obamessiah updates: secrets, lies and the give & take act

obama swaps teleprompters for giant tv monitor

obama is a 'manchurian candidate' because he uses a teleprompter

o'reilly: if cheney really had an 'executive assassination squad,' he would have killed seymour hersh a long time ago

'give' act strips 1st amendment from 'volunteers'
from kurt nimmo: On March 18, Rep. George Miller, a Democrat from California, tacked an amendment on H.R. 1388, entitled “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act,” or GIVE (to government), Obama’s plan to require mandatory service for all able young people. Miller’s amendment will “prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing,” according to GovTrack.us, a site that tracks Congress. In other words, Obama’s “volunteer corps” act, passed by the House with a 321-105 margin and requiring the government to develop a plan for indentured servitude, would deny millions of people their right to oppose and organize against government legistation under the First Amendment. “This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly,” writes Gary Wood for the Examiner.

obama puts 'immigration reform' on docket
(or, more 'retroactive immunity'...)

obama's approach to protecting 'state secrets' at issue
from washington post: Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House. The first signs have come just weeks into the new administration, in a case filed by an Oregon charity suspected of funding terrorism. President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated "state secrets," but also escalated the standoff - proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them. The suit by the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation has proceeded further than any other in challenging the use of warrantless wiretaps, threatening to expose the inner workings of that program. It is the second time the new Justice Department has followed its predecessors in claiming the state-secrets privilege, which would allow the government to exclude evidence in a civil case on grounds that it jeopardizes national security.

is 'war on terror' being retired? no! gordon brown says "we are about to take the war against terror to a new level!"

update: US officials say no ban on 'global war on terror' as 4,000 more US troops to be sent to afghanistan as 'trainers'

obama doesn’t talk like bush, he just acts like him
from ted rall: You can’t blame Dick Cheney for being annoyed at Barack Obama. Obama is closing Guantánamo. He’s ordering the CIA to interrogate prisoners according to the rules written in the Army Field Manual, which doesn’t allow torture. He’s even phasing out such classic Bushian phrases as “enemy combatant” and “war on terror.” But the dark prince of neoconservatism should relax. Obama’s inaugural address may have promised to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” but — in all the ways that matter — he’s keeping all of Bush’s outrageous policies in place. Sure, he talks a good game about “moving forward.” But nothing has really changed. From reading your e-mails to asserting the right to assassinate American citizens to bailing out companies whose executives pay themselves big bonuses, Obama’s changes are nothing but toothless rhetoric.

nsc's jim jones: 'i take my daily orders from dr kissinger'

obama nominates former freddie exec as 'housing commissioner'
from cnsnews: President Barack Obama has named a former Freddie Mac executive to head the federal housing commission. The White House on Monday named David Stevens as assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The position requires Senate confirmation and would put Stevens in charge of the government's housing mortgage-insurance program. Stevens now is the head of Long and Foster Companies, a real estate and mortgage firm. He previously worked at World Savings bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. At Freddie Mac, Stevens was a senior vice president in charge of affordable lending, sales and marketing.

scotus watches 'hillary: the movie' (and you can, too)

obama opens secret laboratories to germany
(like truman & the paperclip nazis?)
from spiegel: The Americans have always kept their research into anti-terrorism technologies top secret - until now. A new treaty between Germany and the US will give German scientists access to highly restricted laboratories. It was a productive start to the week for US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and German Research Minister Annette Schavan. The two women met at 7:15 a.m. on Monday for breakfast at a five-star hotel in Berlin to discuss one of the most explosive issues in the era of international terrorism: How can the population and infrastructure be protected against catastrophic attacks without Western democracies being turned into Orwellian regimes? ... The research offensive began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and has been fueled with huge sums of money ever since. Universities, companies and secret laboratories are carrying out research into highly sensitive surveillance cameras, bomb detectors, biometric analysis software and vaccines against biological weapons, among other things. Until now, neither the general public nor the governments of the US's Western allies have learned much about the contents of that research.

obama secretly ends program that let pilots carry guns (or did he?)

is there anything obama can do about US collapse?

US 2010 apocalypse avoidable

obamessiah: downhill dictatorship, definitions & detainments

president obama: a fraud you can believe in
from the bulletin: The hopes and prayers of the American people have finally been answered with the election of a new president: A fraud they can believe in. Yes, and even as Barack Obama demonstrates he is a fraud, phony and hypocrite par excellence - who also happens to be in way over his head - the American people still believe in him. Yes, love is grand and his approval rating is still miraculously high. If the truth were known, that approval rating would be sinking lower than the stock market, home prices or the economy. I doubted he was the Messiah, but now I’m not sure. When a president can be the greatest wealth destroyer in history and still maintain high approval ratings, maybe he does have supernatural powers. What’s more he is god-like. It is said God so loved the poor that he made many of them; Mr. Obama is almost outdoing God by turning so many into poor people.

download 'a new era of responsibility' aka 'get ready to suffer' here

obama is pushing US economy downhill
from russia today: Obama's policy is pushing the US economy downhill, says vice president of the conservative Business & Media Institute Dan Gainor. U.S. President Barack Obama signed his first government spending bill, worth $410 billion, to fund most government operations through to September 30. The bill is filled with pet projects, so called 'earmarks', a practice Obama had promised to get rid of. The President himself called the document 'imperfect', but necessary.

audio: guns & butter w/ michel chossudovsky:
obama budget will impoverish US
from global research: The administration's 2010 budget will entail the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history, leading to social havoc and the potential impoverishment of millions of people. Defense spending and bank bailouts will consume all government revenue resulting in fiscal collapse that will lead to the privatization of the state.

why the US under obama is still a dictatorship
from future of freedom foundation: Two weeks ago, when the Obama administration announced that it was bringing to an end the disturbing isolation endured by Ali al-Marri, a U.S. resident who has been held without charge or trial for seven years and two months - and who, most worryingly, has spent the last five years and nine months as an “enemy combatant” in solitary confinement in the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina - it was clear that one of the Bush administration’s most arrogant and un-American policies was coming to an end. President Obama clearly regarded al-Marri’s imprisonment as significant, as he issued a presidential memorandum on his second day in office ordering the Justice Department to review the Qatari national’s case, and the announcement that al-Marri was to be moved out of his seemingly endless legal limbo and into the federal court system demonstrated that, in this specific case at least, the president was sticking to his word... As a result, you may be thinking that the president no longer has the power to hold Americans without charge or trial as “enemy combatants,” but if this is the case then you may be — and should be — dismayed to learn that a previous ruling to this effect still stands, which was not addressed by the Supreme Court, and which has not been addressed by the Obama administration either.

obama administration withdraws 'enemy combatant' definition
from thinkprogress: Today, the Obama Justice Department abandoned one of the most prominent phrases of the Bush administration - “enemy combatant.” In a filing with the DC District Court, the DoJ said that it would no longer use the term and asserted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at Gitmo. The Obama administration is still claiming that it has the authority to hold prisoners there, but it will now be based on authority from Congress and the international laws of war. The Bush administration claimed that the president could unilaterally hold prisoners without charge.

the president has the authority to detain persons

obama creates food-safety group
from washington times: President Obama on Saturday created a food safety working group to advise him on new rules and tools to protect the U.S. food supply and tapped two people to serve at the top of the Food and Drug Administration. Mr. Obama said food-borne illness outbreaks have increased in recent years - including major incidents of tainted spinach in 2006, salmonella in peppers or tomatoes last year and the peanut outbreak this year. He said that means the U.S. must do more than it has been and called on his food safety group, led by the secretaries the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, to give him recommendations.

cheney 'assassination unit' still domestically active under obama?

police state int'l: cyberwars, databasing, gps & you

nsa aims to expand power & take over cybersecurity

new zealand plugs into secret pentagon intranet
from cryptogon: The U.S., Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand… Is it a coincidence that these also happen to be the ECHELON states? Via: Stuff: A leaked American study into military actions in Afghanistan [3.4mb PDF] reveals New Zealand is now plugged into the world’s most secret intranet, allowing access to the Pentagon’s battle plans. “Secret Internet Protocol Router Network”, or SIPRNET, is a sophisticated alternative to the internet, allowing New Zealand frigate control rooms and armoured vehicles access to material seen on generals’ desks in Washington. Defence Minister Wayne Mapp refused to comment on the link. “We don’t discuss security matters,” he said through a spokesman.

wikileaks cracks nato's master narrative for afghanistan
from cryptogon: It appears that Wikileaks is distributing NATO classified documents that some imbecile at CENTCOM left on an open webshare. The Wikileaks people ran a dictionary attack on the files and found the password on them was progress.

'enemy combatant' in US indicted

announcing the dna control grid
from corbett report: Recent weeks have seen a string of revelations in mainstream publications that there are plans for a North American Union, a world government and a New World Order including a world central bank with the power to "knock heads" if nations refuse to surrender their authority to an elite group of international bankers (exactly as we predicted). Add to these startling admissions the Austin American-Statesman's recent "discovery" of the state of Texas' practice of keeping blood collected at birth for "scientific research purposes" without the knowledge or consent of parents... The topic of DNA collection by the government usually focuses on criminal databases. The infamous UK DNA database is in fact just one of many such national databases justified by their use in helping law enforcement solve cases by recourse to genetic forensics. Of course, the real problem is not that databases of this sort fail to acknowledge the widespread, systemic and ultimately inevitable abuses of these law enforcement tools; the problem is that these arguments miss the point entirely by arguing only the limited benefits and drawbacks of DNA databases for law enforcement.

video shows teen beaten in seattle jail

elevator video proves man did not assault florida cops

test to track traffic using gps phones
from east bay business times: Researchers at UC-Berkeley will join in a field test Feb. 8 to study how traffic flow can be monitored using data from driver’s GPS-enabled cell phones [212kb PDF]. The researchers will look at the potential of using cell phone data instead of the road sensors currently used, while at the same time preserving phone users’ privacy. The experiment, dubbed Mobile Century, will involve a fleet of 100 cars with drivers carrying Nokia cell phones. They will travel a loop along a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 880 between Hayward and Fremont. The experiment is a joint project between researchers at the UC-Berkeley’s California Center for Innovative Transportation and the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto.

gates says US military can help mexico in drug war

9/11: no-show defendants & classified evidence

hearing delayed after 9/11 defendant wouldn't come, lawyer says
from miami herald: Alleged 9/11 hijack conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh reportedly refused to leave his prison camp cell Thursday, causing a military judge to postpone his hearing by a month.

"He wouldn't come," said attorney Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Romero said military staff at the war court notified observers of bin al Shibh's refusal to leave his Camp 7 cell as they waited at Camp Justice for his 8:30 a.m. military commission hearing.

War court spokesmen were unable to confirm the report. They said only that bin al Shibh's appearance was postponed until a mental health competency hearing Aug. 15.

Bin al Shibh, 36, is one of five former CIA-held Guantanamo captives accused as co-conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed 2,973 people.

9/11 defendant argues to see classified evidence
from mcclatchy: An alleged al Qaida fighter accused of training the Sept. 11 hijackers sought access to classified evidence Thursday, reassuring the war court here that, once convicted, he'll take U.S. secrets to his grave.

"If I am going to receive the death sentence, this evidence will go with me," declared Waleed bin Attash, a one-legged Yemeni captive accused of running an al Qaida camp in Afghanistan.

After execution, he said, the secrets "will be better protected than in the hands of the FBI and CIA."

Bin Attash made the remarks at a hearing before Judge Ralph Kohlmann, a Marine colonel who will preside at the war crimes trial of five Guantánamo captives accused of conspiring in the mass murder of 2,973 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

At least four of the men want to defend themselves. Kohlmann has been warning them that, even as their own lawyers, they can't see or challenge classified evidence until their trial.

'sleeper cell' case questions bush authority to hold US residents as enemy combatants

from ap: The case of a U.S. resident accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent is raising questions about the extent of the president's wartime powers.

Ali Al-Marri came to the U.S. legally, the day before the 9/11 attacks. He arrived on a student visa to pursue a master's degree in computer science at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

But the government alleges he was sent by al-Qaida to use his computer skills to disrupt the U.S. banking system and serve as a liaison for other al-Qaida operatives in the country.

choose one: prison, family detention center or xenu u

US to build vast prison in afghanistan
from afp: The United States plans to build a vast, new detention camp at its main military base in Afghanistan... "I can confirm there are indeed plans to build a new detention facilty at Bagram airfield," spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wright told AFP. "And the overall size is expected to be 40 acres." The move came because "our existing theatre facilty is deterioriating," Wright said, referring to the makeshift jail at Bagram that holds alleged extremist militants rounded up in the US "war on terror" launched after the September 11 attacks.

US admits holding juvenile combatants
from ap: 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 detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President 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.

feds take bids on new detention camps
from latimes: The federal government is accepting bids for up to three new family detention centers that would house as many as 600 men, women and children fighting deportation cases. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a call for proposals last month and set June 16 as the deadline. New facilities are being considered on both coasts and on the Southwestern border... There are currently two family facilities - a former nursing home in Pennsylvania and a former prison in Texas.

will smith to open his very own scientology school
from guardian: Actor Will Smith is funding his own private school that will teach youngsters using an educational system devised in part by the Scientology cult. The curriculum at Smith's New Village Academy of Calabasas, on which he has spent nearly £500,000, uses different educational theories including "study technology" – a learning method developed by L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology.

9/11: lawyers, lies, medals & media

ksm, alleged 9/11 architect, gets navy lawyer
from miami herald: For two decades, attorney Prescott Prince was a solo practitioner with a small family and criminal law practice in eastern Virginia, and a reserve Navy career on the side... Tuesday, the soft-spoken 53-year-old with a mustache and thinning hair found himself with what well could be the case of a lifetime, if not the century: The Pentagon assigned him to defend Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reputed al Qaeda kingpin and alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks...

we have no record of mukasey's 'warning'
from raw story: The vice chair of the prominent 9/11 Commission is denying Attorney General Michael Mukasey's claim that the US received a warning before the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, Salon reports. "I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence," said former Rep. Lee Hamilton in a statement received by Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who has closely followed the Mukasey revelation.

medals mulled for 9/11's flight 93 victims
from usa today: Relatives of the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 are stepping up pressure on Congress to decide whether the people who died fighting their attackers on Sept. 11, 2001, deserve the nation's highest civilian award... Debra Burlingame is the sister of Capt. Charles "Chic" Burlingame, a pilot who died when his American Airlines flight crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. She agrees that the people on Flight 93 deserve an honor beyond what others receive. "They were magnificent. And that story should be told," she said. "When you acknowledge them with these kind of historic gestures you make sure that those stories never die."

jesse ventura on hannity & colmes
from youtube: Former Minnesota Governor Jesse 'The Mind' Ventura on Fox News Hannity & Colmes April 8, 2008.


jesse ventura schools dopey & insanthony

pentagon releases edited interview with '9/11 mastermind'

from kltv: The Pentagon has released an audio tape of a closed court session with the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

The words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have been censored. The Defense Department decided to edit out his comments about his justification for waging a holy war against the United States.

A spokesman says a number of experts listened to the tape and expressed fears it could be used by other militants as a propaganda tool. So, about 10 minutes of the 40-minute tape have been deleted for its release.

The tape comes from a court session at Guantanamo Bay in March that determined Mohammed would be declared an "enemy combatant" and held indefinitely.

At the hearing, Mohammed confessed to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl and to playing a central part in 30 other worldwide attacks and plots that killed thousands of victims.

(Click here to read a summary of the evidence. 109kb PDF)

(Click here to read the full testimony transcript. 1.35mb PDF)

(Click here to listen to the KSM hearing. 24.8mb MP3)

update: censored audio of 9/11 mastermind ksm confession
from raw story: The Pentagon Thursday posted a censored audio version of testimony from September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on its website deleting parts about the beheading of US reporter Daniel Pearl, officials said.

A Pentagon spokesman said the passage was deleted from the audio version of Mohammed's hearing before a military panel at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba because of its potential propaganda value.

Read the full story.

The following audio/video clip is from CNN's Newsroom, broadcast on September 13.

padilla convicted of terrorism support

from ap: Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration's zeal to stop homegrown terror.

Padilla, a U.S. citizen from Chicago, was once accused of being part of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the U.S., but those allegations were not part of his trial.

Padilla, 36, and his foreign-born co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, which carries a penalty of life in prison. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts, which carry potential 15-year sentences each.

Jurors deliberated a day and a half after a three-month trial. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke set a Dec. 5 sentencing date.

The three were accused of being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists. The defense contended they were trying to help persecuted Muslims in war zones with relief and humanitarian aid.

The White House thanked the jury for a "just" verdict.

flashback: prosecutors can't find tape of padilla's final interrogation in navy brig

US military rehearses terror hearings

from ap/yahoo: The U.S. military is rehearsing for hearings on whether 14 top terror suspects can be held indefinitely without charge as enemy combatants, but defense lawyers say the outcome is preordained.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the 13 others will be the highest-profile detainees to undergo the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, and the first to do so in two years. The proceedings, expected early next year, are open to the media.

At the hearings, a military panel will evaluate whether the men should be classified as "enemy combatants," a designation which allows them to be held indefinitely and prevents them from challenging their detention in the U.S. court system.

"The biggest thing we're doing is opening up the books, reviewing procedures and conducting rehearsals so that we do it correctly," Navy Capt. Philip Waddingham told reporters who recently visited Guantanamo. He is the lead officer at Guantanamo for the Pentagon-based office in charge of determining detainees' status.

It is unclear whether Mohammed and the others - who until recently were being held in secret CIA prisons - will agree to attend the hearings. If they do, the military says they will remain shackled and would be forbidden to talk to reporters.