US constitution raped this morning

Bush signs anti-terrorism law
from news.com.au: US President George W. Bush has signed a controversial law legalising secret CIA prisons, harsh interrogation practices and military trials as weapons against suspected terrorists...

The measure was drafted in response to a US Supreme Court ruling in June that Mr Bush had overstepped his powers and breached the Geneva Conventions by setting up special war crimes tribunals for “war on terror” suspects...

Since the opening of a US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, not one of the several hundred prisoners held there has been afforded a trial...

Detainees would be deprived of all legal recourse to protest the conditions of their detention.

The American Civil Liberties Union in a statement called “the new law one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history”.

But Mr Bush hailed the law as “one of the most important pieces of legislation in the war on terror”.

“This Bill will allow the Central Intelligence Agency to continue its program for questioning key terrorist leaders and operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man believed to be the mastermind of the September the 11th, 2001 attacks on our country.”

military commissions law elicits strong emotions
from cns news: President Bush Tuesday signed into law the much contested Military Commissions Act of 2006, the law aimed at defining how suspects in the war against terrorism will be interrogated and prosecuted. Despite much criticism, the president insisted that the act would provide a just response to those accused of terrorism...

Bush repeatedly stressed that the bill is just, not simply an unprecedented move of a power hungry, war mongering executive branch, as some have argued...

Despite Bush's insistence that the act provides a fair, legal and just response to terrorists, critics of the law say it is unjust, unconstitutional and un-American.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow - director of the Shalom Center, a network for Jewish thought, is one of those critics.

"It seems quite possible that the president thinks he has the power to take any person, citizen of the United States or not, inside the territory of the United States or not, and declare that person an enemy combatant. And since habeas corpus and other access to the courts under the law is presumably denied, his decision would be final," Waskow told Cybercast News Service.

Waskow added that such authority is "vile, disgusting," and violates the U.S. Constitution. "It violates the solemn treaties of the United States from both a religious perspective and the perspective of a democratic society itself. Totally unacceptable," said Waskow.

The Shalom Center is affiliated with the Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture (WRRCAT) which released a statement saying that the legislation "deeply shames America" and that members of the group were "prepared to commit acts of civil disobedience" in order to deliver a statement to the president.

wesley snipes, tax protester

from herald tribune: Actor Wesley Snipes faces tax fraud charges in a case that involves an accountant from Venice.

The accountant, Douglas Rosile, worked for two businesses that faked tax records to get refunds for Snipes, federal prosecutors said.

Also charged with tax fraud is Eddie Ray Kahn of Sorrento, Fla., who according to government prosecutors is the founder of the two companies, American Rights Litigators and Guiding Light of God Ministries.

The indictments were announced Tuesday at a press conference held by U.S. Attorney Paul I. Perez in Tampa.

According to the federal government, Kahn and Rosile told potential clients that they didn't have to pay income taxes because U.S. citizens and residents cannot be taxed on income they earn in the US. Others have argued the same thing in court and lost.

Government prosecutors say that Snipes failed to file income tax returns from 1999 to 2004. The actor also fraudulently claimed tax refunds in 1996 and 1997 totaling nearly $12 million, federal prosecutors say.

outside the box #73

here is the latest episode of "outside the box," hosted by alex ansary.
it was originally broadcast by portland community media on october 12, 2006.

22 days later

white house 'almost inexplicably upbeat' about elections
from washington post: Amid widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the coming midterm elections, there are two people whose confidence about GOP prospects strikes even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat: President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove.

and why are they so upbeat? perhaps this seemingly unironic headline from the new york times can help explain why they're so positive: democrats have intensity, but GOP has machine

what machine? are they talking about this machine? or is it this machine? or maybe it's this one? i guess we'll find out in 22 days.

scientific poll: 84% reject official 9/11 story

Only 16% now believe official fable according to New York Times/CBS News poll. How will the Bush Cabal react?

from prison planet: A monumental new scientific opinion poll has emerged which declares that only 16% of people in America now believe the official government explanation of the September 11th 2001 terror attacks.

According to the new New York Times/CBS News poll, only 16% of Americans think the government is telling the truth about 9/11 and the intelligence prior to the attacks:

"Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?

Telling the truth 16%
Hiding something 53%
Mostly lying 28%
Not sure 3%"

The 84% figure mirrors other recent polls on the same issue. A Canadian Poll put the figure at 85%. A CNN poll had the figure at 89%. Over 80% supported the stance of Charlie Sheen when he went public with his opinions on 9/11 as an inside job.

A recent CNN poll found that the percentage of Americans who blame the Bush administration for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington rose from almost a third to almost half over the past four years. This latest poll shows that that figure has again risen exponentially and now stands at well over three quarters of the population.

It took 35 plus years for the majority of Americans to wake up to the fact that the assassination of JFK was a government operation. It has only take five years for MORE Americans to wake up to the fact that 9/11 was an inside job on behalf of the Neoconservative crime syndicate within the US.

Reference to past polls show that in the last five years there has been an explosion in numbers of those who do not buy the official line.

In 2004 a Zogby Poll showed that just over half of New Yorkers believed there was a cover up.

In May of this year another Zogby poll indicated that around half of ALL Americans did not buy the official story.

The latest poll also shows a massive awakening has occurred recently given that previous estimates indicated that around 34% still believed the official story and around 30% were oblivious altogether.

Alex Jones declared that the Truth movement has cause to celebrate this evening as it is now beyond any doubt that the vast majority of Americans know that the official story of 19 Saudis with box cutters is ludicrous.

The diligence of those who have worked to educate the world on 9/11 truth from day one cannot be underestimated. We are now seeing the fruits of this hard and at times extremely trying labor hit home.

We would add that although this is a major victory for the truth movement it does not mean that the hard work can stop.

The next step is to use the majority opinion as leverage towards officially changing the record of what happened on 9/11, forcing the mainstream media into addressing the issue, not as a quirky news item, but as a serious re-defining of the state of the nation and the world today.

We have not taken the country back yet and the cabal that has taken control of the government continues to systematically use 9/11 and the war on terror as an excuse to destroy the Constitutional foundations of law and order in America.

As it becomes clearer that more and more Americans KNOW that their government is lying to them on the most fundamental issue of their lifetimes, we must consider what kind of reaction the government will undertake.

Remember that the majority of American voters now believe that 9/11 was a more significant historical event than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In July 2001, Alex Jones issued an emergency warning that there was going to be a massive false flag terrorist attack in New York to be blamed on Osama Bin Laden. At that time there was not enough activism among the population to prevent it going ahead.

In August of 2006 Alex Jones issued a second emergency warning that all the factors pointed towards an imminent attack. The activism that occurred in the wake of this warning and that of others was exponential and may indeed have helped stave off another attack.

Our next warning is this, desperate times call for desperate measures. The criminal elements of the government now know that they have been totally exposed and are reviled by the majority of free thinking Americans. Will their response be to vamp up the crack down on that free thinking itself?

In essence Americans have outright REJECTED giving up their liberty for security in the wake of 9/11. The only security IS liberty itself, and the only way to stay secure is to constantly defend liberty.

bush keeps revising war justification

from ap/my way: President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now.

Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction or from selling them to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive "struggle between good and evil."

government appeals wiretapping decision

from reuters/yahoo: The Bush administration on Friday appealed a federal judge's ruling this summer that a controversial post-September 11, 2001, domestic spying program was illegal.

The Justice Department, in documents filed with a federal court in Cincinnati, argued that President George W. Bush had acted within the law in authorizing the surveillance of domestic wiretaps of international telephone calls.

In its appeal, the government stated that the federal judge's ruling "dismantles a tool that already has helped detect and disrupt al Qaeda plots."

It stated that U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision directly conflicts with the Supreme Court's direction to "proceed with great caution in resolving challenges in this extraordinarily sensitive context."

Nearly a year ago, media reports revealed the existence of the domestic spying by the National Security Agency.

Civil libertarians, including the ACLU, which brought the suit, have argued the government could gain the same type of intelligence information through warrants.

two other important bits of info are that the plaintiffs in the ACLU v. NSA case include chistopher hitchens & james bamford and also the fact that bush authorized domestic spying BEFORE 9/11!

UNification moonie nations

from cnn: The General Assembly adopted a resolution by acclamation Friday appointing South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. secretary-general.

Ban, 62, will become the eighth U.N. secretary-general on January 1, when Annan's second five-year term expires.

He was one of seven candidates vying to be the U.N. chief and topped all four informal polls in the U.N. Security Council...

The appointment of the South Korean official came less than a week after North Korea said it had tested a nuclear weapon, heightening tensions in the region. The claim has yet to be verified.

The security council will vote Saturday on whether to impose sanctions on North Korea, according to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

Annan hailed Ban as "a future secretary-general who is exceptionally attuned to the sensitivities of countries and constituencies in every continent," and said he would be "a man with a truly global mind at the helm of the world's only universal organization."

Are the Moonies attempting to gain control of the UN?
from wayne madsen report: The Unification Church, the global enterprise of South Korean Rev. Sun Myung Moon (born Yong Myung Moon), may be attempting to take control of the United Nations through the all-but-certain election of South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon as UN Secretary General...

Some informed UN sources are concerned that Moon lists his religious affiliation as "non-denominational Christian," a code word often used by the "Moonies" for the Unification Church.

In addition, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN ambassador John Bolton are attempting to have former Washington Times editor Josette Sheeran Shiner become the next Executive Director of the World Food Program. Sheeran Shiner is a member of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The term of the World Food Program Executive Director is five years. Shiner is currently the Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs.

Although Ban Ki-moon and Sun Myung Moon are not related, some UN members may sense that there is something amiss about the Bush administration's strong support for the South Korean Foreign Minister, given the close links between some Bush officials and the "Moonies." There were a few "discourage" and "no opinion" ballots cast by Security Council members on Ban Ki-moon...

Ban Ki-moon has lived in the United States for a number of years, having gone to graduate school at Harvard and serving two tours at South Korea's Washington embassy, a diplomatic mission that maintains close contacts with the Sun Myung Moon organization in Washington, DC. The Unification Church, in addition to owning the Washington Times, also owns United Press International.

Sun Mying Moon, who was excommunicated by the Korean Presbyterian church for preaching heresy, claims he is the Messiah and intends to take control of the world.

coroner: US forces killed TV reporter

from ap/yahoo: A coroner ruled Friday that U.S. forces in Iraq unlawfully killed a British television journalist by shooting him in the head as he lay in the back of a makeshift ambulance during the opening days of the war.

The widow of reporter Terry Lloyd called for the perpetrators to be prosecuted for the "despicable, deliberate, vengeful act." And Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he would ask the attorney general to take steps to bring to justice those responsible for the death.

But prosecution of U.S. service members seemed unlikely.

olbermann laments 'death of habeas corpus'

from raw story: The Military Commissions Act of 2006 eliminates habeas corpus from traditional rights of prisoners.

In this Countdown special report, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann explains why habeas corpus is "a cornerstone of freedom" for the United States.

"In fact, Countdown has obtained a partially redacted copy of a colonial 'declaration' indicating that back then, 'depriving us of trial by jury' was actually considered sufficient cause to start a war of independence, based on the then-fashionable idea that 'liberty' was an unalienable right," said Olbermann.

category of terror

from another day in the empire: An excerpt from a Ralph Schoenman speech on the false flag aspects of the events of September 11, 2001. Directed and edited by Kurt Nimmo. A broadcast quality DVD of this video is available. Contact Kurt Nimmo: k.nimmo at comcast.net

Canada troops battle 10-ft Afghan marijuana plants

from reuters/yahoo: Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy - almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet high marijuana plants.

General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defence staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.

"We tried burning them with white phosphorous - it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel - it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.

Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.

"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.

One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'."

underlying politics of 9/11

from another day in the empire: An excerpt from a Ralph Schoenman speech on the false flag aspects of the events of September 11, 2001. Directed and edited by Kurt Nimmo. A broadcast quality DVD of this video is available. Contact Kurt Nimmo: k.nimmo at comcast.net

speed through the checkout with just a wave of your arm

Shoppers could soon pay for goods using a microchip implanted under the skin

from london times: It may sound like a sci-fi fantasy but shoppers may one day be able to pay their grocery bills using a microchip implanted in their body.

The idea is already catching on with today’s iPod generation. According to research released today by the Institute for Grocery Distribution (IGD), a retail think-tank, almost one in ten teenagers and one in twenty adults are willing to have a microchip implanted to pay shop bills and help to prevent card or identity fraud and muggings.

A quick scan of the arm would connect immediately to bank details and payments could be made swiftly. Such microchips are already used in cats, dogs and horses. They are used in cattle and sheep so that consumers can trace their food from farm to plate and are also being used to help to combat drugs counterfeiting.

But now the retail industry is looking at body chips among a range of biometric payment methods, including fingerprint and iris recognition. So far the only example of a human body chip being used is at the VIP Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, where people wear bikinis and shorts and there is nowhere to carry wallets and purses.

related: photos & articles on VIP Baja Beach Club

american prison camps are on the way

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

from alternet: The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.

US brings first treason case in over 50 years

from reuters/yahoo: A California-born convert to Islam who has appeared in al Qaeda videos became on Wednesday the first American charged with treason since the World War Two era, a U.S. Justice Department official said.

Adam Gadahn, 28, who is believed to be overseas and is not in U.S. custody, was accused of treason, which carries a maximum punishment of death, and providing material support for a terrorist group, the official said.

Gadahn, also known on the videos as Azzam the American, has been involved in a propaganda campaign of the Islamic militant group, sources familiar with the case said. Some of the videos have threatened attacks against the United States...

There were a number of treason cases after World War Two, including a trial in 1952, legal experts said. In one of the cases, an American woman, known as "Tokyo Rose," was convicted of treason and later pardoned. She died in Chicago last month.

robin williams: 'the whole system sucks'

from cnn: To hear comedian Robin Williams tell it, politics as usual in the United States is no laughing matter, even if he makes a lot of jokes about it in his new movie "Man of the Year."

"This is not about one party or another. This is about how the whole system sucks," Williams told reporters.

He criticized the influence of special interest groups, the millions of dollars needed to campaign for office and the negative advertisements candidates use to hurt their rivals.

Director Barry Levinson's satirical "Man of the Year" hits theaters on Friday, aiming to tap into voter disenchantment ahead of the November U.S. election with a story about an acerbic talk show host, played by Williams, who runs for president...

Levinson has been down this road before with 1997 political satire "Wag the Dog," about how a Hollywood producer and a Washington public relations expert concoct a fake war to cover up a presidential sex scandal. During the term of President Bill Clinton, that story sounded all too familiar...

In "Man of the Year," Williams portrays political commentator Tom Dobbs who runs for president as an independent candidate in an election that is marred by a glitch in computerized voting. Sound familiar?

breaking news: plane crashes into manhattan building

from ap/yahoo: A small plane crashed into a high-rise on the Upper East Side, setting off a fire and startling New Yorkers, police said.

Fire Department spokeswoman Emily Rahimi said an aircraft struck struck the 20th floor of a building on East 72nd Street. Witnesses said the crash caused a loud noise, and burning and falling debris was seen. Flames were seen shooting out of the windows. Video from the scene showed at least three apartments in the high rise fully engulfed in flames.

There was no immediate word on any deaths or injuries.

It was not immediately known if it was a terrorist act.

how george bush gave krazy kim the bomb

You didn't know that?
Of course not, you read the NY Times...
from greg palast: How did a berserker like North Korea's Kim John Il get the bomb in the first place? Answer: He bought it from the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan in 2001 - while all our President's men ordered our intelligence agents to keep their eyes shut tight.

On November 9, 2001, BBC Television Centre in London received a call from a phone booth just outside Washington. The call to our Newsnight team was part of a complex prearranged dance coordinated with the National Security News Service, a conduit for unhappy spooks at the CIA and FBI to unburden themselves of disturbing information and documents. The top-level U.S. intelligence agent on the line had much to be unhappy and disturbed about: a "back-off" directive.

This call to BBC came two months after the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Towers. His fellow agents, he said, were now released to hunt bad guys. That was good news. The bad news was that, before September 11, in those weeks just after George W. Bush took office, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) personnel were told to "back off" certain targets of investigations begun by Bill Clinton. He said there were particular investigations that were effectively killed.

Which particular investigations? The agent was willing to risk his job to get this story out, but we had to press repeatedly for specifics on the directive to "back off." The order, he said reluctantly, spiked at least one fateful operation. As he talked, I wrote in my notebook, "Killed off Conn. Labs investigation." Connecticut Laboratories? I was clueless until my producer Meirion Jones, a weapons expert, gave me that "you idiot" look and said, "Khan Labs! Pakistan. The bomb." Dr. A. Q. Khan is known as the "Father" of Pakistan's atomic bomb.

He's not, however, the ideal parent. To raise the cash for Pakistan's program (and to pocket a tidy sum for himself), Khan sold off copies of his baby, his bomb, to Libya and North Korea-blueprints, material and all the fixings to blow this planet to Kingdom Come. From another source inside the lab itself, we learned that Dr. Khan was persuading Pakistan to test his bomb-on India.

Why would Team Bush pull back our agents from nabbing North Korea's bomb connection? The answer in two words: Saudi Arabia.

more people believe 9/11 inside job than approve of bush

from huffington post: The latest Newsweek poll bears grim tidings for the Republicans. The president's approval ratings are at new low for the poll, just 33 percent. That's less than the 36 percent of Americans who, according to a Scripps Howard poll, believe that "it is 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them."

update: here's my comment posted on huffington post...

... the only music to my ears is the sound of nervous democrats, wringing their hands, worrying they won't get their turn to manage Slavery Incorporated. worrying that they won't get the chance to use the tyrannical powers that the neo-cons have forged; hoping they'll get to label anti-abortionists, gun-rights advocates & home schoolers as terrorists.

i love it because, in a way, the 9/11 truth movement is treated almost like a 3rd party by the democrats, scorned as a spoiler to their corrupt game of controlled opposition.

Wake Up Sheeple! the democrats voted for the enabling act, too. they'll always fall in line and vote for war, surveillance & death. just like the republicans. because they're funded by the same sources. why do you see gore & murdoch joining forces for current TV? why does roger ailes put on fundraisers for hillary? why does GHWB say that bill clinton is like a son?

the sooner you guys figure out that it's all staged like phony wrestling, the sooner We The People can take back this republic.

so, yes, all of you good little democrats should be very concerned about the 9/11 truth movement. because after you blow ANOTHER election, we'll still be here shining a light on YOUR hypocrisy. you can make fun & play the 'tin-foil hat' card all you like, because in the end we're seeking the truth, while you're just looking for a job.

By: mediamonarchy on October 10, 2006 at 06:19pm