Department of Justice seized Associated Press telephone records in its recent investigation of a CIA leak. And that coalition is likely to strengthen in light of the news that the DOJ investigated the reporting activities of Fox News’s chief Washington correspondent as a potential crime — “solicitation” of leaks. The latter development, in many senses more troubling than the former, calls into question whether basic protections for both reporters and whistleblowers are crumbling after more than a decade of Patriot Act abuses, Bush and Obama administration excesses and the politicization of debates about what were once accepted standards for protecting the public’s right to know and the privacy rights that underpin it.
In moments so rigorously partisan as these, many members of Congress will retreat to their corners, mounting attacks or making excuses. But there are some serious legislators, libertarian-leaning Republicans and progressive Democrats, who understand the urgency of the moment.
They get that the revelations about DOJ over-reach reveal a threat not just to freedom of the press but to the most necessary of press functions: the work of revealing for citizens the details of what their government is doing in their name but without their informed consent. None of these members are foolish or casual in their approach; they understand that it is necessary for the government to protect against the leaking of information that could endanger people. But they also understand that it is possible to provide that protection within a constitutional context.
Perhaps most importantly, they get that the best way to protect the First Amendment guarantee of a free press is to protect the Fourth Amendment guarantee of privacy. Journalists do not need — and should not seek — an array of special protections to do their jobs. But journalists and their sources do need to know that information can be shared without the threat of unwarranted — and self-serving — government surveillance of necessary conversations.
It is with this in mind that four very different members of Congress (Michigan Republican Justin Amash, South Carolina Republican Mick Mulvaney, California Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Colorado Democrat Jared Polis) have proposed a precise and appropriate response to the overreach by the Department of Justice. While the White House and key members of the Senate are backing a Shield Law, which protects journalists from being required to reveal sources, the House members are going deeper — to protect not just journalists but all citizens from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” They seek a Telephone Records Protection Act, which requires court approval when the government demands telephone records from service providers.
“The Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records — likely without the sign-off of a single judge — raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns,” says Amash, who has emerged as a hero to libertarian-leaning conservatives. “Regardless of whether DOJ violates the legitimate privacy expectations of reporters or ordinary Americans, we deserve to know that the federal government can’t seize our records without judicial review.”
Polis, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says, “Americans of all political stripes were shocked to find out that the Department of Justice had been accessing telephone records of reporters at the Associated Press. The Department of Justice claims that they operated within the confines of the law, which makes it abundantly clear that we need to provide a higher level of protection against government intrusion into an individual’s private records.”
This is an essential equation for all Americans who value the right to privacy outlined in the Fourth Amendment. But it is especially essential when it comes to constructing a press system that serves the intention expressed by the founders: to inform citizens so that they can, with their votes, steer the affairs of state.
This is what Thomas Jefferson recognized more than 227 years ago when he wrote to John Jay, “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”
In the same letter, Jefferson wrote: “No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.”
Associated Press President Gary Pruitt updated the Jeffersonian premise when he explained that the Justice Department’s actions were not just “unconstitutional” but destructive to the public’s right to know, insofar as such monitoring of media makes sources less willing to talk to journalists and reduces the likelihood that citizens will learn what their government is up to.
“If they restrict that apparatus [of newsgathering about controversial government actions] the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know and that’s not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment,” explained the head of the country’s largest news service.
Pruitt’s right. No matter what action is taken, or not taken, journalists will continue to clog the corridors of the Capitol and crowd into White House press briefings. The question is whether those journalists will be present to challenge the status quo or as mere stenographers to power.
That’s a distinction that members of Congress who take seriously their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States understand. Indeed, it is the distinction that James Madison, the essential player in the drafting of the core document and of the Bill of Rights, was getting at when he said, “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
Justin Amash and Jared Polis are not going to agree on most issues. Neither are Mick Mulvaney and Zoe Lofgren.
But they can agree on the basic outlines of the American experiment and how it must operate.
This is as the founders of that experiment intended: a free press providing a free people with the information they need to be their own governors.
John Nichols is the author (with Robert w. McChesney) of the upcoming book Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America. Hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as “a fervent call to action for reformers,” it details how the collapse of journalism and the rise of big-money politics threatens to turn our democracy into a dollarocracy.
via OpEdNews – Article: “Our Liberty Cannot Be Guarded but by the Freedom of the Press”.
Shackled by Gitmo
At a press conference in late April, US president Barack Obama was asked to comment on the hunger strike unfolding among prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Was he surprised, asked Bill Plante of CBS News, that the 100 or so prisoners who were participating in the protest preferred death over indefinite confinement?
Tapping his finger on the lectern and speaking in a clipped cadence, Obama did not mince words in response. “Guantanamo is not necessary to keep us safe,” he said. “It is expensive. It is inefficient… It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”
He then pledged to rededicate himself to the challenge of shutting the prison. “I’m going to go back at this,” he bluntly resolved.
For anyone who has followed the saga of Guantanamo Bay over the past few years, Obama’s words were nothing short of shocking. It had been a long time since his efforts to close Gitmo had collapsed — done in by congressional obstruction, by political realities, and even, to an extent, by Obama himself.
During the intervening period, there had been little evidence that Obama cared to return to the issue. He hadn’t uttered the word Guantanamo in a State of the Union address since 2009. Nor was there even anybody in charge of driving the initiative. The prevailing attitude toward Gitmo within the White House administration seemed to be “out of sight, out of mind”.
Like the 166 prisoners languishing in the facility, the president’s policy seemed entirely stuck in limbo.
Now Obama, with no public warning, had suddenly committed himself to making another run at what had thus far proved to be the most Sisyphean of all his policy goals. Could he possibly have meant what he said? Was he really ready to restart this particular political fight?
In a word, yes. According to three administration sources, the president’s sudden rhetorical plunge back into the Guantanamo morass reflected a calculated, highly personal decision — one borne of both frustration at his team and a measure of personal regret about his failure to solve the problem sooner.
It all dates to March, when Obama started seeing disturbing reports about the hunger strike at the prison. Twice daily, detainees were being shackled at the wrists and ankles to restraint chairs and force-fed by Navy medics, a process that involved snaking long tubes through their nasal passages, down the backs of their throats, and into their stomachs to pump in cans of Ensure, a nutritional supplement. The painful procedure often provokes gagging and vomiting.
Meanwhile, John Kelly, the marine general overseeing Guantanamo, made a stunning admission before a congressional committee on Mar 20: He attributed the hunger strike directly to the perception that Obama, after promising to close the prison, had given up, effectively abandoning the detainees.
“They were devastated when the president backed off — at least their perception — of closing the facility,” he testified.
According to one presidential adviser, Obama, troubled by what he was hearing, began digging back into his policy to see where things stood and what else could be done. What followed was a flurry of activity. Shutting down the facility would likely entail freeing some prisoners, transferring some to jails in other countries, prosecuting some, and moving still others — those being held indefinitely — to US prisons.
To rally public support for this effort, Newsweek has learned, Obama plans to give a major speech partly devoted to the subject, possibly as soon as later this month. “Obama has no illusions about how hard this is,” says a former administration official. “But he also knows that he will own this bit of history just as much as George Bush does” — if, that is, he doesn’t make substantial progress toward fixing it.
Throughout his presidency, pleas for action on Guantanamo from civil libertarians, friends, and top advisers have reportedly tugged at Obama’s conscience. But politics and a weary fatalism subsumed action nearly every time.
One recent plea, two sources told Newsweek, came from Hillary Clinton, who, just before she left office in Jan 2013, sent a two-page confidential memo to Obama about Guantanamo. Clinton had, during her years in the administration, occasionally jumped into the fray to push the issue. One of those occasions was at a White House meeting of Obama’s national security principals in Aug t 2010. “We are throwing the president’s commitment to close Guantanamo into the trash bin,” she chastised White House aides.
“We are doing him a disservice by not working harder on this.”
But, at the end of the day, Clinton had little leverage to get the White House to act. Now, in one of her last moves as secretary of state, she was making a final effort to prod her boss to do more. Her memo was replete with practical suggestions for moving ahead.
Chief among them: Obama needed to appoint a high-level official to be in charge of the effort, someone who had clout and proximity to the Oval Office. Further, Clinton argued that Obama could start transferring the 86 detainees who had already been cleared for release.
The Clinton missive perturbed White House aides, who viewed it as an attempt to put them on the spot. It’s unclear how Obama himself reacted to the memo; there’s no evidence it spurred him to action. But the mere fact Clinton felt the need to write it was noteworthy, because it suggested the degree to which Guantanamo remained an irritant for her and many other high-level administration officials as well.
One of Obama’s very first tactical moves on Guantanamo backfired spectacularly. His plan to bring to the US a handful of detainees — Chinese Uighurs who were cleared by the courts — caused a political furore. Obama pulled the plug on the plan, and Congress soon began passing measures to restrict transfers out of Gitmo.
For Obama’s advisers, the episode demonstrated that the toxic politics of terrorism could overwhelm the administration’s domestic agenda; for civil libertarians, it was an ominous sign that Obama lacked the political will to aggressively engage Congress.
Even some of Obama’s top national-security aides were frustrated with the White House’s timid approach toward Congress. John Brennan — then Obama’s counter-terrorism czar, now his CIA chief — believed the administration needed to show more backbone in its dealings with Congress.
Brennan’s outrage was fuelled by the knowledge that many detainees, who were still at Guantanamo after years of detention, had no record of terrorism.
A few weeks after the Uighur debacle, Obama made his first attempt to save his faltering Guantanamo policy: in a sweeping address he laid out a detailed plan for closing the prison. But in the end, however eloquent, it was only a speech. It did not push the policy forward.
Things only got worse from there. On Christmas Day 2009, the so-called underwear bomber attempted to bring down a plane over Detroit — a plot directed by al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate. The near miss took a powerful psychic toll on the White House, still dogged by the perception that Democrats were weak on national security.
Obama became convinced that he could not send any of the nearly 100 Yemeni detainees at Gitmo back to their home country, for fear they would link up with extremists and begin plotting attacks against America. Suddenly, the fate of the Yemenis was another giant obstacle to closing the prison.
Then came the unravelling of Attorney General Eric Holder’s plans to try some Gitmo detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in New York. Obama had initially backed Holder’s decision. But when it blew up in Congress, he seemed to equivocate.
His own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, actually worked behind the scenes with Republican senators to undermine Holder’s initiative, according to multiple sources. Once the plan showed cracks, lawmakers smelled blood. They began passing ever more restrictive legislation tying the administration’s hands on Guantanamo.
For much of the past few years, without any signal that Obama was going to fight on Gitmo, the policy drifted.
Even the steps Obama took to move things forward were of a highly limited nature. One of those steps came in Mar 2011, when Obama issued an executive order designed to solve a thorny problem.
Forty-eight of the detainees could not be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because they had been tortured — yet were nonetheless considered too dangerous to release.
This meant they had to be held in indefinite detention, a prospect that troubled Obama. His compromise, issued via executive order, was to set up Periodic Review Boards — administrative bodies that would allow such prisoners to challenge their incarceration, including by presenting new evidence.
It was hardly ideal from a civil liberties perspective. And Obama was worried about the precedent he’d be setting by embracing a regime of detention without trial, likening it to leaving behind a “loaded weapon” for future presidents. But at least the review boards would give detainees some limited version of due process — and the possibility, however remote, of being transferred or released.
Fast forward to now. As Obama, concerned about the hunger strike, began looking into the issue, he found something that, according to officials, infuriated him: Two years after his Mar 2011 executive order, the Periodic Review Boards had not yet gotten off the ground, despite that the order had called for them to be up and running within a year.
Some Obama officials shifted blame to the CIA, which they said had slowed down the process.
One source directly involved in the controversy says CIA officials were balking at sharing any more information about the agency’s infamous detention and interrogation programme — a subject that would have likely come up during review-board hearings.
As word of Obama’s reaction filtered back though the national security agencies, a new effort was launched to resolve the interagency disputes over the review boards. And a frustrated Obama directed his staff to redouble its efforts to identify creative solutions to the Guantanamo conundrum, including measures he could take unilaterally.
Today, many of the options on the table are the ones spelled out in the Clinton memo several months ago.
But the reality, of course, is that Obama cannot close Gitmo by himself. He’s going to need Congress to sign off. And therein lies the central challenge. To date, the public’s emotional response to terrorism has made Gitmo a ripe target for political demagoguery on Capitol Hill.
So how to cajole self-interested lawmakers to take a major political risk on behalf of 166 men who have little or no constituency? Obama’s answer seems to be that he is going to make his case to the public.
In the coming days, Obama plans to address both Guantanamo and drones — another festering, controversial element of the administration’s national security agenda — in a broad “framing” speech that will try to knit together an overarching approach to counterterrorism. In the speech, Obama plans to lay out a legal framework for the administration’s evolving strategies on targeting, detention, and prosecution, according to two senior officials who have been briefed on its contents. The delicate process of putting together such a major presidential statement has apparently taken months and involved arduous interagency wrangling. It had been scheduled for last month but was then abruptly rescheduled. Sources say Obama wants to use the speech to take stock of the war on terror in the wake of such seminal events as the killing of bin Laden and the looming withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.
The speech could serve as the White House’s opening shot in its campaign to solve the Guantanamo riddle. But Obama’s critics will be sceptical — likely branding it another attempt to bend the arc of history with mere eloquence.
It would fit a pattern on rule-of-law issues, they say, in which Obama’s lofty rhetoric is rarely followed by resolute action — especially when it comes to standing up to Congress. According to this narrative, Obama expresses righteous indignation, but then is persuaded by his political team that the time is not right to fight.
Or he threatens to veto legislation that shackles him on Guantanamo, but then fails to go through with the threat. The dynamic, critics say, creates a self-fulfilling cycle that emboldens congressional Republicans and weakens the president.
His supporters argue that instead of giving up, Obama has shifted to a long-road strategy, which sometimes requires backing down from epic confrontations in the hope that over time the politics will turn his way.
In at least one area — prosecuting suspected terrorists in civilian courts — that approach may be working. Though Obama caved to criticism and backed down on trying KSM in court back in 2011, he subsequently decided to have a string of captured terrorists tried in the civilian justice system, the latest being Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber. Over time, the criticism has dwindled to barely a peep.
Will Obama stand up to Congress on Gitmo during his second term?
Even some civil libertarians — Obama’s fiercest critics on Guantanamo — are optimistic that he has built up the resolve to finally fix the situation. “I am more optimistic this time around, because he’s no longer naive about the politics,” says David Cole, a professor of constitutional law and national security at Georgetown.
“He’s lived through four years of stalemate on this, so the fact that he was nonetheless as strong and passionate about his concerns suggests to me that he really has made a renewed commitment to take it on.”
Whether or not Cole is right, Gitmo does appear for now at least to have Obama’s attention again. Indeed, if there’s a silver lining in the events of the past four years for civil libertarians, it’s that, while Obama hasn’t figured out a way to close Gitmo, he also hasn’t figured out a way, in his own mind, to let the issue go.
* Daniel Klaidman is the national political correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast and the author of Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency.
Guantánamo hunger strike to expose Ensure as a health hazard
Images emerging Friday from inside Guantánamo Bay Detention Center may ultimately backfire on “Ensure” manufacturer, as hunger-striker’s conditions worsen.
As the Obama administration’s reputation continues slowly deteriorating in the eyes of the American people, so too do the conditions at the Cuban prison Obama used as a high-profile talking point, during his campaign for the White House, over five years ago. One of the many promises made that continue to go unfulfilled.
But four and a half years into actually having the ability to do something about practices he so openly deemed unethical and examples of “un-American-like values” during the previous administration, the “habeas corpus” he argued for, in the run up to his 2009 inauguration, remains non-existent and the situation at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility continues to defy all ethical and humane standards, or worse.
In addition to the inhumane effectsindefinite detention plays on the human psyche by itself, the religious disrespect prisoners there are treated with has caused more than 100 of the 166 inmates at the facility to feel a hunger-strike and, if necessary, death from a lack of food as being their only way out.
Not only was the idea of habeas corpus actually stripped from the America people themselves, with Obama’s yearly re-authorization of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the government continues to push their cynically twisted version of reality, which now includes the notion that the forced feeding of a mentally competent individual is somehow an act of kindness. At least, that’s how it’s spun now that at least 23 of those inmates must be force-fed to keep them alive, almost three months into the strike.
By stating, “We will not allow a detainee to starve themselves to death, and we will continue to treat each person humanely,” Lt. Col. Samuel House, the prison spokesperson, made the case that not only are they not allowed to leave, the inmates, many of which found to be completely innocent of any wrong-doing and their only crime is that of being born and raised in a Muslim country with Muslim values, are not even allowed to decide if they will or will not eat.
Rivaling the idea of what hell must truly be like, all sense of freedom and humanity has been stripped from sovereign individuals that are not even allowed to die, if they wish, with dignity.
In the real world, doctors and government officials are expected to know that the forced feeding of an individual, who has exercised their right to refuse to eat, is not only completely against all medical standards, but simply an unethical act that no medical professional or person of authority should ever dream of authorizing or administering against a competent individual that has made that decision on their own. Even the US Supreme Court has routinely ruled against officials keeping people alive against their will, on every occasion the situation has come up, ruling it generally unconstitutional to force such actions against a sovereign individual.
Unfortunately, the abuse doesn’t stop there, however. As if actions such as water-boarding and the like isn’t already horrific enough to imagine, adding insult to injury, almost as if the entire operation is someone’s idea of a sick and morbid joke, the government’s so-called act of kindness toward the Guantánamo prisoners is not just the gift of being force-fed, but forcefully fed with none other than Abbott Laboratories’ enteral formula, Ensure.
As if the horrific conditions at Guantánamo were not almost as bad as it gets; the sensory and sleep deprivation, the uncomfortably cold cell temperatures, the physical and psychological torture, etc., it is also reported that, since 2005, hunger-striking inmates have been restrained in padded wheelchairs, while a tube is inserted into their nose and pushed down their throat, so they can be forced fed with the formula. The feedings can take place twice a day with reportedly the same tubes covered in bile and blood. Journalists have also been told this procedure by itself constitutes an extraordinarily painful and torturous activity, aside from what the formula itself is doing to their bodies.
To the average consumer who has been subjected to the relentless television, radio and print campaigns that not only advertise Ensure as the “#1 doctor recommended brand,” but as “a source of complete and balanced nutrition,” this may seem like a great choice for anyone suffering from the debilitating effects of starvation. Interestingly however, the ads fail to inform consumers that the listed ingredients for Ensure are far from what any normal person should ever ingest and certainly not anything you would want to administer to a weak, fasting or starving, individual that hasn’t eaten for weeks or months. To get a better understanding of what this really means, we must examine what Ensure really has to offer.
Marketed as the golden standard of complete nutrition, of the nine major ingredients making up the bulk of Ensure’s “Nutrition Shake,” the specific product being given the starving Guantánamo detainees, the top three are water, corn maltodextrin and sugar (aka, water, sugar and sugar), with the rest consisting of a mixture of GMO soy-based protein and milk and pea protein concentrates, topped off with a dash of GMO rapeseed oil, normally marketed as “Canola oil” in stores.
In addition to a small amount of corn oil (also likely made from GMO corn), artificial flavors and a load of preservatives that keep the drink from going rancid in the bottle, the mixture can only be seen as toxic concoction of slow-poisoning, rather than a source of living nutrition, designed to keep someone healthy and vibrant. This likens the product to that of an overpriced soft drink and far from anything that can be honestly called nutritional.
Even the synthetically-derived “vitamins” in the product, such as Ascorbic Acid, sold as Vitamin C and Cyanocobalamin, sold as Vitamin B12, are known to cause more problems within the human body than they can possibly help.
Considering that Ensure is being marketed and consumed primarily to the elderly, the sick and now starving inmates at Guantánamo, it should also be noted that the food additive Carrageenan, found in Ensure, has been linked to gastrointestinal inflammation and has been banned from infant formula in Europe.
In addition to the brutality that is forced feeding and the absolute joke that is feeding them something as pathetic as Ensure, the inmates also face the many adverse effects associated with tube feeding and enteral formulas, like Ensure.
Among the many side effects of consuming a product like Ensure on a regular bases, according to Drugs.com, the most common are Confusion; convulsions (seizures); decrease in urine volume; dryness of mouth; frequent urination; increased thirst; irregular heartbeat; mood or mental changes; muscle cramps or pain; numbness or tingling in hands, feet, or lips; respiratory distress, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing; unexplained nervousness; unusual tiredness or weakness; weakness or heaviness of legs; weak pulse.
There has already been multiple deaths reported to have occurred by detainees who were previously on hunger strikes, as far back as 2006. Although the deaths were initially reported as suicides, a whistleblower and former Sargent that worked in the facility came forward to admit the initial reports were a cover-up and the result of something else entirely.
But now that the vast majority of the detainees have decided to join in on the mass hunger strike, the public at large may soon realize the sick joke that is feeding them something like Ensure and, for that matter, the sick joke that is doctors reccomending it be fed to the masses, especially as a source of viable nutrition for those that need it the most.
Bush Versus Obama: Who’s Worse?
Obama Names Top Fundraisers to Major Political Posts
Last week, the Obama administration announced its choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission: Tom Wheeler, who is not only a former telecom lobbyist but also a huge bundler for the Obama campaign. The New York Times Editorial Page today explains that this choice is “raising serious questions about [Obama’s] 2007 pledge that corporate lobbyists would not finance his campaign or run his administration.” It also notes that “given his background, it is almost certain that [Wheeler] raised money [for Obama] from people whose companies he would regulate, creating potential conflicts of interest.”
Last week, President Obama named another big bundler of his, the billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker, to be his Commerce Secretary; at the Nation, Rick Perlstein details just some of the interesting questions about that choice that need to be explored. At this point, the only surprising thing is that there are any more bundlers left for Obama to appoint to important administration positions.
While despicable, this is nothing new.
The Center for Public Integrity reported in 2011 that Obama had rewarded as many big money bundlers in 2 years as Bush had appointed in 8:
Source: Public Citizen, iWatchNews analysis. Graphic: Jeremy Borden/iWatch News.
The Center wrote:
As a candidate, Obama spoke passionately about diminishing the clout of moneyed interests and making the White House more accessible to everyday Americans. In kicking off his presidential run on Feb. 10, 2007, he blasted “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests,” who he said had “turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.”
***
[But:]
• Overall, 184 of 556, or about one-third, of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. But the percentages are much higher for the big-dollar bundlers. Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took “key administration posts,” as defined by the White House. More than half the ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised more than half a million.
• The big bundlers had broad access to the White House for meetings with top administration officials and glitzy social events. In all, campaign bundlers and their family members account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits. Half of them raised $200,000 or more.
• Some Obama bundlers have ties to companies that stand to gain financially from the president’s policy agenda, particularly in clean energy and telecommunications, and some already have done so. Level 3 Communications, for instance, snared $13.8 million in stimulus money. At least 18 other bundlers have ties to businesses poised to profit from government spending to promote clean energy, telecommunications and other key administration priorities.
***
Bundling is controversial because it permits campaigns to skirt individual contribution limits of $2,500 in federal elections. Bundlers pool donations from fundraising networks and as a result “play an enormous role in determining the success of political campaigns,” according to Public Citizen. The group has tracked bundlers on a website http://www.whitehouseforsale.org in the belief that they are “apt to receive preferential treatment if their candidate wins.”
***
Ambassadorships have been the classic payoff for big bundlers. But it’s not just the posts in foreign capitals that are attractive. Light, the NYU expert on presidential transitions, said that in recent years many have sought jobs with deep reach into the federal bureaucracy — and found a receptive ear in the White House.
“When they get a resume from a bundler, that is a real signal of seriousness,” Light said. “It’s also a thinly veiled quid pro quo,” and it “goes without saying they will get considered.”
Bringing in a lot of cash to the campaign, Light added, “seems to be well established as a signaling device for getting into key jobs running the government. It’s become more significant and nobody seems to have much outrage about it.”
***
Passing over career diplomats in favor of mega-donors amounts to “selling ambassadorships,” said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association. She said it runs contrary to the law and is unethical, yet, “That hasn’t stopped anybody.”
Thomas Pickering, who served as ambassador to Russia and several other countries during a diplomatic career spanning four decades, said turning to bundlers adds a “new dimension” to what he termed “buying offices” through aggressive fundraising.
***
Hyatt hotels heiress Penny Pritzker, Wall Street titan Robert Wolf and financier Mark Gallogly, for instance, all served on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Commission.
***
In late February, in creating a new commission to take on the task of creating jobs, Obama again appointed the three businesspeople. Transcripts of the recovery board meetings show that commission members are free to press for an agenda that could significantly benefit their business interests.
The Center pointed out in 2012:
At least 68 of 350 Obama bundlers for the 2012 election or their spouses have served in the administration, ranging from seats on advisory boards that tackle critical national issues such as economic growth, to ceremonial posts such as serving on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
At least 250 of the bundlers have been cleared to attend a White House event since January 2009. Most have come twice while others are frequent visitors. The events range from policy briefings to coveted invitations to state dinners and music and entertainment nights featuring top-draw performers at the executive mansion.
At least 30 of the 2012 bundlers have ties to companies that conduct business with federal agencies or hope to do so. They range from Wall Street investors to green energy, technology and defense firms with multimillion-dollar government contracts.
***
Bundlers have been cleared for more than 5,000 visits to the White House from January 2009 through August 2011, according to visitor logs.
***
Boyle of Common Cause said that wealthy bundlers can amass political clout and use it to “further enrich themselves, and their circle of friends and business acquaintances.”
“Money buys access and influence and that’s the big problem,” she said. “Those who don’t have it are left out in the cold. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work, and it must change.”
That’s not likely, according to Tufts political science professor Berry.
Asked if a Republican presidential challenger would end the practice should he win the office next year, Berry said: “It would be shocking if they decided not to try to reward their most loyal fundraisers. It would make no sense.”
Of course, Obama’s top donors in the 2008 election included:
Goldman Sachs
JP Morgan Chase
Citigroup
General Electric
Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs folks held so many top jobs in the Obama administration in his first term that everyone called the cozy relationship “Government Sachs”.
Obama appointed GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt as his jobs czar.
And of course, Obama rewarded his big contributors with tidal waves of government money.
Bush was a horrible crony nepotist, who favored the super-elite at the expense of the little guy.
Obama’s worse.
Bradley Manning Kangaroo Court: This is America. Reason doesn’t live here anymore
I cannot forecast to you the actions of America. It’s a psyop, wrapped in a fraud, the backbone of which is a hoax… and it’s taking center stage… in a kangaroo court. Thus is the state of the nation in a nutshell. But perhaps there is a key and if so, reason is it. Too bad they’re destroying the education system and our time of reason is short.
“Lind ruled later in the hearing that “John Doe” must testify in civilian clothing and “light disguise” in a closed session at an alternate, secure location to prevent disclosure of his identity or details of the mission. The disguise cannot obscure his demeanor, body movements and facial reactions.” AP
I read the news today, oh boy. And though the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh, cus we never saw the photograph…
Lind said the trial also would be closed during the entire testimony of three other unidentified “special” prosecution witnesses who will discuss classified information. It might be closed during part of the testimony of 24 other government witnesses to prevent release of classified information, she said.” AP
Bradley Manning is on trial if you can call it that while keeping a straight face.
He’s on trial for “leaking” all those Wikileaks State Department files that said things like the Muslim people in the Middle East don’t like Iran. Silly stuff like that. We’re supposed to forget that Bradley wanted to be a double agent and that Wikileaks was created by the NSA to be a whistle-blower honey-pot. We’re supposed to forget that Assange is a roving international playboy millionaire housed in one castle after one embassy after another all the while running from legal action for having unprotected sneak-in sex with a young woman while she was asleep. Of course, all the “year of the WOMAN!” liberals still love him and call him hero which is an amazing bit of cognitive dissonance when you think about it.
What happened to Aaron Swartz? Oh yeah, they tried to try him after offering him a deal, but he didn’t take the deal, so they killed him. His thoughtcrime was thinking that educational material and knowledge should be available to everyone and that the internet should remain free to all and open. And Assange is cashing checks where? Running for office in Australia? After living in a castle with an oligarch? And he’s an “outsider”? That’s a laugh
Today the news is rather sad. See if you can keep up:
The court in the Manning trial has ruled that “John Doe”, an “operator” for the military in the bin Laden assassination hoax, can testify in Manning’s court martial hearing on whether or not the dead bin Laden had some of the Wikileaks files on his computer at the shanty he was living in before they whacked him.
You may think that’s silly, but in fact it is not. This is the “why” of it: we are entering an era where clowns in disguise can testify against you, providing secret evidence about how you inadvertently aided the imaginary boogieman and you will be held accountable in a court of “law”.
This is the nation, this is the state of our world, then one we let them construct and keep constructing everyday we choose not to take to the streets en masse.
“The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the intelligence is given to and received by the enemy,” Lind said.
You see, there is always a method to their ridiculous madness. I told you years ago that Obama would attack Social Security. I told you before he was “elected” in 2008 that he wouldn’t prosecute parties from the Bush administration and in fact the only “CHANGE” we would see is things getting worse on all fronts. I told you this then, so you should listen when I tell you the importance of this new development.
Yes, it’s ridiculous – the kangaroo court proceeding of Bradley Manning is a farce. It’s beyond farcical to the point of almost slap-stick.
To bring in a secret “witness” to testify to what a man who had been dead for 10 years had on his laptop, before he was criminally murdered in a public relations production where they lied about how he was killed, why he was killed, produced phony pictures of him killed, rushed out to sea with his body and quietly dumped it in the drink where it could never be found with no photos taken of him to prove they got him and no videos of the tactical insertion, though they claimed they watched it live at the White House and even staged a nifty little photo-op with Hillary Clinton holding her hand over her mouth for dramatic effect….
… all to get the guy they said was responsible for 9/11 because they tortured a couple of other guys for up to 180 days before they “confessed” and gave up that information… before the CIA had to burn all those tapes of those “confessions” in spite of congressional orders and federal laws telling them not too…
… that is to say nothing of the fact that al Qaeda was and is the creation of the CIA as a means to destabilize nations through terrorism (Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria…) …
Hell, they had to get the CIA to work with a Mockingbird agent to make a feature film to finalize the propaganda and even that backfired on them…
Oh what a tangled web we weave…
But here is the point, you knew I would get around to it eventually:
They’re basically saying that by leaking this stuff to Wikileaks (which was carefully vetted by State Department heads and psyop experts to present the illusion of “insider” information but which actually supported their agenda in the Middle East and elsewhere) so that it could be made public, they aided the enemy… not by making the U.S. look bad, but instead by the more direct charge of actually using the random internet publishing as a means by which intelligence was “given to and received by the enemy“
That’s a mighty important distinction in the case. No one is saying Bradley Manning gave the stuff to Assange so he could give it to the ghost of the dead bin Laden personally. What they are saying is that if something is published in an open forum and ends up on a phony terrorist’s laptop, even years after his death, and a secret witness who will remain unnamed in perpetuity, comes forward and makes a claim that he found said publication on said non-existent laptop, well then… you have committed treason basically for publishing something online…
Now remember, none of the “leaks” from Manning have had ANY effect on the all important Global Free Market Wars.
None of them.
And none of them exposed the real nature of it.
In fact, the recent study which showed that our drone strikes are not killing “al Qaeda” like President Peace Prize claims, but rather people the Pakistani military want to kill basically making the drone program nothing more than an updated death squad practice, that study did VASTLY more damage to the free-marketeers of globalization than anything Manning ever did, excluding all the breathless over-hyping from the “foundation” activists to the contrary.
bin Laden certainly didn’t do ANYTHING with that useless trove of Hillary Clinton approved drivel. But that doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter that the story itself is completely bullshit and that so many of the SEALS who supposedly were on that raid are now dead keeping them silent forever.
It doesn’t matter that bin Laden, even by the official record, didn’t do jack shit since 9/11 (since we all know the AmeriThrax attacks came from us) and was holed up in a shitty little run-down ghetto in Pakistan like a broken-down boogieman who’s done way too many sequels.
It doesn’t matter that the last verified videos on bin Laden recorded in Nov. of 2001 are of hims saying he had nothing to do with 9/11 and all the faked ones after those have been proven faked and are not certified by our intelligence agencies.
It doesn’t matter that most informed experts agree that bin Laden died from his illnesses in Dec. of 2001 and even President Bush mentioned several times in the aftermath of 9/11 that they weren’t all that interesting in bin Laden because “he’s just one guy”… one dead guy and they needed one live boogieman.
It doesn’t matter that the deeply flawed 9/11 Commission Report ultimately came to the conclusion that it’s not important to figure out who paid for 9/11 because it was ultimately “of little significance” anyway.
None of that matters.
All they have to do with this psyop is claim that the files were there on the mysterious super-secret bin Laden laptop and provide a super-secret witness to make the claim that he will never be held accountable for and legal precedent is set.
Anything you publish on the net, if it ends up on some “terrorists” laptop, you are responsible for it… even if no one can prove it’s actually on a laptop and even if no one can actually prove the terrorist is a terrorist.
They can provide a “military operator” to come in, in secret, in the dark, with no accountability, to make that claim, and you have to sit back and accept it as the rule of law.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Why don’t we just do this: toss Manning into a pond, if he floats he’s guilty, if he sinks he’s less guilty. And afterwards we can hand onto his computers in super-secret places and for the next 40 or 60 years we can have it available to use to “find” files on it that implicate other people in the future that we don’t like. And for that matter, we can “find” files on the computer that don’t even exist at this point, but of course that won’t matter because the examination of the files and the system is off limits for purposes of national security.
It’s like watching a badly written movie trying to right itself in a tempest of poorly conceived plot-lines or an improve between two comedians that just goes from ridiculous to absurd with no end in sight.
Layers upon layer of already exposed bullshit being heaped one on top of the other. The other day the AP and Fox News were all beside themselves talking about how those Iraqis were celebrating and tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein 10 years ago in Iraq when EVERYONE knows it was a propaganda operation in which a U.S. psyop officer got “Screwball” and his band of ex-pats to run around hooting and hollering while the U.S. troops pulled it down for the PR value of it all. Like the “incubator babies” story before it, it was bullshit yet, there are the articles, plain as day, PRETENDING it wasn’t … PRETENDING we don’t KNOW it was bullshit. And … we… are … supposed… to… believe… it….
more cognitive dissonance.
And now we have this. You almost need a Ph. D to keep up these days. So many contractors running so many psyops and unconventional warfare actions on us here in the states, it makes your head spin. No wonder people just give up and turn away. can’t blame ‘em.
I cannot forecast to you the actions of America or where it will end up. It’s a psyop, wrapped in a fraud, the backbone of which is a hoax… and it’s taking center stage… in a kangaroo court. Thus is the state of the nation in a nutshell. And I think we can all but toss out “reason” as our savior.
This is America. Reason doesn’t live here anymore.
US Financial Industry to Replace the Dollar with Food Stamps
According to Carnegie, the number of food stamp recipients in the last three years increased by over 15 million and now represents well over 10% of US households. “More and more people are becoming comfortable with food stamps, and soon I think the public will be willing to give up cash in favor of the EBT card,” she said. “This is the change we’ve been waiting for.”The change is obvious: once relegated to the poor and stigmatized, the Food Stamp is not just becoming more accepted, it is looking very lucrative for many US businesses struggling with a slow recovery and a large pool of potential customers sidelined from the market by unemployment.
“Everyone knows that food stamps stimulate the economy by putting purchasing power back in the hands of the unemployed, but the really great thing about them is that you don’t even have to be unemployed to get them,” Carnegie said. “Plus, they are not regulated in the same manner as the US dollar is, and so this gives the President more flexibility to increase the supply.”Carnegie added that this flexibility also allows the White House to redirect funds more equitably than private bank accounts and personal finances. She envisions a time when every U.S. citizens will only need one EBT card instead of multiple accounts.
“The credit card will soon also go the way of the dollar,” Carnegie noted. “Poor citizens notoriously have difficulty getting credit or managing their debt. But the EBT program allows the government to assist them in managing their finances so that they will always have enough to eat.”
Some speculate that the EBT card must also include specifications for purchases, such as quotas of certain products that must be acquired. This will help poor families, who typically have dietary management issues, to make good food choices.
“The EBT will set a ‘budget’ for a family, telling them what kinds of groceries to buy,” said Carnegie. “You may see a time when the EBT will have an associated app for your government-issued phone to guide you to the nearest store, or to the one with the shortest lines. There’s no end to the possibilities.”
Will the dollar be missed? Many American businesses seem to be pragmatic enough to overcome their sentimental attachment to the dollar in favor of something more profitable.
“Our nation is moving in a new direction and there’s no way back,” Carnegie said. “Big corporations understand that and are willing to assist the government by providing the technological know-how to make this work.”
“Corporate executives want to get in on the top floor of this program to lock in their positions. It is going to happen, and now is the time to act,” she added optimistically.
Enda Kenny’s Childhood Photograph
Enda Kenny‘s Childhood Photograph
Enda Kenny awash with cash from day one and now folks you are adding to his stash
Mitt Romney Can’t Move On and Reveals His Fatal Political Flaw
Unable to move on:
In his first interview since losing last year’s presidential election, Mitt Romney made it pretty clear through his words and tone that he hasn’t moved on from his loss. “I look at what’s happening right now, I wish I were there. It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done.” Ditto his wife, Ann. “It was a crushing disappointment. Not for us. Our lives are going to be fine. It’s for the country.” Given that the Romneys haven’t moved on, it raises this question: Why did they do the interview? In fairness to Romney, he’s not the first losing presidential candidate to have a hard time getting over a loss — George McGovern, John McCain and Al Gore all come to mind. Not everyone ends up like Mondale or Dole and moves immediately to elder statesman status. By the way, don’t miss what Romney said about his infamous “47%” comment: “What I said is not what I believe.” Folks, that one sentence sums up Romney’s two failed presidential bids.
misebogland 