Progress in distributing aid is slowly being made.
Day: May 21, 2008
“Red Team” Penetrates Nuke Lab’s Security, Reaches “Superblock”
by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, May 21, 2008
Antifascist Calling…
During a mock exercise at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), an antiterrorist “red team” breached security and penetrated Building 332, the so-called “Superblock” where some 2,000 pounds of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium are stored. Lab security personnel failed miserably, TIME magazine reported.
Situated in Livermore, California, LLNL is about an hour’s drive from San Francisco; approximately seven million people live within a 50 mile radius of the weapons facility. But as the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) disclosed in March,
…the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has given Livermore Lab a waiver so that it does not have to meet the current security requirements devised by the intelligence community. The encroaching residential community surrounding the Lab has made it impossible to properly protect the Lab’s weapons quantities of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. (“U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Livermore Homes and Plutonium Make Bad Neighbors,” POGO, March 17, 2008)
Reporting on the exercise, TIME’s Adam Zagorin writes,
The attack team’s objective is usually to penetrate the “Superblock,” after which the attackers are timed to determine whether they can hold their ground long enough to construct a crude “dirty bomb” that could, in theory, be detonated immediately, or can buy themselves enough time to fabricate a rudimentary nuclear device, approximating the destructive power of the low-yield weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A third option in the simulation is for the attackers to abscond with the nuclear material into the heavily populated San Francisco Bay area. (“Security Flaws Exposed at Nuke Lab,” TIME, May 12, 2008)
April’s “force-on-force” exercise pitted two teams in a “real life” test of security procedures. Designed to test nuclear defenses, the “red team” deployed all-terrain vehicles and torches to cut through metal barriers “securing” Building 332 from a hostile assault.
One of the lab’s defensive “centerpieces,” the Dillon Aero M134D Gun (popularly known as a Gatling gun), capable of firing 4,000 high-velocity rounds per minute failed when the hydraulic system used to raise the gun from its “hiding place inside the back of a small truck failed, making it impossible for the gun to be fired,” POGO analysts said.
The use of the weapon itself is not without controversy. Capable of delivering a lethal round a mile away, its deployment by NNSA is particularly troubling since LLNL is surrounded on all sides by the sprawling Livermore community. POGO researchers detailed,
Within that one-mile range of the Lab are two elementary schools, a pre-school, a middle school, a senior center, and athletic fields, making this weapon unacceptable for Livermore. Even in an accidental firing, the Lab would be spraying lethal bullets into the surrounding neighborhoods. This type of accident is not unprecedented. For example, several years ago there was an accidental firing of a mounted, high caliber machine gun at the Y-12 Complex. The gun, similar in firepower to the Gatling guns, sprayed a building at the facility with bullets, which penetrated walls.
To make matters worse, while security personnel failed to deter the “attackers,” LLNL’s recent exercise hardly simulated “real-world” conditions, not least of which is the inevitable shock and confusion that would occur among “defenders” during the opening round of a surprise attack.
To whit, lab security teams are always given advance notice of the operation; the tests are conducted at night or on weekends, when few of the lab’s thousands of employees are present. Consequently, “defenders” do not simulate potential hostage-taking scenarios that in all probability would accompany belligerent action by terrorists.
But as POGO senior investigator Peter Stockton told The Washington Times: “It is important to emphasize that Livermore’s security problems are not the fault of the guard force, who have complained about their lack of training and poor tactics. In fact, two security officers were fired for raising these problems.”
Is there a pattern here? As with other spectacular failures by the Bush administration and their corporate cronies, why not, if you’ll pardon the pun, shoot the messenger? After all, its less politically risky than bringing high-end lab executives and senior managers to account.
In 2005 the Department of Energy “approved the doubling of the amount of plutonium stored at Livermore, less than five months after a scientific panel recommended, for security reasons, that nearly all of it be moved to a safer, more remote site,” TIME revealed.
Yet despite this alarming disclosure, the NNSA, allegedly the prime defender of the “homeland” against terrorists intent on deploying weapons of mass destruction, gave their political masters–the nuclear weapons industry–a free pass when it came to (our) safety. This too, is hardly surprising given the make-up of the lab’s administrative “team.”
As a “public-private partner” of the U.S. national security state, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is run by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, a “limited liability” corporation comprised of five “partners:” the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Washington Group International and Battelle–all heavy-hitters in the biotech, construction, defense, energy, nuclear and security worlds. The seven-year contract to oversee operations for the Department of Energy (DoE)–a Bushist satrapy–is worth some $297.5 million.
Readers are certainly familiar with Bechtel’s sordid history when it came to “reconstructing” Iraq after America’s illegal 2003 invasion and occupation. Three years later, and with contracts in hand worth some $680 million, the construction giant abandoned Iraq with the bulk of its infrastructure projects in tatters–and zero accountability from Congress. And when it comes to the corporation’s “expertise” on nuclear “safety,” Bechtel’s record is less than stellar. As CorpWatch reported back in 2003,
Starting with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb and engineering the first reactor to generate electricity, Bechtel has been heavily involved in both commercial and military nuclear activities. These have included some of the most notable nuclear mishaps in U.S. history, from California’s San Onofre reactor installed backwards, to the botched clean up of Three Mile Island. Now, while the legacy of environmental contamination and worker exposures continue to threaten public health and safety, Bechtel is finding ways to profit from the radioactive mess its projects have created. (“Bechtel: Profiting from Destruction: Why the Corporate Invasion of Iraq Must be Stopped,” CorpWatch, June 5, 2003)
BWX Technologies, during an earlier metastasis as The Babcock-Wilcox Company, were the designers of pressurized water reactors, one of which partially melted down during the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
According to SourceWatch,
BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT) of Lynchburg, VA, “supplies nuclear fuel and reactor components to the U.S. Navy” and “supplies reactor components for the DOE’s Naval Reactors Program and creates reactor fuel elements for several national government labs.”
In July 2000, the Department of Energy selected BWXT “over the Day & Zimmermann Group, a Philadelphia-based government contractor that owns Mason & Hanger, the company that has held the Pantex contract since 1956,” to operate the government’s Pantex plant.
According to John A. Gordon, the [former] head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) which oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, “BWXT Pantex, which has a proven track record in nuclear facility operations, presented the strongest technical proposal.” In its bid for the government contract, BWXT “collaborated with Honeywell, a major aerospace firm, and Bechtel in its Pantex bid.”
Located on 16,000 acres in Amarillo, Texas, Pantex is the the only plant in the United States that assembles nuclear weapons for the Department of Defense. Designated a federal superfund site in 1991, corporate “best practices” have resulted in extensive groundwater and soil contamination throughout surrounding communities.
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS), revealed that BWXT is similarly “partnered” with the University of California, Bechtel and the Washington Group International in yet another “limited liability” corporation, the Los Alamos National Securities (LANS). Here too, “security breaches” are frequent.
But how better to “punish” well-connected corporatist miscreants in our post-Constitutional “New Order” than to hand out multi-year contracts to “manage” the most deadly and dangerous materials on earth!
As POGO’s executive director Danielle Brian told TIME, “suicidal terrorists would not need to steal the fissile material, they could simply detonate it as part of an improvised nuclear device right on the spot.”
Talk about hitting the corporate “sweet spot”!
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press.
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
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© Copyright Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling…, 2008
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Countdown: McCain’s Problems + Obama’s Appalachia Problem + Hillary Compares Seating FL Delegates to Freeing Slaves
May 21, 2008
McCain’s Problems w/Chuck Hagel & John Hagee
New Yorker magazine’s Ryan Lizza discusses Sen. John McCain losing the support of Republican senator and Vietnam vet Chuck Hagel and the latest backlash from comments made by Pastor John Hagee that may affect McCain’s campaign.
Obama’s Appalachia Problem
Political blog First Read pointed out that Sen. Barack Obama does not seem to have a problem with white-working class voters, just white working-class voters in the Appalachian states. Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson discusses.
Hillary Compares Seating FL Delegates to Freeing Slaves
Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe talks about what should happen to the votes in Florida and Michigan.
World’s Worst – Romney, Gillespie, Hewitt
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt doesn’t realize Countdown’s Keith Olbermann hasn’t been a “sports guy” for about 10 years.
GOP Compares McCain to Jesus Christ
Chairperson of the Georgia Republican party Sue Everhart said, “John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross.” She said that McCain was tortured by the North Vietnamese but did not turn on the U.S. and that she was looking at the similarities in pain between the two men.
Kevin Spacey on HBO’s Recount
Despite the current angst, the state of Florida is not expected to hang the Democratic nomination on a hook or create problems like it did in 2000. Actor Kevin Spacey speaks with Countdown’s Keith Olbermann about the HBO film Recount which takes a look at the 2000 presidential election.
See a very short clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59t2CDA2JEY
Jim Webb Interview May 21, 2008
Keith talks to Jim Webb about the Presidential race and his new book, A Time to Fight.
see
McCain Endorser Hagee: God Sent Hitler, Jews Have Dead Souls
Propagandists First, Journalists Second – How the NYT Won 2004 for Bush
By Ted Rall
05/21/08 “ICH”
Should the news media be patriotic? When a journalist uncovers a government secret, which comes first–national security or the public’s right to know?
In the United States, reporters consider themselves Americans first, journalists second. That means consulting the government before going public with a state secret. “When I was at ABC,” James Bamford told Time in 2006, “we always checked with the Administration in power when we thought we had something of concern, and there was usually some way to work it out.” Continue reading
Lebanon politicians sign power-sharing deal
Rival leaders in Lebanon have cast aside their differences to end an 18 month political feud that had driven the country to the brink of civil war.
Arab leaders in Qatar helped forge a deal between the western-backed government, and the Hezbollah-led opposition.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reports on the Lebanese reaction to the deal.
McCain Endorser Hagee: God Sent Hitler, Jews Have Dead Souls
Updated: July 29, 2008 Video is no longer available; added a different but similar video.
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From J Street (new Jewish Lobby): Take Action
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John Hagee Pushes Hitler’s anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theory
retitled: John Hagee Claims Rothschilds Rule American Economy
bruceewilson June 12, 2008 Continue reading
Snakes and Superdelegates By Lori Price
By Lori Price
www.legitgov.org
21 May 2008
While the US media obsesses on delegates, superdelegates and whether or not Hillary Clinton is using math formulae hallowed by MSNBC, we learn that US interrogators used snakes to torture prisoners (that’s right, PentaPost –torture, not ‘interrogate’ and prisoners, not ‘detainees’) at Guantanamo Bay – while the FBI watched.
Today, we learned form NEWS.com.au, an Australian news and information site, that US interrogators – at least on one occasion – used a snake (in addition to military dogs and pornography) on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. We also discovered that “[Australian detainee Mamdouh] Habib alleged that ‘Mike’ a private-contract interrogator with Lockheed Martin, had hit him during an interrogation.” Further, we discovered that, ”of the more than 450 FBI agents who served at Guantanamo… almost half ‘observed or heard about various rough or aggressive treatment of detainees, primarily by military interrogators’.”
Snakes used in interrogation sessions?! This is Nazi tactics territory, folks – using our dollars and under our name! I don’t care about Democratic superdelegate totals or nomination math formulae. The US media is using the election itself as a distraction for war crimes that are being carried out in our name, every day!
Lest we forget: U.S. Has Detained 2,500 Juveniles as Enemy Combatants 16 May 2008 The United States has imprisoned approximately 2,500 people younger than 18 as illegal enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to a report filed by the Bush regime with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Is there anyone out there besides me who wants the Bush dictatorship gone – and I mean gone – and I mean now? Impeachment – even if it were miraculously to transpire – is no longer enough! Bush – and his sadomasochistic henchmen – need to stand trial for *treason* and for *war crimes.*
Permitted demonstrations in Washington DC by people wearing pink and sporting clown noses – that the media refuses to cover, anyway – ARE NOT GOING TO CUT IT and NEVER WILL, with this regime!
The Second American Revolution should have began 13 December 2000, the day Al Gore ‘offered his concession‘ to George W. Bush.
People: Bush is using snakes to torture cab drivers and other innocents – people held for years without charge in KBR-built prisons – and we’re tallying Barack Obama’s superdelegate count!
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FBI watched Guantanamo abuse – report 21 May 2008 An FBI agent watched Australian prisoner [former Sydney taxi driver] Mamdouh Habib repeatedly vomit during a marathon interrogation session at Guantanamo Bay in 2004, according to a long-awaited US Justice Department report released today. Details about Mr Habib’s confinement at Guantanamo, including an alleged assault inflicted by a private-contract interrogator with Lockheed Martin, were included in the 370-page report that took the Department of Justice more than three years to compile… Of the more than 450 FBI agents who served at Guantanamo, the report found almost half “observed or heard about various rough or aggressive treatment of detainees, primarily by military interrogators”. “The most frequently reported techniques included sleep deprivation or disruption, prolonged shackling, stress positions, isolation and the use of bright lights and loud music,” the report said. Other abuse allegations include the use of a snake, dogs and pornography on detainees… The US Justice Department report details how Mr Habib told an FBI agent he was tortured in Egypt before being transported to Guantanamo where he was assaulted. “(Mr)Habib alleged that ‘Mike’ a private-contract interrogator with Lockheed Martin, had hit him during an interrogation,” the report said. Mr Habib also claimed “detainees were beaten when guards searched their cells”.
Report: CIA Pushed Torture Envelope –Justice Department Says FBI Warned Spy Agency, Military, That Their Tactics Were “Borderline Torture” 20 May 2008 CIA and military interrogators bucked repeated warnings from the FBI that methods used to question terror suspects were in some cases “borderline torture” and potentially illegal, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog reported Tuesday. Agents repeatedly asked FBI headquarters for guidance, but didn’t get it, as prisoners at Guantanamo were threatened with growling dogs, had their thumbs twisted back and heads wrapped in duct tape.
Report: U.S. Soldiers Did ‘Dirty Work’ for Chinese Interrogators —Alleges Guantanamo Personnel Softened Up [Tortured] Detainees at Request of Chinese Intelligence 20 May 2008 U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up prisoners at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men — or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report. Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.
Excerpts from Justice terror interrogations audit (AP) Excerpts from the Justice Department audit of terror interrogations at overseas military bases 20 May 2008 ‘The range of permissible DOD (Defense Department) techniques was expanded after the September 11 attacks and was modified over time. These military policies permitted techniques that were inconsistent with the FBI’s long-standing approach towards witness interrogations.’
Other allegations of detainee abuse contained in the report include:
SNAKES – One FBI employee reported a detainee told him that he found a snake in his cell and he suspected his “interrogators” had something to do with it. The employee indicated in his survey response that he also suspected an interrogator from another agency might have been responsible for placing the snake in the detainee’s cell.
DOGS – Several FBI agents reported that military dogs were used at Guantanamo for purposes other than interrogations, including for the purpose of controlling or intimidating detainees when they arrived at the Cuban base.
PORNOGRAPHY – Several FBI agents reported incidents involving the exposure of a detainee to pornography. One observed two military intelligence interrogators showing homosexual pornographic movies to a detainee.
MOCK BAPTISM – An FBI agent said “he heard” the military had someone dress up as a Catholic priest and pretend to baptize detainee Yussef Mohammed Mubarak Al-Shihri.
PLACING WOMEN’S CLOTHING ON DETAINEE – Four FBI agents at Guantanamo reported they heard about military personnel placing women’s clothing on detainees, although none of them personally witnessed this conduct.
TOUCHING OR ACTING TOWARD A DETAINEE IN SEXUAL MANNER – More than 20 FBI agents reported they had seen or heard about female interrogators touching or acting towards a detainee in a sexual manner.
US says detains 500 juveniles in Iraq, 10 in Afghanistan –Civil liberties groups denounce detentions as abhorrent, and a violation of U.S. treaty obligations. 19 May 2008 The U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being “unlawful enemy combatants” in detention centers in Iraq and has about 10 detained at the U.S. base at Bagram, Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations. A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been imprisoned, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President [sic] George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism campaign since 2002, the United States reported last week to the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.
U.S. Has Detained 2,500 Juveniles as Enemy Combatants 16 May 2008 The United States has imprisoned approximately 2,500 people younger than 18 as illegal enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to a report filed by the Bush regime with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. 2,400 of the juveniles were captured in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003; 500 are still held in detention facilities in that country. As of last month, 10 juveniles were still being held in Bagram, Afghanistan.
Lori Price is the Editor of Citizens for Legitimate Government, www.legitgov.org.
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The New York Times and Washington’s new prison in Afghanistan
By Alex Lantier
http://www.wsws.org
20 May 2008
On May 17 the New York Times reported on plans for a new, US-run prison complex at Bagram air base north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. The prison complex would occupy 40 acres on the base, house up to 1,100 prisoners, and cost more than $60 million to build. The complex will replace an existing prison, the Bagram Theater Internment Facility.
Military officials told the press they were concerned about the health effects on US troops stationed at the current Bagram facility, which is heavily contaminated with toxic heavy metals. They are unwilling to turn “dangerous” detainees over to the Afghan puppet government, however, and are planning on building a new prison, under direct US control.
The Times described the existing Bagram prison as overcrowded, with inadequate restroom and exercise facilities, and acknowledged that American guards had beaten several detainees to death there. Comparing conditions there to those at Guantánamo Bay, the US-run concentration camp in Cuba which has become notorious for its torture and arbitrary punishment of detainees, it reported: “Military personnel who know both Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site […] as far more Spartan. Bagram prisoners have fewer privileges, less ability to contest their detention and no access to lawyers.”
Starting with these horrible facts, the Times then took on a grotesquely Orwellian task: presenting the construction of the new prison as an exercise in humanitarianism.
Citing US military officials who told the Times the new prison would be would be “more modern and humane,” it continued: “Classrooms will be built for vocational training and religious discussion, and there will be more space for recreation and family visits, officials said. […] The structures will have more natural light, and each will have its own recreation area.”
It quoted a senior Pentagon official for detention policy, Sandra L. Hodgkinson: “The driving factor behind this is to ensure that in all instances we are giving the highest standards of treatment and care.”
One rubs one’s eyes in disbelief. US treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan has been distinguished, in fact, by its murderous brutality, from the very beginning of the US-led occupation.
h/t: The Man Common
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The Last Roundup – Is the govt compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?
By Christopher Ketcham
ICH 05/21/08
Radar 05/15/08
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.
The bureaucrat was James Comey, John Ashcroft’s second-in-command at the Department of Justice during Bush’s first term. Comey had been a loyal political foot soldier of the Republican Party for many years. Yet in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he described how he had grown increasingly uneasy reviewing the Bush administration’s various domestic surveillance and spying programs. Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he wasn’t allowed to name it or even describe what it did. He did say, however, that he and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004, trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes. Shortly before the certification deadline, Ashcroft fell ill with pancreatitis, making Comey acting attorney general, and Comey opted not to certify the program. When he communicated his decision to the White House, Bush’s men told him, in so many words, to take his concerns and stuff them in an undisclosed location.
Comey refused to knuckle under, and the dispute came to a head on the cold night of March 10, 2004, hours before the program’s authorization was to expire. At the time, Ashcroft was in intensive care at George Washington Hospital following emergency surgery. Apparently, at the behest of President Bush himself, the White House tried, in Comey’s words, “to take advantage of a very sick man,” sending Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on a mission to Ashcroft’s sickroom to persuade the heavily doped attorney general to override his deputy. Apprised of their mission, Comey, accompanied by a full security detail, jumped in his car, raced through the streets of the capital, lights blazing, and “literally ran” up the hospital stairs to beat them there.
Minutes later, Gonzales and Card arrived with an envelope filled with the requisite forms. Ashcroft, even in his stupor, did not fall for their heavy-handed ploy. “I’m not the attorney general,” Ashcroft told Bush’s men. “There”—he pointed weakly to Comey—”is the attorney general.” Gonzales and Card were furious, departing without even acknowledging Comey’s presence in the room. The following day, the classified domestic spying program that Comey found so disturbing went forward at the demand of the White House—”without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality,” he testified.
What was the mysterious program that had so alarmed Comey? Political blogs buzzed for weeks with speculation. Though Comey testified that the program was subsequently readjusted to satisfy his concerns, one can’t help wondering whether the unspecified alteration would satisfy constitutional experts, or even average citizens. Faced with push-back from his bosses at the White House, did he simply relent and accept a token concession? Two months after Comey’s testimony to Congress, the New York Times reported a tantalizing detail: The program that prompted him “to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases.” The larger mystery remained intact, however. “It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate,” the article conceded.
Another clue came from a rather unexpected source: President Bush himself. Addressing the nation from the Oval Office in 2005 after the first disclosures of the NSA’s warrantless electronic surveillance became public, Bush insisted that the spying program in question was reviewed “every 45 days” as part of planning to assess threats to “the continuity of our government.”
Few Americans—professional journalists included—know anything about so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs, so it’s no surprise that the president’s passing reference received almost no attention. COG resides in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces—and effectively suspend the republic. In short, it’s a road map for martial law.
While Comey, who left the Department of Justice in 2005, has steadfastly refused to comment further on the matter, a number of former government employees and intelligence sources with independent knowledge of domestic surveillance operations claim the program that caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency. Sources familiar with the program say that the government’s data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.
Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a “national emergency.” Executive orders issued over the past three decades define it as a “natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency,” while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order.” According to one news report, even “national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad” could be a trigger.
…continued (there’s a lot more)
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see
National Security & Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51 (2007)
Congress Quietly Repeals Martial Law Provision by James Bovard
The Economy: Another Casualty of War by Ron Paul
by Ron Paul
May 18, 2008
This week, as the American economy continued to suffer the effects of big government, the House attempted to pass two multibillion dollar “emergency” spending bills, one for continued spending on the war in Iraq, and one increasing spending on domestic and international welfare programs. The plan was to pass these two bills and then send them to the president as one package. Even though the House failed to pass the war spending bill, opponents of the war should not be fooled into believing this vote signals a long term change in policy. At the end of the day, those favoring continued military occupation of Iraq will receive every penny they are requesting and more as long as they agree to dramatically increase domestic and international welfare spending as well.
The continued War in Iraq and the constant state of emergency has allowed Congress to use these so-called “emergency” bills as a vehicle to dramatically increase spending across the board–including spending that does not meet even the most generous definition of emergency. For example, the spending proposals currently being considered by Congress provide $210 million to the Census Bureau and $4 million for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. $4.6 billion is requested for the closing of military bases, but not any of the more than 700 bases overseas – but bases here at home! Another $387 million would go to various international organizations and $850 million more just in international food aid – all this when food prices are skyrocketing here and American families are having a hard time making ends meet. Because this spending will be part of “emergency” measures, it will not count against debt ceilings, or any spending limits set by Congressional budget resolutions, and does not have to be offset in any way.
Explosive growth of government is just another tragedy of this war. The “bipartisan” compromises made in Washington are at the expense of the taxpayer, not in the interest of fiscal responsibility, or peace. The taxpayer loses and government grows.
The bottom line is that our dollar is falling, the economy is in rough shape, and government spending is wildly out of control. Congress argues over relatively minor details, instead of dramatically changing our flawed foreign policy. We need to bring our troops home, not only from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from South Korea, Germany, and the other 138 countries where we have troops stationed. Our foreign policy of interventionism is not only offensive to others, inviting further terrorist attacks, but it is ruining our economy as we tax, borrow and print the money to pay the bills of our empire. The economy and ultimately the American people suffer because Washington is refusing to adopt more sensible and constitutional policies.
Squabbling between those who favor increased welfare and those who favor increased warfare has giving the American people a temporary reprieve from having to bear the burden of yet another dramatic increase in government this week. However, as early as next week a compromise could be reached that expands both government warfare and welfare. As congressional approval ratings drop to 18% according to a recent Gallup poll, the American people are telegraphing that Congress is taking the country in the wrong direction. Our government must stop bankrupting the country so that we can get back on track to a peaceful, prosperous future.
h/t: www.fff.org
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Fighting continues in Sudan’s Abyei region – 21 May 2008
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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
In the oil rich Abyei region of Sudan, more fierce fighting has killed 22 government soldiers.
It is not known how many rebels died.
The fighting, which flared despite a recent ceasefire, threatens a fragile peace accord supposed to end decades of civil war.
Al Jazeera’s Dan Nolan has the latest.
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Mosaic News – 5/20/08: World News from the Middle East
Warning
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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
For more: http://linktv.org/originalseries
“Fighting Flares in Southern Sudan ,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“‘Deal Agreed’ on Lebanon Crisis,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
“Police to Question Olmert in Talansky Case,” IBA TV, Israel
“Iran Looks into Strengthening Ties in Africa,” IRIB2 TV, Iran
“Iraqi Tribes in Mosul Help Fight Al Qaeda,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
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Prisons – a new form of slavery (video)
Kathy Kelly: None of the three best known candidates are dealing with the issues facing the poor…
Carbon Trading Is Just Another Derivatives Scam by The Other Katherine Harris
by The Other Katherine Harris
Featured writer
Dandelion Salad
The Other Katherine Harris’s blog
May 21, 2008
Being so often sold to the highest bidder, governmental legislation has been a product for a long time, but lately it’s deliberately spinning off other products, too.
Mind you, these aren’t products in any rational sense. Nothing tangible will be produced – not a road, not a sofa, not even a sandwich. Just money and other paper for elites who’ll trade so-called “new assets” created out of whole cloth (or, rather, dirty air) will result if supporters of the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill have their way. Its cap-and-trade provisions will commodify pollution in America into the basis of an “industry” so immense that $150 billion will supposedly spring into being during its first year (and $3 trillion between now and 2050).
These figures in fact represent fictitious value that will have to be sucked out of the productive economy somehow. That’s how trading derivatives always works. The principle was elegantly encapsulated by a gentleman who commented last month on one of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s columns in the London Telegraph. He was specifically addressing derivatives associated with commodities like oil and food, but the same trick lies behind the mortgage securitization scam and any other bubble. Walt O’Brien wrote (emphasis mine):
… Derivatives are a means of introducing superfluous layers of financing to otherwise pretty tame trades in commodities. On a straight commodity exchange for a tanker owner or freightforwarder who … wants to move a couple of million gallons … oftentimes a factor is used (something now called “accounts receivables financing”). The tanker owner … (makes) a deal with the factor and the buyer where … the tanker owner takes receipt of the full value of the cargo less the factor’s discount — usually 3 to 7 percent simple interest – and … the tanker owner and/or freightforwarder know they are paid for the cargo and aren’t held up in demurrage at the dock while the greedy buyer tries to starve them out for a lower rate per gallon. If a derivatives trader is involved, the deal is between the fuel supplier and the trader. The trader fronts the cargo in transit with bank money … chats up the value of the cargo in transit and adds as much as 30-40% of non-value-added cost to the cargo in the process, which the trader then pockets, and the banker pockets … associated fees and interest. How many layers of useless and unnecessary derivatives trading can you plotz onto a commodity trade? Answer: in theory, an infinite amount; in practice, the highest number of … re-re-re-financings I’ve seen is 15 layers of needless trades on one consignment. This … trade boosted the cargo cost — not value, as the cargo price for the carrier and cargo owner in transit did not … change at all, though the cargo owner, to cover the derivatives had to stick the customer with his price plus the derivatives trades — by a factor of 12 times true cost. The bourses of the world are starving … the black and Asian world through extortion of unnecessary money while ruining the value of your currency… Annual payouts to derivatives traders looks to be at US$62 trillion, according to this Economist article (“Taming the Beast” in the April 19 -25 edition). That $62 trillion, if expressed as food, energy and metals commodities, could be the vehicle for the New Millenium to move forward in hope and in earnest, but instead is going to golf turf fees, amusing clarets and…eco-tourism by really fat and greedy people who constitute about .005 percent of the population.
Sadly, what’s due to be bruited about soon in Washington is NOT whether we should launch ourselves into this lunacy at all, but merely who’s to be handed how much of the first $150 billion in fairy money: chits representing the “right” to pollute at a certain level. Of course the polluters want them free, claiming their charges to consumers will rise horribly otherwise. Other proponents – including environmental groups and both Democratic presidential contenders – want the chits auctioned off to generate some form of public benefit. Conciliators of course favor splitting the difference. See Marc Gunther’s recent analysis for a wealth of detail.
The fundamental problem is that almost nobody’s saying hey, let’s stop and think before creating another Mad Max market to rob everyone else blind for the sake of the players; couldn’t we just pass a law that simply says you WILL reduce pollution by x amount within y timespan, or be subject to penalties?
Exactly the same aversion to laws with no payola for the bankers, traders and mega-corporations is apparent in our government’s approach to alternate energy — setting things up in such a way that big business controls it and has already spun off a myriad of derivatives in solar and wind power (a subject for another day) – and equally apparent in how our legislators are dealing with the housing meltdown.
As Dean Baker pointed out this week, we needn’t create yet more mortgages to be securitized, sold and resold, in order to avert foreclosures. The simple solution would be a law allowing residents to remain in their homes by paying fair market rent. This would prevent a further price-depressing glut on the housing market and also prompt banks to renegotiate their customers’ mortgages, rather than become landlords. Instead, Congress is tussling with a complex bailout proposal that would have the Federal Housing Authority guarantee new lower interest rate mortgages and put taxpayers on the hook for another $1.7 billion (or, as the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), prefers, swipe those funds from assistance to low-income renters).
I can see no surer route to utter ruin for most people than keeping the “structured finance” contingent in the catbird seat, sucking the world’s real economy dry with more and more derivative schemes. However, our elected representatives in Washington lack a grain of economic sense or are completely in thrall to Wall Street. Either way, it’s probably far too late to stop carbon trading here, given that it’s so entrenched in Europe. Normally our Pig Men lead the world – off various cliffs, in case you’ve been dozing since before the dotcom bust – but, in carbon trading, Europe has the jump on us. Lured by an annual volume that reached $50 billion last year, Morgan and others have already crossed the Pond to play.
And, yes, you’re throwing candy to the same beasts if you buy carbon offsets. We need real laws, not tricky financial mechanisms.
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New Jewish Lobby Counters Neocons By Ralph Seliger
By Ralph Seliger
http://www.inthesetimes.com
May 15, 2008
On April 15, after 18 months of planning, a new progressive Jewish lobby called J Street was launched as a counterweight to the increasingly conservative American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). There is no physical J Street in Washington, D.C., but the name conjures up K Street, the hub for lobbying on Capitol Hill.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper columnist Shmuel Rosner writes that the “J” in J Street also jokingly refers to Jeremy Ben-Ami, the veteran political operative and public relations professional who served as a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration and has worked for various progressive and peace-oriented American-Jewish organizations. Ben-Ami is executive director of both J Street — a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization — and of its separately chartered political action committee, JStreetPAC.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Dandelion Salad 