Memo to America: Stop murdering my people

Almost every day, the NATO occupation of our country continues to kill innocent people. Each time, it seems, military officials try to claim that only insurgents are killed, or they completely deny and cover up their crimes. The work of a few courageous journalists is the only thing that brings some of these atrocities to light.

For instance, it was only after the reporting of Jerome Starkey of the Times of London that officials admitted to the brutal Feb. 12 murder of two pregnant women, a teenage girl, and several young men in a night raid at a home where a family was celebrating the birth of a child.

Night raids, air raid “mistakes,” firing on civilian buses and cars at checkpoints — the occupation finds many ways of killing the people of Afghanistan. The excuses and lies for these deaths are like salt in our wounds, and it is no wonder that protests against the U.S. military are growing. The Afghan people have had enough.

Report: US ordered assassination of Yemeni cleric

The United States has ordered the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric, over alleged links to a failed Christmas airline bombing in Detroit, a report says.

Citing unnamed US officials, The Washington Post reported Wednesday that US President Barack Obama’s administration has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to capture and kill Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki, 38, was born in New Mexico and spent years as an imam in Virginia, before moving to Yemen.

The report claims he has moved from the category of being militant preacher to becoming an operational figure in al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Al-Awlaki is charged with ties to an alleged failed attack on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.

Let Dr. Aafia go home, Mr. President

Reading all those legal thrillers by John Grisham and watching Hollywood blockbusters that portray innocent individuals framed and ensnared by a powerful system, one always thought: Of course, these things do not happen in real life.

I am not so sure anymore though. The abduction, persecution and now conviction of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated neuroscientist, by the U.S. authorities reads like a regulation Grisham thriller written for Hollywood.

Aafia disappeared with her three children on her way to Jinnah International Airport airport for Islamabad way back in 2003. Five years later, she was presented in a New York court in March 2008 as “a top al-Qaeda terrorist” and the “most dangerous woman on earth,” as United States Attorney General John Ashcroft put it.

The U.S. authorities claimed then that Aafia was captured near Ghazni governor’s office in Afghanistan with a bag that carried instructions on making explosives and a list of U.S. landmarks.

But more damningly, the U.S. authorities claimed that the frail mother of three attacked a team of eight U.S. soldiers, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Afghan officials in Ghazni with a highly sophisticated, heavy M-4 gun in Ghazni when they went to question her. Surprisingly though, it’s Aafia who ended up with two gunshot wounds, inflicted point blank. None of the officials she allegedly attacked sustained any injuries or wounds.

Last week, after months of courtroom drama and charade of a trial, Aafia was convicted of attempted murder and attacking U.S. soldiers and FBI officials with a deadly weapon.

United Nations report blasts US over human rights abuses

A United Nations report says the US has been violating basic human rights by kidnapping and holding terrorism suspects in secret detention centers during the past nine years.

The US is among dozens of countries that have kidnapped suspects, four independent UN rights investigators said in a year-long study based on flight data and interviews with 30 former detainees.

“On a global scale, secret detention in connection with counter-terrorist policies remains a serious problem,” they wrote in the 226-page report which is expected to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in March.

“Secret detention as such may constitute torture or ill-treatment for the direct victims as well as their families,” the report said.

Victims and their families deserve compensation and those responsible should be prosecuted, said the four independent investigators.

The UN report explained that the purpose of the secret detentions was to cover up torture and inhuman treatment of the detainees in an effort to obtain information or silent the subjects.

The rights investigators said running facilities such as those used by the Nazis, the Soviet gulag system and Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and ’80s, was banned under the internationally recognized laws laid out in the Geneva Conventions.

They also said establishment of secret detention could not be justified under any circumstances, including during states of emergency or armed conflict.

Engineers Most Likely to Become Islamic Radicals

Engineers of Jihad

Why Are There So Many Engineers Among Islamic Radicals?

What sort of people are more likely to become religious fundamentalists?

Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog recently released two reports demonstrating that individuals with degrees in subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are most likely to become Islamic extremists. The two most well-known cases are Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who studied engineering in university, and Al-Qaeda second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri who received a degree in medicine.

Mumbai terror suspect David Headley was ‘rogue US secret agent’

A key terror suspect who allegedly helped to plan last year’s attacks in Mumbai and plotted to strike Europe was an American secret agent who went rogue, Indian officials believe.

David Coleman Headley (aka Daood Sayed Gilani), 49, who was born in Washington to a Pakistan diplomat father and an American mother, was arrested in Chicago in October. He is accused of reconnoitering targets in India and Europe for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based terror group behind the Mumbai attacks and of having links to al-Qaeda. He has denied the charges.

He came to the attention of the US security services in 1997 when he was arrested in New York for heroin smuggling. He earned a reduced sentence by working for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) infiltrating Pakistan-linked narcotics gangs.

Indian investigators, who have been denied access to Mr. Headley, suspect that he remained on the payroll of the US security services — possibly working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — but switched his allegiance to LeT.

“India is looking into whether Headley worked as a double agent,” an Indian Ministry of Home Affairs official said yesterday.

Lithuania ‘hosted at least two secret CIA prisons’

A Lithuanian inquiry has found that the US Central Intelligence Agency set up and used secret prisons on its soil following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US.

Lithuania‘s intelligence agency assisted the CIA-run secret prisons, which were used to hold at least eight al-Qaeda suspects, the parliamentary panel in charge of the probe said in a report on Tuesday.

The National Security Committee report records instances in 2005 and 2006 when chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania, adding that all the Lithuanian officials, including President Dalia Grybauskaitė, were kept in the dark about the aircraft’s passengers.

The report, which is based on testimony of top politicians and intelligence officials, also sought to close the door on any charges of human rights violations on the grounds that no official was ever aware of exactly what was happening in the US-run prisons.

It said Lithuania’s State Security Department (Valstybės saugumo departamento) provided two facilities to the CIA.

Obama ordered deadly blitz on Yemen: US media

US Nobel Peace Prize Laureate President Barack Obama has signed the order for a recent military strike on Yemen in which scores of civilians, including children, have been killed, a report says.

Upon the orders of Obama, the military warplanes on Thursday blanketed two camps in the North of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, claiming there were “an imminent attack against a US asset was being planned,” ABC News quoted anonymous administration officials as saying on Friday.

The US air raids were then followed by a Yemeni ground forces incursion.

The attacks led to the death of around 120 people of whom many were civilians including children, the report quoted Yemeni opposition as saying.

Obama also contacted Yemen’s President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, after the blitz in order to “congratulate” him on his efforts against ‘al-Qaeda,’ the US news outlet quoted White House officials as telling reporters earlier.

UN ombudsman to review list of terrorist suspects

An ombudsman is now to consider the delisting of terrorist suspects from the United Nations list of Al Qaeda and Taliban members as the Security Council adopted a resolution intended to bring ‘fairness and transparency’ to its anti-terrorism efforts.

The decision, driven by repeated criticism that non-suspects might be included in the 500-member list, was taken unanimously by the 15-nation council on Thursday.

Those listed will now have an opportunity to file a request to be removed from the sanctions list.

In line with the resolution 1904, a post of ombudsperson, who will have to review requests “in an independent and impartial manner”, is to be established for an initial period of 18 months.

Intelligence Improperly Collected on U.S. Citizens

WASHINGTON — In February, a Department of Homeland Security intelligence official wrote a “threat assessment” for the police in Wisconsin about a demonstration involving local pro- and anti-abortion rights groups.

That report soon drew internal criticism because the groups “posed no threat to homeland security,” according to a department memorandum released on Wednesday in connection with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The agency destroyed all its copies of the report and gave the author remedial training.

That was just one of several cases in the last several years in which the department’s intelligence office improperly collected information about American citizens or lawful United States residents, the documents show.

Lithuanian leader ‘impeached’ for refusing CIA

Lithuania‘s former president says he was impeached because of his refusal to let the Central Intelligence Agency set up secret prisons in the country.

Rolandas Paksas made the remark during a parliamentary hearing into claims that at least eight al-Qaeda terror suspects were held by the US Central Intelligence Agency at a facility just outside the Lithuanian capital Vilnius between 2004 and 2005.

“When I was a president, I knew that there were people who wanted to bring terror suspects to Lithuania. I think that my principal disagreement to do this led to the subsequent anti-presidential campaign and impeachment,” said Paksas.

Paksas explained that in spring 2003, the then-head of Lithuania’s State Security Department (Valstybės saugumo departamento), Mečys Laurinkus, asked him if it were possible to allow the CIA to transfer some terror suspects to the country unofficially.

According to the former president, Laurinkus hinted that a positive answer would please foreign partners. Paksas said, however, that he had refused to take that option.

Laurinkus has confirmed that he held such a conversation with Paksas.

US silent on Taliban’s al-Qaeda offer

WASHINGTON – The Barack Obama administration is refusing to acknowledge an offer by the leadership of the Taliban in early December to give “legal guarantees” that they will not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other countries.

The administration’s silence on the offer, despite a public statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing skepticism about any Taliban offer to separate itself from al-Qaeda, effectively leaves the door open to negotiating a deal with the Taliban based on such a proposal.

The Taliban, however, have chosen to interpret the Obama administration’s position as one of rejection of their offer.

The Taliban offer, included in a statement dated December 4 and e-mailed to news organizations the following day, said the organization had “no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantees if foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan”.

The statement did not mention al-Qaeda by name or elaborate on what was meant by “legal guarantees” against such “meddling”, but it was an obvious response to past US insistence that the US war in Afghanistan is necessary to prevent al-Qaeda from having a safe haven in Afghanistan once again.

Republic of Lithuania’s spy chief quits after leak of CIA prison in Lithuania

The Republic of Lithuania‘s intelligence chief has resigned after news leaked out that the Central Intelligence Agency operated a secret prison in the country between 2004 and 2005.

Povilas Malakauskas, director of the Lithuanian State Security Department (Valstybės saugumo departamento), quit his job after two years in the position “partly” because of government efforts to investigate the details surrounding the CIA facility, a lawmaker told local media.

Arvydas Anušauskas, who heads a parliamentary committee investigating the prison, said much of the government probe could have been avoided if Malakauskas had simply told the truth about his department’s involvement in the CIA program.

According to Anušauskas, the resignation was first brought up in September, when the intelligence chief refused to provide information to investigators.

Malakauskas was forced to resign nearly a month after ABC News first revealed the location of the secret prison run by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

Capturing Osama Bin Laden Is the Last Thing That Americans Want

Where is bad guy Osama bin Laden? This question still takes the minds of US political and military elite. US National Security Advisor James L. Jones believes that the prime suspect of 9/11 attacks is hiding in Pakistan. Defense Secretary Robert Michael Gates later said that the Pentagon did not have the information to confirm the statement, for terrorist No. 1 would have been caught otherwise.

A special report from the US Senate said that the US military had a chance to capture Bin Laden alive, but they missed him during the first months of the Afghan campaign in 2001. Former Defense Secretary Donald Henry Rumsfeld and General Tommy Ray Franks are said to be accountable for that mistake.

According to US intelligence, Bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora caves in the east of Afghanistan. US troops were prepared to storm the caves in December of 2001, but suddenly canceled the operation following the orders from Rumsfeld and Franks, who later said that they should concentrate their efforts in other directions.

The authors of the report believe that Bin Laden and his associates used the opportunity to escape to Pakistan, where he can probably be staying still. The officials, who prepared the report, referred to the information announced by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

Brussels gives CIA the power to search UK bank records

THE Central Intelligence Agency is to be given broad access to the bank records of millions of Britons under a European Union plan to fight terrorism.

The Brussels agreement, which will come into force in two months’ time, requires the 27 EU member states to grant requests for banking information made by the United States under its terrorist finance tracking program.

In a little noticed information note released last week, the EU said it had agreed that Europeans would be compelled to release the information to the CIA “as a matter of urgency”. The records will be kept in a US database for five years before being deleted.

Critics say the system is “lopsided” because there is no reciprocal arrangement under which the UK authorities can easily access the bank accounts of US citizens in America.

They also say the plan to sift through cross-border and domestic EU bank accounts gives US intelligence more scope to consult our bank accounts than is granted to law enforcement agencies in the UK or the rest of Europe.

In Britain and most of Europe a judge must authorize a specific search after receiving a sworn statement from a police officer.

US let bin Laden escape after 9/11: Senate report

US military leaders allowed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden) to ‘walk unmolested out of Tora Bora‘ when he was within the reach of US troops, a Senate report reveals.

Staff members for the Democratic majority of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Forbes Kerry.

The Saturday report said that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden in December 2001 has had lasting consequences, according to the Associated Press.

Kerry has argued the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaeda leader and top deputies when they were holed up in the mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan three months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The report also sharply criticized mishandling of US military for capturing Osama bin Laden.

Sources and Methods

So, by now you’ve likely heard that Nidal Malik Hasan, the ‘Fort Hood Shooter’, had been in email contact with an infamous radical cleric in Jordan some months ago.

By now, you’ve probably heard that the government was aware of these emails – of the contents of these emails, had reviewed them, and found them to not be of particular concern.

By now, you’ve probably heard a fairly decent summary of what was discussed in those emails.

A couple questions, in my opinion, remain markedly unanswered.

First of all, who was doing the interception? Who were they monitoring – were they monitoring Hassan’s email, or the cleric’s? Both? What tool or tools did they use? Did they need a warrant to do so? Did they have one?

I mean, when i saw the first coverage of this development on the national news, my first thought was that they might as well have just sent the dude in Jordan a lolcat message saying “Ohai, were in ur komputer, readin ur emails – luv, teh National Security Agency”.

My second thought was “why even leak this to the public in the first place?”

It’s politics. It’s gotta be. Someone sure appears to be trying to make the intelligence community – and by proxy the Obama administration – look like fools, for no particularly compelling reason. “Aaaah, it’s 9/11 all over again – the warning signs were there, but the government did nothing, aaaaah!” Oh noes, the sky is falling, oh noes. Has we learn’d nothings since teh 9/11es?

Worse yet, in my mind, is that whoever decided to release this useless, albeit juicy, tidbit of gossip to the media sans context is apparently unconcerned about – potentially – compromising one or more intelligence sources and methods.

I mean, the narrative could quite easily have been “a preliminary government examination of Hasan’s personal computer revealed that the alleged gunman had been in email contact with a well-known al-Qaeda spokesperson prior to the shooting”, and that could have protected the hypothetical (and now compromised) sources/methods that were actually used to read Hasan’s mail.

Every indication so far is that Hasan acted alone. Lone actors – “lone wolves” – are pretty much impossible to detect, as history has shown. That’s an unavoidable fact of life, and nobody needs apologize for it. There need not have been “warning signs” that went unnoticed. There need not have been “intelligence failures”, and I really don’t think there were, based on what’s come out in the media so far.

What good does the leaks about his email correspondence serve? What, he emailed an al-Qaeda associate? He shot up a bunch of soldiers, for crying out loud – does anyone honestly need to try and cast him in a further negative light? No. All it does is needlessly serve some partisan political agenda. And, you know, potentially compromise some intelligence sources and methods.

Don’t forget that part, okay? Because someone is trying really hard to make you believe that Nidal Hasan is a radical terrorist – which is probably true… and apparently doesn’t want you to look too hard at where the evidence came from or how it was acquired. Should that raise your hackles? Well, it does for me…

UN says US drone strikes may violate international law

US unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) strikes against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan could be breaking international laws against summary executions, the United Nations top investigator of such crimes said.

“The problem with the United States is that it is making an increased use of drones/Predators (which are) particularly prominently used now in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan,” UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston told a press conference.

“My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” he said.

US strikes with remote-controlled aircraft against Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan have often resulted in civilian deaths and drawn bitter criticism from local populations.

“The onus is really on the United States government to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary extrajudicial executions aren’t in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons,” he added.

Alston said he presented a report on the matter to the UN General Assembly.

Perpetual war is here — and Americans are getting used to it

A new poll shows a substantial majority of Americans have resigned themselves to the reality of our nation’s perpetual foreign wars. They don’t like it, but they see it happening and know there is nothing they can do about it. The poll, conducted by Clarus Research Group, showed that 68 percent of us agree with idea that we won’t either win or lose the war in Afghanistan, now eight years long, but will instead just remain there. The image of flies and flypaper again swirls in my head, just as it did at the time of the invasion of Iraq. We invaded these places and now we’re stuck there, and President Barack Obama is likewise stuck, not on flypaper, but on the horns of a dilemma: Does he send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, as his area commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has publicly demanded, or does he change strategies a la Joe Biden and rely more on special ops and drones to harass the Taliban and kill whatever members of al-Qaeda we can find?

CIA Furious Over New Secret Site Expose

Already wrestling with a renewed controversy over contract killers, the CIA reacted angrily Thursday to a news organization’s revelation of yet another secret interrogation center.ABC News reported that the CIA had a secret site in Lithuania where interrogators grilled terrorist suspects,  “one of eight facilities the CIA set-up after 9/11 to detain and interrogate top al Qaeda operatives captured around the world.”

“Former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified program (said) that Lithuanian officials provided the CIA with a building on the outskirts of Vilnius, the country’s capital, where as many as eight suspects were held for more than a year, until late 2005 when they were moved because of public disclosures about the program,” wrote ABC News investigative reporter Matthew Cole.

“Flight logs viewed by ABC News confirm that CIA planes made repeated flights into Lithuania during that period,” Cole reported.

“Former CIA officials tell ABC News that the prison in Lithuania was one of eight facilities the CIA set-up after 9/11 to detain and interrogate top al Qaeda operatives captured around the world. Thailand, Romania, Poland, Morocco, and Afghanistan have previously been identified as countries that housed secret prisons for the CIA,” Cole added.

CIA spokesman George Little called the ABC report “irresponsible.”

C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help to Kill Jihadists

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.

Drones Hardly Ever Kill Bad Guys

The foreign policy community’s favorite counterinsurgency adviser, or at least their favorite Australian one, David Kilcullen, told lawmakers last week that the drone strikes targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Pakistan are creating enemies at a far faster rate than its killing them. According to statistics he provided, the success rate of the drone bombing campaign is extremely low: just 2 percent of bombs dropped have hit targeted militants. The other 98 percent? Those killed noncombatant Pakistani civilians, he said.

Italian Prosecutor: Enough Evidence for CIA Convictions

FLORENCE, Italy — The chief prosecutor in a trial related to the U.S. “rendition” of a suspected terrorist believes there is more than enough evidence to secure a conviction of over two dozen Americans charged in the case despite a ruling that excludes key Italian documents and testimony under  “state secrecy” laws.

A judge in Milan ruled Wednesday that the trial of Italian and American intelligence agents accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr), suspected of ties to al Qaeda, would continue, “even though critical evidence had been ruled inadmissible, severely undermining the prosecution’s case,” according to a local account.

National Cyber Range: Building Attack Tools for Mass Destruction

A quintessential hallmark of an authoritarian regime, particularly one that operates within highly-militarized, though nominally democratic states such as ours, is the maintenance of a system of internal control; a seamless panopticon where dissent is equated with criminality and the rule of law derided as a luxury ill-afforded “during a time of war.”

In this context, the deployment of new offensive technologies which can wreck havoc on human populations deemed expendable by the state, are always couched in a defensive rhetoric by militarist aggressors and their apologists.

While the al-Qaeda brand may no longer elicit a compelling response in terms of mobilizing the population for new imperial adventures, novel threats–and panics–are required to marshal public support for the upward transfer of wealth into the corporate trough. Today, “cyber terror” functions as the “new Osama.”

And with Congress poised to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, an Orwellian bill that would give the president the power to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security” of course, the spaces left for the free flow of information–and meaningful dissent–slowly contract.

State Supported and State Associated Gangs: Credible “Midwives of New Social Orders”

From the Strategic Studies Institute,United States Army War College

Added May 22, 2009

Type: Monograph

78 Pages

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Cost: Free

Brief Synopsis

The monograph examines contemporary populism and neo-populism, 21st century socialism, and a non-state actor (al-Qaeda) seeking regional and global hegemony. They are: first, paramilitary gang permutations in Colombia that are contributing significantly to the erosion of the Colombian state and its democratic institutions, and implementing the anti-system objectives of their elite neo-populist sponsors; second, Hugo Chavez’s use of the New Socialism and popular militias to facilitate his populist Bolivarian dream of creating a mega-state in Latin America; and, third, al-Qaeda’s strategic and hegemonic use of political-criminal gangs to coerce substantive change in Spanish and other Western European foreign and defense policy and governance. Lessons derived from these cases demonstrate how gangs might fit into a holistic effort to force radical political-social-economic change, and illustrate how traditional political-military objectives may be achieved indirectly, rather than directly.

‘America lives in a fascist state’ – Gerald Celente

The merger of corporate and government powers in modern America is plain and simple fascism, believes Gerald Celente, the founder of the Trends Research Institute and publisher of Trends Journal.

Celente takes an in-depth look at what AIG and Goldman Sachs really are and the people behind them; explains the policies of the Obama’s administration, and the moral basis for a forthcoming new American Revolution.

US flag-burning marks war anniversary

BAGHDAD (AP)– American flags were set on fire Friday to chants of “no, no for occupation” as followers of an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric marked the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war.

In five other Iraqi cities, supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also either marched or stood in protest after prayers to demand the release of their allies detained at Iraqi and U.S.-run prisons.

The protests came as a suicide bomber in Fallujah killed an Iraqi police officer and five other people, including civilians, in an attempted attack on the home of the local leader of Sunni security volunteers who turned against al-Qaeda.

The Missing Memos

The Bush administration’s controversial policies on detentions, interrogations and warrantless wiretapping were underpinned by legal memoranda. While some of those memos have been released (primarily as a result of ACLU lawsuits), the former administration kept far more memos secret than has been previously understood. At least three dozen by our count.

The decision to release them now lies with President Obama. To help inform the debate—and inject an extra dose of accountability—we’re posting the first comprehensive list of the secret memos. (The ACLU first compiled a list, which ProPublica verified and expanded on.)

Note: Our list is quite inclusive, but we have chosen to leave off some documents, such as early drafts of later memos.

[ click on image to view ]

NSA Whistleblower Tells More on Illegal Wiretapping of US Citizens (videos)

On January 21, former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice appeared Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show. Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, told Olbermann government programs designed to spy on the American people are more extensive and far reaching than previously admitted. “The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications,” Tice said. “It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.”

[ click “Read more” for videos and related links ]

Did we just have our i-911 – and is an i-Patroit Act on the way?

Former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told a leading expert on internet free speech, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, that there was going to be an “i-9/11”, in other words, an electronic terrorist act, and an “i-Patriot Act” to crack down on freedoms on the Internet under the guise of protecting against such threats:

(See also: Patriot Act – The War on Civil Liberties)

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”.

(4.30 into this video).

We may have just had our i-911.

Al Qaeda is More of a U.S. Propaganda Campaign than a Real Organization

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote:

Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”.

And see this Los Angeles Times Article, reviewing a BBC documentary entitled “The Power of Nightmares”, which shows that the threat from Al Qaeda has been vastly overblown (and see this article on the people within the U.S. who are behind the hype).

The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It’s time to stop the mission creep

We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk.

Former CIA Employee Zawahri Threatens America

Al-Qaeda’s alleged number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri has called for new attacks to be launched against “criminal America,” which is somewhat odd considering the fact that he once fought on behalf of the CIA and was granted U.S. residence by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Indeed, Al-Zawahiri has reportedly been captured twice before, so the fact that he is still releasing video tapes via the Pentagon-allied IntelCenter organization and playing the role of boogeyman so Obama can continue bombing sovereign countries in the name of the war on terror strikes us as a little fishy.

Menace of US drones

USA has no remorse over its brazen acts of aggression and rationalizes its invasion and destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq as compulsory acts to ensure security of its homeland. It justifies its offensive actions under Article 51 of UN charter. It is now trying to justify its intended offensive against Pakistan under the same Act on the plea that Pakistan is allowing its soil for breeding terrorism and exporting terrorism into Afghanistan to cause harm to US-NATO troops. If so, why it remains tight-lipped on misuse of Afghan soil by several spy agencies working against the interests of Pakistan?