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Paul Merrell

Secrecy News - from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy - 0 views

  • New or newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.
  • Cybersecurity: Authoritative Reports and Resources, October 25, 2013
  • “The President… recognizes that U.S. citizens and institutions should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from foreign or domestic intercept when using the public telephone system,” according to National Security Decision Memorandum 338 of September 1, 1976 (document 180).
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  • The Central Intelligence Agency today asked a court to allow more time to declassify its response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) activities, which itself is undergoing a time-consuming declassification review. “This complex process requires the careful review of over 500 pages of highly classified material. In addition, sufficient time must be allowed not only for coordination with other agencies, but — after completion of declassification review — for implementation of security measures to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel and facilities overseas,” according to a May 15 motion filed by the government in a FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU. “Due to the fluid nature of this process, aspects of which are beyond the CIA’s control, the Agency does not yet have a firm date by which it can complete the processing of the CIA Response [to the SSCI report] and the so-called Panetta Report, although it hopes the declassification review and accompanying processing of those documents can be completed this summer.” The CIA therefore requested an extension of time to respond, to which the ACLU plaintiffs did not consent.
  • With respect to the Senate Intelligence Committee report itself, the government promised an “expeditious” declassification review of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions. “While all declassification decisions are guided by the need to protect national security interests, the President has expressed a clear intent to declassify as much of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the SSCI Report as possible, and intends the declassification process to be expeditious,” the government motion said. According to an April 18 letter from then-White House counsel Katherine Ruemmler, appended to the new motion, “The President supports making public the Committee’s important review of the historical RDI program, as he believes that public scrutiny and debate will help to inform the public understanding of the program and to ensure that such a program will not be contemplated by a future administration.
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    Congress in its wisdom does not publish all Congressional Research Service reports online. The Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy fills that gap. The report linked in this bookmark is an amazing compendium of research resources on the topic of cybersecurity, with a heavy emphasis on cloud computing. 
Paul Merrell

Stanford Researchers: It Is Trivially Easy to Match Metadata to Real People - Rebecca J... - 0 views

  • In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers dialed, lengths of calls. "There are no names, there’s no content in that database," President Barack Obama told Charlie Rose in June. No names; just metadata. New research from Stanford demonstrates the silliness of that distinction. Armed with very sparse metadata, Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler found it easy—trivially so—to figure out the identity of a caller. <div><a href="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Drebecca-j-rosen%26title%3Dstanford-researchers-it-is-trivially-easy-to-match-metadata-to-real-people%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x185&c=387748957&tile=3" title=""><img src="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Drebecca-j-rosen%26title%3Dstanford-researchers-it-is-trivially-easy-to-match-metadata-to-real-people%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x185&c=387748957&tile=3" alt="" /></a></div> Mayer and Mutchler are running an experiment which works with volunteers who agree to use an Android app, MetaPhone, that allows the researchers access to their metadata. Now, using that data, Mayer and Mutchler say that it was hardly any trouble at all to figure out who the phone numbers belonged to, and they did it in just a few hours.
  • They write: We randomly sampled 5,000 numbers from our crowdsourced MetaPhone dataset and queried the Yelp, Google Places, and Facebook directories. With little marginal effort and just those three sources—all free and public—we matched 1,356 (27.1%) of the numbers. Specifically, there were 378 hits (7.6%) on Yelp, 684 (13.7%) on Google Places, and 618 (12.3%) on Facebook. What about if an organization were willing to put in some manpower? To conservatively approximate human analysis, we randomly sampled 100 numbers from our dataset, then ran Google searches on each. In under an hour, we were able to associate an individual or a business with 60 of the 100 numbers. When we added in our three initial sources, we were up to 73. How about if money were no object? We don’t have the budget or credentials to access a premium data aggregator, so we ran our 100 numbers with Intelius, a cheap consumer-oriented service. 74 matched.1 Between Intelius, Google search, and our three initial sources, we associated a name with 91 of the 100 numbers.
  • Their results weren't perfect (and they note that the Intelius data was particularly spotty), but they didn't even try all that hard. "If a few academic researchers can get this far this quickly, it’s difficult to believe the NSA would have any trouble identifying the overwhelming majority of American phone numbers," they conclude. It's also difficult to believe they wouldn't try. As federal district judge Richard Leon wrote in his decision last week, "There is also nothing stopping the Government from skipping the [National Security Letter] step altogether and using public databases or any of its other vast resources to match phone numbers with subscribers."
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    Another Obama/NSA lie exposed. 
Paul Merrell

9-11 Research: An Independent Investigation of the 9-11-2001 Attack - 0 views

  • An Attempt to Uncover the Truth About September 11th, 2001 We all know the official story of September 11th: four jetliners were hijacked by groups of four and five Arabic men armed with box cutters, who proceeded to fly three of the four jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Subsequently the World Trade Center Towers, weakened by the impacts and fires, collapsed into piles of rubble. The FBI had compiled a list of hijackers within three days, and it was so obvious that Osama bin Laden had masterminded the operation from caves in Afghanistan, that there was no need to seriously investigate the crime or produce evidence. The "retaliatory" attack on the Taliban would soon commence. Is this story true? Its central assumptions have never been tested by an official government body whose members lack obvious conflicts of interest. There are numerous red flags in the official story, which requires a long series of highly improbable coincidences. Questioning that story is an act of responsible citizenship.
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    Preliminarily, looks to be a great resource site for 9-11 research.
Gary Edwards

Ron Paul: Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis - WSJ.com Oct 20, 2011 - 0 views

  • The manner of thinking of the Federal Reserve now is no different than that of the former Soviet Union, which employed hundreds of thousands of people to perform research and provide calculations in an attempt to mimic the price system of the West's (relatively) free markets. Despite the obvious lesson to be drawn from the Soviet collapse, the U.S. still has not fully absorbed it.
  • The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price—the price of time—and that attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control. It fails to see that the price of housing was artificially inflated through the Fed's monetary pumping during the early 2000s, and that the only way to restore soundness to the housing sector is to allow prices to return to sustainable market levels.
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    Maybe the best statement to date as to why we, the people, need to take back control of the Federal Reserve.  Ron Paul has noticeably tempered down his close the Fed rhetoric, moving to a audit-control the Fed position.   excerpt: The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy. Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time-the interest rate-lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources. Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use-the uses the free market actually desires-the economy stagnates. Enlarge Image Bloomberg Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke The great contribution of the Austrian school of economics to economic theory was in its description of this business cycle: the process of booms and busts, and their origins in monetary intervention by the government in cooperation with the banking system. Yet policy makers at the Federal Reserve still fail to understand the causes of our most recent financial crisis. So they find themselves unable to come up with an adequate solution.
Paul Merrell

2013 mass surveillance disclosures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • 1 Historical context 1.1 Origins of clandestine surveillance in the United States (1919–78) 1.2 Mass surveillance in a global context (1988-2000) 1.3 9/11 and its implications on mass surveillance (2001–2009) 1.4 Acceleration of media leaks (2010–present) 2 Summary of NSA surveillance 2.1 Purposes 2.2 Targets 2.3 International cooperation 3 2013 Disclosures by category 3.1 Court Orders, Memos and Policy Documents 3.2 Reports 3.3 Collection and Analysis Programs or Hardware 3.4 Relationships with Corporate Partners 3.5 NSA Databases 3.6 Signals Intelligence Directorates (SIDs) 3.7 Technical Directorates 3.8 Names associated with specific targets 3.9 Uncategorized or insufficiently described codenames. 3.10 GCHQ Operations 3.11 NSA Operations 3.12 NSA Relationships with Foreign Intelligence services 3.13 Unrelated to Edward Snowden 4 Media reports 4.1 Chronology 4.2 Disclosures 4.3 Violation of civil liberties and international law 5 Fallout 5.1 Counter-terrorism and national security 5.2 Impact on foreign relations 5.3 Amash/Conyers Amendment 5.4 Public reaction 5.4.1 Petitions 5.4.2 Protests 6 Media related to the disclosures 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading
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    Wikipedia begins pulling its act together on coverage of the NSA scandal. This article is, at least for the time being, a major NSA scandal research resource. But wait to see how soon NSA sock puppets bowdlerize it. The occasional snapshot downloaded or stored in e.g., Zotero, is advisable.   
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    Wow. Diigo handled the markup just fine in My Library but decided to display the raw HTML here. That's got to be a bug. Click through to Wikipedia and look at the table of contents. That's what buried in the markup above.
Paul Merrell

ExposeFacts - For Whistleblowers, Journalism and Democracy - 0 views

  • Launched by the Institute for Public Accuracy in June 2014, ExposeFacts.org represents a new approach for encouraging whistleblowers to disclose information that citizens need to make truly informed decisions in a democracy. From the outset, our message is clear: “Whistleblowers Welcome at ExposeFacts.org.” ExposeFacts aims to shed light on concealed activities that are relevant to human rights, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war. At a time when key provisions of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are under assault, we are standing up for a free press, privacy, transparency and due process as we seek to reveal official information—whether governmental or corporate—that the public has a right to know. While no software can provide an ironclad guarantee of confidentiality, ExposeFacts—assisted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and its “SecureDrop” whistleblower submission system—is utilizing the latest technology on behalf of anonymity for anyone submitting materials via the ExposeFacts.org website. As journalists we are committed to the goal of protecting the identity of every source who wishes to remain anonymous.
  • The seasoned editorial board of ExposeFacts will be assessing all the submitted material and, when deemed appropriate, will arrange for journalistic release of information. In exercising its judgment, the editorial board is able to call on the expertise of the ExposeFacts advisory board, which includes more than 40 journalists, whistleblowers, former U.S. government officials and others with wide-ranging expertise. We are proud that Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was the first person to become a member of the ExposeFacts advisory board. The icon below links to a SecureDrop implementation for ExposeFacts overseen by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and is only accessible using the Tor browser. As the Freedom of the Press Foundation notes, no one can guarantee 100 percent security, but this provides a “significantly more secure environment for sources to get information than exists through normal digital channels, but there are always risks.” ExposeFacts follows all guidelines as recommended by Freedom of the Press Foundation, and whistleblowers should too; the SecureDrop onion URL should only be accessed with the Tor browser — and, for added security, be running the Tails operating system. Whistleblowers should not log-in to SecureDrop from a home or office Internet connection, but rather from public wifi, preferably one you do not frequent. Whistleblowers should keep to a minimum interacting with whistleblowing-related websites unless they are using such secure software.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Thanks Paul! Great article and I agree with you about switching. Rather than a USB, I would rather look into a SSD and try to isolate performance to an ISP bandwidth issue. FYI, I read your Diigo posts daily at this Web site: https://groups.diigo.com/group/socialism-and-the-end-of-the-american-dream/content/user/marbux Seems to be the best visual presentation of your research. I do however think Diigo could improve their hosting of this research by enabling more extensive comments. Notice that your comments are often clipped :( Still, I really do appreciate your sharing both your research and your commentary. Priceless stuff! Many thanks! ~ge~
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    A new resource site for whistle-blowers. somewhat in the tradition of Wikileaks, but designed for encrypted communications between whistleblowers and journalists.  This one has an impressive board of advisors that includes several names I know and tend to trust, among them former whistle-blowers Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Ann Wright. Leaked records can only be dropped from a web browser running the Tor anonymizer software and uses the SecureDrop system originally developed by Aaron Schwartz. They strongly recommend using the Tails secure operating system that can be installed to a thumb drive and leaves no tracks on the host machine. https://tails.boum.org/index.en.html Curious, I downloaded Tails and installed it to a virtual machine. It's a heavily customized version of Debian. It has a very nice Gnome desktop and blocks any attempt to connect to an external network by means other than installed software that demands encrypted communications. For example, web sites can only be viewed via the Tor anonymizing proxy network. It does take longer for web pages to load because they are moving over a chain of proxies, but even so it's faster than pages loaded in the dial-up modem days, even for web pages that are loaded with graphics, javascript, and other cruft. E.g., about 2 seconds for New York Times pages. All cookies are treated by default as session cookies so disappear when you close the page or the browser. I love my Linux Mint desktop, but I am thinking hard about switching that box to Tails. I've been looking for methods to send a lot more encrypted stuff down the pipe for NSA to store. Tails looks to make that not only easy, but unavoidable. From what I've gathered so far, if you want to install more software on Tails, it takes about an hour to create a customized version and then update your Tails installation from a new ISO file. Tails has a wonderful odor of having been designed for secure computing. Current
Paul Merrell

WA State Bill Proposes Criminalizing Help to NSA, Turning Off Resources to Yakima Facil... - 0 views

  • The state level campaign to turn off power and electricity to the NSA got a big boost Wednesday. In a bipartisan effort, Washington became first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency. Rep. David Taylor (R-Moxee) and Rep Rep. Luis Moscoso (D- Mountlake Terrace) introduced HB2272 late Tuesday night. Based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition, it would make it the policy of Washington “to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant.” Practically speaking, the bill prohibits state and local agencies from providing any material support to the NSA within their jurisdiction. This includes barring government-owned utilities from providing water and electricity. It makes information gathered without a warrant by the NSA and shared with law enforcement inadmissible in state court. It blocks public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds. And it disincentivizes corporations attempting to fill needs not met in the absence of state cooperation.
  • The state level campaign to turn off power and electricity to the NSA got a big boost Wednesday. In a bipartisan effort, Washington became first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency. Rep. David Taylor (R-Moxee) and Rep Rep. Luis Moscoso (D- Mountlake Terrace) introduced HB2272 late Tuesday night. Based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition, it would make it the policy of Washington “to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant.” Practically speaking, the bill prohibits state and local agencies from providing any material support to the NSA within their jurisdiction. This includes barring government-owned utilities from providing water and electricity. It makes information gathered without a warrant by the NSA and shared with law enforcement inadmissible in state court. It blocks public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds. And it disincentivizes corporations attempting to fill needs not met in the absence of state cooperation.
  • Lawmakers in Oklahoma, California and Indiana have already introduced similar legislation, and a senator in Arizona has committed to running it there, but Washington counts as the first state with an actual NSA facility within its borders to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act. The NSA operates a listening center on the Army’s Yakima Training Center (YTC). The NSA facility is in Taylor’s district, and he said he cannot sit idly by while a secretive facility in his own backyard violate the rights of people everywhere. “We’re running the bill to provide protection against the ever increasing surveillance into the daily lives of our citizens,” he said. “Our Founding Fathers established a series of checks and balances in the Constitution. Given the federal government’s utter failure to address the people’s concerns, it’s up to the states to stand for our citizens’ constitutional rights.”
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  • According to documents made public by the US Military, as of 2008, a company called PacifiCorp serves as the primary supplier of electric power, and Cascade Natural Gas Corporation supplies natural gas to YTC. The Kittitas Public Utility District, a function of the state of Washington, provides electric power for the MPRC and the Doris site, but no documentation has yet proven that it also provides electricity used directly by the NSA facility on site. And while YTC does provide a bulk of its own water, documents also show that some of it gets there by first passing through upstream dams owned and operated by the State. The Army report states, “YTC lies within three WAUs whose boundaries coincide with WRIAs, as defined by the State of Washington natural resource agencies.” WAU’s are Washington State Water Administration Units. WRIAs are Washington State Water Resource Inventory Areas A Washington company also has a strong link to the NSA. Cray Inc. builds supercomputers for the agency.
  • If the bill passes, it would set in motion actions to stop any state support of the Yakima center as long as it remains in the state, and could make Cray ineligible for any contracts with the state or its political subdivisions. Three public universities in Washington join 166 schools nationwide partnering with the NSA. Taylor’s bill would address these schools’ status as NSA “Centers of Academic Excellence,” and would bar any new partnerships with other state colleges or universities. Tenth Amendment Center national communications director Mike Maharrey says the bills prohibition against using unconstitutionally gathered data in state court would probably have the most immediate impact. In fact, lawmakers in Kansas and Missouri will consider bills simply addressing this kind of data sharing.
  • “We know the NSA shares data with state and local law enforcement. We know from a Reuters report that most of this shared data has absolutely nothing to do with national security issues. This bill would make that information inadmissible in state court,” he said. “This data sharing shoves a dagger into the heart of the Fourth Amendment. This bill would stop that from happening. This is a no-brainer. Every state should do it.” Maharrey said he expects at least three more states to introduce the act within the next few weeks. “This idea is catching fire,” he said. “And why wouldn’t it? We have an out of control agency spying on virtually everybody in the world. We have a president and a Congress that appears poised to maybe put a band aid on it. Americans are realizing if we are going to slow down the NSA, we are going to have to take a different approach. This is it.”
Gary Edwards

RealClearMarkets - Yes, IRS Harassment Blunted The Tea Party Ground Game - 0 views

  • We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races.
  • The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Wow!  So the IRS re-elected Obama?  This is a bureaucratic coup.  We are living in a cleptocracy where the citizens treasury is being systematically looted by Federal bureacracies who are in position and powerfully corrupt enough to elect the representatives who enable them to loot at will. 
  • The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010,
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  • and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 - 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million.
  • Unfortunately for Republicans, the IRS slowed Tea Party growth before the 2012 election.
  • In March 2010, the IRS decided to single Tea Party groups out for special treatment when applying for tax-exempt status by flagging organizations with names containing "Tea Party," "patriot," or "9/12."
  • For the next two years, the IRS approved the applications of only four such groups, delaying all others while subjecting the applicants to highly intrusive, intimidating requests for information regarding their activities, membership, contacts, Facebook posts, and private thoughts.
  • As a consequence, the founders, members, and donors of new Tea Party groups found themselves incapable of exercising their constitutional rights, and the Tea Party's impact was muted in the 2012 election cycle.
  • it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president's team was competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it seriously.
  • The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign.
  • Its remarkable competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would have been equally sophisticated.
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    excerpt: .................... The controversy over the IRS's harassment of conservative groups continues. President Obama's team continues to blame low-level bureaucrats. Some conservatives suspect a more sinister explanation: that the levers of government were used to attack an existential threat to the president's 2012 reelection. The president and his party dismiss this as a paranoid fantasy. The evidence, however, is enough to make one believe that targeting Tea Party groups would have been an effective campaign strategy going into the 2012 election cycle. It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party movement dealt the president his famous "shellacking" in the 2010 mid-term election. Less well-known is the actual number of votes this new movement delivered-and the continuing effects these votes could have had in 2012 had the movement not been de-mobilized by the IRS. In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum. The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a hal
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    One interesting facet of this scandal is that the IRS in its own regulations rewrote a law passed by Congress in the early 50s to permit non-profit corporations to devote part of their resources to political issues. As passed by Congress, it says that the non-profits must be "exclusively" charitable in nature. But when the IRS wrote its implementing regulations, it substituted "primarily" for "exclusively," thus allowing the non-profits to engage in political political campaigns to an undefined extent and getting the IRS into the business of looking at political credentials rather than a simpler review of whether the given non-profit's purpose is purely charitable. Thus, a question of what should be done about this. Roughly, the choices are: [i] amend the statute to read "primarily;" or [ii] leave the statute alone and have someone litigate to correct the IRS regulations. The latter path, if followed, should result in ending *all* non-profits' participation in political campaigns. The advantage of the latter path is that it gets the IRS out of the business of picking whose politics they like. The disadvantage is that it gores a huge number of non-profits' oxen across the political spectrum, so a major lobbying effort to rewrite the statute to maintain the status quo is predictable. But with a court decision holding that the IRS got it wrong, that non-profits must be "exclusively" charitable, presumably it would be illegal for non-profits to do that campaigning themselves.
Paul Merrell

THE 9/11 READER. The September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks | Global Research - 0 views

  • GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES GR I-BOOK No.  7  THE 9/11 READER The September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks 9/11 Truth: Revealing the Lies,  Commemorating the 9/11 Tragedy
  • August 2012 The 911/ Reader is part of Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader, which brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter.  To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.
  • Table of Contents of the 9/11 Reader In Part I, the 911 Reader provides a review of what happened on the morning of 9/11, at the White House, on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, at Strategic Command Headquarters (USSTRATCOM), What was the response of the US Air Force in the immediate wake of the attacks?  Part II focusses on “What Happened on the Planes” as described in the 9/11 Commission Report. Part III sheds light on what caused the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. It also challenges the official narrative with regard to the attack on the Pentagon. Part IV reviews and refutes the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report. Part V focusses on the issue of foreknowledge by Western intelligence agencies. Part VI examines the issue of how foreknowledge of the attacks was used as an instrument of insider trading on airline stocks in the days preceding September 11, 2001. The bonanza financial gains resulting from insurance claims to the leaseholders of the WTC buildings is also examined.
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  • Part VII focusses on the history and central role of Al Qaeda as a US intelligence asset. Since the Soviet-Afghan war, US intelligence has supported the formation of various jihadist organizations. An understanding of this history is crucial in refuting the official 9/11 narrative which claims that Al Qaeda, was behind the attacks. Part VIII centers on the life and death of 9/11 “Terror Mastermind” Osama bin Laden, who was recruited by the CIA in the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war. This section also includes an analysis of the mysterious death of Osama bin Laden, allegedly executed by US Navy Seals in a suburb of Islamabad in May 2011. Part  IX  focusses on “False Flags” and the Pentagon’s “Second 9/11″. Part X examines the issue of “Deep Events” with contributions by renowned scholars Peter Dale Scott and Daniele Ganser. Part XI  examines the structure of 9/11 propaganda which consists in “creating” as well “perpetuating” a  “9/11 Legend”. How is this achieved? Incessantly, on a daily basis, Al Qaeda, the alleged 9/11 Mastermind is referred to by the Western media, government officials, members of the US Congress, Wall Street analysts, etc. as an underlying cause of numerous World events. Part XII focusses on the practice of 9/11 Justice directed against the alleged culprits of the 9/11 attacks. The legitimacy of 9/11 propaganda requires fabricating “convincing evidence” and “proof” that those who are accused actually carried out the attacks. Sentencing of Muslims detained in Guantanamo is part of war propaganda. It depicts innocent men who are accused of the 9/11 attacks, based on confessions acquired through systematic torture throughout their detention. Part  XIII focusses on 9/11 Truth.  The objective of 9/11 Truth is to ultimately dismantle the propaganda apparatus which is manipulating the human mindset. The 9/11 Reader concludes with a retrospective view of 9/11 ten years later.
  • PART  I Timeline: What Happened on the Morning of September 11, 2001 Nothing Urgent: The Curious Lack of Military Action on the Morning of September. 11, 2001 - by George Szamuely – 2012-08-12 Political Deception: The Missing Link behind 9-11 - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2002-06-20 On the morning of September 11, Pakistan’s Chief Spy General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged “money-man” behind the 9-11 hijackers, was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence committees. 9/11 Contradictions: Bush in the Classroom - by Dr. David Ray Griffin – 2008-04-04 9/11 Contradictions: When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker? - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-04-24 VIDEO: Pilots For 9/11 Truth: Intercepted Don’t miss this important documentary, now on GRTV - 2012-05-16
  • PART II What Happened on the Planes “United 93″: What Happened on the Planes? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-05-01   Phone Calls from the 9/11 Airliners Response to Questions Evoked by My Fifth Estate Interview - by Prof David Ray Griffin – 2010-01-12 Given the cell phone technology available in 2001, cell phone calls from airliners at altitudes of more than a few thousand feet, were virtually impossible Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-04-01 Ted Olson’s report was very important. It provided apparent “evidence” that American 77 had struck the Pentagon.
  • PART III What Caused the Collapse of The WTC Buildings and the Pentagon? The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True - by Dr. David Ray Griffin – 2006-01-29 The official theory about the Twin Towers says that they collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires Evidence Refutes the Official 9/11 Investigation: The Scientific Forensic Facts - by Richard Gage, Gregg Roberts – 2010-10-13 VIDEO: Controlled Demolitions Caused the Collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings on September 11, 2001 - by Richard Gage – 2009-09-20 VIDEO: 9/11: The Myth and The Reality Now on GRTV - by Prof. David Ray Griffin – 2011-08-30 Undisputed Facts Point to the Controlled Demolition of WTC 7 - by Richard Gage – 2008-03-28 VIDEO: 9/11 Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out See the trailer for this ground-breaking film on GRTV - 2011-08-03 9/11: “Honest Mistake” or BBC Foreknowledge of Collapse of WTC 7? Jane Standley Breaks Her Silence - by James Higham – 2011-08-18 The Collapse of WTC Building Seven. Interview. Comment by Elizabeth Woodworth - by David Ray Griffin – 2009-10-17   Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in Plain Sight: The 9/11 “Official Story” and the Collapse of WTC Building Seven - by Prof David Ray Griffin – 2010-05-30 Besides omitting and otherwise falsifying evidence, NIST also committed the type of scientific fraud called fabrication, which means simply “making up results.” VIDEO; Firefighters’ Analysis of the 9/11 Attacks Refutes the Official Report - by Erik Lawyer – 2012-08-27 VIDEO: Pentagon Admits More 9/11 Remains Dumped in Landfill - by James Corbett – 2012-03-01 The Pentagon revealed that some of the unidentifiable remains from victims at the Pentagon and Shanksville sites on September 11, 2001 were disposed of in a landfill. 9/11: The Attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 The Official Version Amounts to an Enormous Lie - by Thierry Meyssan – 2012-08-16
  • PART IV Lies and Fabrications: The 9/11 Commission Report A National Disgrace: A Review of the 9/11 Commission Report - by David Ray Griffin – 2005-03-24 The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571 Page Lie - by Dr. David Ray Griffin – 2005-09-08 September 11, 2001: 21 Reasons to Question the Official Story about 9/11 - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-09-11 911 “Conspiracy Theorists” Vindicated: Pentagon deliberately misled Public Opinion Military officials made false statements to Congress and to the 911 Commission - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-08-02 The 9/11 Commission’s Incredible Tales Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93 - by Prof. David Ray Griffin – 2005-12-13 9/11 and the War on Terror: Polls Show What People Think 10 Years Later - by Washington’s Blog – 2011-09-10
  • PART  V Foreknowledge of 9/11   VIDEO: The SECRET SERVICE ON 9/11: What did the Government Know? Learn more on this week’s GRTV Feature Interview - by Kevin Ryan, James Corbett – 2012-04-10 9/11 Foreknowledge and “Intelligence Failures”: “Revealing the Lies” on 9/11 Perpetuates the “Big Lie” - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-14 “Foreknowledge” and “Failure to act” upholds the notion that the terrorist attacks (“act of war”) “waged by Muslims against America” are real, when all the facts and findings point towards coverup and complicity at the highest levels of the US government. Foreknowledge of 9/11 by Western Intelligence Agencies - by Michael C. Ruppert – 2012-08-21
  • PART XII Post 9/11 “Justice” IRAN ACCUSED OF BEING BEHIND 9/11 ATTACKS. U.S. Court Judgment, December 2011 (Havlish v. Iran) - by Julie Lévesque – 2012-05-11 U.S. Court Judgment, December 2011 (Havlish v. Iran) “American Justice”: The Targeted Assassination of Osama Bin Laden Extrajudicial executions are unlawful - by Prof. Marjorie Cohn – 2011-05-10 ALLEGED “MASTERMIND” OF 9/11 ON TRIAL IN GUANTANAMO: Military Tribunals proceed Despite Evidence of Torture - by Tom Carter – 2012-05-30 U.S. Military Drugged Detainees to Obtain FALSE Confessions Self-confessed 9/11 “mastermind” falsely confessed to crimes he didn’t commit - by Washington’s Blog – 2012-07-15 911 MILITARY TRIAL: Pentagon Clears Way for Military Trial of Five charged in 9/11 Attacks - by Bill Van Auken – 2012-04-06 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial will convict us all - by Paul Craig Roberts – 2009-11-25
  • PART VII 9/11 and the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) Political Deception: The Missing Link behind 9-11 - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2002-06-20 On the morning of September 11, Pakistan’s Chief Spy General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged “money-man” behind the 9-11 hijackers, was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence committees. 9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan and the Soviet-Afghan War to George W Bush and September 11, 2001 - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2010-09-09 Osama bin Laden was recruited by the CIA in 1979. The US spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings.     The Central Role of Al Qaeda in Bush’s National Security Doctrine “Revealing the Lies” on 9/11 Perpetuates the “Big Lie” - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2007-07-12 September 11, 2001: America and NATO Declare War on Afghanistan NATO’s Doctrine of Collective Security - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2009-12-21   America’s Holy Crusade against the Muslim World. - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2010-08-30 What is now unfolding is a generalized process of demonization of an entire population group
  • Osamagate - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2001-10-09 The main justification for waging this war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future. The “Demonization” of Muslims and the Battle for Oil - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2007-01-04 Muslim countries possess three quarters of the World’s oil reserves. In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent of total oil reserves.   Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11? - by David Ray Griffin – 2008-09-10 Much of US foreign policy since 9/11 has been based on the assumption that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11.   New Documents Detail America’s Strategic Response to 9/11 Rumsfeld’s War Aim: “Significantly Change the World’s Political Map” - by National Security Archive – 2011-09-12
  • PART VIII The Alleged 9/11 Mastermind: The Life and Death of  Osama bin Laden Who Is Osama Bin Laden? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2001-09-12   VIDEO: The Last Word on Osama Bin Laden - by James Corbett – 2011-05-24 Osama bin Laden: A Creation of the CIA - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-05-03 Interview with Osama bin Laden. Denies his Involvement in 9/11 Full text of Pakistani paper’s Sept 01 “exclusive” interview - 2011-05-09 Where was Osama on September 11, 2001? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2008-09-11 On September 10. 2001, Osama was in a Pakistan military hospital in Rawalpindi, courtesy of America’s indefectible ally Pakistan Osama bin Laden, among the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives”: Why was he never indicted for his alleged role in 9/11? - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-09-17 Osama bin Laden: Already Dead… Evidence that Bin Laden has been Dead for Several Years - by Prof. David Ray Griffin – 2011-05-02 The Mysterious Death of Osama bin Laden: Creating Evidence Where There Is None - by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – 2011-08-04 The Assassination of Osama bin Laden: Glaring Anomalies in the Official Narrative Osama was Left Handed… - by Felicity Arbuthnot – 2011-05-11 The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden - by Fidel Castro Ruz – 2011-05-07 Dancing on the Grave of 9/11. Osama and “The Big Lie” - by Larry Chin – 2011-05-05
  • PART  IX  ”False Flags”: The Pentagon’s Second 9/11 The Pentagon’s “Second 911″ “Another [9/11] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against some known targets” - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-08-10 The presumption of this military document, is that a Second 911 attack “which is lacking today” would usefully create both a “justification and an opportunity” to wage war on “some known targets Crying Wolf: Terror Alerts based on Fabricated Intelligence - by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-08-20 This is not the first time that brash and unsubstantiated statements have been made regarding an impending terror attack, which have proven to be based on “faulty intelligence”.
  • PART X “Deep Events” and State Violence The Doomsday Project and Deep Events: JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11 - by Prof. Peter Dale Scott – 2011-11-22 The Doomsday Project is the Pentagon’s name for the emergency planning “to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis.” JFK and 9/11 Insights Gained from Studying Both - by Dr. Peter Dale Scott – 2006-12-20 In both 9/11 and the JFK assassination, the US government and the media immediately established a guilty party. Eventually, in both cases a commission was set up to validate the official narrative. Able Danger adds twist to 9/11 9/11 Ringleader connected to secret Pentagon operation - by Dr. Daniele Ganser – 2005-08-27 Atta was connected to a secret operation of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in the US. A top secret Pentagon project code-named Able Danger identified Atta and 3 other 9/11 hijackers as members of an al-Qaida cell more than a year before the attacks. 9/11, Deep State Violence and the Hope of Internet Politics - by Prof. Peter Dale Scott – 2008-06-11 The unthinkable – that elements inside the state would conspire with criminals to kill innocent civilians – has become thinkable… Al Qaeda: The Database. - by Pierre-Henri Bunel – 2011-05-12
  • PART XI Propaganda: Creating and Perpetuating the 9/11 Legend September 11, 2001: The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11: Creating the Osama bin Laden “Legend” - by Chaim Kupferberg – 2011-09-11 THE 9/11 MYTH: State Propaganda, Historical Revisionism, and the Perpetuation of the 9/11 Myth - by Prof. James F. Tracy – 2012-05-06   Al Qaeda and Human Consciousness: Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda…. An Incessant and Repetitive Public Discourse - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2012-03-24 9/11 Truth, Inner Consciousness and the “Public Mind” - by James F. Tracy – 2012-03-18
  • PART VI Insider Trading and the 9/11 Financial Bonanza 9/11 Attacks: Criminal Foreknowledge and Insider Trading lead directly to the CIA’s Highest Ranks CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed Firm that handled “Put” Options on UAL - by Michael C. Ruppert – 2012-08-13 The 9/11 Attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC): Unspoken Financial Bonanza - by Prof Michel Chossudovsky – 2012-04-27 SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: Insider Trading 9/11 … the Facts Laid Bare - by Lars Schall – 2012-03-20 Osama Bin Laden and The 911 Illusion: The 9/11 Short-Selling Financial Scam - by Dean Henderson – 2011-05-09
  • PART XIII 9/11 Truth Revealing the Lies,  Commemorating the 9/11 Tragedy VIDEO: Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – 2011-09-01 VIDEO: AFTER 9/11: TEN YEARS OF WAR Special GRTV Feature Production - by James Corbett – 2011-09-08
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    Wow!
Paul Merrell

9/11 Truth: Eight Great Reads at the Journal of 9/11 Studies | Global Research - 0 views

  • This summer will mark the ninth anniversary of the Journal of 9/11 Studies. In that time, my co-editors and I have published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and letters addressing various aspects of the 9/11 crimes. Although it can be hard, thankless work, the job of co-editor has also been rewarding and I’ve learned a great deal.
  • Through publishing articles in mainstream journals, I’ve learned that our peer-review process is at least as rigorous as that of others. At our Journal, submissions often fail to pass the editor’s initial assessment and are never reviewed. Of the remainder, dozens have failed to make it through the peer-review process to become published. It’s definitely a disappointment when that happens but it’s important that whatever we publish lives up to certain standards. The end result is a treasure-trove of reliable research, freely available on the web. For example, here are six articles and two letters that should be widely read.
  • Intersecting Facts and Theories on 9/11, by Joseph P. Firmage This short article was published in August 2006. It presents a comparison of competing theories for what happened on 9/11 with respect to known facts. The comparison clearly shows that the “create a new reality” theory, in which U.S. officials were involved in the attacks, is by far more sensible than other possibilities.
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  • The “Strategy of Tension” in the Cold War Period, by Daniele Ganser In May 2014, Swiss historian Daniele Ganser contributed this updated version of a previously published article. Dr. Ganser’s article provides important historical perspective for considering what happened on 9/11. His conclusion, based on historical fact, is that objections to U.S. government or military involvement in 9/11 are based on unsupportable, a priori arguments. These eight papers are just a sampling of the wide-range of peer-reviewed research and commentary available at the Journal of 9/11 Studies. If you want to learn more about that fateful day through an evidence-based approach, the Journal is a great resource. For anyone interested in contributing, we continue to seek out new perspectives that have not yet been expressed. Guidelines for submission are published at the website.
Gary Edwards

The Sides Are Forming For The Coming Civil War. | Militia News - 1 views

  • America is in the choosing sides phase of the coming civil war. To use a college recruiting phrase, it is accurate to state that the letters of intent to join one side or another have mostly been signed and the commitments offered. However, there is one big uncommitted piece, but very soon the sides will be drawn.
  • The Chess Pieces of Civil War What is going on today in America all about choosing sides. There are clear lines being formed in the United States. The recruiting pool consists of the Department of Homeland Security, the American military, local law enforcement, the Russian troops pouring into the United States, the trickle of Chinese troops coming into the country through Hawaii and, of course, the poor, the middle class and elite. This is the recruiting pool which will form the chess pieces of the coming American Civil War. Even if all parties in this country wanted the country to continue, even in its present mortally wounded state, it would be foolish to believe that it could continue for much longer.
  • Barring a false flag event, US martial law will have a trigger event, which will lead to martial law, that will be financial and it will naturally occur as we are already on a collision course with destiny.
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  • The net result of these staggering numbers can only end one way, and that is with a financial collapse, followed by a bank holiday, rioting in the streets and the full roll out of martial law. These financial numbers guarantee that the party cannot continue much longer. Since America, in her present form, cannot continue much longer without experiencing a cataclysmic shift, we would be wise to realize what resources are going to be the impetus for civil war. When you play the board game, Monopoly, the properties on Boardwalk are among the most coveted. It is no different in real life. The biggest prize of the coming conflict is real estate. Homes, office buildings and shopping malls are the most coveted prize. The MERS mortgage fraud continues unabated as millions of homes have been confiscated through mortgage fraud. When the dollar is worthless and is awaiting its replacement (e.g. the Amero or the Worldo), real estate will be more valuable than gold.
  • Other big game that is being hunted by both sides in the coming civil war will be bank accounts, which must be looted before the dormant computer digits we call money can be converted into hard assets. That is why my advice is, and has been, convert your cash into tangible assets which can enhance your survivability in the upcoming crash.
  • Also, your pensions, your 401K’s and your various entitlement programs are also at risk as evidenced by Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew’s “borrowing” from various Federal retirement accounts in order to increase the debt ceiling fight that will resurface in Congress, again, early next year.
  • Again, my advice is to convert your assets in tangible items which will aid in getting you through some very dark days coming up in the near future.
  • Before the cognitive dissonance crowd rears their ugly heads and accuses me of fear mongering, ask yourself what the elite did prior to the crash of the economy in 1929. For example, Joseph Kennedy took his money out of the stock market the day BEFORE it crashed. Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Westinghouse, et al., all took their money out just prior to the crash, leaving the ignorant masses unaware of what was coming. Don’t make the same mistake.
  • I have news for you, there are Federal officials in every town, city and county in America. If one violates HR 347, they will be immediately arrested and charged with a felony.
  • The NDAA constitutes another big fence being built around the people in which all due process will soon be gone. The NDAA will allow the administration the “legal” right to secretly remove any burgeoning leadership of citizen opposition forces.
  • There are three paramount numbers that every American should be paying attention to and they are (1) national deficit ($17 trillion dollars), (2) the unfunded liabilities debt ($238 trillion dollars), and (3) the derivatives/futures debt (one quadrillion dollars which is 16 times the entire wealth of the planet.
  • In short, this spells the potential enslavement of the American people.
  • For those of you who still have your blinders on, research the NDAA and EO 13603 and then when you realize that I am correct in my interpretation, ask yourself one question; If the powers that be were not going to seize every important asset, then why would the government give itself the power to do just that?
  • And while you are at it, remember the Clean Water Act gives the EPA to control all private property as well as the precious resources of all water. And then of course, the FDA and the conflicts with local farmers is escalating.
  • And if this is not enough to convince the sheep of this country that the storm clouds are overhead, then take a look at HR 347 which outlaws protesting and takes away the First Amendment. This unconstitutional legislation makes it illegal to criticize the President and the government, as a whole, in the presence of Federal officials.
  • The second provision which will allow this country to quickly transition to martial law is Executive Order (EO) 13603 which allows the President to take control over any resource, property and even human labor within the United States. This EO gives the President unlimited authority including the ability to initiate a civilian draft as well as a military draft.
  • I just saw the Hunger Games sequel, Catching Fire, and this is eerily similar to what I saw in the movies in that the people are being provoked to revolution.
  • in the TV show, Revolution, the most evil entity in the series is the re-emergence of the United States government and the heroes of the show are rebelling against the abuse.
  • It seems like everywhere we turn in the media, the people are being encouraged to rise up now and challenge authority. I am sure the establishment would rather confront a small group of dissidents and squelch the rebellion now, before the numbers can become significant and overwhelming to the establishment and this theme is being carried out in the media.
  • The final action will consist of gun confiscation and one side of the coming conflict is attempting to position themselves to do that in the near future and that would be the DHS, the Russians and the Chinese.
  • I cannot think of another legitimate reason which would describe why they are here.
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    While I'd be the first to agree that the degree of fiscal mismanagement of this nation's economy is beyond insane and have to admit that I see very little to admire in Barack Obama's presidency, the meme about Executive Order 13603 authorizing confiscation of any property and enslavement of the American public needs to be put to rest. See http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/2012.html#13603 E.O. 13603 is not much more than an updating of similar executive orders issued by prior presidents beginning with Dwight Eisenhower. In fact, in skimming it a few minutes ago, I didn't see anything drastically different from some of the prior related orders. E.g., it reflects that a bunch of agencies that were formerly either independent or under other departments are now under the newish Department of Homeland Security, whose Secretary now gets the authority formerly delegated to other department and agency heads. If blame must be cast, it belongs on the Congress that enacted the Defense Production Act of 1950, 50 U.S.C. 2061, et seq. The executive order does no more than obey that Act's instructions. For example there is a section authorizing pre-emption of manufacturing capacity of critical industries over any existing civilian contracts in the event of a national emergency, but that language is in the statute as well. But that power hasn't had much traction since Harry Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry to break a nationwide strike. The Supreme Court swatted down that effort as an abuse of a power that would be lawful in a true emergency, like another major. But even that semi-radical "survival" power is ameliorated by other provisions of the statute and the order that authorize loan guarantees for companies' construction and maintenance of critical productive capacity. Much of that has been implemented over the years as outright grants. So for example, many chemical manufacturing plants were built with Defense Production Act funds, with
Paul Merrell

From Energy War to Currency War: America's Attack on the Russian Ruble | Global Research - 0 views

  • Putin announced that Russia has cancelled the South Stream project on December 1, 2014. Instead the South Stream pipeline project has been replaced by a natural gas pipeline that goes across the Black Sea to Turkey from the Russian Federation’s South Federal District. This alternative pipeline has been popularly billed the «Turk Stream» and partners Russian energy giant Gazprom with Turkey’s Botas. Moreover, Gazprom will start giving Turkey discounts in the purchase of Russian natural gas that will increase with the intensification of Russo-Turkish cooperation. The natural gas deal between Ankara and Moscow creates a win-win situation for both the Turkish and Russian sides. Not only will Ankara get a discount on energy supplies, but Turk Stream gives the Turkish government what it has wanted and desired for years. The Turk Stream pipeline will make Turkey an important energy corridor and transit point, complete with transit revenues. In this case Turkey becomes the corridor between energy supplier Russia and European Union and non-EU energy customers in southeastern Europe. Ankara will gain some leverage over the European Union and have an extra negotiating card with the EU too, because the EU will have to deal with it as an energy broker.
  • For its part, Russia has reduced the risks that it faced in building the South Stream by cancelling the project. Moscow could have wasted resources and time building the South Stream to see the project sanctioned or obstructed in the Balkans by Washington and Brussels. If the European Union really wants Russian natural gas then the Turk Stream pipeline can be expanded from Turkey to Greece, the former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, and other European countries that want to be integrated into the energy project. The cancellation of South Stream also means that there will be one less alternative energy corridor from Russia to the European Union for some time. This has positive implications for a settlement in Ukraine, which is an important transit route for Russian natural gas to the European Union. As a means of securing the flow of natural gas across Ukrainian territory from Russia, the European Union will be more prone to push the authorities in Kiev to end the conflict in East Ukraine.
  • From the perspective of Russian Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, the US is waging its multi-spectrum war against Russia to ultimately challenge Moscow’s Chinese partners. In an insightful interview, Glazyev explained the following points to the Ukrainian journalist Alyona Berezovskaya — working for a Rossiya Segodnya subsidiary focusing on information involving Ukraine — about the basis for US hostility towards Russia: the bankruptcy of the US, its decline in competitiveness on global markets, and Washington’s inability to ultimately save its financial system by servicing its foreign debt or getting enough investments to establish some sort of innovative economic breakthrough are the reasons why Washington has been going after the Russian Federation. [13] In Glazyev’s own words, the US wants «a new world war». [14] The US needs conflict and confrontation, in other words. This is what the crisis in Ukraine is nurturing in Europe. Sergey Glazyev reiterates the same points months down the road on September 23, 2014 in an article he authors for the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, which is sponsored by the Russian International Affairs Council — a think-tank founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian Ministry of Education 2010 — and the US journal Foreign Affairs — which is the magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relation in the US. In his article, Glazyev adds that the war Washington is inciting against Russia in Europe may ultimately benefit the Chinese, because the struggle being waged will weaken the US, Russia, and the European Union to the advantage of China. [15] The point of explaining all this is to explain that Russia wants a balanced strategic partnership with China. Glazyev himself even told Berezovskaya in their interview that Russia wants a mutually beneficial relationship with China that does reduce it to becoming a subordinate to Beijing. [16]
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  • It is because of the importance of Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties that Ankara has had an understanding with both Russia and Iran not to let politics and their differences over the Syrian crisis get in the way of their economic ties and business relationships while Washington has tried to disrupt Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties like it has disrupted trade ties between Russia and the EU. [9] Ankara, however, realizes that if it lets politics disrupt its economic ties with Iran and Russia that Turkey itself will become weakened and lose whatever independence it enjoys Masterfully announcing the Russian move while in Ankara, Putin also took the opportunity to ensure that there would be heated conversation inside the EU. Some would call this rubbing salt on the wounds. Knowing that profit and opportunity costs would create internal debate within Bulgaria and the EU, Putin rhetorically asked if Bulgaria was going to be economically compensated by the European Commission for the loss.
  • It is clear that Russian business and trade ties have been redirected to the People’s Republic of China and East Asia. On the occasion of the Sino-Russian mega natural gas deal, this author pointed out that this was not as much a Russian countermove to US economic pressure as it was really a long-term Russian strategy that seeks an increase in trade and ties with East Asia. [10] Vladimir Putin himself also corroborated this standpoint during the December 18 press conference mentioned earlier when he dismissed — like this author — the notion that the so-called «Russian turn to the East» was mainly the result of the crisis in Ukraine. In President Putin’s own words, the process of increasing business ties with the Chinese and East Asia «stems from the global economic processes, because the East – that is, the Asia-Pacific Region – shows faster growth than the rest of the world». [11] If this is not convincing enough that the turn towards East Asia was already in the works for Russia, then Putin makes it categorically clear as he proceeds talking at the December 18 press conference. In reference to the Sino-Russian gas deal and other Russian projects in East Asia, Putin explained the following: «The projects we are working on were planned long ago, even before the most recent problems occurred in the global or Russian economy. We are simply implementing our long-time plans». [12]
  • According to Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, Washington is «trying to destroy and weaken Russia, causing it to fragment, as they need this territory and want to establish control over this entire space». [18] «We have offered cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok, whereas they need control to maintain their geopolitical leadership in a competition with China,» he has explained, pointing out that the US wants lordship and is not interested in cooperation. [19] Alluding to former US top diplomat Madeline Albright’s sentiments that Russia was unfairly endowed with vast territory and resources, Putin also spoke along similar lines at his December 18 press conference, explaining how the US wanted to divide Russia and control the abundant natural resources in Russian territory. It is of little wonder that in 2014 a record number of Russian citizens have negative attitudes about relations between their country and the United States. A survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center has shown that of 39% of Russian respondents viewed relations with the US as «mostly bad» and 27% as «very bad». [20] This means 66% of Russian respondents have negative views about relations with Washington. This is an inference of the entire Russian population’s views. Moreover, this is the highest rise in negative perceptions about the US since 2008 when the US supported Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi’s war against Russia and the breakaway republic of South Ossetia; 40% viewed them as «mostly bad» and 25% of Russians viewed relations as «very bad» and at the time. [21]
  • In more ways than one the Turk Stream pipeline can be viewed as a reconfigured of the failed Nabucco natural gas pipeline. Not only will Turk Stream court Turkey and give Moscow leverage against the European Union, instead of reducing Russian influence as Nabucco was originally intended to do, the new pipeline to Turkey also coaxes Ankara to align its economic and strategic interests with those of Russian interests. This is why, when addressing Nabucco and the rivalries for establishing alternate energy corridors, this author pointed out in 2007 that «the creation of these energy corridors and networks is like a two-edged sword. These geo-strategic fulcrums or energy pivots can also switch their directions of leverage. The integration of infrastructure also leads towards economic integration». [8] The creation of Turk Stream and the strengthening of Russo-Turkish ties may even help placate the gory conflict in Syria. If Iranian natural gas is integrated into the mainframe of Turk Stream through another energy corridor entering Anatolia from Iranian territory, then Turkish interests would be even more tightly aligned with both Moscow and Tehran. Turkey will save itself from the defeats of its neo-Ottoman policies and be able to withdraw from the Syrian crisis. This will allow Ankara to politically realign itself with two of its most important trading partners, Iran and Russia.
  • Whatever Washington’s intentions are, every step that the US takes to target Russia economically will eventually hurt the US economy too. It is also highly unlikely that the policy mandarins in Beijing are unaware of what the US may try to be doing. The Chinese are aware that ultimately it is China and not Russia that is the target of the United States.
  • The United States is waging a fully fledged economic war against the Russian Federations and its national economy. Ultimately, all Russians are collectively the target. The economic sanctions are nothing more than economic warfare. If the crisis in Ukraine did not happen, another pretext would have been found for assaulting Russia. Both US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury Daniel Glaser even told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives in May 2014 that the ultimate objectives of the US economic sanctions against Russia are to make the Russian population so miserable and desperate that they would eventually demand that the Kremlin surrender to the US and bring about «political change». «Political change» can mean many things, but what it most probably implies here is regime change in Moscow. In fact, the aims of the US do not even appear to be geared at coercing the Russian government to change its foreign policy, but to incite regime change in Moscow and to cripple the Russian Federation entirely through the instigation of internal divisions. This is why maps of a divided Russia are being circulated by Radio Free Europe. [17]
  • Without question, the US wants to disrupt the strategic partnership between Beijing and Moscow. Moscow’s strategic long-term planning and Sino-Russian cooperation has provided the Russia Federation with an important degree of economic and strategic insulation from the economic warfare being waged against the Russian national economy. Washington, however, may also be trying to entice the Chinese to overplay their hand as Russia is economically attacked. In this context, the price drops in the energy market may also be geared at creating friction between Beijing and Moscow. In part, the manipulation of the energy market and the price drops could seek to weaken and erode Sino-Russian relations by coaxing the Chinese into taking steps that would tarnish their excellent ties with their Russian partners. The currency war against the Russian ruble may also be geared towards this too. In other words, Washington may be hoping that China becomes greedy and shortsighted enough to make an attempt to take advantage of the price drop in energy prices in the devaluation of the Russian ruble.
  • Russia can address the economic warfare being directed against its national economy and society as a form of «economic terrorism». If Russia’s banks and financial institutions are weakened with the aim of creating financial collapse in the Russian Federation, Moscow can introduce fiscal measures to help its banks and financial sector that could create economic shockwaves in the European Union and North America. Speaking in hypothetical terms, Russia has lots of options for a financial defensive or counter-offensive that can be compared to its scorched earth policies against Western European invaders during the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and the Second World War. If Russian banks and institutions default and do not pay or delay payment of their derivative debts and justify it on the basis of the economic warfare and economic terrorism, there would be a financial shock and tsunami that would vertebrate from the European Union to North America. This scenario has some parallels to the steps that Argentina is taken to sidestep the vulture funds.
  • The currency war eventually will rebound on Washington and Wall Street. The energy war will also reverse directions. Already, the Kremlin has made it clear that it and a coalition of other countries will de-claw the US in the currency market through a response that will neutralize US financial manipulation and the petro-dollar. In the words of Sergey Glazyev, Moscow is thinking of a «systemic and comprehensive» response «aimed at exposing and ending US political domination, and, most importantly, at undermining US military-political power based on the printing of dollars as a global currency». [22] His solution includes the creation of «a coalition of sound forces advocating stability — in essence, a global anti-war coalition with a positive plan for rearranging the international financial and economic architecture on the principles of mutual benefit, fairness, and respect for national sovereignty». [23] The coming century will not be the «American Century» as the neo-conservatives in Washington think. It will be a «Eurasian Century». Washington has taken on more than it can handle, this may be why the US government has announced an end to its sanctions regime against Cuba and why the US is trying to rekindle trade ties with Iran. Despite this, the architecture of the post-Second World War or post-1945 global order is now in its death bed and finished. This is what the Kremlin and Putin’s presidential spokesman and press secretary Dmitry Peskov mean when they impart—as Peskov stated to Rossiya-24 in a December 17, 2014 interview — that the year 2014 has finally led to «a paradigm shift in the international system».
Paul Merrell

"The War is Worth Waging": Afghanistan's Vast Reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas | Gl... - 0 views

  • US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan more than 13 years ago in October 2001.   Afghanistan is defined as a state sponsor of terrorism. The war on Afghanistan continues to be heralded as a war of retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks.  This article, first published in June 2010, points to the “real economic reasons”  why US-NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. 
  • The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade and occupy Afghanistan under “the doctrine of collective security” was that the September 11 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power, namely Afghanistan. Under the proposed Afghan-US security pact,  which is an integral part of Obama’s Asian pivot, Washington and its NATO partners are preparing to ensure a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, with military facilities located in proximity of China’s Western frontier.  The pact would allow the US to maintain their nine permanent military bases, strategically located on the borders of  China, Pakistan and Iran as well as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In addition to its vast mineral and gas reserves, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the World’s supply of opium which is used to produce grade 4 heroin. US military bases in Afghanistan are also intent upon protecting the multibillion narcotics trade.  Narcotics, at present, constitutes the centerpiece of Afghanistan’s export economy.
  • The heroin trade, instated at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 and protected by the CIA, generates cash earnings in Western markets in excess of $200 billion dollars a year. “The highest concentration of NATO servicemen in Afghanistan is being accompanied with the highest concentration of opium poppy, ….  That situation causes doubts about the anti-terrorist mission and leads to the conclusion about catastrophic consequences of the eight-year stay [of coalition forces] in Afghanistan,” (Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov, January 2010)
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    It bears notice that Afghanistan was one nation targeted for capture by the neocon Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding American Defenses report in 2000, specifically because of Afghanistan's abundant natural resources detailed in this article. The PNAC report also advocated for a natural gas pipeline passing through Afghanistan. That is the same report that said a "new Pearl Harbor" would be needed to create public support for the plan's execution. Enter 9-11 from stage left as just such a justification for invasion of Afghanistan (and later Iraq, another targeted nation). Several of the PNAC report authors and signatories went on to become high ranking members of the U.S. State and Defense departments when Bush II took office in January 2001. Notably, the PNAC report and above history provides irrefutable evidence that key U.S. policymakers had military goals for Afghanistan before 9-11 because of that nation's natural resources.  
Paul Merrell

Lifting the 24 Hour Siege: Julian Assange, London's Metropolitan Police and Continued D... - 0 views

  • While things tend to get murky, sometimes by design, regarding the police presence outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, the announcement that the city’s Metropolitan Police would be lifting their twenty-four hour surveillance did surprise some. This was hardly to suggest that the police forces had lost interest in capturing Julian Assange.  What mattered here was that the costs in guarding Assange from a literal flight of fancy had simply become disproportionate, requiring a change of tact.  Over £12m in costs had been incurred since he skipped bail to avoid his Swedish sojourn, and irrespective of which side of the Assange side one was on, anger was mounting at a very conspicuously bloated project. The statement from the Metropolitan Police was cool in its language.  “Like all public services, MPS resources are finite.  With so many different criminal, and other, threats to the city it protects, the current deployment of officers is no longer believed proportionate” (The Guardian, Oct 12). The siege, according to WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, had not been lifted so much as reconstituted.  “My interpretation is that it has not been lifted. They are calling off the uniformed presence but escalating the covert operation and will arrest him if he steps outside off the embassy.”  Costs, in other words, were going to be moved off the books to un-uniformed personnel.
  • Having been granted political asylum for fears that he might be carted off to the US via Sweden to face the findings of an empanelled grand jury, he remains confined to the cramped quarters of the embassy.  Nor can he rely on new laws in the form of the Anti Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 that make an “accusation” – in this case, claims of sexual assault on two Swedish nationals in Sweden – insufficient to require extradition.  As the laws were passed after the fact, precisely motivated by the Assange imbroglio, the foreign and commonwealth office has deemed it inapplicable retrospectively.  Assange, as ever, continues to be the legal exception, a singular target of juridical manipulation. In the meantime, the UN working group on arbitrary detention (WGAD) has been considering Assange’s case, and it likely to find in his favour given its previous rulings of a deprivation of liberty when a person is forced to choose between confinement or the forfeiture of a fundamental right such as asylum.[1] It is also a principle that holds for the European Court of Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  The latter defines detention as confinement “within a narrowly bounded or restricted location, including prisons, closed camps, detention facilities or airport transit zones, where freedom of movement is substantially curtailed, and where the only opportunity to leave this limited area is to leave the territory.”
  • [2] Submission to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention by Mr. Julian Assange, available at: https://justice4assange.com/IMG/pdf/assange-wgad.pdf
Paul Merrell

WorldLII - WorldLII: About WorldLII - 0 views

  • You are here: WorldLII >> About WorldLII   What is WorldLII? The World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) is a free, independent and non-profit global legal research facility developed collaboratively by the following Legal Information Institutes and other organisations. Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII) Legal Information Institute (Cornell) (LII (Cornell)) Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PacLII) Wits University School of Law (Wits Law School) For further details, see the WorldLII brochure. The LIIs, meeting in Montreal in October 2002, adopted the Montreal Declaration on public access to law. WorldLII comprises three main facilities: Databases, Catalog and Websearch.
  • WorldLII Databases WorldLII provides a single search facility for databases located on the following Legal Information Institutes: AustLII; BAILII; CanLII; HKLII; LII (Cornell); and PacLII. WorldLII also includes as part of this searchable collection its own databases not found on other LIIs. These include databases of decisions of international Courts and Tribunals, databases from a number of Asian countries, and databases from South Africa (provided by Wits Law School). Over 270 databases from 48 jurisdictions in 20 countries are included in the initial release of WorldLII. Databases of case-law, legislation, treaties, law reform reports, law journals, and other materials are included. WorldLII welcomes enquiries concerning the possible inclusion of other databases on WorldLII or on one of its collaborating LIIs. WorldLII Catalog and Websearch The WorldLII Catalog provides links to over 15,000 law-related web sites in every country in the world. WorldLII's Websearch makes searchable the full text of as many of these sites as WorldLII's web-spider can reach. WorldLII welcomes enquiries from law librarians and other legal experts who are interested to become Contributing Editors to the WorldLII Catalog.
  • Operation of WorldLII The provision of the WorldLII service is coordinated by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), which maintains WorldLII's user interface, the WorldLII Catalog and Websearch, and the databases located only on WorldLII. Technical enhancements to WorldLII are being developed jointly by the cooperating Legal Information Institutes. Contacting WorldLII General contact: feedback@worldlii.org AustLII/WorldLII Co-Directors: Professor Andrew Mowbray, UTS <andrew@austlii.edu.au> Professor Graham Greenleaf, UNSW <graham@austlii.edu.au> Philip Chung, AustLII Executive Director <philip@austlii.edu.au> Mail: WorldLII, c/- AustLII, UTS Faculty of Law, PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 Australia Telephone: +61 2 9514 4921 Fax: +61 2 9514 4908 We hope that you enjoy using WorldLII and find it to be a useful service. Feedback (particularly words of encouragement or constructive criticism) are welcome and may be sent to feedback@worldlii.org. WorldLII: Copyright Policy | Disclaimers | Privacy Policy | Feedback URL: http://www.worldlii.org/worldlii/
  •  
    The various Legal information Institutes that collaborate on WorldLII have the most advanced, integrated, and largest public legal research databases available on the Internet, searchable through a common interface. Still nothing like a complete university law library because so many legal source materials are copyrighted, this is the combined effort of many law schools. A companion browser extension is available for Chrome and Firefox called Jureeka. That extension causes your pages rendered in the browser to contain hyperlinks to all legal authorities cited on the page that are recognized by the extension, with the links going to case law, regulations, and statues that are in the public domain. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jureeka/ediidjmindkcaflpfjgabfaibhngadbb?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog Thus far, Jureeka is integrated with all legal materials published by the Legal Information Institute long located at Cornell Law School, as well as the Justia archives of U.S. case law. Rumor has it that the extension will be extended to cover materials published by other Legal Information Institutes at various law schools around the globe.
Paul Merrell

Chaos - not Victory - is the Empire's "Name of the Game" | Global Research - Centre for... - 0 views

  • “Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.” Global Research.  This could be anyone of the countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission. This is precisely the point: The Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assures the west a continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.
  • That’s the name of the game – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya…. you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS / ISIL / IS / DAISH / DAESH / Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just tags to confuse. You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.
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    More and more writers are beginning to recognize that victory is no longer the goal of U.S. military and foreign policy, that ongoing instability and chaos is. A tip of the hat is due Pepe Escobar, who years ago dubbed the U.S. the "Empire of Chaos." 
Paul Merrell

Transparency Toolkit - 0 views

  • About Transparency Toolkit We need information about governments, companies, and other institutions to uncover corruption, human rights abuses, and civil liberties violations. Unfortunately, the information provided by most transparency initiatives today is difficult to understand and incomplete. Transparency Toolkit is an open source web application where journalists, activists, or anyone can chain together tools to rapidly collect, combine, visualize, and analyze documents and data. For example, Transparency Toolkit can be used to get data on all of a legislator’s actions in congress (votes, bills sponsored, etc.), get data on the fundraising parties a legislator attends, combine that data, and show it on a timeline to find correlations between actions in congress and parties attended. It could also be used to extract all locations from a document and plot them on a map where each point is linked to where the location was mentioned in the document.
  • Analysis Platform On the analysis platform, users can add steps to the analysis process. These steps chain together the tools, so someone could scrape data, upload a document, crossreference that with the scraped data, and then visualize the result all in less than a minute with little technical knowledge. Some of the tools allow users to specify input, but when this is not the case the output of the last step is the input of the next. Tools Existing and planned Transparency Toolkit tools include include scrapers and APIs for accessing data, format converters, extraction tools (for dates, names, locations, numbers), tools for crossreferencing and merging data, visualizations (maps, timelines, network graphs, maps), and pattern and trend detecting tools. These tools are designed to work in many cases rather than a single specific situation. The tools can be linked together on Transparency Toolkit, but they are also available individually. Where possible, we build our tools off of existing open source software. Road Map You can see the plans for future development of Transparency Toolkit here.
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    If you think this isn't a tool for some very serious research, check the short descriptions of the modules here. https://github.com/transparencytoolkit I'll be installing this and doing some test-driving soon. From the source files, the glue for the tools seems to be Ruby on Rails. The development roadmap linked from the last word on this About page is also highly instructive. It ranks among the most detailed dev roadmaps I have ever seen. Notice that it is classified by milestones with scheduled work periods, giving specific date ranges for achievement. Even given the inevitable need to alter the schedule for unforeseen problems, this is a very aggressive (not quite the word I want) development plan and schedule. And the planned changes look to be super-useful, including a lot of "make it easier for the user" changes.   
Gary Edwards

Liberty in the Breach | The End of the American Dream - 0 views

  •  
    This link will take you to a public blog, the content of which comes from the collaborative work of the Diigo group, "Socialism and the End of the American Dream". The content for the Liberty in the Breach (http://goo.gl/AAFJ9) blog is posted directly from a Diigo.com group called "Socialism and the End of the American Dream". So yes, this groups bookmarking efforts are public.  The way this works is easy for anyone to to do, and I encourage everyone to make use of blog and RSS posts. The Diigo bookmark service enables groups of people to share tagged and categorized lists of bookmarks, but the only way to take these group collaborations truly public is through the blog and RSS posting mechanisms. There are also select sharing methods.  Each Group of bookmarks and comments can have any number of "Lists". A list is a subset of a group, but it can stand on it's own or serve many groups. The difference is that Groups have members and lists do not.  The effect of this separation is that you can publish or RSS any list to a Web Site or Reader, and not be concerned about errant group membership comments and posts. Fortunately we not encountered that problem with the End of the American Dream group.  The "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" group contains two prominent "lists": Banksters and USA-Constitution. There are other lists, but over time these two became dominant.  I started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" group in August of 2008 as part of my research and attempt to understand the financial collapse of 2008. What I found was quite chilling, and has nothing to do with "Socialism" or it's many forms.  I came to understand that socialism in it's many forms (liberalism, Progressivism, Marxism, Naziism, and Communism), is used the same as conservatism and corporate facism by a wealthy globalist elite to seize the instruments and resources of government for their own purposes.  So yeah, if I had the chance to rename to group, I
Gary Edwards

Breakaway Civilizations/ Rethinking History - Shows - Coast to Coast AM - 0 views

  •  
    "Date: 03-16-14 Host: George Knapp Guests: Joseph P. Farrell, Brad Olsen In the first half, George Knapp was joined by author Joseph Farrell, who detailed his research into the possibility that a secret, breakaway civilization was formed by American elites following World War II. He explained that, after the war, the United States was faced with three formidable challenges: escaped Nazis bent on recreating their empire elsewhere, the Cold War, and the UFO phenomenon. In turn, Farrell surmised, a secret system was put into place to develop defenses against these dangers facing the country. He theorized that, in order to surreptitiously fund such a massive undertaking, the United States used the vast wealth that had been plundered by Japan during WWII to bankroll various projects. Farrell suggested that, over time, similar secret infrastructures were created by other technologically advanced countries such as England, Russia, and China. In the ensuing years since its creation, Farrell said, the American organization likely developed amazing technological capabilities far beyond what is known to the general population, hence the concept of a 'breakaway civilization,' which shares our planet but exists within a world of knowledge far different from our own. Manmade UFOs, weather control, and zero point energy may be achievements that have secretly been accomplished, but remain classified for fear of revealing technologies which could be weaponized and used against the United States. Farrell pointed to the emergence of 3D printing and the push for mining in space as potential signs of previously accomplished breakthroughs which are now slowly being introduced to the public. --------------------------------- In the latter half, author Brad Olsen discussed flaws in modern history and how conspiracy theories, esoteric insights, and fringe subjects can be used to help change a dead-end course for humanity. He contended that nearly every facet of human life, from science,
Paul Merrell

Lawfare › The NSA Documents: The Entire Series - 0 views

  • Our series on the NSA documents now being complete, I thought I would collect all of the posts together in one place. Here are the documents themselves. And here are our seven posts commenting on them: The Introduction Summary of the October 2011 FISC Opinion Summary of the November 2011 FISC Opinion Summary of the September 2012 FISC Opinion Summary of Statements to Congress Summary of the Minimization Procedures Summary of the Semi-Annual Compliance Report Now that the series is done, I will turn to the question of
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    Someone had the sense and time to collect them all. The linked site has many NSA/privacy research resources 
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