U.S. Martial Law Timeline

by Sarah Meyer Index Research

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UPDATES
Updates April/May/June/July 2008
Updates August/September 2008
Updates October 2008
Updates November/December 2008

2009
Updates January 2009
To view continuation, please see Will Economic Crisis Lead To A Police State World? (30.03.09).

“Hurricane Dean is pictured moving west in the Caribbean Sea in this satellite photograph taken
on August 18, 2007. REUTERS/National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration/Hand”

It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee ‘Blackwater-style’ martial law in all of America.

Pre-emptive measures have now been proposed for Hurricane Dean - which has not even happened yet. The above photo is representative of what seems to be happening to the democratic process in America.

Contempt for life

Contempt (OED). “The mental attitude in which a thing is considered of little account, or as vile and worthless. Law: Disobedience or open disrespect to the authority or the lawful commands of the sovereign, the privileges of the `Houses of Parliament or other legislative body; and esp. action of any kind that interferes with the proper administration of justice by the various courts of law; in this connection called Contempt of Court. 1621"

U.S. Contempt for life (“Stuff happens”) is rampant in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan.

Dave Lindorff (Counterpunch) writes:“And let's be honest: this is no matter of "collateral damage." It is a deliberate policy of terror.”

Contempt for law

Contempt of law is also a totalitarian by-product. In the U.S., this is evident in the (continuing) presence of “Gitmo;” and in the recent conviction of Jose Padilla: The Huffington Post noted, “Clearly, too, the time has come to put the entire infrastructure of an illegal, and ominous so-called war on terror on trial, and show that those who maim, humiliate, kill, and psychologically torture in the name of counterfeit, homogenized purity are the true terrorists.”

‘Quite’, as we say here.

Presidential Signings

In April 2006,The Boston Globe wrote that “President Bush has issued signing statements on more than 750 new laws, declaring that he has the power to set aside the laws when they conflict with his legal interpretation of the Constitution.” You can read the full text of these, and further signing statements and annotations here

John Conyers and the Bush Dictatorship
06.06.07. blackagendareport. Without fanfare, or announcement of any kind, the president recently signed a directive which states that in case of a "catastrophic emergency" the "President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." What is a catastrophic emergency? Well, it is anything that Bush says it is.

The "Use of the Armed Forces" in America under a National Emergency
27.06.07. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky,global research.ca. Unrestricted & Arbitrary Powers conferred to the President & Vice President.

Subpoenas ignored. There are 529,000 ‘web results’ pages on this subject.

U.S. ‘Prime Suspect’ for contempt

Dick Cheney Official: Cheney Urged Wiretaps 07.06.07. D. Eggen, Washington Post. Stand-In for Ashcroft Alleges Interference Dick Cheney's Song of America By David Armstrong, Harper's Magazine, 0017789X, Oct 2002, Vol. 305, Issue 1829 / ICH. The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. Gelman and Becker wrote a series on Mr. Cheney, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,for the Washington Post. And we also have the now the infamous video. “Can’t recall” has become a U.S. mantra. Dr. Estes nails her man: Dick Cheney on the Couch: Factitious Disorder and Career Criminality Five US Reps Support Cheney Impeachment 06.06.07. Atlanta progressive. US Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) has become the fifth total co-sponsor of US Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) bill to impeach Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney, Atlanta Progressive News has learned. In addition to Kucinich, the additional three Members of Congress who have signed on to H. Res 333 are US Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), William Lacy Clay (D-MO), and Albert Wynn (D-MD). Don’t Misunderestimate Dick Cheney 30.06.07. John Dean, Find Law. Cheney Told GOP-Led Congress They Couldn't Issue Subpoenas 21.08.07. Amanda Terkel, Think Progress / Alternet. Sen. Leahy says, "Not quite sure that's my understanding of the separation of power Where will this pathological contempt lead the U.S.?

Martial Law

Google ‘martial law’ on Information Clearing House .There are about 185 entries.


Signs for the Times

Global Eye -- Dark Passage
20.02.02.Chris Floyd, Moscow Times, (republished at Information Clearing House) The Bush Regime's foreign policy is also being carried out according to a strict blueprint. Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed.

Jay Bookman’s article The president’s real goal in Iraq (29.10.02) has excellent resource material.

The Thirteen Stars and Stripes: An Expatriate's Alarm
05.05.07. ICH. Emanuel E. Garcia. ‘A quartet of laws has been signed that lays the complete legal foundation for the takeover of our constitutional democracy. They are the (so-called) Patriot Act of 2001 (extended in 2005); the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (which allows for the suspension of habeas corpus and the practice of torture and rendition); the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which facilitates the declaration of martial law and nullifies posse comitatus by allowing the President to station troops anywhere in the country and to commandeer the National Guard without the consent of local authorities; and, finally, the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, which in the event of a catastrophe would place all governmental authority in the hands of the President.’

The CIA -- a Terrorist Organization
11.05.07. C. Nelson, oh my news. ‘Most definitions of terrorism include only those acts which are intended to create fear or "terror," are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to an attack by a "madman"), and deliberately target "non-combatants." According to the United States Federal Criminal Code, Chapter 113B of Part I of Title 18, terrorism is defined as “activities that involve violent ... or life-threatening acts ... that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State and ... appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and ... (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States ... [or] ... (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States." … In reality, the CIA does not only gather information but consistently targets and engages in covert operations, psychological operations, and acts of terrorism both domestically and internationally.’ Discusses past/present operations of CIA and concludes: “It seems to me you cannot claim to fight terrorism or claim to be the beacon of democracy with an organization like the CIA in your ranks.”

Habeas Corpus Evaporating
14.05.07. Aziz Huq, Tom Paine. Six months after Congress enacted the Military Commissions Act of 2006 with its eyes firmly on the polls, there have been many promises and proposals from legislators about how to remedy the damage done to civil liberties by that law—but little action. Despite the powerful advocacy of former military officials, religious figures, and law enforcement officials, Congress has as of yet failed to fix a single one of the MCA’s many flaws. … In particular, Congress made it easier to hold individuals without an adequate or lawful process to determine what they have in fact done to merit detention. It established a category of “Unlawful enemy combatant,” which is presently limited in function, but which may create an open-ended detention authority.

America's biggest threat comes from within
19.05.07. dmregister / ICH. “Paul Craig Roberts is a Republican who served as undersecretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, so he's no kook or Commie. He warns, "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the United States could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran." Roberts warns us that Bush has put into place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of executive orders that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency.”

Al Gore | Drive for Global Domination Puts Us in Greater Danger
24.05.07. Guardian / Truthout. Al Gore writes, "Moral authority, which is our greatest source of strength, has been recklessly put at risk by this willful president."

Not for Freedom
06.06.07. Charley Reese Lew Rockwell, ICH. The "global war on terror" is just a bad metaphor that doesn't have any connection to reality. How long are the American people going to allow liars to lull them into sacrificing the most precious treasure the country has - its youth - in a futile, lie-ridden, corruption-pocked war?

Imperialism and Fascism are on the Rise in the USA
09.07.07. Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay, globalresearch.ca.

Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law: Roasting Marshmallows on the American Reichstag Fire to Come
26.07.07. Phil Rockstroh, uruknet. ‘those who have been paying attention are aware that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire's version of the Reichstag fire. … After the catastrophes spawned by the rise of European fascism in the 1930s, a number of brilliant, original thinkers (including Hannah Arendt, Roberto Freire, Wilhelm Reich, and R. D. Laing) set out to study the phenomenon in order to learn how future calamities might be prevented.’

The Threat Of Martial Law Is Real
27.07.07. Dave Lindorff, ICH. The looming collapse of the US military in Iraq, of which a number of generals and former generals, including former Chief of Staff Colin Powell, have warned, is happening none too soon, as it my be the best hope for preventing military rule here at home.

Economic Collapse As Precursor To Open Plan For Martial Law?
16.08.07. PJ Watson, Prison Planet. Many fear recession, bank run, strike on Iran or terror attack could signal green light for state of emergency. With Video


Fear to Create Fear

“Propaganda is indeed part and parcel of “psychological warfare”; but terror is more. Terror continues to be used by totalitarian regimes even when its psychological aims are achieved; its real horror is that it reigns over a completely subdued population."²

Nations Use Fear to Distract From Rights Abuses, Group Says
24.05.07.Washington Post / ICH. "The politics of fear is fueling a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct and no person is safe," said Irene Khan, secretary general of the human rights watchdog. Governments are undermining the rule of law and human rights with "short-sighted fear-mongering and divisive policies." See Amnesty International Report 2007 here.

and a further Amnesty report:
Amnesty International Regional Report on the United States of America
Facts and comments on detainees; Military Commissions Act; Renditions and secret detention; Guantánamo; Detentions in Afghanistan and Iraq; Unlawful killings by US forces outside the USA; Detention of 'enemy combatants' in the USA; Torture and other ill-treatment; Ill-treatment in jails and police custody; 'Supermax' prisons; Women in prison; Prisoners of conscience; Death penalty; Other concerns; UN Committee against Torture and UN Human Rights Committee ; AI country reports/visits.

This is a good, cynical example of the 'Fear Factor" : White House: Iraq Progress Report Could Be Sept. 11 (20.08.07, Reuters).

The Fungus Grows

Identity

National ID card a disaster in the making
03.05.07. news.com / ICH. Six years into the "new normal" of terror alerts, identification checks, electronic surveillance, and increasing levels of secrecy-based security, the prospect of a national identification card needs serious public debate. … Real ID was buried in a 2005 "must-pass" military spending bill and enacted into law without public debate or congressional hearings. But
REAL ID Revolt Spreads to 33 States (09.05)

National ID: Biometrics Pinned to Social Security Cards
15.05.07. R. Singel, wired. "This is an exact example of why IDs are so ludicrous as a form of security," American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Tim Sparapani said. "Do we really think the migrant workers are going to show up at the pickle farm and the farmer is going to demand ID and have a laptop in the field to check their ID?" … A recent report by the Social Security Administration's inspector general backs up Moran's criticism with findings that 17.8 million records in the government's employment databases contained inaccuracies that could initially and erroneously flag individuals as ineligible for employment.

Face recognition next in terror fight
11.05.07. USA Today. Homeland Security leaders are exploring futuristic and possibly privacy-invading technology aimed at finding terrorists and criminals by using digital surveillance photos that analyze facial characteristics. [Remember the racial profiling by the Nazis?]

Official Identity Theft
22.05.07. Frances Madesen, Tom Paine. “There is in existence an electronic database with over a half-billion records, containing information collected via extrajudicial requests made in National Security Letters, the majority of which pertain to U.S. citizens. Your banking and credit activities, telephone and internet usage records, insurance policies, post office box rental, car, boat and home ownership records could already be in the FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse. If so, no one need inform you. If the information is incorrect, there’s no way to fix it. It is shared among 10,000 government employees at multiple agencies, and is stored for 20 years even if you have no connection whatsoever to a crime. In fact, only 65 convictions correlated to information obtained by the FBI from over 143,000 NSL demands made during 2003-2005.”

Critical Care Without Consent
27.05.07. R. Stein, Washington Post. The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting patients' permission. The $50 million, five-year 'project,' which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment [the profit margin for the corpora-terrorists] after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies... George J. Annas, a Boston University bioethicist, said "I don't think we should use people like this." Annas was particularly disturbed that children as young as 15 might be included in the research. [note from legitgov.org: Bush's mentors, the Nazis, carried out such experiments on prisoners in concentration camps! Notice that this news tidbit broke in the middle of a holiday weekend, when no one was paying attention.]

Censorship

Censorship 'changes face of net'
05.05.07. BBC. Amnesty International has warned that the internet "could change beyond all recognition" unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms.

State-mandated Internet censorship on the rise: report
18.05.07. The Jurist. A study released Friday by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) [advocacy website] has found a "substantial growth in the scale, scope and sophistication" of Internet censorship [JURIST news archive] worldwide. The study, focusing on state-mandated censorship, found evidence of content filtering in 25 of 41 countries tested.

Google is watching you
24.05.07. Independent. 'Big Brother' row over plans for personal database. Google, the world's biggest search engine, is setting out to create the most comprehensive database of personal information ever assembled, one with the ability to tell people how to run their lives. In a mission statement that raises the spectre of an internet Big Brother to rival Orwellian visions of the state, Google has revealed details of how it intends to organise and control the world's information.

The Pentagon has recently censored soldiers from blogging; many reporters have been murdered; newspaper offices bombed. The only war news allowed is from controlled 'embedded' reporters, or news manufactured by the defence department.

Criminalising the public

Air Marshals Flooding German, British Flights
14.05.07. ABC. * Also See: EU: Armed sky marshals by the back-door?

Then there are the numerous innocent citizens wrongly stopped because of the 'terrorist' list at airport 'security' - includng very young children. See, eg., Seven-year-old Muslim boy stopped in US three times on suspicion of being a terrorist (20.08.07. JAYA NARAIN, Daily Mail). [More racism? ]

FBI Terror List Out of control
13.06.07. J. Rood, ABC. A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.

Secret trials for terrorists, says US judge
28.06.07. David Nason, The Australian / ICH. A TOP-RANKING US judge has stunned a conference of Australian judges and barristers in Chicago by advocating secret trials for terrorists, more surveillance of Muslim populations across North America and an end to counter-terrorism efforts being "hog-tied" by the US constitution.

Nightmare on Main Street: More on Bush's Anti-Dissent Order
02.08.07. Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque/URUKNET. … In other words, Bush now claims the power to strip you of your assets if you oppose American policy in Iraq.

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons who Threaten Efforts in Iraq
17.07.07. The White House

Bush Executive Order: Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement
20.07.07. Michel Chossudovsky Global Research.

“Totalitarianism in power uses the state administration for its long-range goal of world conquest; … it establishes secret police as the executors and guardians of its domestic experiment in constantly transforming reality into fiction; and it finally erects concentration camps as special laboratories to carry through its experiment in total domination.” ³

Construction set to begin on delayed maximum security prison
04.08.07. AP, 9NEWS.com - Denver,CO,USA. Construction on a 948-bed maximum security prison will begin in November, more than four years after lawmakers approved funding to build it./ The Colorado State Penitentiary II, being built next to the Centennial correctional facility, is expected to open in early 2010. [ Another Halliburton contract?]

US House passes intelligence surveillance bill
05.08.07. The Jurist. The bill can be read here.

Globalising US Troops

The Militarization of North America
18.08.07. Michel Chossudovsky, globalresearch.ca. Canadian jurisdiction over its Northern territories was redefined, following an April 2002 military agreement between Ottawa and Washington. This agreement allows for the deployment of US troops anywhere in Canada, as well as the stationing of US warships in Canada's territorial waters.


Outsourcing

“It is true, ascendancy of the secret police over the military apparatus is the hallmark of many tyrannies, and not only the totalitarian.”⁴

The corporate takeover of U.S. intelligence
01.06.07. T. Shorrock, Salon.com. The U.S. government now outsources a vast portion of its spying operations to private firms -- with zero public accountability. ‘the U.S. government revealed for the first time how much of its classified intelligence budget is spent on private contracts: a whopping 70 percent. Based on this year’s estimated budget of at least $48 billion, that would come to at least $34 billion in contracts. … "Those numbers are startling," said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and an expert on the U.S. intelligence budget. "They represent a transformation of the Cold War intelligence bureaucracy into something new and different that is literally dominated by contractor interests."

“The emphasis on the police as the sole organ of power, and the corresponding neglect of the seemingly greater power arsenal of the army, which is characteristic of all totalitarian regimes, can still be partially explained by the totalitarian aspiration to world rule and its conscious abolition of the distinction between a foreign country and a home country, between foreign and domestic affairs. The military forces, trained to fight a foreign aggressor, have always been a dubious instrument for civil-war purposes; even under totalitarian conditions they find it difficult to regard their own people with the eyes of a foreign conqueror.” ⁵

Blackwater Down, Jeremy Scahill (Photo from Google Images; original source unknown)

What if our mercenaries turn on us?
03.06.07. Chris Hedges, Philly.com, anti-war.com. Armed units from the private security firm Blackwater USA opened fire in Baghdad streets twice in two days last week. It triggered a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, a reminder that the war in Iraq may be remembered mostly in our history books for empowering and building America's first modern mercenary army. … Mercenary units are a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built rogue paramilitary forces. And the appearance of Blackwater fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, may be a grim taste of the future. In New Orleans Blackwater charged the government $240,000 a day. … And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on the streets in New Orleans could appear on our streets.

Defense Agency Proposes Outsourcing More Spying
19.08.07. W. Pincus, Washington Post. Contracts Worth $1 Billion Would Set Record. The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an amount that would set a record in the outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon's top spying agency.


U.S. ‘War of Terror’

"Only when terror is intended to coerce not merely from without but, as it were, from within, when the political regime wants more than power, is terror in need of propaganda.

“Propaganda and violence are never contradictions. Use of violence can be part of the progaganda.”⁶

NATIONAL EMERGENCIES ACT (2002)

‘War on terror’
05.07. Amnesty International Report. In its international campaign against abuses in the “war on terror”, AI exposed and denounced hundreds of cases of torture and other grave violations of human rights claimed by states to be a necessary response to security threats. AI also strongly condemned deliberate attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks by armed groups.

National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
10.05.07. The White House. Also see article about this directive: Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency

Contingencies for nuclear terrorist attack
12.05.07.J. Sterngold, Sfgate/ - markings by legitgov.org. Government working up plan to prevent chaos in wake of bombing of major city. As concerns grow that terrorists [the Bush regime] might attack a major American city with a nuclear bomb, a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program that would include the building of bomb shelters, steps to prevent panicked evacuations and the possible suspension of some civil liberties... Fred Ikle said that the government should plan how it could restrict civil liberties and enforce a sort of martial law in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, but also have guidelines for how those liberties could be restored later.

see also Bush orders contingency plans for attack on U.S. (Washington Post/LA Times): President Bush issued a formal national security directive Wednesday ordering agencies to prepare contingency plans for a surprise, "decapitating" attack on the federal government, and assigned responsibility for coordinating such plans to the White House.

? "surprise"", as in 'Pearl Harbour attack', mentioned in PNAC document?

Street Lockdowns Proposed for Baltimore
17.05.07. AP, Guardian. Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., a mayoral hopeful, said Curran's idea was an interesting concept but it raised questions about civil liberties. “We have to make sure we're not declaring martial law,'' he said.

Portland to Host Terrorism Drill “NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2” Aug. 20 to 24
13.08.07. Oregon Truth Alliance / legitgov.org. This is an urgent advisory notice from concerned citizens of Oregon and Washington about an upcoming U.S. Joint Forces Command emergency management exercise known as NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 that will simulate terrorism or disaster scenarios in the Lower Columbia River Basin between Aug. 20th and Aug 24th, 2007. / NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 was designed and will be directed by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and the Department of Homeland Security. We are aware of no public notice concerning this exercise, but preliminary investigation has revealed that Oregon National Guard officials and federal officials will conduct the drill. Details from official sources are minimal.

Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared
16.08.07. ksla. Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that.

Who is listening?

Who is planning the next 9/11?


“UNFREE FREEDOM”

“and once again you're tumbled from your private concerns into a dreadful realization of where history has taken you: into a strange hybrid world of unfree freedom, where you can say what you want, do what you want – unless those in power arbitrarily decide that you can't.” Chris Floyd.

Democracy Dreaming
23.03.07. (& reposted) Joel S. Hirschhorn, ICH. We have arrived at a delusional democracy. Delusional because Americans overwhelmingly cannot admit the painful truth that their limited democracy no longer works for the good of most citizens. Instead, through corruption and dishonesty, our representative democracy has morphed into a plutocracy that serves the wealthy, power elites and corporate masters that control the political system and through that the economic system.

Freedom or Totalitarianism, The Choice Is Yours
08.06.07. Sgt. Kevin Benderman, ICH. The apathetic American public needs to pull their heads out of the comfortable little hole in the sand where it has been for far too long and do something about the way our country is being stolen from us by an administration that has its well-being and only its well-being in mind.

Postscript: A Bit of Opposition?

In an article no longer available on the internet, The Washington Times reported (23.05.07): "Baltimore council nixes 'martial law'. '‘Baltimore lawmakers have rejected a proposal to allow the mayor to lock down streets and close businesses in high-crime zones, the most recent attempt to curb violence in the city. The proposal, which was introduced by City Council member Robert W. Curran (D) also would have granted police extended search powers. "While I do agree that desperate times call for desperate measures, I do not agree that trampling on citizens' civil liberties is the answer," said council member Keifer J. Mitchell Jr., a Democrat running for mayor. "This bill gives the mayor tremendous power, tantamount to declaring martial law, and I have grave reservations about that."

I liked Carolyn Baker’s article, The End of the World as We Know It: Hope Vs. Mindset (17.08.07, Dissident Voice)

For those pathologically sick people who are trying to destroy our world – may they experience ‘blowback’. Soon.

“They fail to understand that their own conspiracy may eventually provoke the whole world into uniting against them.⁷

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Videos

George Bush's Power Grab: Authorizes Martial Law Provisions

Mind Control : America's Secret War

The Century of the Self. (How politicians and business learned to create and manipulate mass-consumer society.)

"The War On Terror Is Bogus"

Just in the Name of Democracy

Gore Vidal: Understanding America's Terrorist Crisis: What Should Be Done?

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"Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition; it rules supreme when nobody any longer stands in its way. If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.⁸

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References

Totalitarianism and Obedience (13.02.07. S. Meyer, Index Research. Updated to 30.04.07)

Project for the New American Century

PNAC: Rebuilding America's Defenses - A Biopsy on Imperialism; Part I: Blueprint for Imperialism (18.02.06. S. Meyer, Index Research)

PNAC: Rebuilding America's Defenses - A Biopsy on Imperialism; Part II: "Special Interests" - The Persian Gulf (29.03.06. S, Meyer, Index Research. Updated.)

Iraq: Security Companies and Training Camps (24.05.06. S. Meyer, Index Research, updated frequently)

I have quoted from Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism. Also recommend Hannah Arendt, Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship , The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress. This essay is also in Arendt’s book, Responsibility and Judgment, Schocken; Reprint edition (August 9, 2005)

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Footnotes

[1] Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Schocken Books, 2004, pp. 543-4. More on p. 401.

[2] Arendt Ibid, p. 453.

[3] Arendt, Ibid, p. 511

[4] Arendt, Ibid, p. 401

[5] Arendt, Ibid, p. 543

[6] Arendt, Ibid, p. 450, footnote

[7] Arendt, Ibid, p. 506

[8] Arendt, Ibid, p. 599

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Sarah Meyer is a researcher living in the UK
(The UK is also having its share of oppression. Google ‘The Observer’: Henry Porter – he’s terrific - and angry.)

This Timeline article is dedicated to a visiting Washington, D.C. lawyer friend, who ticked me off - shaking a finger at me - four years ago, for saying that the U.S. was becoming fascist. I apologised, but I haven’t changed my mind; worse than I feared.

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The url to U.S. Martial Law Timeline http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2007/08/us-martial-law-timeline.html
Shorter url: http://tinyurl.com/362zcd

Sarah Meyer is also on the Advisory Committee of the BRussels Tribunal. Please see here for access to this article on the BRussels Tribunal site. Thank you.

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UPDATES

"what people gotta understand is that we'll make decisions based upon law. We're a nation of law.":
George Bush (14.02.08, BBC interview)

Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business
07.02.08. Matthew Rothschild, progressive. Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard , receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. .. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law. ... In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, ... “Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

US Surveillance: these Boots are Made for Walking (10.08.07)

Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007
Passed 23.10.07. To understand the meaning of the above “prevention” act, read here.

Is Bush Administration Planning Martial Law?
28.10.07. rinf.com. Congressman DeFazio Denied Access to Government Documents. The Bush Administration shocked lawmakers and analysts two months ago when it denied a member of the House Homeland Security Committee permission to examine classified plans for maintaining the functioning of the government in the event of a major natural disaster or terrorist attack.

Big Brother: House passes the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act"
02.11.07. Lee Rogers, global research. House Passes Thought Crime Prevention Bill

Constitution Will Grant Police Preemptive Arrest Powers
05.11.07. minivannnews. The police will be constitutionally empowered to arrest anyone they believe may commit a crime, after an amendment to the draft Bill of Rights was passed last night.
The Home Minister, Justice Minister and Attorney General all voted in favour of the amendment, which some lawyers say gives the police a green light to detain political dissidents.

2008

INTERNET Pentagon: The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system" 02.02.08. Brent Jessop, Global Research. The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. Chapter headings: Computer Network Attack; Fighting the Net; PNAC Dominating Cyberspace; Internet 2; Conclusion From legitgov.org 'It seems now to be way beyond the realm of coincidence that a further 4th critical international communications cable should break within seven days.' Flag plays down net blackout conspiracy theories. 04 Feb 2008 Flag Telecom on Monday played down conspiracy theories over the recent damage to undersea cables that has seriously disrupted internet and international telecoms services across the region. Two intercontinental cables connecting Europe and Asia were cut off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday, followed by breaks in two more cables off the UAE coast on Friday. Flag owns two of the affected cables. The location of the breaks and short space of time in which they have happened has sparked fears the cables were intentionally damaged by the US and Israel to deprive Iran of internet access. The Cable-Cutter Mystery 08.02.08. Justin Raimondo, anti-war.com. Spies, lies, and "conspiracy theories" – what's behind the Middle East internet outage On 8 February, Rense wrote that up to 8-9 cables were cut. Internet interruption in the Middle East looks fishy 08.02.08. J. Dvorak, marketwatch. Nobody knows what caused the cut cables in the Mediterranean that interrupted Internet service to parts of the Middle East last week, but there are now conspiracy theories galore written by bloggers and pundits. Some say it will benefit terrorists and Iran somehow. In fact, the cut cables -- originally blamed on ships dragging anchors -- look more like a ploy by some intelligence agency to disrupt Iranian commerce, specifically an emerging oil bourse that the Iranians have been quietly establishing and hoped to roll out fully in the next 60 days. There has always been talk about disrupting commerce by screwing up the Internet. We've just seen a proof of concept, whether done on purpose or by accident. This concept seems a little farfetched until you look at the details which were provided to me by one of my readers, Martin Kuplens-Ewart who has been following the story from the outset. He notes: "there is a substantial event that has effectively been killed by the loss of connectivity: the launch of the Iranian Oil Bourse. {see also PNAC: Rebuilding America's Defenses - A Biopsy on Imperialism; Part II: "Special Interests" - The Persian Gulf 2008 submarine cable disruption Wikepedia. Learn About Submarine Cables iscpc. NARRATIVE HISTORY OF SUBMARINE CABLES The Cable-Cutter Mystery 09.02.08. afterdowningstreet. Spies, lies, and "conspiracy theories" – what's behind the Middle East internet outage And my dog ate my homework... 09.02.08. afterdowningstreet. Anchor behind cable cut mystery Chinese cut off from internet 09.02.08. BBC. 5th cable cut fuels allegations of isolating Iran

Disaster threatens US in cyber drill
In the middle of the biggest-ever Cyber Storm war game to test the nation's hacker defenses, someone quietly targeted the very computers used to conduct the exercise. The surprising culprit? The players themselves, the same government and corporate experts responsible for detecting and fending off attacks against vital computer systems, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press. Perplexed organizers sent everyone an urgent e-mail marked "IMPORTANT!" instructing them not to probe or attack the game's control computers. ... The $3 million, invitation-only war game simulated what the U.S. describes as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers. The government is organizing a multimillion-dollar Cyber Storm 2 , to take place in early March. Among the mock disasters confronting officials in the previous exercise: Washington's Metro trains shut down. Seaport computers in New York went dark. Bloggers revealed locations of railcars with hazardous materials. Airport control towers were disrupted in Philadelphia and Chicago. Overseas, a mysterious liquid was found on London's subway. The list of fictional catastrophes -- which also included hundreds of people on "No Fly" lists suddenly arriving at airport ticket counters -- is significant because it suggests what kind of real-world trouble keeps the White House awake at night. Railway switches failed. Planes flew too close to the White House. Water utilities in Los Angeles were compromised.

SPYING/SURVEILLACE


FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping
04.02.08. CNN. The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists. ... The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans. [NB: more money for the corporatists!] ... "It's the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project.
The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file.


Bush to veto surveillance bill without telecom immunity: Mukasey letter
05.02.08. Jurist. US President George W. Bush will veto any terror surveillance legislation passed by Congress that does not include liability protection for telecom companies, a letter from Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell warned Congress Tuesday, according to AP. Last week, Bush signed a 15-day extension [JURIST report] to the temporary Protect America Act [S 1927 materials; JURIST report], designed as a stopgap while Congress works on long-term legislation to "modernize" the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [text; JURIST news archive].

West Virginia: Bill Turns Traffic Cameras into Spy Cameras
11.02.08. thenewspaper.com / ICH. Cameras once proposed solely for the purpose of monitoring the level of traffic on freeways may soon have a new mission in West Virginia following unanimous state House passage of the "Guardian Angel Video Monitoring Act" last Wednesday.

Senate Approves Surveillance Bill, Preserves Telecom Immunity
12.02.08. Washington Post. The Senate voted today to preserve retroactive immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that cooperated with a government eavesdropping program, decisively rejecting an amendment that would have stripped the provision from a bill to modernize an electronic surveillance law.

Bush admits telecoms spied
12.02.08. Raw Story. Well, he finally dropped the "allegedly." President Bush at long last admitted what everyone has suspected for years -- the nation's telecommunications companies closely cooperated with the National Security Agency and his administration to implement large-scale spying on Americans.

Lockheed Secures Contract to Expand Biometric Database
13.02.08. washington post. The FBI yesterday announced the award of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to Lockheed Martin to develop what is expected to be the world's largest crime-fighting computer database of biometric information, including fingerprints, palm prints, iris patterns and face images. Under its contract to build Next Generation Identification, the Bethesda contractor will expand on the FBI's electronic database of 55 million sets of fingerprints and criminal histories used by law enforcement and other authorities. The aim is to make the query and results process quicker, more flexible and more accurate. Lockheed built and maintains the fingerprint database.

House Leaves Surveillance Law to Expire
15.02.08. C. Hulse, The New York Times/ truthout. The House broke for a week's recess Thursday without renewing terrorist surveillance authority demanded by President Bush, leading him to warn of risky intelligence gaps while Democrats accused him of reckless fear mongering.
See Video: Mr. Bush You Are A Fascist (Keith Olbermann)

Error Gave FBI Unauthorized Access to E-Mail
17.02.08. E. Lichtblau NY T|imes / truthout. A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network - perhaps hundreds of accounts or more - instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode. The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect. The problem has received no discussion as part of the fierce debate in Congress about whether to expand the government's wiretapping authorities and give legal immunity to private telecommunications companies that have helped in those operations. But an intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because surveillance operations are classified, said: "It's inevitable that these things will happen.

CIA's Ambitious Spy Plan Falters
16.02.08. Greg Miller, LA Times / truthout. After 9/11, the agency spent millions setting up front companies overseas to snag terrorists. Officials now say the bogus firms were ill-conceived and not close enough to Muslim enclaves.

Supreme Court Refuses To Review Warrantless Wiretapping Case
19.02.08. aclu. The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of prominent journalists, scholars, attorneys and national nonprofit organizations who say that the unchecked surveillance program is disrupting their ability to communicate effectively with sources and clients.

Homeland Security Training NYC Firefighters to Spy
19.02.08. Colin Meyn, In These Times/alternet. The FDNY will now be on the lookout for "material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities" during their day-to-day work. In November, the Associated Press reported that in New York, Homeland Security was testing a program called the Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise (FSIE) to help identify “material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities.”

Bush says no compromise possible on telecom immunity in surveillance bill
21.02.08. Jurist. US President George W. Bush Thursday reiterated his call for Congress to extend the temporary Protect America Act
which expired on Saturday without an agreement in Congress on replacement legislation, and said he can foresee "no compromise" with Congressional Democrats on the issue of immunity for telecommunications companies [JURIST report] from lawsuits related to their participation in the NSA warrantless surveillance program [JURIST news archive].

ACLU: 900,000 Names on U.S. Terror Watch Lists
27.02.08. ABC.

Censorship

Bush Administration Hides More Data, Shuts Down Website Tracking U.S. Economic Indicators
13.02.08. thinkprogress. The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has worsened. Conservatives have attempted to deflect attention from the crisis, by blaming the media’s negative coverage and insisting the United States is not headed toward a recession, despite what economists are predicting. The Bush administration’s latest move is to simply hide the data.

US: Comcast Defends Role As Internet Traffic Cop
13.02.08. C. Kang, Washington Post/ corpwatch.

MEDIA CENSORSHIP The excerpts below are from Into the Buzzsaw by Kristina Borjesson, who gives the accounts of 20 award-winning journalists who were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major news stories. Hidden Danger in Your Milk? Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report on hormones in your milk, Fox fired the general manager of our station. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination. We pleaded with him to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these TV stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” After we refused, Fox’s general manager presented an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000 in “consulting jobs,” but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. After declining, we were fired. (pp. 213 - 219) Dan Rather What's going on is a belief that you can manipulate communicable trust between the leadership and the led. The way you do that is you don't let the press in anywhere. Access to war is extremely limited. The fiercer the combat, the more the access is limited, [including] access to information. This is a direct contradiction of the stated policy of maximum access to information consistent with national security. There was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways the fear [now in the U.S.] is that you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. That fear keeps journalists from asking the tough questions. I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism. Greg Palast—BBC In the months leading up to the November [2000] balloting, Gov. Jeb Bush ordered elections supervisors to purge 58,000 voters on the grounds they were felons not entitled to vote. As it turns out, only a handful of these voters were felons. This extraordinary news ran on page one of the country's leading paper. Unfortunately, it was the wrong country: Britain. In the USA, it was not covered. The office of the governor [also] illegally ordered the removal of felons from voter rolls— real felons—but with the right to vote under law. As a result, 50,,000 of these voters could not vote. The fact that 90% of these were Democrats should have made it news as this alone more than accounted for Bush's victory. Michael Levine: The expert witness The Chang Mai "factory" that the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn't a thing we could do about it….In 1980, CIA-recruited mercenaries and drug traffickers unseated Bolivia's democratically elected president. Immediately after the coup, cocaine production increased massively. Bolivia [became] the source of virtually 100% of the cocaine entering the US. This was the beginning of the crack "plague."…The CIAA along with State and Justice Departments had to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source….I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote evidence of my charges. I addressed it to Newsweek. Three weeks later DEA's internal security [called] to notify me that I was under investigation….The highlight of the 60 Minutess piece is when the administrator of the DEA, Federal Judge Robert Bonner, tells Mike Wallace, "There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It's illegal." Gary Webb: Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion In 1996, I wrote a series of stories that began this way: For the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods gangs of LA and funneled millions in drug profits to a guerilla army run by the CIA. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America….The story was developing a momentum alll of its own, despite a virtual news blackout from the major media. Ultimately, it was public pressure that forced the national newspapers into the fray. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times published stories, but spent little time exploring the CIA's activities. Instead, my reporting and I became the focus of their scrutiny. It was remarkable [Mercury News editor] Ceppos wrote, that the four Washington Post reporters assigned to debunk the series "could not find a single significant factual error." A few months later, the Mercury News [due to intense CIA pressure] backed away from the story, publishing a long column by Ceppos apologizing for "shortcomings." The New York Times hailed Ceppos for "setting a brave new standard," and splashed his apology on their front page, the first time the series had ever been mentioned there. I quit the Mercury News not long after that….Do we have a free press today? Sure. It's free to report all the sex scandals, all the stock market news, [and] every new health fad that comes down the pike. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff—such stories are not even open (fl?)oor discussion. Lots more. See http://www.wanttoknow.info/emailmedia

WIKILEAKS 'Wikileaks.org' taken off line in many areas after fire, court injunction 18.02.08. The website WikiLeaks.org has been taken off line in many parts of the world. Wikileaks is a website dedicated to leaking documents that are "anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable." Several factors have taken the site off line including DDoS attacks, which was followed by a fire which took out the main servers hosting the site in Sweden, and a restraining order on the domain name 'WikiLeaks.org' issued in the United States. .. The third and final factor taking the site off line is a permanent injunction granted in the California Northern District Court in San Francisco, California to Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss Bank ... US court attacks web freedom; enjoins Wikileaks.org out of existence 18.02.08. Stephen Soldz, wikileaks. []click link for stories mentioned} One of the most important web sites in recent months has been Wikileaks.org. Created by several brave journalists committed to transparency, Wikieaks has published important leaked documents, such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq [see my The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq], the 2003 and 2004 Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, and evidence of major bank fraud in Kenya [see also here] that apparently affected the Kenyan elections. Wikileaks has upset the Chinese government enough that they are attempting to censor it, as is the Thai military junta. Now censorship has extended to the United States of America, land of the first amendment. As of Friday, February 15, those going to Wikileaks.org have gotten Server not found messages. Today I received an message explaining that a California court has granted an injunction written and requested by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers. It seems that the bank is trying to keep the public from accessing documents that may reveal shady dealings. Wikileaks was only given a couple of hours notice “by email” and was not even represented at the hearing where a U.S. judge took such a drastic step attempting to totally shut down an important information outlet. The result was this totally unprecedented attempt to totally wipe out the existence of Wikileaks: If this injunction stands, it will set an incredible precedent for all of us who use the web to unveil misbehavior by the rich and powerful. email from Wikileaks 19.02.08 "Here's some interesting background on Judge Jeffrey White: * He was appointed to his current position by George W. Bush in 2002 * He sentenced the reporters who blew open the drugs in baseball scandal to 18 months in prison for failing to reveal their sources * He also fined the San Francisco Chronicle $1000/day until the names were turned over to the court * He ordered struck down a San Francisco ruling that would have provided universal health care for the employed in San Francisco" Julius Baer's Court Order Springs a Leak 20.02.08. E. Schor, Washington Post / truthout. The US court order shutting down the website Wikileaks today appeared to backfire on the Swiss bank that sought the legal action, as bloggers and other fans of the site gave new life to leaked documents the bank was working to suppress. In addition to international Wikileaks versions that were unaffected by the shutdown order, "mirror" copies of the website sprouted like weeds thanks to supporters of its mission. Run anonymously, Wikileaks aims to publish sensitive documents that often prove incriminating for governments and corporations. Close of Wikileaks website raises free speech concerns 22.02.08. CSM. A US judge's move to close the dissident site Wikileaks only showed the limits of enforcing national laws in cyberspace. Internet activists this week gave a Swiss bank and a San Francisco judge a powerful demonstration of the "Streisand Effect." That's Internet jargon for any effort to suppress online information that backfires by drawing much wider publicity. The Wikileaks website can be read here

Sibel Edmonds’ Story Makes the MSM!
17.02.08. anti-war.com. It was shocking, but a pleasant surprise, to find Philip Giraldi’s
“Found in Translation” article reprinted , at least in part, in today’s Dallas Morning News. They did leave out the part about the Valerie Plame, but with graphics the article does fill the entire back page of the opinion section. [... more ... ]

Be irrepressible
Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information. The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression. learn more.

Army Blocks Public's Access to Documents in Web-Based Library
21.02.08. C. Lee, Washington Post/ Truthout. "The Army has shut down public access to the largest online collection of its doctrinal publications, a move criticized by open-government advocates as unnecessary secrecy by a runaway bureaucracy."
The Army has since restored public access. See full story at Secrecy News (21.02.08).

Parts of "60 Minutes" Broadcast Blocked in Alabama
24.02.08. Larisa Alexandrovna, Huffington Post. ... Tonight was something truly unseen in US history. During the 60 Minutes broadcast and ONLY during the Don Siegelman portion -- the screen went black for Huntsville residents and Mobile residents.


Police State


New Operation to Put Heavily Armed Officers in Subways
02.02.08. NY Times. In the first counterterrorism strategy of its kind in the nation, roving teams of New York City police officers armed with automatic rifles and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs will patrol the city’s subway system daily, beginning next month, officials said on Friday. Under a tactical plan called Operation Torch, the officers will board trains and patrol platforms, focusing on sites like Pennsylvania Station, Herald Square, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. Officials said the operation would begin in March. {NB: FEEL SAFER?]

Rape By Any Other Name
Guantanamo Comes to Main Street U.S.A.
12.02.08. VIDEO. STORY BY MARC GOLDMAN, ICH. The video .. is indicative of the evolving consciousness of law enforcement in our nation... and it's our 'Shock and Awe' government, with its penchant for gratuitous and unconscionable violence, and the People's refusal to hold them accountable, that is setting the stage for our future in this 'land of the free and home of the brave.'

When we allow fear and force to dominate the way in which our government deals with people we don't know... we open the door to despotism, for surely when we fail to protect the legitimate rights of any group or person, we sow the seeds of our own destruction. Take a look at this video if you want to know what is happening to civil liberties in our own country. I guess for some members of our community, this is not news at all.

Apparently local law enforcement officers are now being trained to treat citizens the way military personnel were trained to treat Guantanamo prisoners. Your government doesn't seem to care anymore what you think... except maybe during an election year and even then, not so much. And like the military, many police officers who have been trained to just follow orders, are doing just that...just following orders. Watch this video. Woman is stripped naked and abused by Start County Sheriff Dept. email them at strkshrf@raex.com to let them know how you feel. Our silence and indifference to the plight of others is what allows this kind of thing to happen. You probably won't get a better wake up call than this. No doubt bad public relations will force this kind of evidence into dark corners. The question is, will we wake up, or will we remain silent until something like this happens to someone we know and care about... or maybe to a lot of people we know and care about?

Following Orders
12.02.08. Mark A. Goldman, ICH. If it is true that the war in Iraq is illegal, as I and others believe it is—including the Secretary General of the United Nations—then all the deaths and atrocities that have occurred to date, inflicted by our coalition forces, are the acts of individuals who, knowingly or unknowingly, with good intentions or not, have been willing to break the law in order to follow the orders of superiors.

Please also see related article, Totalitarianism and Obedience

Tasers, Torture and Terror Tactics: America Becomes a Police State
14.02.08. existential cowboy / Speaking Truth to Power. Torture and atrocities are not confined to Abu Ghraib. In and out of the nation's 'out-sourced' penal institutions, perverts with badges terrorize the nation, threatening innocent children,women and the handicapped. Everyone is a target.

St. Paul Police Orders Tasers For Every Officer
16.02.08. myfoxtwincities/legitgov. Police force will have 370 tasers just in time for the Republican National Convention.

VIDEO. This is What A Police State Looks Like

Prisons

VIDEO; Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Detention camps at undisclosed locations in the US? Rule by Fear or Rule by Law?
13.02.08. L.Seller, D/ Hamburg, Sa..Fran Chronicle / global research. Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

Significant Progress Seen in U.S. Health Preparedness
21.02.08. nti. U.S. cities and states have made significant progress in preparing for an act of bioterrorism or other health crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday in a major report [called "Public Health Preparedness: Mobilizing State by State] ... This was the first time the federal government had assessed improvements made through more than $5 billion it has spent on public health preparedness since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

http://emergency.cdc.gov/">Centre for Disease Control and prevention: Emergency Preparedness & Response.
defense

N.M. Guard Prepared for WMD Attack, Officials Say
21.02.08. nti. Representatives for New Mexico’s National Guard have defended the state’s ability to respond to attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons despite the conclusions of an independent report, the Associated Press reported yesterday

Report: 1 in every 99 Americans behind bars
29.02.08. AP / USA.

Water
Congress Moves To SeizeControl Of All US Water
07.02.08. Rense. From Bathtubs To Baptismal Fonts, Congress Moves To Give the Corps of Engineers Control Of All U.S. Waters

Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water
14.02.08. Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Maude Barlow's new book about the water crisis is a call to arms to protect a fundamental human right.

Navy Research Paper: 'Disrupt Economies' with Man-Made 'Floods,' 'Droughts'
11.02.08. N. Shachtman, wired. The proposal suggests a study of the latest weather manipulation techniques, to "give the U.S. military a viable, state-of-the-art weather modification capability again." With that in hand, American forces would be able...
+ To impede or deny the movement of personnel and material because of rains-floods, snow-blizzards, etc.

+ To disrupt economy due to the effect of floods, droughts, etc.

See Water: The Impending Apocalypse (s. meyer, index research, 27.11.07)

Travel [ I guess THEY want to Martial Law the entire planet? ]

Civil liberties groups sue feds to get info on laptop searches by border agents
07.02.08. computerworld. Claim DHS didn't respond to FOIA request; searches of phones, other devices also at issue. Two civil liberties groups today filed a lawsuit in a federal court in California in response to complaints from travelers of excessive screenings at border-entry points, including inspections of the data on laptops, cell phones and other electronic devices.

Bush orders clampdown on flights to US
11.02.08. Guardian. EU officials furious as Washington says it wants extra data on all air passengers. EU officials furious as Washington says it wants extra data on all air passengers 11 Feb 2008 The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines. The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush regime that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington's requirements. According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.

More Screening Planned at 7 Airports
11.02.08. AP, SFgate. ... The screening tests will be conducted at airports in Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Jacksonville, Fla., New Bern, N.C., Eugene and North Bend, Oregon. Screening procedures will vary by airport.

Amtrak to Screen Carry-On Bags at Random
19.02.08. AP / anti-war. Amtrak passengers will have to submit to random screening of carry-on bags in a major new security push that will include train and platform patrols by officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs, the railroad plans to announce on Tuesday.

U.S. rescreening of bags from Canada called overkill

18.02.08. globeandmail. A U.S. policy requiring luggage arriving from Canada to be rescreened is so tangled in red tape that it's causing people to miss connections and is responsible for the loss or delay of as many as 100,000 bags annually, experts warn. ... The airport in Shannon, Ireland, is the only other in the world with pre-clearance to the United States.

IN THE UK: disgusting affront on human rghts; UK aping US policies

Government wants personal details of every traveller
23.02.08. Guardian.

DISASTER CAPITALISM

agri-terror

Bush Boosts Food Defense Budget
14.02.08. nti. The Bush administration has requested an additional $91 million in fiscal year 2009 for the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Food and Agriculture Defense Initiative, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported yesterday. A program in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that monitors for biological threats to animals and plants would have its budget increased from $63 million to $98 million. Funds for the health inspection service’s National Veterinary Stockpile would be doubled from $4 million to $8 million to supply vaccines, protective gear and other equipment for treating animals affected by a catastrophe. Funds for the service’s efforts related to “select agents,” or dangerous biological contaminants, would be increased from $4 million to $6 million (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

State Pioneers Food Safety Tracking Tool
14.02.08. nti. North Carolina state officials are using a cutting-edge food safety tracking system that they say might help facilitate a rapid response to any future agroterrorism incident. North Carolina’s “Multihazard Threat Database” is a Web-based mapping system that state personnel continually update so they can monitor both livestock and processed foods, according to Joe Reardon, director of the Food and Drug Protection Division at the North Carolina Agriculture and Consumer Services Department.

Monsanto U: Agribusiness's Takeover of Public Schools
15.02.08. Nancy Scola, AlterNet / Speaking Truth to Power. Thanks to Bush's new cuts on public funding for land-grant schools, agribusiness is gaining a huge foothold in the future of our food.

Bush Boosts Food Defense Budget
14.02.08. nti/legitgov. The initiative’s proposed $277 million budget would increase funds for food defense research conducted by the Agricultural Research Service from $9 million to $23 million while boosting agriculture defense research funds from $25 million to $39 million. A program in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that monitors for biological threats to animals and plants would have its budget increased from $63 million to $98 million.

'security' 'defense'

Canada, U.S. Agree To Use Each Other's Troops In Civil Emergencies
22.02.08. D. Pugliese, Canwest /ICH. Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other's borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

bio-'defense'

PESTICIDES BEING SPRAYED OVER CALIFORNIA CITIES
08.02.08. NaturalNews.com/ Speaking Truth to Power. The Sex Pheromone: Government's Pesticide Experiment Program The California Department of Food and Agriculture's own doctor acknowledges, in court documents, that the aerial application of this chemical has not been tested. Let me repeat this so you understand, chemicals are being sprayed on young children, nursing mother's, people with asthma, lung problems, heart problems, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless and the chemically sensitive - and this chemical formulation has NEVER been tested on even a piece of dirt, let alone, humans.

Did you know that each aerial application of Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F costs approximately $3.5 million and that $3 million is paid directly to the manufacturer Suterra, LLC of Bend, Oregon? If you examine the CDFA reports you will see the cause for grave alarm. The LBAM aerial spraying program does not target agricultural fields with this agricultural technology, but rather targets mostly residential and urban areas that are great distances from crops and fields.

Federal judge threatens anthrax reporter with contempt for not revealing sources
19.02.08. Jurist. US District Judge Reggie B. Walton Tuesday threatened to hold a reporter in contempt of court if she continues to violate an August 2007 order to testify [memorandum opinion, PDF; JURIST report] about government sources who provided five reporters with information about former US Army germ-warfare researcher Dr. Steven J. Hatfill [Washington Post profile].

Significant Progress Seen in U.S. Health Preparedness
21.02.08. nti. U.S. cities and states have made significant progress in preparing for an act of bioterrorism or other health crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday in a major report [called "Public Health Preparedness: Mobilizing State by State] ... This was the first time the federal government had assessed improvements made through more than $5 billion it has spent on public health preparedness since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Centre for Disease Control and prevention: Emergency Preparedness & Response.


Indonesian Official Suggests U.S., Others Developing Biological Weapons From Bird Flu Virus
22.02.08. nti. Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari has been ordered to stop sales of a new book she authored that suggests the United States and the World Health Organization might be developing biological weapons from bird flu samples collected in developing nations, the Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday

WMD 'defense'

The US-NATO Preemptive Nuclear Doctrine: Trigger a Middle East Nuclear Holocaust to Defend "The Western Way of Life"
11.02.08. Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research. The controversial NATO sponsored report entitled “Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership" calls for a first strike use of nuclear weapons. The preemptive use of nukes would also be used to undermine an "increasingly brutal World" as well as a means to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction:

"They [the authors of the report] consider that nuclear war might soon become possible in an increasingly brutal world. They propose the first use of nuclear weapons must remain "in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction". (Paul Dibb, Sidney Morning Herald, 11 February 2008)

The group, insists that the option of a nuclear first strike is indispensable, "since there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world." (Report, p. 97):

Army Guard Requests $94M for WMD Gear
15.02.08. NTI. The U.S. Army has asked lawmakers to allocate $94 million for equipment to protect Army National Guard personnel responding to attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, Inside the Pentagon reported yesterday

N.M. Guard Prepared for WMD Attack, Officials Say
21.02.08. nti. Representatives for New Mexico’s National Guard have defended the state’s ability to respond to attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons despite the conclusions of an independent report, the Associated Press reported yesterday

See NUCLEAR USA: SEPTEMBER - NOVEMBER 2007 (Index Research 06.01.08)

Racheting Up The Fear Factor

Rule by fear or rule by law?
04.02.08. Lewis Seiler,Dan Hamburg, sfgate / legitgov. Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse... or to support the rapid development of new programs." Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

FBI asks terror squads for threat data
14.02.08. AP| / wiredispatch / antiwar. Terrorism Task Forces Ordered to Watch for Threats Against Jewish Targets in the US. FBI asks terror squads for threat data. FBI spokesman Rich Kolko said there have been no specific threats so far against any Jewish centers after Tuesday's assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, which Hezbollah and its Iranian backers blamed on Israel.

Bush says Congress putting US in danger
15.02.08. AP/wiredispatch/antiwar. Bush Says Nation in More Danger of Terror Attack Because Congress Hasn't Extended Spy Law

False Flag?

SFRC Testimony -- Zbigniew Brzezinski
01.02.08. Brzezinski Testimony, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
See also: Senate Foreign Relations Commitee - February 1, 2007.
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan

False Flag Prospects, 2008 -- Top Three US Target Cities
23.02.08. Captain Eric H. May, global research. The easiest way to carry out a false flag attack is by setting up a military exercise that simulates the very attack you want to carry out. ... My aim, as a former military intelligence officer who spent five years with the U.S. Army 75th Division conducting military war games, is to convince the American people that the "next 9/11" -- constantly promised by officials and the media -- is likely to be carried out under the guise of future military exercises. If the American people are aware of pending exercises and the danger they represent, then the exercises cannot "go live" and effect the very terror events that they are supposed to be rehearsing against.
Military Exercises; Mainstream Media; "The Noble Lie"; Top Three US Target Cities; Postscript

Health

Vaccines and Medical Experiments on Children, Minorities, Woman and Inmates (1845 - 2007)
14.12.07. Dan Veracity, Natural News / Speaking Truth to Power (15.02.08). Think U.S. health authorities have never conducted outrageous medical experiments on children, women, minorities, homosexuals and inmates? Think again: This timeline, originally put together by Dani Veracity (a NaturalNews reporter), has been edited and updated with recent vaccination experimentation programs in Maryland and New Jersey. Here's what's really happening in the United States when it comes to exploiting the public for medical experimentation:

Top Scientists Want Research Free From Politics
A. Appel, Inter Press Service. "leading US scientists called on Congress Thursday to make sure the next president does not do what they say the George W. Bush administration has done: censor, suppress and falsify important environmental and health research. 'The next president and Congress must cultivate an environment where reliable scientific advice flows freely,' said Susan Wood, a former director of women's research at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Wood resigned her post in 2005 in protest over the FDA's delay in getting emergency, over-the-counter birth control onto the market. 'Serious consequences can result when drug safety decisions are not based on the best available scientific advice from staff scientists and experts,' she said."

US Government Asks Court to Seal Vaccine Records
26.02.08. Reuters / whale.to. Attorneys for the Bush Administration asked a
federal court on Monday to order that documents on hundreds of cases of
autism allegedly caused by childhood vaccines be kept from the public.

Understanding America

AMERICANISM: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”
11.02.08. Gaither Stewart, bestcyrano.org. It is a paradox that the Americanism of which Americans are so proud is the source of the pandemic anti-Americanism throughout the world. Precisely the same Americanism of which Americans boast generates a worldwide antipathy toward them. And today, not just toward the US government, but in many places—to begin with in Iraq, as testified by blog writers from there—that antipathy, that hate, is directed against Americans in general.

“We hate Americans!”

One wonders if there is some great misunderstanding at play. Is this a cultural matter? A lack of true information about Americanism and what it stands for? Are Americans simply misunderstood in the world?

However that may be, the nature of Americanism as it is understood by the majority of Americans and that perceived and experienced by non-Americans are so diametrically opposed that sometimes the two concepts seem to concern different historical times and different geographical places; Americans and the others seem to inhabit different worlds.

FAILED FASCIST STATES
15.02.08. Pablo Ouziel, Cyrano’s Journal/Speaking Truth to Power. When Hermann Hesse warned of the rise of fascism in Germany he was rejected by a majority of the population. The truth is that most people were experiencing first hand the benefits of fascist ideology. Today we look at that part of our global history with shame, asking ourselves how something like Auschwitz could be allowed to happen. The problem is that while we identify it in our past, we are reluctant to acknowledge it happening in our present. During the rise of the short-lived Nazi empire, criticizing Hitler and his party to the average German civilian would have undoubtedly received strong rejection. Today the same holds true to critics of the mighty ‘democratic’ empire, built by the U.S. with the submissive support of its ‘client states’. MUST READ ARTICLE.

Observations from the Frontline
18.02.08. William Bowles. Can the Clintons Clinch it? Who cares. "It’s pretty obvious, at least to me anyway, that the ‘democratic process’ has run its course, at least as it’s presently constituted in the so-called developed countries. Not that I’m advocating a dictatorship, in any case we already have a de facto dictatorship by default by virtue of the total non participation by the ‘people’ in the political process. [See for example, ‘How Far Are the Clintons Willing to Go?’ By Robert Parry, Consortium News for details on what is effectively no more than an internal struggle that bears little relationship to reality].

Instead we have what might be called a ‘commercial democracy’, that is to say, a political system that is really no more than a ‘product’ that’s ‘sold’ to the electorate (those who bother to vote). Devoid of real choices, we have to be persuaded to participate by being sold a candidate.

Just how desperate the ruling classes are to restore some kind of legitimacy is illustrated by the Obama/Clinton candidacy. Of course it’s all smoke and mirrors, a PR job of stupendous dimensions that’s costing hundreds of millions of dollars but one that is destined to backfire and for the obvious reason that real change is simply not on the cards, in fact it’s unthinkable let alone permissible." MUST READ, STUPENDOUS ARTICLE.

The West to the World: Accept Our Values or Die
21.02.08. Abid Mustafa, Middle East Online/alternet. Whenever western governments mention weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and Muslims in the same breath, the western media immediately breaks into a wild frenzy warning its people that a catastrophic event of epic proportions is about to unfold. Old European fables of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword are reinvented to convey the impression that Muslims are extremely dangerous, highly irresponsible and pay scant regard to human life. Hence the mantra of disarming Muslim countries of WMD has become the rallying cry of the West directed against the Muslim world. In some cases the arguments are extended to justify the West's ongoing policy of regime change in Syria, Iran and perhaps Pakistan.

NOTES FROM A DYING NATION No. 1, Part Two B
21.02.08. Eric Larsen, Atlantic Free Press. “It’s the most exciting presidential race, certainly in my lifetime.” MARK M. BAKER, a 60-year-old voter in the Bronx. [P7]
It would appear that Mr. Baker has slept through the entirety of his sixty years, having no consciousness of races where openly humane rather than secretly tyrannical ideas were fought for by politicians like Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and even, dare we add, the assassinated Robert Kennedy. Or perhaps it’s not that at all. Perhaps Mr. Baker really does get excited by watching traitors, liars, hypocrites, war criminals, and aiders and abettors of crimes against humanity preening day after day before the television cameras and, shills that they are, lying through their teeth, by omission or commission, about it all.


Larry Blumenfeld on New Orleans’ Refusal to Vanish
22.02.08. truthdig. “The destruction of buildings in 2005 was fearful, but so was the loss of something intangible: African America took a blow when the collective knowledge of black New Orleans was scattered to the four winds. Dispersing that population was like tearing up an encyclopedia in front of an electric fan. This book is dedicated to the people who are trying to put that book back together.”

American and Alone
26.02.08. Michael Goodspeed, best cyrano. .. “Atomized” is the best term to describe the collective socio-psychic state of 21st century Americans. Contracted individuals exist separate and alone, only occasionally “coming together” to butt heads and give each other the finger. ... Far from the spotlight of popular media — who remain obsessed with more sophisticated matters such as Britney Spears, steroids in baseball, and yet another stultifyingly irrelevant Presidential election — this is the reality of life in 21st century America. Despite the total pervasiveness of electronic “communications,” more and more of us are alone and lonely. Across the full socioeconomic, racial, and gender spectrum, for Americans young and old, rich and poor, fat and thin, married and single, loneliness has become the rule rather than the exception. .. Why are we alone? Why are we lonely? ...

You Think You Are Free?
28.02.08. L. Heard, ICH. Nowadays, states are usurping responsibilities that are rightfully those of their citizens. Western so-called democracies, in particular, are supposed to have governments that are servants of the people, whereas, in fact, the opposite is true. Under the guise of doing what's best for us or ensuring our security, governments are exercising more and more control over our lives. And, tragically, we are facilitating this erosion of our own freedoms, mostly because we're not even aware it's happening.

A Book Americans Must Read Before Time Runs Out. 25.03.08. Michael Scheuer, anti-war.com. 25.03.08. Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Gallup Press, 2008


The Science of Terror
26.03.07. Jim Miles, bestcyrano.org. Sometimes the science community, hiding behind the guise of empirical research, cannot see its own bias even while correctly analyzing a situation. The latter statement may seem contradictory, but given the manner in which it studies ‘terror’ and then applies those findings and definitions only to some ‘other’ group, it ignores the reality of terror at home and the reality of terror perpetrated by the ‘homeland’. Not ‘home grown terror’ such as the Timothy McVeighs of the world, nor the terror inflicted on the people by the very infrequent acts of foreigners acting on the homeland, but the terror of the country itself, the acts of the people in government, in the military, in politics, in religion, who either spread terror themselves or spread the fear of terror in order to control not only the domestic audience but foreign audiences as well.


US MARTIAL LAW APRIL 2008

Feds to collect DNA from every person they arrest
16.04.08. yahoo / legitgov. The government plans to begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency — a move intended to prevent violent crime but which also is raising concerns about the privacy of innocent people.

The Martial Law Act of 2006
15.04.08. James Bovard, Lew Rockwell / ICH. Martial law is perhaps the ultimate stomping of freedom. And yet, on September 30, 2006, Congress passed a provision in a 591-page bill that will make it easy for President Bush to impose martial law in response to a terrorist "incident." It also empowers him to effectively declare martial law in response to what he or other federal officials label a shortfall of "public order" - whatever that means.

Bush Replaced REX84 With New Martial Law EO
14.04.08. T. Twietmeyer, rense. Once In Control - Martial Law Will Stay. ... / America's case for a repeat of a Hitler type power grab is clearly underway.

Sheriffs Back Three Jails for Illegal Immigrants
21.04.08. WLTX. The current plan calls for the three prisons to hold up to 400 inmates each. (They will be) will be paid for through a program with the federal Department of Homeland Security.

see http://detroit.craigslist.org/rnr/650544976.html

UK AND EUROPE COLLUDING?

New anti-terrorism rules 'allow US to spy on British motorists'
Toby Helm and Christopher Hope, Telegraph. Routine journeys carried out by millions of British motorists can be monitored by authorities in the United States and other enforcement agencies across the world under anti-terrorismrules introduced discreetly by Jacqui Smith.

EU to Criminalize Internet-Based Incitement to Terrorism
19.04.08. dw-world


Important

National Security and the Presidential Transition
22.04.08. Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News. “The 2008-2009 election marks the first presidential transition in the post-9/11 era, and is of concern to many national security observers,” a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service says. / “While changes in administration during U.S. involvement in national security related activities are not unique to the 2008-2009 election, many observers suggest that the current security climate and recent acts of terrorism by individuals wishing to influence national elections and change foreign policies portend a time of increased risk to the current presidential transition period.” Reports and important links. see also;

"2008-2009 Presidential Transition: National Security Considerations and Options,"
April 21, 2008

Steven continues: Meanwhile, "A growing community of interest, including Members of Congress, senior officials in the executive branch, and think-tank analysts, is calling for a reexamination of how well the U.S. government, including both the executive branch and Congress, is organized to apply all instruments of national power to national security activities," according to another new CRS report. ... (cont)

US leads world in prison inmate numbers: NYT
23.04.08. The Jurist. US prisons currently house the world's largest inmate population, according to a Wednesday New York Times report [text] citing data provided by the International Center for Prison Studies [organization website]. The US currently holds 2.3 million inmates, far more than second-in-line China [JURIST news archive], which holds only 1.6 million inmates even though its population is four times that of the US. On a per capita scale, the US also leads worldwide inmate populations, with 751 people imprisoned for every 100,000 in population, compared with 627 inmates for every 100,000 people in Russia, 151 for every 100,000 in England, and 88 for every 100,000 in Germany [JURIST news archives]. The report attributes the high inmate numbers to several factors, including the prevalence of prison sentences for nonviolent crimes, rigorous anti-drug campaigns, and the ready availability of guns.

Machine Gun-Toting Officers To Patrol NYC Subway
24.04.08. CBS. M4 Carbine Rifles, MP5 Submachine Guns & Bomb Sniffing Dogs Part Of New "Torch Team" Anti-Terror Efforts

ACLU tells Senate: Stop Bush's abuse of 'state secrets'
24.04.08. raw story. "While national security must be protected," he said, "there must also be meaningful oversight by the courts and Congress to ensure the Executive branch does not misuse the privilege.”

Laura Berg's letter
27.04.08. NY Times, Editorial The PEN American Center, the literary organization committed to free expression, is honoring an American most people in this country have never read or even heard of: Laura Berg. She is a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital who was threatened with a sedition investigation after she wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

Daley: Chicago police to get assault rifles
26.04.08. chicago tribune. Chicago police officers will he armed with high-powered assault rifles when they're on the streets fighting gangs and other criminals.

read and vomit?

New troops in war on terror: 80 million boaters
27.04,08. AP / MSNBC. As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist the country’s 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the country’s 95,000 miles of coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, “The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al-Qaida’s weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success.”

Coup 2008 underway: Decision Is Likely to Spur Voter ID Laws in More States
29.04.08. The Supreme Court ruling on Monday upholding Indiana’s voter ID law is likely to lead to more laws and litigation, voting experts said. Lawmakers in at least four states may seek to pass stricter regulations in the next year or so, the experts said. In response, voting rights groups might sue on behalf of individuals or groups in an effort to exempt them.


MAY 2008

Fear Is a Tax, and We're Eagerly Paying It
04.06.08. Josef Joffe, Washington Post. Some years ago, I received a terror threat. If I did not apologize publicly and profusely for a column that blasted the Iranian regime, I would be killed by Friday, Sept. 13 -- what an auspicious date! So I sent for the security experts, and this is what they told me: Your front and back doors are worthless; get armored ones. Order bulletproof windows. Build a safe room. Install panic buttons. Get rid of that silly chicken-wire fence and put in a steel and concrete one. Don't use the driveway; try to vary your access routes (which, I think, meant sneaking home through the neighbors' gardens). Pretty soon, we were talking six-figure costs and contemplating emigration to Iceland.

Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Report offers answers
05.05.08. AP / legitgov. Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die. / Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia.

Americans Are Living (And Dying) In A Militarized Police State
05.05.08. Dave Gibson, Alternet. Today, police departments across the United States more closely resemble an occupying army than they do public servants responding to calls for help. Police officers can now be seen wearing helmets and body armor and carrying AR-15's, just to deliver simple warrants. The militarization of our police departments not only gives the appearance of a military dictatorship but places the public at great risk. / No less than 70 percent of U.S. cities now have SWAT teams.

Feds Practice Evacuation From D.C.
07.05.08. A national disaster exercise that began last week involves the evacuation of thousands of federal personnel from Washington, D.C., the Washington Post reported (see GSN, April 29). / In National Exercise 2-08, which continues through Saturday, terrorists release a poisonous gas from a tanker in Washington state while Oregon authorities must handle the unintentional escape of nerve agent from the Umatilla Chemical Depot./ Meanwhile, the capital region is faced with a terrorist threat and a major hurricane making its way up the East Coast. Over three days this week, the federal government is using cars and helicopters to move large numbers of employees to temporary sites in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. The drill is intended to test the ability to maintain “continuity of government” in the face of a crisis. / This is among the largest such drills since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said.

Questions Surround Homeland Security's Presence in Waterloo
09.05.08. whotv. People in Waterloo are trying to figure out what sort of operation federal officials are conducting in town. This week, the Department of Homeland Security took-over and sealed-off the grounds of the National Cattle Congress on the west side of Waterloo. ... A guard at the gate told us they are preparing for training exercises, but a Homeland Security spokesman would not confirm that. Many people in Waterloo believe the site is being transformed into a detention center. People in the Latino community fear it will be used in a mass immigration raid.

Domestic Spying Far Outpaces Terrorism Prosecutions
12.05.08. Richard B. Schmitt, LA Times / truthout. As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made. The trend concerns civil liberties groups as well as some lawmakers and legal experts. "The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously."


Fearmongering

Bush says he still fears new terror attacks on U.S.
13.05.08. President [sic] Bush said on Tuesday he was disappointed in "flawed intelligence" before the Iraq war and was concerned that if a Democrat wins the presidency in November and withdrew troops prematurely it could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States." He acknowledged concerns about leaving the unfinished [lost] Iraq war to a Democratic successor. Bush said his "doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

It is definitely fascism when it happens to you
14.05.08. Wayne Madsen, on line journal. In Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's world of an "Israelized" America, the terms SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) and BDO (Behavior Detection Officer) are the new acronyms of Stasi-like control of the American citizenry by a government that treats anyone as a suspicious person in the same manner that Israel mistreats its own Arab citizens and Palestinians. / Sunday, this editor and his colleague faced the Chertoffian menace at Washington's Reagan National Airport while heading to the gate to board a flight to Houston.

VIDEO: IF I WERE A 'TERRORIST'

All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush
15.05.08. Larisa Alexandrovna, at largely. [outstanding]

US military detained over 2000 minors as illegal enemy combatants since 2002: report
16.05.08. Jurist. Approximately 2,500 minors under the age of 18 have been detained as illegal enemy combatants by the US military at facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to a US government report

So they can continue to torture people in Afghanistan instead of Guantanamo?

U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
17.05.08. NY Times. The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come. / The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Air Force Colonel Wants to Build a Military Botnet
19.05.07. Kevin Poulsen, Wired. ol. Charles W. Williamson III is proposing that the Air Force build its own zombie network, so it can launch distributed denial of service attacks on foreign enemies. / In the most lunatic idea to come out of the military since the gay bomb, Williamson writes in the Armed Force Journal that the Air Force should deliberately install DDoS code on its unclassified computers, as well as civilian government machines. He even wants to rescue old machines from the junk bin to enlist in the .mil botnet army.


JUNE 2008

The Last Roundup: Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?
06.06.08. Christopher Ketcham, Global Research. ARE YOU ON THE LIST? The federal government has been developing a highly classified plan that will override the Constitution in the event of a major terrorist attack / In the spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president's henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral witness be present.

"Big Brother" Presidential Directive: "Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security"
11.06.08. Michel Chossudovsky, global research. The latest Big Brother police state measure emanating from the Bush administration, with virtually no press coverage, is NSPD 59 (HSPD 24) entitled Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security [Complete text of NSPD 59 (HSPD 24) in Annex below] / NSPD is directed against US citizens. / It is adopted without public debate or Congressional approval. Its relevant procedures have far-reaching implications. / NSPD 59 goes far beyond the issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of "associated biographic" information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be "accomplished within the law":

Copters will keep buzzing downtown through Friday
17.06.08. rocky mountain news. 'Routine' activity part of training for {so-called]war on terror. It's the end of a two-week exercise by special ops troops, supported by Denver police SWAT teams and firefighters, to prepare for a terrorism threat in a "realistic urban environment," said Lt. Steve Ruh, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

The New Surveillance Bill: The Worst of Both Worlds
21.06.08. Aziz Huq, The Nation/alternet. Months of troubled negotiations over new surveillance legislation ended in the House of Representatives today, with the approval of the so-called FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Hailed in some quarters as a "compromise" after the capitulation of the Protect America Act of 2006, the new surveillance bill is nothing of the kind: on core issues of privacy and accountability, there is no compromise, since little in the measure honors those two values. [the bill was also supported by B. Obama]

Analysis: U.S. military to patrol Internet
30.06.08. UPI / legitgov. U.S. military is looking for a contractor to patrol cyberspace, watching for warning signs of forthcoming terrorist attacks or other hostile activity on the Web. In a solicitation posted on the Web last week, the U.S. Army's Fifth Signal Command said it was looking for a contractor to provide "Internet awareness services" to support "force protection" -- the term of art for the security of U.S. military installations and personnel. "The purpose of the services will be to identify and assess stated and implied threat, antipathy, unrest and other contextual data relating to selected Internet domains," says the solicitation. The solicitation says the successful contractor will "analyze various Web pages, chat rooms, blogs and other Internet domains to aggregate and assess data of interest."

JULY 2008

Senate Passes Unconstitutional Spying Bill And Grants Sweeping Immunity To Phone Companies
09.07.08. ACLU / legitgov. ACLU Announces Legal Challenge to Follow President's Signature Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69 to 28 and is expected to be signed into law by President [sic] Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president’s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.

Police State USA: Spying as Law of the Land
11.07.08. Larry Chin, global research. FISA "Compromise" Completes Transformation of US into Full Police State. On July 9, 2008, the US Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation permitting government spying, including immunity to telecommunications companies involved in secret domestic surveillance programs. With the stroke of George W. Bush’s pen, the US is now a police state by definition. / The extent of the spying program, and its larger implications, have been revealed by Mark Klein, who blew the whistle on secret domestic spying program of Bush/Cheney’s National Security Agency (NSA) and AT&T

Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names
14.07.08. ACLU / legitgov. The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list. / "Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon." / A September 2007 report by the inspector general of the Justice Department reported that the list was growing by 20,000 names per month. ACLU launches online watch list complaint form

Fearmongering

Chertoff: European terrorists trying to enter US
17.07.08. legitgov. AP/legitgov. European terrorists [?] are trying to enter the United States with European Union passports, and there is no guarantee officials will catch them every time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday. Chertoff's comments on Capitol Hill comes as the country is entering a potentially vulnerable period with the presidential nominating conventions coming up next month; the presidential election in November; and the transition to a new administration in January -- all of which may be attractive targets for [Bush's] terrorists. Chertoff reiterated his concern that terrorists could sneak radiological material into the country on small boats or private aircraft. This material could be used to create an explosive device known as a "dirty bomb."

When not being spent on corporate wars in Iraq & Afghanistan; this is where U.S. tax money is going - not to US infrastructure or anything positive like that

Terror exercise contract reviewed for ethics issue
17.07.08. AP / legitgov. Federal officials are investigating whether millions of dollars are being steered improperly toward a government contractor to run the country's largest counterterrorism exercise. At issue is a written request for companies to compete for the TOPOFF 5 exercise contract and whether an employee of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) wrote parts of the proposal, according to officials familiar with the contract who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive procurement activity.


U.S. Headed for 'Heightened Alert' Stage
28,07.08. ABC. Exclusive: Major Events on the Horizon Prompt a Surge in Anti-Terror Efforts. Government officials have been quietly stepping up counterterror efforts out of a growing concern that al Qaeda or similar organizations [The White House?] might try to capitalize on the spate of extremely high-profile events in the coming months, sources tell ABC News.

Spying uncovered
17.07.08. Baltimore Sun. Documents show state police monitored peace, anti-death penalty groups

Training drill targets bio-terrorism
22.07.08. sign on san diego. Local, state and federal agencies are participating in a four-day training drill that focuses on how the groups respond to a mock bio-terrorism attack.


AUGUST 2008

REPORT

"The Department of Defense DNA Registry and the U.S. Government Accounting Mission" by Brion C. Smith, August 2005 (at page 14).
Read about it here.

Clarity At Last: Border Guards Don't Need A Reason To Seize Your Laptops, Cell Phones, Cameras, iPods, Tapes, Books, Handwritten Notes...
04.08.08. Winter Patriot, uruk. We finally know what to expect in border inspections. According to the government, border guards can seize any data storage medium, and copy any data -- from your laptop compute! rs, cell phones, digital cameras, memory cards, iPods, portable disk drives and such, as well as from traditional analog media such as tapes, books, pamphlets and even handwritten notes. And they can do it for no reason, without any grounds for suspicion, without any hint that you might have done anything wrong. We will all be comforted to have answers to longstanding questions...

FOCUS | The New York Times: A New Rush to Spy
22.08.08. NY Times/Truthout. "There is apparently no limit to the Bush administration's desire to invade Americans' privacy in the name of national security. According to members of Congress, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to give the F.B.I. broad new authority to investigate Americans - without any clear basis for suspicion that they are committing a crime. Opening the door to sweeping investigations of this kind would be an invitation to the government to spy on people based on their race, religion or political activities. Before Mr. Mukasey goes any further, Congress should insist that the guidelines be fully vetted, and it should make certain that they do not pose a further threat to Americans' civil liberties."

Defense Intelligence Agency Seeking "Mind Control" Weapons
22.08.08. Tom Burghardt, globalresearch. A new report from the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (NRC) argues that the Pentagon should harvest the fruits of neuroscientific research in order to enhance the "warfighting" capabilities of U.S. soldiers while diminishing those of enemy personnel. ... / During the "golden age" of the CIA and U.S. Army's quixotic search for "mind control" agents during the 1950s and 1960s, researchers were seeking a reliable mechanism that would unlock the secrets of the mind--and gain control over witting or unwitting subjects--for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of unethical experiments were carried out on psychiatric patients, civilians and soldiers. The results were subsequently suppressed on grounds on "national security."

Some 2 years ago, the Senate Health Subcommittee heard chilling testimony about the human experimentation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations." ...

We believed that the record, incomplete as it was, was as complete as it was going to be. Then one individual, through a Freedom of Information request, accomplished what two U.S. Senate committees could not. He spurred the agency into finding additional records pertaining to the CIA's program of experimentation with human subjects. ... The records reveal a far more extensive series of experiments than had previously been thought. Eighty-six universities or institutions were involved. New instances of unethical behavior were revealed.

The Central Intelligence Agency drugged American citizens without their knowledge or consent. It used university facilities and personnel without their knowledge. It funded leading researchers, often without their knowledge.

As Antifascist Calling queried in "Neuroscience, National Security & the 'War on Terror'," "If behavioral psychology was handmaid to the horrors perpetrated at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and CIA transnational 'black sites,' what new nightmares are in store for humanity when advances in neuroscience, complex computer algorithms and a secretive national security state enter stage (far) right?"... /

While Nazi theories of Aryan superiority may have been displaced by a uniquely American ultranationalist, though no less predatory utilitarian praxis, behind the glittering technological promises trumpeted by today's biotech weaponeers lurk the same murderous mental constructs that guided Indian hunters and slave traders of yore.

Only this time, we're all Manchurian candidates.

...
In the UK: shadows of USA?

Safe in our cages
26.08.08. A.C. Grayling, Guardian. In the Queen's speech this autumn Gordon Brown's government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and "made accessible" to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and "other public bodies". / Not even George Orwell in his most febrile moments could have envisaged a world in which every citizen could be so thoroughly monitored every moment of the day, spied upon, eavesdropped, watched, tracked, followed by CCTV cameras, recorded and scrutinised. Our words and web searches, our messages and intimacies, are to be stored and made available to the police, the spooks, the local council – the local council! – and "other public bodies".
[DisGUSTing] "the first duty of our politicians should be to protect our liberties,"

...
Bush Seeks to Affirm a Continuing War on [of] Terror
29.08.08. E. LICHTBLAU, NY Times / legitgov. Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President [sic] Bush’s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda [al-CIAduh]. Mr. Bush’s advisers want Congress to say so and "acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans." The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say. Some lawmakers are concerned that the administration's effort to declare anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers , even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court and Congress.

Rule by Fear

Massive Police Raids on Suspected Protestors in Minneapolis
31.08.08. Salon.com/ Common Dreams. Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. ... / There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. VIDEO.

SEPTEMBER 2008

The Election

Pre-Emptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC
02.09.08. M. Cohn, Truthout: "In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called 'Moles Wanted.' Law enforcement sought to pre-empt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention."

Police, National Guard, Fire Tear Gas Into Protest Group
01.09,08. Pioneer Press staff /ICH. - Includes video. Local police and Minnesota National Guard units are using a combination of pepper spray, concussion grenades and tear gas on a group of breakaway protesters gathered on Kellogg Boulevard in downtown St. Paul. The group of about 150 protesters, many thought to be with the group "Funk the War," had been blocking traffic for much of the afternoon.

As Unlawful Arrests Continue, St. Paul Feels Like a City Under Siege for Some Residents
03.09.08. Liliana Segura, AlterNet. "It's like we don't have rights. Like we don't even live here."

BREAKING: RNC 8 Charged with "Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism"
03.09.08. indymedia / legitgov. In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. / "These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. / The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC -- other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement -- and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. . None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police.

Bush pushes for more police power
03.09.08. Nat Henhoff, cantonrep. In his last months, President Bush is working to ensure that his successor will have the greatly expanded power of the executive branch — unprecedented in American history — that Bush instituted after 9/11. His chief enabler in this ever-increasing surveillance of American citizens is Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Rule Changes Would Give FBI Agents Extensive New Powers
12.09.08. Carrie Johnson, The Washington Post/truthout. "The Justice Department will unveil changes to FBI ground rules today that would put much more power into the hands of line agents pursuing leads on national security, foreign intelligence and even ordinary criminal cases. The overhaul, the most substantial revision to FBI operating instructions in years, also would ease some reporting requirements between agents, their supervisors and federal prosecutors in what authorities call a critical effort to improve information gathering and detect terrorist threats. The changes would give the FBI's more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor."

New FBI Guidelines Open Door to Further Abuse
12.09.08. ACLU/legitgov. Following a briefing today at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the American Civil Liberties Union reiterated its deep concern over new guidelines that would govern FBI investigations. The new guidelines would lower standards for beginning "assessments" (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, and would replace existing guidelines for five types of existing guidelines: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations.

Big Brother in the "Big Apple": Encircling Manhattan with thousands of surveillance cameras
15.09.08. Tom Burghardt, globalresearch.ca. New York's Mass Surveillance Plan Fast-Tracked by the NYPD. Mukasey Hands FBI Broad New Powers.

Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
23.09.08. Fox News/legitgov. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening -- a body scanner that can read your mind. Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person -- not the device -- set to wreak havoc and terror. MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security's directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.


VIDEO (23.09.08, 1 min.) Oct. 1st Military starts Martial Law Mission

Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to "help with civil unrest"
26.09.08. Michel Chossudovsky, global research. What we are dealing with is a militarization of civilian police activities in derogation of the Posse Comitatus Act. ... / What is envisaged is the possibility of a (false flag) terrorist attack on America, which could be used as a justification for retaliatory or preemptive military action overseas (e.g. Iran) as well actions on the domestic front. The ultimate objective of this deployment of 1st BCT is to apply combat experience in the Homeland:/ ... Civil unrest resulting from from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc. The timing of this planned militarization is crucial: how will it affect the presidential elections scheduled for Tuesday November 4. / ... But at the same time, the Bush administration may be seeking a justification to establish martial law and intervene militarily within the USA.

Possible Chemical Attack Against Muslims in Ohio
27.09.08. Kyle Nagel, Dayton Daily News/truthout. "Baboucarr Njie was preparing for his prayer session Friday night, Sept. 26, when he heard children in the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton coughing. Soon, Njie himself was overcome with fits of coughing and, like the rest of those in the building, headed for the doors."

The Electronic Frontier: Homeland Security's Border Spying Operations
28.09.08. Tom Burghardt, globalresearch.ca. New documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) revealed that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) subunit "reversed a two-decades-old policy that restricted customs agents from reading and copying the personal papers carried by travelers, including U.S. citizens."/ After suing DHS under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the civil liberties organizations received 661 pages of heavily redacted files from the department and will be seeking withheld documents as well as the blacked-out material in federal district court this fall./ ... in some cases 50% or more of the documents have been censored.

Warning: police state ahead
28.09.08. morningstar. PICK: Lockdown America by Christian Parenti. TOM MELLEN reads Christian Parenti's unflinching analysis of the US justice system.

Exercise readies first units for NORTHCOM assignment
29.09.08. army.mil/-news. The exercise scenario was a sobering one: a 10-kiloton nuclear device detonated in America's heartland, quickly overwhelming civilian responders. / Military leaders who recently trained for this response say they are now thinking differently about how to move equipment, extract the injured and take care of people following this type of attack.

Their insights came from "Vibrant Response," a week-long command post exercise designed to train the commanders and staff of the nation's dedicated force for responding to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive incidents, or CBRNE incidents. The units completed the exercise Sept. 18 at Fort Stewart, Ga., just two weeks before their force, the CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF, will be assigned to U.S. Northern Command to begin its mission.


Financial Crisis


Is Our "Financial Crisis" A New 9/11? Chumps Think So, And I Do Too
27.09.08. Winter Patriot, uruknet. I've seen a remarkable number of mentions of 9/11 in connection with the current so-called "financial crisis". Most of them have come from people who seem to have no knowledge of or interest in what actually happened on 9/11. And yet they all seem to "get" the parallel. How odd. Or maybe not. The most prominent common features, in my view, between the so-called "terrorist attacks" of 2001 and the so-called "financial crisis" of 200! 8 are: It's an inside job -- a terrorist attack of unprecedented scope and scale -- enabled by statements from politicians and the media which are chock-full of lies and spin (...) The programs endorsed by Krugman and every other bailout proponent amount to robbing from the poor and innocent to give to the rich and guilty, under cover of extreme fear deliberately induced by our own government and media. And guess what? It's just like 9/11 all over again, and from an administration whose only claim to legitimacy was that it supposedly protected us from such things...

The Rich Are Staging a Coup Right Now
29.09.08. Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com /alternet. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab.

Will Wall Street's Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?
30.09.08. Scott Thill, AlterNet. "Financial Terrorism". [NB: Do! * Click link * for Jon Stewart video]


OCTOBER 2008

Photo Jeremy Scahill

Satellite-Surveillance Program to Begin Despite Privacy Concerns
01.10.08. Siobhan Gorman, Wall Street Journal/truthout. "The Department of Homeland Security will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn't yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws."

UK
UK: Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones
19.10.08. Times on Line. Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

VIDEO: Rep. Brad Sherman Martial Law
02.10.08. (saluki 420. "The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. That atmosphere is not justified. Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday, that the sky would fall, the Market would drop two or three thousand points the first day-another couple thousand the second day-and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no. That's what I call fearmongering. Unjustified. Proven wrong."

FOCUS | Dean Baker: Bush Provokes Fear to Push for Bailout
03.10.08. Dean Baker, The Center for Economic and Policy Research/truthout. "This is the first time in the history of the United States that the president has sought to provoke a financial panic to get legislation through Congress. While this has proven to be a successful political strategy, it marks yet another low point in American politics. It was incredibly irresponsible for President Bush to tell the American people on national television that the country could be facing another Great Depression. By contrast, when we actually were in the Great Depression, President Roosevelt said that, 'we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.'"

Shock and Awe: Bipartisan Beltway Terrorists Launch Economic 9/11 on the American People
03.10.08. Chris Floyd, uruknet.de. You've seen the news. You know the score. The House of Representatives has now completed the economic terrorist attack inflicted on the American people by the nation's elite. The bailout bill -- or as Arthur Silber more rightly terms it, the "Extortion Bill" -- is already law, thanks to the Democrats in Congress, and to Barack Obama, who spent the day working the phones and twisting arms to make sure the $700 bill! ion bonanza for the filthy rich passed without any more of the hiccups that held it up earlier this week. The plan that Obama made his own -- despite its origins in the poison kitchen of the Bush White House -- is far worse than the version voted down on Monday...

Asleep at the Wheel
03.10.08. Fred on everything. The Pentagon is now the private army of any president who chooses so to use it.

==
04.10.08. NB: THE BILL PASSED BY CONGRESS/SENATE IS NOT A "RELIEF PLAN"; IT IS STILL A "BAILOUT". WHO IS BEING BAILED OUT? WALL ST AND BUSH/CO. Changing the language to mean its opposite is de-rigour for this administration. Bush/Co will make millions on this one.
==

New, controversial FBI guidelines go into effect
04.10.08. AFP. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Democrat Patrick Leahy said the new guidelines expand the FBI's powers of surveillance. "It appears that with these guidelines, the attorney general is once again giving the FBI broad new powers to conduct surveillance and use other intrusive investigative techniques on Americans without requiring any indication of wrongdoing or any approval even from FBI supervisors," Leahy said in a statement. / "The American people deserve a vigilant Justice Department that does not sacrifice or endanger their rights and privacy," he added.

Palin Accuses Obama of 'Palling Around With Terrorists'
04.10.08. Fox news/ ICH. "This is not a man who sees America as you see America, and as I see America," Palin said. "Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect -- imperfect enough that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. Americans need to know this. ... I think, OK we gotta get the word out.

Intelligence Policy on Unauthorized Disclosures
06.10.08. Secrecy News. Intentional leaks of intelligence are a violation of law, may result in irrevocable damage to national security, and will not be tolerated,” according to a 2002 directive from the Director of Central Intelligence (pdf) that was itself leaked. / The directive largely reiterates longstanding policy, though perhaps with increased vigor. It states twice that leaks will not be “tolerated” and twice more that intelligence agencies will take “aggressive” measures to combat leaks.

New Army Doctrine on Stability Operations
06.10.08. Secrecy News. An Army field manual (large pdf) published today updates military policy on “stability operations,” referring to the use of military and other instruments of national power “to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief.” / … “But this doctrine looks beyond the here and now to address a likely future where threats to our national security emerge from regional conflicts arising from increased competition for scarce natural resources, teeming urban populations with rising popular expectations, unrestrained technological diffusion, and a global economy struggling to overcome the strain of the American financial crisis, meet mounting demands from emerging markets, and extend foreign development aid into third world countries.”

America ! Be Truly Afraid
06.10.08. Rand Clifford, countercurrents. So what if instead of subjugating, dividing and stupefying the the people, corporate media actually lived up to its noblest reason for being and served the peoples’ best interests? What might be some of the headlines we’d see, and the essence driving them? The House closed - door meeting was primarily about nine key issues ...

Leahy Concerned about NorthCom’s New Army Unit
07.10.08. M. Rothschild, progressive / anti-war.

“Invasion Of The Sea-Smurfs”
08.10.08. Amy Goodman, Democracy Now / countercurrents. In December 2001, in the midst of restricted access to bank accounts due to a financial crisis, respectable, middle-class Argentines rose up, took to the streets, smashed bank windows and ultimately forced the government out of power, despite a massive police crackdown and a failed attempt to control the media. Here in the U.S., with the prospect of a complete failure of our financial system, the people have spoken and do not want an unprecedented act of corporate welfare. We don’t know how close the system is to collapse, nor do we know how close the people are to taking to the streets. The creation of an active-duty military force, the sea-smurfs, that could be used to suppress public protest here at home is a very bad sign.

UN rights chief warning over tackling terrorism
08.10.08. Yahoo. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay said moves by European Union nations, the U.S. and others to expand government powers "at the expense" of parliaments and courts was a cause for concern.

America's Shadow Government Part II
09.10.08. John W. Whitehead, Huff post. Part 2. [The next president] will also inherit a shadow government--an authoritarian regime that is fully staffed by unelected officials, fully operational and ready to take over the running of the country at a moment's notice. This is all part of the government's Continuity of Government (COG) plan , which was laid out in two May 2007 directives issued by President Bush. These directives, which do not need congressional approval, provide that the president (or his appointees) will take control of the government in the event of a "national emergency"--loosely defined to mean "any incident" that disrupts governmental functions or "severely affects the U.S. population." This could mean anything from a terrorist attack to a hurricane. Particularly significant is the absence of a plan to repopulate or reconvene Congress or the Supreme Court, which would give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the executive branch.

FEMA sources confirm coming martial law
09.10.08. Wayne Madsen, global research. WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

Homeland Security

Homeland Security's Space-Based Spying Goes Live
08.10.08. Tom Burghardt, intel daily / ICH. While America's attention has shifted to the economic meltdown and the presidential race between corporate favorites John McCain and Barack Obama, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Applications Office (NAO) "will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn't yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws."

New college major: homeland security
09.10.08. boston.com/legitgov. 5 students began Daniel Webster College's new major in homeland security this fall. The students will spend the next few years taking classes with anxiety-producing names: Acute Stress Management, Sociology of Disasters and Ideology, Conflict and Terror. About 300 schools have homeland security programs.

Biological / chemical warfare

New Site Details Chemical Warfare, LSD Tests
10.10.08. Jason Sigger, blog.wired. For decades, the U.S. military has been accused of exposing service members and the public to chemical and biological warfare agents and simulants.

US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears
11.10.08. yahoo / legitgov. When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard. Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism." The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare. [legitgov's comment: [The U.S. is the most prolific 'state sponsor of terrorism' on God's green earth, and if *anyone* is going to create, spread and manage-for-profit an avian flu pandemic--it's Bush's bioterror team. Oh, btw. Try to envision Sarah Palin running the show during a Blackwater-KBR bird flu event. See: Killer flu recreated in the lab 07 Oct 2004 UK Scientists have shown that tiny changes to modern flu viruses could render them as deadly as the 1918 strain which killed millions. A US team added two genes from a sample of the 1918 virus to a modern strain known to have no effect on mice.]

Eavesdropping

Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans
09.10.08. ABC. Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

Congress initiates probe over NSA military eavesdropping charges
11.10.08. Jurist. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Friday that it is investigating allegations made by two members of the US military that the National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropped on the personal conversations of members of the military and humanitarian aid workers stationed in the Middle East.

Protestors/Crowd Control

Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists
08.10.08. Washington Post. The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out "Crowd Control"
08.10.08. Naomi Wolf, alternet. Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn't pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.

Army Orders Pain Ray Trucks; New Report Shows 'Potential for Death'
10.10.08. David Hambling, blogwired. After years of testing, the Active Denial System -- the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam -- could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it's shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer. / The contract for the pain ray trucks is "expected to be awarded by year's end," Aviation Week notes. "A year after the contract is signed, the combination vehicle/weapons will start be fielded at the rate of one per month."

The Prosecution for War Crimes of President Bush 13.10.08. Sherwood Ross Assoc. Press Release, globalresearch.ca/. Massachusetts law school Dean Lawrence Velvel will chair a Steering Committee to pursue the prosecution for war crimes of President Bush and culpable high-ranking aides after they leave office Jan. 20th. Besides Velvel, members of the Steering Committee include: Ben Davis, a law Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law, where he teaches Public International Law and International Business Transactions. He is the author of numerous articles on international and related domestic law. Marjorie Cohn, a law Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, Calif., and President of the National Lawyers Guild. Chris Pyle, a Professor at Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches Constitutional law, Civil Liberties, Rights of Privacy, American Politics and American Political Thought, and is the author of many books and articles. Elaine Scarry, the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University, and winner of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center For Constitutional Rights, of New York City, which was recently involved with war crimes complaints filed in Germany and Japan against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others. David Swanson, author, activist and founder of AfterDowningStreet.org/CensureBush.org coalition, of Charlottesville, Va. Kristina Borjesson, an award-winning print and broadcast journalist for more than twenty years and editor of two recent books on the media. Colleen Costello, Staff Attorney of Human Rights, USA, of Washington, D.C., and coordinator of its efforts involving torture by the American government. Valeria Gheorghiu, attorney for Workers’ Rights Law Center. Andy Worthington of Redress, a British historian and journalist and author of books dealing with human rights violations. Initial actions considered by the Steering Committee, Velvel said, are as follows: # Seeking prosecutions of high level officials, including George Bush, for the crimes they committed. # Seeking disbarment of lawyers who were complicitous in facilitating torture. # Seeking termination from faculty positions of high officials who were complicitous in torture. # Issuing a recent statement saying any attempt by Bush to pardon himself and aides for war crimes prior to leaving office will result in efforts to obtain impeachment even after they leave office. # Convening a major conference on the state secret and executive privilege doctrines, which have been pushed to record levels during the Bush administration. # Designation of an Information Repository Coordinator to gather in one place all available information involving the Bush Administration’s war crimes. # Possible impeachment of 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jay Bybee for co-authoring the infamous “torture memo.” Further information and to arrange interviews with Dean Velvel, contact Sherwood Ross, Sherwood Ross Associates, Suite 403, 102 S.W. 6th Avenue, Miami, FL 33130; (305) 205-8281. E-mail sherwoodr1@yahoo.com.

Mail carriers to bring drugs in anthrax attack
01.10.08. Reuters. Government mail carriers would deliver emergency supplies of antibiotics to people in U.S. cities in the case of an anthrax attack, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials said on Wednesday. The system has been tested in three large [blue] cities -- Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston -- and a pilot program is set to begin soon in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in Minnesota. The U.S. Postal Service carriers who would bring the antibiotics from door to door all would be volunteers who would have advance supplies of antibiotics to protect themselves and their families, officials said. Following any new attacks, the mail carriers would be escorted by local police as they deliver supplies of a few days' worth of antibiotics directly to residences throughout an affected community, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said.

UK

'Great' terror plot brewing in UK: Top official
16.10.08. indian express.

MoD scientists 'deployed in UK'
21.10.08. BBC / legitgov. Scientists from Porton Down have been deployed in the UK a "number of times this year", the government's head of counter-terrorism has told MPs. / The lab mainly specialises in nuclear and biological warfare but the reason for the deployments is not known. / Brigadier Chip Chapman told a committee of MPs he could not go into details for national security reasons. The Commons defence committee is probing the UK's level of readiness for a terrorist attack or other emergency.

= =

Police prepare for unrest
21.10.08. The Hill/legitgov. Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest. / Public safety officials said in interviews with The Hill that the election, which will end with either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president, demanded a stronger police presence.

ACLU Demands Information On Military Deployment Within U.S. Borders
21.10.08. ACLU / legitgov. The American Civil Liberties Union today demanded information from the government about reports that an active military unit has been deployed inside the U.S. to help with "civil unrest" and "crowd control" – matters traditionally handled by civilian authorities. This deployment jeopardizes the longstanding separation between civilian and military government, and the public has a right to know where and why the unit has been deployed, according to an ACLU Freedom of Information request filed today. / "The military's deployment within U.S. borders raises critical questions that must be answered," said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "What is the unit's mission? What functions will it perform? And why was it necessary to deploy the unit rather than rely on civilian agencies and personnel and the National Guard? Given the magnitude of the issues at stake, it is imperative that the American people know the truth about this new and unprecedented intrusion of the military in domestic affairs."

Terrorists could strike Britain by infecting country with bird flu
27.11.08. Telegraph. Terrorists could strike Britain by infecting the country with bird flu or Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a leading group of security experts has warned. A commission led by Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, identified 27 countries where terror organisations could become a threat to the UK. The report by the Institute of Public Policy Research warns that one of the biggest emerging threats comes from terrorists turning to biological warfare.
[Lets nip the 'al-Qaeda-bird flu-link' lie in the bud. It's not 'al-Qaeda' that's trying to get the bird flu pandemic party started. See: Killer flu recreated in the lab (07.10.04.(BBC) UK Scientists have shown that tiny changes to modern flu viruses could render them as deadly as the 1918 strain which killed millions. A US team added two genes from a sample of the 1918 virus to a modern strain known to have no effect on mice. Animals exposed to this composite were dying within days of symptoms similar to those found in human victims of the 1918 pandemic. See also: Indonesian Minister: Rich nations creating "new viruses" to create markets for drug companies to sell vaccines (06.09.08. AFP) -- Supari says US using bird flu virus to develop biological weapons 06 Sep 2008. And see: HHS Declares 'Health Emergencies' to Limit Legal Liability for Anti-terrorism Vaccines, Drugs
(19.10.08. Lori Price, legit gov.) The U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Michael Leavitt, has declared a series of 'public health emergencies' -- due to risk of a bioterrorism attack -- that continue through 2015.

Travel

Homeland Security to Change Airline Boarding Process
22.10.08. washington post / legitgov. The Department of Homeland Security will take responsibility from airlines for checking passenger names against watch lists beginning in January and will require all commercial passengers for the first time to provide their full name, date of birth and gender as a condition of boarding a flight, U.S. officials said today. VIDEO.

Wealth gap creating a social time bomb
23.10.08. John Vidal, Guardian. Growing inequality in US cities could lead to widespread social unrest and increased mortality, says a new United Nations report on the urban environment. / In a survey of 120 major cities New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Many were above an internationally recognised acceptable "alert" line used to warn governments. / "High levels of inequality can lead to negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilising effect on societies," said the report. "[They] create social and political fractures that can develop into social unrest and insecurity."

Packs of robots will hunt down uncooperative humans
22.10.08. Paul Marks The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human"... Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed?... Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen.

U.S. "Constitution Free Zone" Fact Sheet
23.10.08. ACLU. globalresearch.ca. The Problem; Much of US Population Affected; Part of a broader problem. If the current generation of Americans does not challenge this creeping (and sometimes galloping) expansion of federal powers over the individual through the rationale of “border protection,” we are not doing our part to keep alive the rights and freedoms that we inherited, and will soon find that we have lost some or all of their right to go about their business, and travel around inside their own country, without interference from the authorities.

VIDEO; Colin Powell - "There's Going To Be A Crisis...On the 21st, 22nd of January [2009]" (24.10.08. globalresearch.ca)

Surveillance (cont)

Darpa Wants to See Inside Your House
22.10.08. Noah Shachtman, blog.wired. The Pentagon wants to be able to peer inside your apartment building -- picking out where all the major rooms, stairways, and dens of evil-doers are. ...Darpa, the Defense Department's way-out research arm, is looking to develop a suite of tools for "external sensing deep inside buildings." The ultimate goal of this Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project: "reverse the adversaries' advantage of urban familiarity and sanctuary and provide U.S. Forces with complete above- and below-ground awareness."

Biological Warfare

Huge New Biodefense Lab Is Dedicated at Fort Detrick
23.10.08. Nelson Hernandez, Washington Post. The Department of Homeland Security dedicated a massive biodefense laboratory in Frederick yesterday, moving toward the facility's opening despite questions raised about the risks of deadly pathogens to be studied there. / ...Construction began in June 2006 on the $143 million, 160,000-square-foot facility inside the fort, the Army's sprawling medical research post in Frederick. The ship-shaped building will be divided between the lab's major divisions: a forensic testing center, which aims to identify the culprits in biological attacks; and the Biothreat Characterization Center, which seeks to predict what such attacks will look like and guide the development of countermeasures.

"Social Time Bomb"
Wealth gap creating a social time bomb
23.10.08. John Vidal, Guardian. Growing inequality in US cities could lead to widespread social unrest and increased mortality, says a new United Nations report on the urban environment. / In a survey of 120 major cities New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Many were above an internationally recognised acceptable "alert" line used to warn governments. / "High levels of inequality can lead to negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilising effect on societies," said the report. "[They] create social and political fractures that can develop into social unrest and insecurity."

Robots Hunt You
Packs of robots will hunt down uncooperative humans
22.10.08. Paul Marks The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human"... Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed?... Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen.
==
U.S. "Constitution Free Zone" Fact Sheet
23.10.08. ACLU. globalresearch.ca. The Problem; Much of US Population Affected; Part of a broader problem. If the current generation of Americans does not challenge this creeping (and sometimes galloping) expansion of federal powers over the individual through the rationale of “border protection,” we are not doing our part to keep alive the rights and freedoms that we inherited, and will soon find that we have lost some or all of their right to go about their business, and travel around inside their own country, without interference from the authorities.

Surveillance

Darpa Wants to See Inside Your House
22.10.08. Noah Shachtman, blog.wired. The Pentagon wants to be able to peer inside your apartment building -- picking out where all the major rooms, stairways, and dens of evil-doers are. ...Darpa, the Defense Department's way-out research arm, is looking to develop a suite of tools for "external sensing deep inside buildings." The ultimate goal of this Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project: "reverse the adversaries' advantage of urban familiarity and sanctuary and provide U.S. Forces with complete above- and below-ground awareness."

VIDEO; Colin Powell - "There's Going To Be A Crisis...On the 21st, 22nd of January [2009]" (24.10.08. globalresearch.ca)

Tracking Your Every Move: ‘Enhancing’ Driver’s Licenses At The Cost Of Privacy
26.10.08. Christopher Parsons, countercurrents. The potential for ubiquitous surveillance that emerges with Enhanced Drivers Licenses (EDLs) could only be imagined by the Stasi in Communist East Germany, but is a genuinely looming specter for contemporary North American democracies. Provincial and state governments in North America are proposing to 'enhance' driver’s licenses in coming years by including a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in them

Biological Warfare

U.S. to provide extra $320 mln to fight bird flu
25.10.08. Xinhuanet. The additional 320 million dollars will bring to 949 million dollars offered by the United States to the fight against avian and pandemic influenza, said Dobriansky.

Military bracing for wartime presidential transition
25.10.08. Ann Scott Tyson, Washington post. he U.S. military, bracing for the first wartime presidential transition in 40 years, is preparing for potential crises during the vulnerable handover period, including possible attacks by al-Qaida and destabilizing developments in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to senior military officials. / "I think the enemy could well take advantage" of the transfer of power in Washington, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, who launched preparations for the transition months ago, and who will brief the president-elect, the defense secretary nominee and other incoming officials on crisis management and how to run the military. [WHO, exactly, is "launching" a terrorist attack? -- eg look at this nifty bit of CIA work in 1964, and polka dots don't change their spots! ]

In bioterror dry-run, Kansas community turns flu shot clinic into dispensing station
25.10.08. abilene-rc. For the nurses who gave the shots, the police officers at the Abilene Community Center and others, the nine-hour walk-in influenza clinic on Thursday, was a test. For the first time, the Dickinson County health department partnered with Abilene Police, the Sheriff’s Office, Emergency Management and others and turned the clinic into a point of dispensing event that satisfied their yearly requirement to prepare for a public health emergency or a [US-engendered] biological attack.
==
The New Technology of Repression
31.10.08, Robert Parry, consortium / uruknet.
In its final months, the Bush administration is pressing ahead with a new generation of spy technology designed to strengthen the U.S. military’s ability to detect and eliminate suspected insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere based on computer analyses of their movements and activities. The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has begun granting contracts to software firms to create algorithms that can be applied to the real-time video feeds from dr! one aircraft so the data can be sorted and stored on a wide range of human activities, from digging a ditch to climbing into a car to kissing someone...

Fear Mongering

Police fear riots if Barack Obama loses US election
24.10.08. Telegraph. Law enforcement officials say the intense public interest and historic nature of the vote could lead to violent outbreaks if people are unhappy with the results, encounter problems casting their ballots or suspect voting irregularities. / Police departments say they cannot rule out disorder and are mobilising extra forces and putting SWAT teams on standby.

"Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War": Interview with Anthony Teolis, Veterans For Peace
27.10.08. Mike Whitney, ICH. Our leaders are using their power to invoke fear. They are operating secret prisons and torturing people. They are deploying paramilitary forces that not answerable to congress and spying on the American people. Our representative form of government has become corrupt, ineffective and unresponsive to its citizens.

Bio Terror 'Next Threat' For US
31.10.08. Sky News. n an exclusive interview, homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff said sources of radioactive and biological materials must be properly secured "at all costs". / He warned terrorists are actively seeking to acquire such materials.

"A Second 9/11": An Integral Part of US Military Doctrine
31.10.08. Michel Chossudovsky, globalresearch. IMPORTANT READ.

False Flag

Report of suspicious powder at high school a false alarm
31.10.08. dispatch. 15 students and eight adults who were in the building at the time were quarantined while emergency officials swarmed the scene. Men in Mylar suits and air masks went into the building and eventually everyone inside endured cold decontamination showers in makeshift stalls made of tarps strung between fire engines.


NOVEMBER 2008

Senior Corporate Executives Warned to Leave N.Y. on 9/11: Source
03.11.08. foreign policy journal. The source, who spoke to the Journal on the condition of anonymity, worked at a European branch of the media giant Warner Bros.

UK surveillance

UK: Government black boxes will 'collect every email'
05.11.08. Independent. Internet "black boxes" will be used to collect every email and web visit in the UK under the Government's plans for a giant "big brother" database, The Independent has learnt. [But the UK is infamous for losing data bases]

Australia Joins 'McCarthy brigade'

Internet filter to block 10,000-plus "unwanted" sites
13.11.08. au courier mail. The websites form a blacklist of unspecified "unwanted content", Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy revealed in Federal Parliament.

Police hire private spies to snoop online
26.11.08. smh.com,au.

Homeland Security

REPORT
"Homeland Emergency Preparedness and the National Exercise Program
10.11.08. fas.org. Background, Policy Implications, and Issues for Congress,"
==
Military command casts broad net with homeland security operations
09.11.08. colorado independent/legitgov. A recent article by The Colorado Independent reported that the U.S. Northern Command, a military entity created in 2002 for homeland defense missions and based in Colorado Springs, plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service members for specialized domestic operations inside the United States. What’s next for the Northern Command? So far the federal government is keeping details relating to the planned troop activation vague, but claims the service members will only be used for humanitarian purposes.

Defense Department Order Allows Secret Raids in Many Countries
09.11.08. Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, NY Times / truthout. "The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials. These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States."

Theater of War: Portrait of a Homeland Security State
22.11.08. Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet. A new book by the award-winning photojournalist Nina Berman. [Photo Slideshow Included]

Why all these 'exercises'?

What Is NorthCom Up To?
13.11.08. Matthew Rothschild, Progressive / Common Dreams. This week and into next, NorthCom and NORAD are conducting a joint exercise called "Vigilant Shield '09." / The focus will be on "homeland defense and civil support," a NorthCom press release states. / From November 12-18, it will be testing a "synchronized response of federal, state, local and international partners in preparation for homeland defense, homeland security, and civil support missions in the United States and abroad."

EU Conducts WMD Response Exercise
13.11.08. nti. European Union military experts were scheduled today to conclude a three-day exercise in Belgium aimed at refining techniques for responding to a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack, the European Defense Agency said.

Major international drill based at D-M to focus on rescue skills, coordination
15.11.08. azstar. The effort, dubbed Angel Thunder, will involve the U.S. Army and Air Force, troops from Germany, Chile, Colombia and observers from Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Pakistan. / Several non-military U.S. agencies such as the State and Justice departments, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, also will take part in the drills, which aim to smooth interaction between military branches, allied nations and civilian agencies. / With about 450 personnel involved, Angel Thunder "is the most complex and largest Department of Defense personnel- recovery exercise to date," said a news release from Air Combat Command in Langley,

"Emergency Preparedness" or Martial Law?
Vigilant Shield 09: A Cover for Illegal Domestic Operations?
23.11.08. Tom Burghardt, globalresearch.ca. But the NORTHCOM-CIFA liaison wasn't the only episode of illegal military spying on Americans to come to light. In May, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Marines, including a Colonel and the co-founder of the Los Angeles County Terrorist Early Warning Center, stole top secret intelligence files from Camp Pendleton's Strategic Technical Operations Center. / Among the documents filched by the intelligence privateers were those marked "Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information," the highest U.S. Government classification. The files included surveillance dossiers on the Muslim community and antiwar activists in Southern California. .. / A November 5 press release described that the concurrent exercises included "U.S. Strategic Command GLOBAL LIGHTNING 09 and BULWARK DEFENDER 09; Canada Command DETERMINED DRAGON; California National Guard VIGILANT GUARD; and the State of California GOLDEN GUARDIAN." Discussion of CRS Report and involvement of Northrop Grumman.

==
KBR's Convenient Contract
15.11.08. Lori Price, legitgov. Halliburton's offshoot, KBR, is awarded a $75 million U.S. Army Corps contract to provide emergency power to Western states days before a wildfire sweeps California, 'threatening the power of the city of Los Angeles'. Now, that's what I call a coincidence!

G-20 Emergency Summit in Washington = Fear Mongering to Hide Bush Bailout Mess?

Naomi Klein,Photo © Sarah Meyer, Hay Festival’08

Wall Street's Bailout is a Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene -- Why Aren't the Dems Doing Something About It?
14.11.08. Naomi Klein, Tha Nation / Alternet. In a moment of high panic in late September, the U.S. Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed -- a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice." / Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country's banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending -- for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc. -- is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used.

VIDEO: Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill at Miami Book Fair. Bailout: "The Bush Administration's Final Pillage."

Fear Mongering: You Have Been Warned

Bush: Terrorists May Attack During Transition
06.11.08. anti-war. In a speech at the White House, he said “we’re in a struggle against violent extremists determined to attack us, and they would like nothing more than to exploit this period of change to harm the American people.”

Targeting Protestors

Security focused on protesters more than terror
14.11.08. sfgate. U.S. intelligence officials say they have no credible information about potential terrorist or criminal attacks against a weekend summit in Washington of world leaders to deal with the global financial crisis. ... / The high profile event — drawing many world leaders and members of the media to one place — is an appealing target for terrorists and other extremists who want to make a point. ... / "It is possible, however, that an individual adversely affected by the current economic downturn and acting impulsively" could see the summit as an opportunity to commit violent acts, the assessment said. / The nation's jobless ranks zoomed past 10 million last month, the most in a quarter-century, as 240,000 more people lost jobs.

Preemptive Policing & the National Security State: Repressing Dissent at the Republican National Convention
19.11.08. Tom Burghardt, global research.ca. With "preemptive policing" all the rage in Washington, the whistleblowing website Wikileaks has done it again, exposing how repressive trends in the U.S. had real world consequences for democracy during September's Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul, Minnesota. / On November 15, the global whistleblowers published a leaked planning document "Special Event Planning: 2008 Republican National Convention," a dense schematic used by repressors who targeted activists, journalists and concerned citizens during the far-right conclave.


"Fiscal Martial Law?"

Experts See Security Risks in Downturn
15.11.08. Washington Post. Intelligence officials are warning that the deepening global financial crisis could weaken fragile governments in the world's most dangerous areas and undermine the ability of the United States and its allies to respond to a new wave of security threats. / U.S. government officials and private analysts say the economic turmoil has heightened the short-term risk of a terrorist attack, as radical groups probe for weakening border protections and new gaps in defenses.

Lawless Capital, Rushing to Armageddon
19.11.08. Black Agenda Report. The frenzy of unchecked illegality pulsates outward from the chaotic center of crisis and criminality: Wall Street, which has succeeded in establishing a kind of privatized martial law economic regime in the waning months of the Bush kleptocracy. The $700 billion "bailout" is revealed as a brazen bait-and-switch bamboozlement, in which Goldman Sachs Family Don Hank Paulson, under color-of-law as Treasury Secretary, ignores the terms of congressional legislation to dispense mountains of public wealth to his bankster friends as he sees fit. In return for their cut of the loot, the banking mafia give the public - nothing!

Paulson Was Behind Bailout Martial Law Threat
20.11.08. Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet. Senator James Inhofe has revealed that Henry Paulson was behind the threats of martial law and a new great depression prior to the passage of the bailout bill, having made such warnings during a conference call on September 19th, around two weeks before the legislation was eventually approved by both the Senate and Congress. / on October 2, Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman gave a stunning speech on the House floor during which he decried the fact that, “Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day, another couple of thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.”

Obama Threats

TARGET OBAMA
06.11.08. daily express. A MILITARY-style operation to keep Barack Obama alive was under way yesterday within hours of his victory.

Barack Obama is warned to beware of a ‘huge threat’ from al-Qaeda
15.11.08. NY Times. Security officials fear a ‘spectacular’ during the transition period. Barack Obama is being given ominous advice from leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to brace himself for an early assault from terrorists. / General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, this week acknowledged that there were dangers during a presidential transition when new officials were coming in and getting accustomed to the challenges. But he added that no “real or artificial spike” in intercepted transmissions from terror suspects had been detected. / President Bush has repeatedly described the acute vulnerability of the US during a transition. The Bush Administration has been defined largely by the 9/11 attacks, which came within a year of his taking office. / ... Lord West of Spithead, the Home Office Security Minister, spoke recently of a “huge threat”, saying: “There is another great plot building up again and we are monitoring this.”

Obama Has More Threats Than Other Presidents-Elect
14.11.08. AP / truthout. "Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive."

Election spurs 'hundreds' of race threats, crimes
15.11.08. ap / myway. Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars. / Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America. / From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders. / There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

Dangers from US Foreign Policies

America's Moronic Iraqi Policy
18.11.08. Paul Craig Roberts, ICH. If the US maintains its pro-Israeli stance against Arabs and Muslims generally, the implications of a growing Muslim population and a government obsessed with its "war on terror" are frightening for American civil liberty. In order to contain the potential terror that it will have imported, Washington would impose a total police state. We will have our own Saddam Hussein.

Nuclear and Biological Fearmongering

REPORT

Nuclear Terror Risks Demand Global Attention, Report Says
18.11.08. nti. Despite progress [sic] toward securing nuclear weapon-usable materials around the globe, nations must do more to prevent terrorists from acquiring the means to create a nuclear nightmare, a major new Harvard University report urged today. See Report Securing the Bomb 2008.

Report Sounds Alarm Over Bioterror
30.11.08. Joby Warrick. Washington Post. The report is the product of a six-month study by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism. Seven years after the 2001 anthrax attacks, a congressionally ordered study finds a growing threat of biological terrorism and calls for aggressive defenses on par with those used to prevent a terrorist nuclear detonation. / Due for release next week, a draft of the study warns that future bioterrorists may use new technology to make synthetic versions of killers such as Ebola, or genetically modified germs designed to resist ordinary vaccines and antibiotics. / .. The number of such "high-containment" labs in the United States has tripled since 2001, yet U.S. officials have not implemented adequate safeguards to prevent deadly germs from being stolen or accidentally released, it says. "The rapid growth in the number of such labs in recent years has created new safety and security risks which must be managed," the draft report states.

New York, New York

NYC Opens Counterterrorism Center
19.11.08. nti. New York City police opened a new counterterrorism center in Manhattan's financial district this month that is set at some point to monitor data from radiological and biological threat sensors installed around the island and its connecting bridges and tunnels, the Associated Press reported. .. / The facility would eventually receive video footage from 3,000 cameras posted in and near the financial district, an area of about 1.7 square miles. Roughly 150 cameras have been deployed to date; an additional 250 are expected to begin operating this year and the remaining devices are set to be installed by 2011.

New York Police Fight With U.S. on Surveillance
19.11.08. NY Times. An effort by the New York Police Department to get broader latitude to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects has run into sharp resistance from the Justice Department in a bitter struggle that has left the police commissioner and the attorney general accusing each other of putting the public at risk.

NYPD wants more terror wiretaps
20.11.08. UPI.

NY warns of possible al Qaeda attack
26.11.08. Reuters. Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said the warning was issued on the basis of "plausible but uncorroborated information" and that al Qaeda may have discussed such attacks in late September. / Knocke said Homeland Security and the FBI had passed on the warning to state and local officials on Tuesday but there was no specific information to confirm that the plot had developed "beyond aspirational planning."

Warning Boosts Security On N.Y. and D.C. Transit
27.11.08. washington post.

New York subway system on high alert after Mumbai attack
27.11.08. hindu.com [it was the rich, and 22 dead foreigners in the financial capital of India that were under attack. Why isn't US Homeland Security in Wall St.?]

California: Infectious Fear Mongering

L.A. tightens security after New York's terrorism alert
26.11.08. LA Times. Local mass transit routes will be under extra security through the holidays, especially after a report of a possible Al Qaeda terrorist threat to New York City’s transit systems, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Kentucky

Anti-terror law requires God be acknowledged
28.11.08. kentucky.com. Under state law, God is Kentucky's first line of defense against terrorism. / The 2006 law organizing the state Office of Homeland Security lists its initial duty as "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth." [Hiring Bush, then?]

U.S. Islamophobia

U.S. Muslims worry about new federal rules
30.11.08. MSNBC.

DECEMBER 2008

REPORT

Understanding and Preventing Nuclear Terrorism (03.12.08. Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation)

ARTICLES

Europe rights chief criticizes anti-terror blacklists 01.12.08. JURIST. Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg said Monday that human rights standards have been undermined by the "war on terror." Hammarberg focused on blacklists created by UN Security Council Resolution 1267 (1999); the EU common position 2001/931, EU Regulation 2580/2001 , and revisions made to EU Regulation 2580 . Under these resolutions, persons suspected of involvement with terrorism can have their financial assets seized without being afforded a trial. They can submit a request for removal from the list to the UN Sanction Committee but only the country of which they are a citizen can assert any formal rights relating to the seizure. Hammarberg wrote in a column posted on the COE website. / he 'war on terror' has gravely undermined previously agreed human rights standards. The counter-terrorism measures taken since 9/11 must now be thoroughly review and changed, not only in the United States and other affected countries, but also in inter-governmental organisations [sic]. Innocent victims must have their names cleared and receive compensation and steps must be taken to prevent similar injustices in the future. Those suspected of association with terrorism must not find themselves on so-called 'black-lists' without any prospect of having their case heard or reviewed by an independent body. / Placements on the UN and the EU 'black-lists' have been regularly voided by the courts. In 2006, the European Court of First Instance annulled a decision by the Council of the European Union that froze the assets of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) . In 2007, the same court overturned a decision to freeze the assets of the chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Jose Maria Sison and the Hamas-affiliated al-Aqsa Foundation. In January, the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) called the blacklists "completely arbitrary" . In October, UN Special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights Martin Scheinin urged an overhaul of the blacklisting system.

Obama Appointments

Homeland security: a multi-agency behemoth
01.12.08. AFP. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano , who was nominated Monday by president-elect Barack Obama to be the next DHS secretary, will inherit a behemoth of a department that stands accused of muddled thinking and inefficiency. / .. With 200,000 employees and an annual budget of more than 50 billion dollars, homeland security is the US government's third-biggest department after the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs.

Obama to Appoint WMD Terror Prevention Coordinator
03.12.08. nti. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama intends to assign a coordinator responsible for overseeing all efforts to prevent nuclear and other WMD terrorism, a step strongly urged by a bipartisan report issued this week

==

Keep the Change: The Empire Beat Goes On
01.12.08. Chris Floyd, uruknet. ...But hey, if the Afghan adventure goes up in smoke, there is always another prime target for the Bush-Obama-Gates "War on Terror": the American people. As the Washington Post reports, with astonishing sang-froid, the Terror Warriors plan to deploy 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States, to "help" local authorities with "domestic emergencies." And as many others have noted earlier, the definition of a "domestic emergency" requiring the use of combat ! troops against the American people is entirely up to the discretion of our old friend, the Unitary Executive -- soon to be appearing in a brand-new sepia-toned edition, but still packing the same authoritarian punch we've come to know and love so well. Now don't you feel safer already? Aren't you proud to be an American again? Isn't it great to see how things are changing?....

Bio-Nuclear

Panel warns biological attack likely by 2013
01.12.08. P. Hess, AP. The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists. / The report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri, acknowledges that terrorist groups still lack the needed scientific and technical ability to make weapons out of pathogens or nuclear bombs. But it warns that gap can be easily overcome, if terrorists find scientists willing to share or sell their know-how. see also here (UPI).

04.12.08. I received FOUR fearmongering news stories this afternoon. So I was pleased to read the following: Slew of Warnings on Nuclear, Biological Terrorism Prompt Worries of Fearmongering.
03.12.08. Alex Kingsbury, us news / legitgov. After a series of dire new warnings about possible terrorist threats—capped by a government commission's report that terrorists are likely to stage a biological or nuclear attack somewhere in the world during the next five years—some experts are urging officials "to retire the fear card," as California Rep. Jane Harman puts it.

and

Analyst Takes Issue With Estimate of WMD Risk
04.12.08. Elaine M. Grossman, nti. Ref: Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism: Michael Krepon, a co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center who has worked at the State Department and on Capitol Hill, said policy-makers should question expert judgments that prompt such levels of fear. / .. “A fear-based strategy of reducing nuclear dangers is not politically sustainable,” Krepon said. “A fear-based strategy can lead to significant errors in judgment and policy.”

America, cowering to an imaginary enemy, is not the country I once knew
05.12.08. Simon Jenkins, Guardian. America seems much in need of Roosevelt's maxim to stop fearing fear itself. Virtually all comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11 and al-Qaida, and thus invited citizens to continue feeling afraid. No matter that Mumbai appears to have been primarily about Kashmir and the status of India's Muslims. No matter that Osama bin Laden has no dog in that fight. Any stick will do to elevate al-Qaida as America's enemy number one.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then ... they came for me ... And by that time there was no one left to speak up." German Pastor Martin Niemoller

Police: NY hotels vulnerable to Mumbai-type attack (05.12.08. WIRED)

Analysts Debate Bioterror Risks
11.12.08. nti. "I think in the palace of truth, the scientific community will tell you that the threat of the development of a (terrorist) biological weapon was vastly overblown," said Brian Finlay, an analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center, said in an interview. / Still, "the threat of a successful dissemination of a dangerous pathogen has consequences that are potentially so excessively catastrophic that not investing resources to prevent even a remote chance of this occurrence would be an egregious abrogation of our government's responsibility to protect Americans," he added.

U.S. to Prepare Chemical Weapons Waste Treatment Plan
11.12.08. nti. The U.S. Defense Department is scheduled next week to begin developing a plan for treating waste produced by neutralizing chemical warfare materials at two sites. .... Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado.

http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20081211_7404.php">U.S. Extends Anthrax Vaccine Funding for Alabama Firm
11.12.08. nti. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has provided an Alabama biotechnology firm with $1.4 million in new funding to pursue a next-generation anthrax vaccine. / Vaxin Inc. received its initial government grant in 2005.

Senators Hear Security Warnings About Labs, Bioweapons
12.12.08. tni. Congress might need to pass legislation to improve the safety and security of private and federal laboratories that work with deadly biological pathogens to help ensure they do not fall into the hands of terrorists, officials at a U.S. Senate hearing said on Thursday.

U.S. Agency Fails to Address Potential "Dirty Bomb" Threat, Lawmaker Says
15.12.008. nti. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be ignoring the potential use of cesium chloride as an ingredient in radiological "dirty bombs" by refusing to prohibit the use of the radioactive isotope, U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said Friday

U.S. Air Force Developing Nuclear Blast Curtains
16.12.08. nti. The U.S. Air Force yesterday announced it is developing thermal curtains to protect the crews of its B-52 nuclear bombers from the light of an atomic blast

Final U.S. Chemical Tanker Rail Route Rule Issued
16.12.08. nti. A finalized regulation allows rail firms to send tankers carrying chlorine or other dangerous chemical substances to pass through large U.S. urban areas,Outside safety assessments should be conducted throughout the process of designing and producing the virus, the U.S. researchers said in noting potential concerns about their work. the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday

Upgrades Planned for Dugway Chemical, Biological Defense Testing Site
17.12.08. nti. The plans [for Utah] call for installing advanced sensors, communications technology and other equipment. A number of 10-meter-tall towers would be erected, each employing technology to monitor the dispersal of mock warfare materials in testing.

Expert Worried by U.S. Disease Research
24.12.08. nti. The head of the Australian National Center for Biosecurity has expressed concerns about the possible ramifications of U.S. research that produced a synthetic virus similar to SARS, the Canberra Times reported today. / SARS, which has killed 800 people and sickened thousands since arising more than five years ago, is believed to have come from bats. In attempting to determine how the disease might have been passed to humans, scientists at the Vanderbilt Medical Center in Tennessee and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill manufactured a bat virus on their own. / Outside safety assessments should be conducted throughout the process of designing and producing the virus, the U.S. researchers said in noting potential concerns about their work.

CANADA

Canada Orders Smallpox Vaccine
01.12.08. Canada has ordered 20,000 doses of a next-generation smallpox vaccine, Danish manufacturer.

KANSAS, USA

Government recommends Kansas for biodefense lab
03.12.08. sfgate. The government has recommended a site in Kansas for a new $450 million laboratory to study biological threats such as anthrax and foot-and-mouth disease, officials said Wednesday. / The Homeland Security Department's choice of Manhattan, in central Kansas, beat out intense competition from sites in Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas. The new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility would replace an aging 24-acre research complex on Plum Island, about 1.5 miles off the eastern shore of New York's Long Island. [ominous rings of the name
Manhattan]

LOUISIANA

Tulane University Completes Biodefense Lab
08.12.08. Tulane University in Louisiana on Friday marked the completion of a $27.5 million biological defense facility [sponsored by which pharma?]
housed at its National Primate Research Center, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. scientists are expected to use nonhuman primates as test subjects in the pursuit of vaccines for potential biological-weapon agents such as brucellosis, plague, SARS, tuberculosis, epidemic typhus and West Nile Virus.

Surveillance

Probably for financial profit, the world is caught up in the US so-called
"War on Terror

UK (cont)

The Big Brother state – by stealth
04.12.08. Independent. Thousands of unaccountable civil servants given access to our most intimate personal information

Europe court rules UK DNA database violates privacy rights
04.12.08. JURIST The European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled Thursday that the British practice of keeping the fingerprints and DNA profiles of people arrested but not convicted of crimes was against privacy rights and should not continue. The suit was originally brought by UK nationals Michael Marper and a juvenile named as "S," both of whom were arrested for crimes in 2001 and never convicted. When they later requested that their DNA and fingerprint profile be destroyed they were turned down. Their appeal was dismissed in 2004 by the UK's highest court, the House of Lords. The ECHR held that the practice of retaining the material violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which requires respect for private and family life. The court awarded the applicants €42,000, less €2,613.07 already paid in legal aid. The UK cannot appeal the ruling, and they were given a deadline of March to plan a new practice for future DNA collection and to propose a plan for destroying the existing 4.5 million sample database. UK leaders can agree to destroy the entire database, or make a case for keeping certain individual samples.

In November, the House of Lords ruled that the DNA database rules needed to be amended to allow those not convicted to have their profiles deleted. That decision, along with the human rights court ruling, come just months after a proponent of the database called for it to be expanded to include all citizens and visitors of the country. The Home Office has denied any plans to create such a database.

UK: Has your child been CAFed?
07.12.08. Daily Mail/ICH, How the Government plans to record intimate information on every child in Britain. under sinister new guidelines, officers must assess all children they encounter – including while ‘searching premises’ – for a police database called MERLIN. This, in turn, feeds into a giant new Whitehall database on Britain’s children, Contact Point, which goes live nationally in January.

EUROPE

Culture of surveillance creeps across Europe, despite resistance
18.12.08. McClatchy / anti-war. Despite the fact that fascism and repressive state security services dominated Europe - East and West - at different points in the 20th century, a new culture of surveillance is spreading, slowly, across the region again, using tools that the Nazis and the KGB never had.

EU members infringing free movement rights: report
11.12.08. JURIST. Vice President of the European Commission Responsible for Justice, Freedom, and Security Jacques Barrot on Wednesday reported that European Union (EU) governments are violating people's right to travel freely among the EU member states. Directive 2004/38/EC gives nationals of EU member states the right to move and reside freely among any of the states. According to the report, no member states have fully implemented the directive. The two biggest problems are the right of entry and residence of third country family members and the requirement of submitting additional documents for residence not foreseen in the directive.

U.S. Islamophobia (cont.)

Arab-Americans say new laws will target them
02.12.08. big news network. In a last-minute rule change before vacating the Oval Office, President George Bush has amended US Department of Justice guidelines to allow agents to interview people without identifying who they are and to spy on suspects without clear evidence of wrongdoing.

Washington Arrogance Has Fomented a Muslim Revolution
05.12.08. Paul Craig Roberts, Lew Rockwell. The attack on Mumbai required radicalized Muslims. Radicalized Muslims resulted from the US overthrowing the elected government in Iran and imposing the Shah; from the US stationing troops in Saudi Arabia; from the US invading and attempting to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, bombing weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games; from the US violating international and US law by torturing its Muslim victims; from the US enlisting Pakistan in its war against the Taliban; from the US violating Pakistan’s sovereignty by conducting military operations on Pakistani territory, killing Pakistani civilians; from the US government supporting a half century of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands, towns and villages; from the assault of American culture on Muslim values; from the US purchasing the government of Egypt to act as its puppet; from US arrogance that America is the supreme arbiter of morality.

Panel to Call for Probe Into Wiretapping of Scholar
07.12.08. NY Times. A Congressional oversight panel plans to ask the National Security Agency to start an investigation into new evidence that the agency illegally wiretapped a Muslim scholar in Northern Virginia and concealed the eavesdropping during a 2005 trial in which the scholar was convicted on terrorism charges. / The scholar, Ali al-Timimi, once a spiritual leader in Northern Virginia and described by prosecutors as a “rock star” in the Islamic fundamentalist world, is now serving a life sentence in federal prison after he was convicted in 2005 on charges of inciting his Muslim followers to commit acts of violence overseas.

Surveillance

FREEDOM OF SPEECH / CENSORSHIP

Berlusconi plans to use G8 presidency to 'regulate the internet'
03.12.08. the register. Italian president and media baron Silvio Berlusconi said today that he would use his country's imminent presidency of the G8 group to push for an international agreement to "regulate the internet".

Enemy Combatants and Freedom of Speech
10.12.08. Jacob G. Hornberger, blog. Some Americans favor the federal government’s post-9/11 assumption of power to arrest Americans and treat them as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terrorism.” It doesn’t matter to them that the Pentagon now has the power to round up Americans, keep them in prison camps indefinitely, torture them, and deny them all the rights and guarantees enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The reason it doesn’t bother them is that they figure it would never happen to them, only to other people. / ... There is also another important factor relating to a free society that Americans should consider about this post-9/11 power that is now being claimed by the Pentagon and other federal officials. That factor involves the fundamental right of freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment. / Once it seeps into the consciousness of the American people that the federal government now wields the omipotent power to arrest, punish, and detain people indefinitely without trial, a pall of silence will almost certainly fall [has fallen] over the land with respect to criticism of the Pentagon and the rest of the federal government.

9/11

Ex ISI Chief Gul Exposes 911 Inside Job Pakistani General Goes In-Depth On Details CNN Refused to Broadcast
12.12.08. daily.pk/ legitgov. The UPI interview with Gul remains online and in it he questions the delayed response to the hijackings by the U.S. Air Force. / Gul said that he first went public on who he thought was behind 9/11 UPI two weeks after the attacks, but that the report was blocked by the western news media./ "It is quite amazing that for a very long period of time the air traffic control did not report this nor did the U.S. Air Force act in time," said Gul, noting that fighters were scrambled from bases further away than where the hijacked planes were. / "The time that it took was enormous, it was 120 minutes, a very long time in which to act - was the U.S. Air Force sleeping and if it was sleeping which heads were rolled?" asked Gul, adding that if the botched response was a mere intelligence failure then why was nobody disciplined or taken to task and why had nobody resigned. / Gul then questioned why standard operating procedure was not followed, stating, "In the past within minutes the U.S. aircraft has been on the wing of the hijacked aircraft, in this case it did not happen, the U.S. alert system is so high and it is so sophisticated that if a missile was to take off from Moscow and was to head towards New York, the U.S. Air Force and the missile system is supposed to intercept it within nine minutes….the system is in place but it did not work and nobody tried to question this."

Google Gags Uruknet - More internet censorship
14.12.08. uruknet, based in Italy, is the best internet site for information on Palestine. Other superbly chosen articles are also on this site.

Surveillance

Malls boost security as shopping season starts
04.12.08. usa today. Malls across the country have boosted security in recent months, adding rooftop observation posts, parking lot cameras and more patrols to keep shoppers safe.

Spying on Pacifists, Environmentalists and Nuns
07.12.08. Bob Drogin, LA Times / truthout. : "'Lucy' was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between 2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups. Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by 'Lucy' and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database - and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency. Among those labeled as terrorists: two Catholic nuns, a former Democratic congressional candidate, a lifelong pacifist and a registered lobbyist. One suspect's file warned that she was "involved in puppet making and allows anarchists to utilize her property for meetings."

Satellites Spy on Washington from on High [Slide Show]
11.12.08. sciam.com/anti-war.

New Rule Expands DNA Collection to All People Arrested
12.12.08. Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post/anti-war. / Congress authorized the expansion in 2005, citing the power of DNA as a tool in crime solving and prevention.

Police: Tasering

The Taser Myth: How Does a 'Non-Lethal Weapon' Kill 400 People?
13.12.08. Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Taser's marketing coup has convinced consumers that there is such a thing as a gun that won't kill. Taser deaths prove otherwise. See new study here

US police could get 'pain beam' weapons (24.12.08. newscientist)

PREPARING FOR MARTIAL LAW SOON? There appear to be two current White House concerns:
1) loss of control in case of economic riots and
2) Obama's inauguration.

Police State 2009: Pentagon to Militarize USA with 20,000 Armed Troops
01.12.08. Mike Adams, natural news. In direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids military troops from playing a role in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has announced plans to station 20,000 armed, uniformed troops inside the United States where they will walk the streets, ready to "respond to terrorism events," says the Pentagon.

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
01.12.08. Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post. The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. / The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said. / There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement. / But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

New Rapid-Response Forces to Bolster Homeland Defense Mission
12.12.08. defense link / legitgov. In the event of civil disturbances and some other types of national emergencies other designated U.S. military units could be ordered by the president to help civil authorities establish order as part of the Garden Plot domestic security plan. Pentagon officials have established a new rapid-response joint task force and plan to create two more in coming years to bolster assistance to civil authorities following potential chemical, biological or nuclear attacks or 'natural' disasters, a senior U.S. official said here yesterday. The new units will team with other federal agencies in support of local responders... Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and Americas’ security affairs, told American Forces Press Service and Pentagon Channel reporters. The first new 4,700-member task force was assigned to a component of U.S. Northern Command on Oct. 1, McHale said. Plans are to stand up the other two new joint task forces in 2010 and 2011, respectively, McHale said.

U.S. troops' new mission: America's 'special events'
13.12.08. worldnetdaily / legitgov. Proposal would allow civilians to activate Army to prevent 'environmental damage'. New rules published in the Federal Register would allow certain civilians to call American soldiers into action inside the U.S. to prevent environmental damage or respond to "special events" and "other domestic activities." The alarming warning is contained in proposed rules published last week for the Department of Defense's "Defense Support of Civil Authorities" plan.

Doomsday: U.S. report warns of 'strategic shock' leading to massive unrest
15.12.08. world tribune / legitgov. The United States could be sleep-walking into its next crisis, a military report said. ... "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security," the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, said.

Ariz. police say they are prepared as War College warns military must prep for unrest; IMF warns of economic riots
17.12.08. phoenix biz./ legitgov. (Ariz. police say they are prepared as War College warns military must prep for unrest; IMF warns of economic riots) A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks. / “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report. / The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

US Army War College issues report on martial law (19.12.08. WORLD WAR 4 REPORT)

Obama, the military and the threat of dictatorship
23.12.08. WSWS. Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development:” the monograph was produced by Nathan Freier, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a professor at the college, the Army’s main training institute for prospective senior officers. ... One of the key contingencies for which Freier insists the US military must prepare is a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” .. He writes: “To the extent events like this involve organized violence against local, state, and national authorities and exceed the capacity of the former two to restore public order and protect vulnerable populations, DoD [Department of Defense] would be required to fill the gap.” ... Freier continues: “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order … An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home.” ... In other words, a sharp intensification of the unfolding capitalist crisis accompanied by an eruption of class struggle and the threat of social revolution in the US itself could force the Pentagon to call back its expeditionary armies from Iraq and Afghanistan for use against American workers. Given such conditions, he adds: “DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.”

U.S. Military Preparing for Domestic Disturbances
23.12.08. Jim Meyers, global research. A new report from the U.S. Army War College discusses the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis. The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” Entitled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” the report was produced by Nathan Freier, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a professor at the college — the Army’s main training institute for prospective senior officers. ... Freier continues: “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order … An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home.”

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned last week of riots and unrest in global markets if the ongoing financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are beset with credit constraints and rising unemployment, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.

US ARMY READY IF THE DOWNTURN GETS OUT OF HAND (25.12.08. ny post / legitgov)

Report: Military may have to quell domestic violence from economic collapse
29.12.08. Raw Story. Deepening economic strife in the US could lead to civil unrest and violence that would require military intervention, warns a new report from the US Army War College. / "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security," writes Nathan Freier, a 20-year Army veteran and visiting professor at the college. / A copy of the 44-page report, "Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development," can be downloaded here. Freier notes that his report expresses only his own views and does not represent US policy, but it's certain that his recommendations have come before at least some Defense Department officials.

Obama & Inauguration

Military to be on high alert for inauguration
18.12.08. J. Barnes, LA Times. About 11,500 troops, including chemical attack experts, will join the security detail as Obama takes the oath of office.

Terrorism drill to be part of passing torch
23.12.08. usa today. What would happen if terrorists attacked the United States at the start of Barack Obama's presidency? / The Bush administration doesn't want to wait to find out. It's planning to test the incoming government's readiness next month in a series of tabletop exercises involving top Bush and Obama officials.

Fearmongering for the Future

Homeland Security forecasts 5-year terror threats
26.12.08. . AP / ICH. The terrorism threat to the United States over the next five years will be driven by instability in the Middle East and Africa, persistent challenges to border security and increasing Internet savvy, says a new intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press.

JANUARY 2009

Obama inauguration (cont.)

Security Agencies Alter Strategies, Add Backup for Inauguration Week
04.01.09. Washington Post. Security Agencies Alter Strategies, Add Backup for Inauguration Week. / "There are a lot of different ways to screen people, to check people as they're coming onto the Mall itself or while they're on the Mall," said Sgt. Robert Lachance, a Park Police spokesman. They include using undercover police, officers on horseback and cameras mounted on raised platforms around the Mall, he said. / Joseph J. Funk, a former Secret Service agent who heads the Maryland-based firm US Safety & Security, said that even a large security force would probably be insufficient to fully screen an expected crowd of 2 million people.

Environmental Groups Warn of Chemical Threat to Obama Train
07.01.090. nti. Two environmental groups are warning that terrorists could use industrial chemical plants or cargo as a weapon against the train carrying President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden from Philadelphia to Washington on Jan. 17, Environment and Energy reported yesterday. / The train is expected to pass near chemical storage sites and operational plants that are considered vulnerable to possible acts of terrorism, according to Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Trains and trucks used to ship potentially dangerous chemicals also move along the same route, the groups said.

Unprecedented Security Planned for Obama Inauguration
12.01.09. nti. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is expected to enter office in a Jan. 20 ceremony featuring more security than any presidential inauguration in history, the McClatchy News Service reported Friday (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2008; Greg Gordon, McClatchy News Service/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 9). / Obama's new, armored presidential limousine includes an interior completely closed off from the outside environment to protect against a chemical strike, Agence France-Presse reported (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Jan. 8). The vehicle would be followed during the inaugural parade by black vans filled with SWAT teams and counterassault forces, advanced communication systems and electronic scramblers designed to prevent remote-controlled bombs from detonating, McClatchy reported. / Planners are concealing chemical and biological-weapon sensors around the National Mall, where between 2 million and 4 million spectators are expected to gather for the ceremony. Roughly 10,000 law enforcement personnel from more than 100 federal, state and local police agencies are participating in the inauguration's security effort.

Bush, Obama teams hold disaster drill
13.01.09. AP. Senior officials in the Bush administration and members of President-elect Barack Obama's team were at the White House Tuesday teaming up for a rehearsal of how to handle a hypothetical terrorist attack on American cities.

Bush Declares State of Emergency for Inauguration
13.01.09. Washington Post. The federal government had given the District $15 million to help with the inauguration costs, but D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) had lobbied for more money. Fenty, along with Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D), recently asked the federal government for $75 million to cover the costs. No word on whether Virginia or Maryland will get extra federal money.

Inauguration security center to go live Saturday
17.01.09. AP. Five 8-foot-square monitors and four flat-panel televisions hang on beige walls in the windowless room. A few flicker with images from news programs and street maps of downtown Washington.

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Martial Law, the Financial Bailout, and War
08.01.08. Prof. Peter Dale Scott, Global research. Since the financial meltdown, there has been a sustained move in the direction of martial law preparations.

[See earlier ressearch U.S. Martial Law Timeline (21.08.07 - 31.12.08]


THE GOVERNMENT SPEAKS

Nuclear / Biological / Chemical

Kansas Site Gets Final OK to Host Biological Defense Lab
13.01.09. nti. The U.S. Homeland Security Department has finalized its decision to build a planned $450 million biological defense laboratory at a 59-acre site in Kansas, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 5, 2008). / When built on the Kansas State University property at Manhattan, the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility would assume responsibility for research on anthrax and other diseases conducted for decades by a laboratory at Plum Island, N.Y.

Black Death 'kills al-Qaeda operatives in Algeria'
19.01.09. Telegraph. The disease, which struck Europe in the Middle Ages killing more than 25 million people, has swept through a training camp for insurgents in Algeria. / The arrival of the plague was discovered when security forces found the body of a dead terrorist by a roadside, the Sun reports.

Fear Mongering

Bioterror Attempt Likely by 2013, DHS Report Warns
05.01.09. nti. A U.S. Homeland Security Department intelligence report warns that terrorists are likely to attempt a biological-weapon strike sometime over the next several years, potentially spreading a lethal illness to thousands of people, the Associated Press reported last month

Surveillance

Under Obama, feds may still snoop library files
17.01.09. sfgate. President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general has endorsed an extension of the law that allows federal agents to demand Americans' library and bookstore records as part of terrorism probes, dismaying a national group of independent booksellers.

New RFID Technology Allows You to be Tracked WITHOUT Your Knowledge
(? date?) Louis Sirico, rfidwizards. This system is exactly what the privacy advocates have long feared: Big Brother tracking us with spy chips. As Orwellian as this sounds, the undisputed fact is that this system catches thieves and does so at a fraction of the cost of traditional security solutions. / NOX combines high-resolution video pictures and RFID for identification, tracking and tracing, overlaid in real time on a facility map to show the movement of people and assets. The system allows security officers to see theft as it happens, even if the stolen object is inside a briefcase, under a jacket, or stuffed inside a sock. / What makes the NOX system I saw different from traditional security systems is that it uses RFID for clandestine surveillance: RFID readers are hidden inside walls, floors, and ceilings; RFID tags are discretely placed; and only the security personnel know that the system is in place – until the thief gets caught. Then, all the thief knows is that he or she was caught in the act, on video.

Whistleblower: NSA Targeted Journalists, Snooped on All U.S. Communications
22.01.09. Kim Zetter, wired blog. Just one day after George W. Bush left office, an NSA whistleblower has revealed that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic. ... / "The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications," he said. "Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. ... They monitored all communications." ... / He said he was told to monitor certain groups in order to eliminate them as suspects for more intense targeting. Those groups, he said, were U.S. journalists and news agencies. But rather than excluding the news organizations from monitoring, he discovered that the NSA was collecting the organizations' communications 24 hours a day year round.


Travel

U.S. visitors required to register online
12.01.09. Cnet.news. Starting Monday, travelers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Australia, and a host of other countries will have to register online with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before they can travel into the United States. / As part of its efforts to use technology to improve border security, the DHS is mandating that travelers from any of the 35 countries in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program apply online for an Electronic System of Travel Authorization before boarding a plane to the U.S. Previously, visitors from those countries were only required to fill out the I-94W form on flights to the U.S. for trips shorter than 90 days.


Israel

Israel, the "51st state", is another police state. See Focus on Gaza

ISRAEL Recruits Army Of Bloggers To Troll Anti-War Websites
19.01.09. Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, uruknet. Israel has announced that it is setting up a network of bloggers to combat websites deemed "problematic" by the Zionist state, presumably to propagandize about the necessity of killing babies and infants in the name of self-defense. / Israel’s global reputation for being the new Nazis was already firmly established, but the ceaseless and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, labeled a war crime by international observers, has hardened opinion against the country and this has manifested itself nowhere more than the world wide web. / Israel’s response will be to flood the Internet with PR agents who will attempt to create a phony consensus that the ZIonist state’s barbarian actions are justifiable. / According to a report in Haaretz, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry is setting up "an army of bloggers" who will "represent" Israel on "anti-Zionist blogs" in English, French, Spanish and German. see also here.


Police State

More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying
04.01.09. Lisa Rein, Josh White, Washington Post, Truthout. "The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored - and labeled as terrorists - activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes. Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation."

Many Americans do love their police state
05.01.09. examiner. Unfortunately, all too many of our friends, neighbors and relations have come to relish acting like bit players in a bad Cold War film. They're more than happy to bow down to the nearest uniform so long as somebody assures them it will "keep us safe" -- from whom, it doesn't matter, though it's certainly not from overbearing authorities.

Homeland security

Planning Agency Approves Homeland Security Complex
09.01.09. Washington Post. After years of battling historic preservationists, the federal government won approval yesterday to build a massive headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security on a 176-acre hilltop site east of the Anacostia River. / The $3.4 billion headquarters would be one of the largest construction projects in the Washington area since the Pentagon was built in the 1940s. Advocates say it would generate economic activity in one of the city's poorer corners and provide a secure workplace for 14,000 Homeland Security employees scattered across the Washington area.

Text of H.R. 645: To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military...
22.01.09. gov track. A Bill to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations. SECTION 1. This Act may be cited as the 'National Emergency Centers Establishment Act'. SECTION 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS. (a) In General - In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations... (b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers... (3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and (4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Police Listed Gay Rights Group Among Terrorists
23.01.09. Washington Post. he files were revealed yesterday at a press conference, where a dozen Democratic lawmakers announced plans to introduce legislation to prevent future surveillance of non-violent groups.


UK

New powers for police to hack your PC
05.01.09. Independent. Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain. / The moves will fuel claims that the Government is presiding over a steady extension of the "surveillance society" threatening personal privacy.
Police Listed Gay Rights Group Among Terrorists
23.01.09. Washington Post. he files were revealed yesterday at a press conference, where a dozen Democratic lawmakers announced plans to introduce legislation to prevent future surveillance of non-violent groups.

+

REFERENCES

Will Israel Play Proxy in Iran? (updated 05.03.09)

Index on Economics and Peril in Afghanistan, October 2008 Timeline. This research has a large amount of material on the Military Industrial Complex, along with charts.

Index Research: The Pentagon and Oil (24.07.08)

SOS: The United States of Terror

NUCLEAR USA: SEPTEMBER - NOVEMBER 2007 .

US Surveillance: These Boots Are Made for Walking

SOS: The United States of Terror

Totalitarianism and Obedience

Security Company Death Squads Timeline

The U.S. War on Children

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