More details on extensive domestic surveillance

from the wsj via raw story...

According to current and former intelligence officials, [NSA] now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

didja note this part --- "began YEARS BEFORE the 9/11 attacks"...? (not that we didn't know that, of course...)

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the US Government Totalitarians

It becomes pretty clear that the US Government and its private partnerships with major US corporations have been involved in the wholesale spying on US citizens all along.

The Government/Corporate eavesdroppers have long ago concluded that they will have immunity for their crimes no matter what. Normally, the standard meme which has been pushed, (and which has been readily generally accepted with little thought or circumspection), was that, "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear from surveillance and/or searches."

Of course the Information Haves enjoy a complete advantage over everyone else by maintaining and growing a total (insider) knowledge of the Global Information Grid.

Now comes an example of how things really work:

"House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites"

The Senate version is S.519.

It is likely that they expect the operation of the law to go down like this: "Someone has reported an illegal image. Someone is therefore offended, they have personally found that image obscene and have accordingly reported it and you. Therefore we have no choice but to act on the offended party's complaint."

And most likely, even that won't be enough. Parties will be obliged to comb through every bit and byte, through every virtual nook and cranny looking for anything in everything at all, to possibly get offended about. We will have wholesale packet-sniffing enough to satisfy even the most delicate of all sensibilities.

Gee, it seems like it wasn't all that long ago when we all took umbrage at merely this.

How many times have we heard that lawmakers have simply signed onto or voted for a bill because they never read it? That is like saying that they fired a gun in a crowded direction without looking and that explanation should somehow absolve them. Yet what is worse is that they more often do know, and the excuse that they didn't is a lie.

The so-called "SAFE Act" that was rushed through the House yesterday by a vote of 409 to 2, obliges vast numbers of parties to now become "snitches". No longer are court orders obliged, but rather many parties (the list will grow, it always does) are obliged by the bill to snitch and turn over records and data; but now compliance is mandated to snitch on Internet users, based upon broad undefined subjective interpretations of such nebulous concepts as art and drawings.

Explanations exist for why censorship was ever started in this country to begin with: that it was "to protect the children from starting to masturbate". The Irony is, that for that same reason, (and there is little doubt in this writer's mind), that coupled with the fact of the State having its own sexual appetites, totalitarians will eventually one day work government cameras into the bedrooms of both parents and children alike.

A quick check of the decoy sites last night showed that some of the sites had abruptly switched over to foisting hard core fare over their usual mere soft imagery, to unsuspecting down-loaders. Another deception they have also suddenly begun, is mislabeling downloads as uploads, presumably to misinform grand juries.

This totalitarian scheme will surely scale up to and be applied to music and video and file-sharing very soon as well, as the clearly (to us anyway) unconstitutional expedited "SAFE Act" serves as proof-of-concept for wholesale application to vast other areas of liberal arts and humanities as well.

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smell those red herrings

Here's a little more information shedding light on that recent contrivance, the National Intelligence Estimate:

from Pravda: "Russia and USA sign secret defense memorandum"

Deputy Defense Minister of the Russian Federation, General Yury Baluyevsky and his counterpart, U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen, signed a memorandum on defense cooperation in Washington.

The memorandum specifies the plan of defense cooperation and the compatibility of the armed forces of the two countries in 2008. It was a very fruitful, productive discussion that both parties benefited from, and the chairman desires to keep the content of those discussions between him and his counterpart,” Navy Captain John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen, said."

It was former world chess champion Garry Kasparov that disclosed on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that:

[Russian President Vladimir] Putin makes an open friendship with Iranian President Amadenijad because Putin has but one item in his geo-political agenda: He needs high oil prices and tensions in the Middle East help him to keep oil prices at an all time high. So that's why he sells nuclear technology to Iran, he sells missiles to to Hezbollah and Hamas via Syria, because it helps Putin to stay in power. If the oil price goes down, the Putin regime goes down."

And from Garry Kasparov's WSJ op ed:

Opposition activists--or just those who happen to be in the way of the [Putin] administration--are harassed and arrested on false charges of drug possession, extremism, or the latest trend, for owning illegal software."

It is clear the 5th Estate has every intention of foisting the Telcom Immunity down our throats. It was clear that the PATRIOT Act was similarly concocted long before 911. It is clear that file-sharing is to be the next big bugaboo, like the drug laws against marijuana or the First Amendment abridgments against child pornography.

Striking a deal with Russia to target file-sharing as equivalent to Terrorism, would account for why the US Intelligence Community is willing to issue an NIE now admitting that Iran is of no imminent nuclear threat to the US. Such a secret deal is not beyond consideration. Yet the timing also reeks of a red herring to distract us from the Telcom Immunity shenanigans the 5th Estate is currently up to, including Sen. Arlen Specter's S. 2402, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Substitution Act.

Government and corporations have clearly already been invading privacy to snoop for private concerns such as the likes of RIAA and MPAA. The specter of making file sharing a giant bugaboo like government creates out of whole cloth in so many other areas, shows us well, what they are already likely up to.

Enough information has already been leaked to create a reasonable belief that virtually all electronic communications are already being intercepted, diverted and mined at some point for myriad purposes - most of which probably have little to do with preventing acts of terrorism, but rather intend to work all manner of machinations to serve ever-increasing political control by those who are already Haves.

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Two Naomi's

h/t DU:

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the rogue government

In taking original FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's own words, that the FBI's mission includes to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize" specific groups and individuals, we can probably now better substitute the word "out", for the word "expose", given contemporary usage and for a clearer understanding.

In Senator Rockefeller's (now where have we heard that family name before?) apologetics for the telecoms, he paints a picture that companies like AT&T are some kind of witless, hapless and unwitting dupes of the government's overreach.

They are anything but. Evidence abounds that AT&T is an instigator, that they are actually often out front, pitching Big Brother technological possibilities to government, (much like SAIC is known to do, as with their plans for Total Information Awareness, and also with their bleeding-edge work in the field of psyops). It is all about the data mining.

In a truly revealing microcosmic example of what government is doing, consider how regular folks currently utilize Usenet and BitTorrent. All manner of downloads are available to those in the know on these two layers of the Internet: binaries of music, movies, software, child porn, etc, despite copyright or taboos. Unfettered political commentary and analysis often even leads ahead of the blogs there. It is still like the Wild, Wild West, or like pre-copyright conscious China, where the brightest minds were sampling everything and discerning in real time, all that is best.

Now scale that up a gazillion times and you have a picture of how government grabs virtually everything and crunches it to see how it might serve government as a means for political control. And realize why government knows it must stop individuals from doing what it does, on their much contrasting scale. Usenet and BitTorrent are the closest things to genuine equalizers that the People have going, at the moment.

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Subjects now instead of Citizens?

This earlier post has made its rounds in the blogs and deserves a second look. It may very well qualify for one of the compelling issues being promulgated as a distraction from the pending Telcom Immunity vote:

A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

'Privacy no longer can mean anonymity', says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. 'Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.'"

America rose up to the abuses of government and forged its separation from England for those reasons as delineated in the Declaration of Independence. What Donald Kerr proposes above, is nothing less than a return to life as "subjects" rather than citizens of this powerful nation.

"Publius" was the moniker for "Anonymous" in those days. It is what helped win the revolution. Gentlemen's affairs were their own business. The notion of a "nanny state", to micromanage every detail of the People's lives would have been held anathema.

The Operations flip-side of the Surveillance Society has hidden hands that make bad things happen, in order to shape people's lives in a Mission Impossible-like scenario. I can assure you full well that Operations works in real time along side Surveillance using psychological and behavioral science to shape behavior in real time. Better known examples of this are the BSCT Teams, or "Behavioral Science Consultation Teams", such as reported at Guantanamo.

While "Operations" is complex, I can give you a simple example, such as when I make strongly worded posts to blogs, I often immediately receive (a) phone call(s) (clearly on a speaker phone on the other end), displaying an intimidating caller ID such as, (to paraphrase): "Extrord Renditn", or "Re Ed Camp", or the like. Accusations that they are stalkers draws an enthusiastic response of, "Yes!"

What good does actual jury service play in a world like this? When all is known and clearly deviating from the government's side will result in reprisals?

If Socialism is condemned because it robs individuals of incentives towards accumulating private property, what happens to incentive where the government is stealing private information and essentially file-sharing with others, who are in a much better position to profit from it than the ones it has been surveilled from?

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it is happening...

John Stewart signaled the start of the writer's strike on Thursday. His shows are written fresh so none are in the can. HBO: Real Time with Bill Maher is also fresh and Friday's featured an Interview with Blackwater expert Jeremy Scahill:



Blackwater's Total Intelligence Solutions, LLC, very name suggests a private version of what SAIC/Government's attempted with the Total Information Awareness program. SourceWatch calls Blackwater USA, "America's Holy Warriors". And why not, as Friedrich Nietzsche said:

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose."

That is why "America's Holy Warriors" are so intent upon private military warriors smiting sin. It is another reason that people should become alarmed at Scahill's disclosure that Erik Prince of Blackwater, USA, just received part of a $15 billion contract to fight the war on drugs. And that is just some of what we know about. Blackwater seems eager to smite sin with military force. How long before Blackwater gets into smiting sex porn and nudity, despite our First Amendment, et al?

So when my First Amendment right to what I want to write, see, produce or watch is encroached upon, I am loudly a First Amendment absolutist. And then Bill Mahers' other guests, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, were a direct dichotomy to an absolute First Amendment. Valerie Plame agreed that the death penalty was appropriate for those that revealed her CIA employment. The blueprints that are used to destabilize parties, religions, race relations, labor, states and regions can anger opponents. It is better to carve out exceptions to our First Amendment, we are told.

On PBS: Bill Moyers Journal, we learned that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing for even more media consolidation and plans to ram it through before Christmas.

What is happening in Pakastan CAN happen here. Look around. It is happening already. We need our First Amendment and our writers now more than ever.

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breaking up [monopolies] is hard to do

After Downing Street reports: Pelosi Asks for Impeachable Offenses:

[I]n an October 10th interview with Ed Schultz, [Speaker Pelosi] said 'if anyone knows of impeachable offenses that can pass the Congress, then please let me know'.

Ok, lets start here:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony"

-- from the Sherman Antitrust Act

The very nature of the 5th Estate, that marriage of corporations with the Intelligence Community, (or more generally, with government), is antitrust.

We have seen unrelenting and perpetual consolidations going on under this scheme. We have seen outrageous no bid contracts that continually favor Administration cronies. The entire Department of Defense cannot give an accurate accounting of its money spent. Private Armies are now said to outnumber our government forces. There is little secret that the auspices of the newly created Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been pushing for privatization of the Internet by the telcoms, et al., through the machinations of "immunities" and by packet sniffing.

A recent cover for further expansion of ubiquitous packet sniffing might be this little reported undertaking, under the moniker of "super V-chip". This is likely a cover for not really even a single chip at all, but rather, total spying everywhere.

This just in: AT&T may be getting a windfall. VoIP had threatened their Market Power.

Societies are able to work as well as they do on the planet precisely because of the Internet. Journals that used to take 30 days to circulate amongst professionals in a given field, are available immediately. Responses are available within minutes to new discoveries. Unfettered political ideas now currently generally abound.

Once the Internet becomes privatized, it will be used as simply another technology of political control, and its usefulness to everyday people will be limited. There will surely be a collapse of society as we know it on that day.

Update: fresh comments by Cindy Sheehan re Nanci Pelosi at CounterPunch:

No matter how many times Ms. Pelosi and George Bush share tea and giggles and no matter how often she 'prays' for him, George is not the Decider and she is only the Leader of the House of Representatives not the people. We are the sovereigns in this country and I tried to demonstrate this when I demanded a meeting with another haughty public servant: George Bush"

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"Dirty Tricks"

Bill Moyers' September 28, 2007 interview of John Bogle was quite telling. America has gone from about 7.5% of the economy being represented by money managers, to nearly 10 times that at almost 75% of our economy today. These money men chase the cheapest labor on earth, which is called outsourcing America's jobs, to places where human rights are routinely ignored, and the rest of us live large on that exploitation.

But it cannot last. Without sufficient numbers of manufacturing and/or production jobs in the US, our economy cannot sustain our population with just service industry jobs. The rich and powerful will dispose of the surplus population the way they always do.

The movie, "Blood Diamond", reveals the paradigm for the exploitation of all riches. Those in this country still content to act as apologists for the totalitarians need to realize, the small gain they achieve, comes at high cost to many others. A similar scenario is bound to play out here as the 5th Estate continues to crush free speech and other rights like the ability to eek out a living.

Slashdot reports:

Despite a congressional request for that probe, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin quashed the inquiry based on comments from National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell. 'At issue are reports last year that some big telephone companies allowed the U.S. government access to millions of telephone records for an anti terrorism program. The reports have prompted scrutiny by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman of a key Energy and Commerce subcommittee, asked Martin to investigate. Markey, of Massachusetts, said McConnell's stance was "unsurprising given that this administration has continually thwarted efforts by Congress to shed more light on the surveillance program."

In reports of hearings being held on telcom issues, two names seem prominent: Edward Markey and John Kerry. Edward Markey had previously pushed the V-chip. Some of us were concerned that he had joined America's demagogue campaign of hysteria to marginalize children. These days Representative Markey seems more a voice of reason. He won't be cheap for the totalitarians to buy or kill. His wife made both Rear Admiral and served as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States.

John Kerry on the other hand, is a police state advocate. He is one of the current demagogue forces behind the "Sexual Predator" laws that aim to replace the arguably waning war on Global Terrorism.

John Kerry appears to be in favor of massive police surveillance. The recent incident of a brave young neophyte reporter asking him solid questions and paying for that by being tortured by Kerry's police with a Taser, now seems typically Kerry.

Government's enforcers make it clear: They isolate and disrupt their targets. This didn't start recently. It has roots back in COINTELPRO:

They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's own words, to 'expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize' specific groups and individuals."

Now add to that the use of terror and torture by our own government.

Want to complain? Well that's why they want to detect and fight you with packet shaping (sniffing).

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Stop the Spying

A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press."

-- George Seldes

As our free press was largely subsumed into a propaganda arm of the government, the Internet began to serve the original functions of a free press. As such, the Internet became a prime target by governments, to be subjugated the same as governments have thoroughly subjugated other media.

The game works like this: Two steps forward, one step back. Just as a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water, yet will remain if the water in the pot is brought up slowly to a boil, governments crush our inalienable rights, incrementally.

Now and then, the courts will appear to strike down some insult to our Constitution, but that is largely for show. We are allowed to believe that the system is working, albeit slowly.

The apparent rush to jam through the myriad unconstitutional laws is no mere error. It is done by sheer audacity, before the facts can be made known. While we have a somewhat still free Internet, the totalitarians are vulnerable.

Government wedded to corporations is generally known as fascism, or recently, as the 5th Estate. It involves looting the wealth of nations, under the auspices of "privatization".

A recent case that comes to mind is where Bechtel managed to privatize water in Bolivia. That was quickly recognized as a war on the poor. After bloodshed, Bolivia has regained its resources (including oil) and those resources now serve the people of that country, and do not simply line the pockets of a few with massive wealth.

In the US, the Haves managed to install one of their own into power, who quickly set out to transfer as much of the wealth into the hands of his cronies, as he possibly could. Social Security looked like one of the few remaining massive pools of wealth, so that remains a ripe plum.

And machinations are underway to privatize the Internet. That will insure escalating power for the Haves and curb the free press threat that the Internet currently represents to totalitarianism, at the same time.

While Japan, South Korea and much of Europe have fast Internet connection speeds, America's bandwidth has been held back. While much optic fiber has been laid, much remains unlit, and is accurately termed "dark fiber". The strategy is similar to having parked oil tankers teaming with oil, offshore, while proclaiming an oil shortage in order to jack prices up.

Now as a result, some communications companies are engaging in "Packet shaping". "Packet shaping" is the Internet form of wire tapping. It allows them to examine the contents of what is being sent to their customers and to control that content. Those that want to keep the Internet free from privatization, are pushing "Net Neutrality", which opposes packet shaping. Packet shaping allows companies to throttle down speed of any given content and to speed up traffic that serves the companies' interests first. They then no longer are principally carriers, they have become publishers, as if controlling editorial content. That should make them liable for all content as publishers.

The race is on to grant these companies immunity to engage in such spying and to control all content. Some companies, such as AT&T, have announced their intention to team with RIAA and to detect music files that are passing through their systems. A recent case found a women liable for 10,000 times the value of 24 songs she was found guilty of getting. US President George Bush immediately hailed the case as an example that the system is working. More recently AT&T said its spying was to protect the children, which is another tell that they are engaged in massive spying, not just for a war on terrorism with foreigners.

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The Bourne Ultimatum and Blackbriar ain't just big-screen fiction

i took myself to the bargain matinee movie this afternoon, altho' $6.50 ain't what i call a "bargain matinee" price... guess i'm gettin' old...

anywayz, it was the bourne ultimatum, a flick i've been wanting to catch that i didn't get around to seeing when it came out in buenos aires... the action is good but i was much more interested in the technology and black ops showcase that i knew would be on display, and it didn't disappoint... however, as is distressingly typical these days, it's so very easy to move from hollywood to hard core reality in the blink of an eye... case in point...

George W. Bush has transformed elite units of the U.S. military – including Special Forces and highly trained sniper teams – into “death squads” with a license to kill unarmed targets on the suspicion that they are a threat to American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to evidence from recent court cases.

Though this reality has been the subject of whispers within the U.S. intelligence community for several years, it has now emerged into public view with two attempted prosecutions of American soldiers whose defense attorneys cited “rules of engagement” that permit the killing of suspected insurgents.

with precious few modifications, this was the plot premise of the movie... golly gee... why am i not surprised...?

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A verifiable, fact-checked timeline of potential government conspiracy

courtesy of WantToKnow...

1996-2001: Federal authorities are aware for years before 9/11 that suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden are receiving flight training at schools in the US and abroad. One convicted terrorist confesses that his planned role in a terror attack was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. [Washington Post, 9/23/01, CBS, 5/30/02, more]

1996-2001: On multiple occasions spies give detailed reports on bin Laden's location. Each time, the CIA director or top White House officials prevent bin Laden's elimination. [Los Angeles Times, 12/5/04, New York Times, 12/30/01, more]

2000-2001: 15 of the 19 hijackers fail to fill in visa documents properly in Saudi Arabia. Only six are interviewed. All 15 should have been denied entry to the US. [Washington Post, 10/22/02, ABC, 10/23/02] Two top Republican senators say if State Department personnel had merely followed the law, 9/11 would not have happened. [AP, 12/18/02, more]

2000-2001: The military conducts exercises simulating hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets causing mass casualties. One target is the World Trade Center (WTC), another the Pentagon. Yet after 9/11, over and over the White House and security officials say they're shocked that terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into landmark buildings. [USA Today, 4/19/04, Military District of Washington, 11/3/00, New York Times, 10/3/01, more]

Jan 2001: After the Nov 2000 elections, US intelligence agencies are told to "back off" investigating the bin Ladens and Saudi royals. There have always been constraints on investigating Saudi Arabians. [BBC, 11/6/01, more]

Spring 2001: A series of military and governmental policy documents is released that seek to legitimize the use of US military force in the pursuit of oil and gas. One advocates presidential subterfuge and hiding the reasons for warfare "as a necessity for mobilizing public support." [Sydney Morning Herald, 12/26/02, more]

May 2001: For the third time, US security chiefs reject Sudan's offer of thick files on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. A senior CIA source calls it "the worst single intelligence failure in the business." [Guardian, 9/30/01, more]

June-Aug 2001: German intelligence warns the CIA that Middle Eastern terrorists are training for hijackings and targeting American interests. Russian President Vladimir Putin alerts the US of suicide pilots training for attacks on US targets. In late July, a Taliban emissary warns the US that bin Laden is planning a huge attack on American soil. In August, Israel warns of an imminent Al Qaeda attack. [Fox News, 5/17/02, Independent, 9/7/02, CNN, 9/12/02, more]

July 4-14, 2001: Bin Laden reportedly receives kidney treatment from Canadian-trained Dr. Callaway at the American Hospital in Dubai. Dr. Callaway declines to comment. During his stay, bin Laden is allegedly visited by one or two CIA agents. [Guardian, 11/1/01, Sydney Morning Herald, 10/31/01, London Times 11/1/01, UPI, 11/1/01, more]

July 26, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft stops flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment. [CBS, 7/26/01] In May 2002, Ashcroft walks out of his office rather than answer questions about it. [Fox News/AP, 5/16/02, more]

Aug 6, 2001: President Bush receives an intelligence briefing warning that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. Titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the briefing specifically mentions the WTC. Yet Bush later claims it "said nothing about an attack on America." [Washington Post, 4/12/04, Briefing, 8/6/01, more]

Aug 27, 2001: An FBI supervisor says he's trying to keep a hijacker from "flying a plane into the WTC." [Senate Report (Hill #2), 10/17/02] Headquarters chastises him for notifying the CIA. [Time, 5/21/02, more]

Sept 10, 2001: A number of top Pentagon brass suddenly cancel travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. Why isn't this news spread widely? [Newsweek, 9/13/01, Newsweek, 9/24/01, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Data recovery experts extract data from 32 damaged WTC computer drives. The data reveals a surge in financial transactions shortly before the attacks. Illegal transfers of over $100 million may have been made through WTC computer systems immediately before and during the 9/11 disaster. [Reuters, 12/18/01, CNN, 12/20/01, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Described as a bizarre coincidence, a US intelligence agency was set for an exercise on Sept 11 at 9 AM in which an aircraft would crash into one of its buildings near Washington, DC. [USA Today/AP, 8/22/02, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Hours after the attacks, a "shadow government" is formed. Key congressional leaders say they didn't know this government-in-waiting had been established. [CBS, 3/2/02, Washington Post, 3/2/02, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners make a tape recording describing the events within hours of the attacks. The tape is never turned over to the FBI. It is later illegally destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it. [Washington Post, 5/6/04, New York Times, 5/6/04]

Sept 13-19, 2001: Bin Laden's family is taken under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point. They leave the country by private plane when airports reopen days after the attacks. [New York Times, 9/30/01, Boston Globe, 9/20/01, more]

Sept 15-16, 2001: Several of the 9/11 hijackers, including lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, may have had training at secure US military installations. [Newsweek, 9/15/01, Washington Post, 9/16/01, New York Times, 9/15/01, more]

Sept 20, 2001: Several 9/11 hijackers later mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report turn up alive. "Five of the alleged hijackers have emerged, alive, innocent and astonished to see their names and photographs appearing on satellite television...The hijackers were using stolen identities." [quote in London Times, 9/20/01, see also BBC, 9/23/01, more]

Dec 2001-Feb 2002: The US engineers the rise to power of two former Unocal Oil employees: Hamid Karzai, the interim president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalizad, the US envoy. The big American bases created in the Afghan war are identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline. [Chicago Tribune, 3/18/02, more]

May 17, 2002: Dan Rather says that he and other journalists haven't been properly investigating since 9/11. He graphically describes the pressures to conform that built up after the attacks. [Guardian, 5/17/02, more]

May 23, 2002: President Bush says he is opposed to establishing an independent commission to probe 9/11. [CBS, 5/23/02] Vice President Cheney earlier opposed any public hearings on 9/11. [Newsweek, 2/4/02, more]

May 30, 2002: FBI Agent Robert Wright formally accuses the FBI of deliberately curtailing investigations that might have prevented 9/11. He is threatened with retribution if he talks to Congress about this. [Fox News, 5/30/02, more]

July 22, 2004: The 9/11 Commission Report is published. It fails to mention that a year before the attacks a secret Pentagon project had identified four 9/11 hijackers, including leader Mohamed Atta. The Commission spokesperson initially states members were not informed of this, but later acknowledges they were. [New York Times, 8/11/05, more]

2004 - 2005: A growing number of top government officials and public leaders express disbelief in the official story of 9/11. 100 prominent leaders and 40 9/11 family members sign a statement calling for an unbiased inquiry into evidence suggesting high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the attacks to occur. [Various Publications]

Aug 9, 2006: A book by 9/11 Commission chairmen Kean and Hamilton outlines repeated deceptions by the Pentagon and FAA, including the timelines of Flights 77 and 93. CNN News: "The fact that the government would...perpetuate the lie suggests that we need a full investigation of what is going on." [CNN, 8/9/06 , MSNBC/AP, 8/4/06, more]

this site is a new one for me, but i like it so far, primarily because it includes verifiable links to everything it posts... if we're after truth, it only makes sense to be as factual as possible, which, admittedly, in these days of spin, disinformation, propaganda and media brainwashing, is no small task...

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The do-it-yourself interrogation and torture kit, ready to be used at your very own black site

i confess, i haven't gone and read jane mayer's new yorker article on the cia's black sites simply because i haven't wanted to soil my mental and emotional state with any more of the bushco nightmare than has already been sprinkled around my neural synapses... i was just following a link from kos to digby and found myself reading this...

The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. "It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever," an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. "At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling."

the do-it-yourself torture kit... just follow the easy, illustrated instructions...

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Do I take it personally?

I wonder if most people are genuinely mad because they have been personally wronged, or if they are mad because the media tells them to be." -- from a comment at The Washington Post blog

[R]epeal [of the 4th Amendment] wouldn't mean a government camera in every bedroom." -- from a comment at The [very Right leaning] Volokh Conspiracy

DemocracyNow! has a new story about how Intelligence is largely farmed out to Corporatism. The Register reports that Bush is following up on the Attorney General's declaration that Big Brother must be given carte blanche instead of being limited to specific authorizations of existing technology. I guarantee you he is playing catch-up. They are already well out ahead of themselves.

People are being thrown off-track by being made to imagine that this is all about listening in on a few overseas phone calls. The Global Information Grid (Infosphere), is much larger than that. It surely includes total domestic spying. In ACLU, et al. v. NSA, et al. (.pdf), the court dismissed and said:

Even though the plaintiffs alleged a well-founded fear that their communications were subject to illegal surveillance, the court dismissed the case because plaintiffs could not state with certainty that they had been wiretapped by the National Security Agency."

Ok, so what do I care? How am I spied on? What is my empirical data? Well I have supposed the extent of spying for many, many, years. I have tried to live as much as I can as a "blank". I try as best as I can to conduct my life as anonymously as possible:

BENE QUI LATUIT BENE VIXIT" - Translation: (Latin) - He who has kept well in obscurity has lived well.

I would like to subscribe to a NEWS SERVER and/or a GLOBAL INTERNET TELEVISION SERVICE without notifying the government. I had a system worked out where a courier would travel a thousand miles distance for me and drop a cash payment in the mail from that far, to a provider. The last time I did this, the next day after the mail drop, the president announced an executive order that he was permitting government to now open mail.

Similarly, I obtained an anonymous debit card. The rules were immediately changed to require Social Security Numbers for debit cards as well as credit cards. These services now insist on credit card only accounts, never mind that on CASH, it says that it is good for all debts public and private. Who says that this is not total global & domestic spying?

Like I said previously, predictably, there will be diversion of information, it will be data mined and it will be used for political purposes.

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"Black" operations against Syria, Iran, and Lebanon by both CIA and Pentagon

larisa does her usual in-depth and thorough investigative reporting...

[T]he Pentagon is continuing to conduct more aggressive “black” operations, approved by the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President.

Current and former intelligence officials would not identify new specific covert programs running out of the Pentagon, though sources stressed these are far riskier and more truly covert operational activities against Iran than the activities of the CIA.

These operations started almost immediately after the Iraq war and have continued for several years. Because they can be considered part of a military operation, they are not subjects to the same requirements for Congressional authorization as the activities of the CIA.

The majority of these efforts to destabilize Iran through a covert war of aggression have been carried out by the Department of Defense, largely steered by the Office of the Vice President and by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

but we can rest assured, at least on the cia side... (ya, right...)

“The CIA does not, as a matter of course, publicly discuss allegations of covert action, whether the assertions are wrong, right, or somewhere in-between,” [CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano] said. “That's one reason why the term ‘covert action’ still exists.”

“But it's important to remember that, through the Congress, there is vigorous oversight of secret intelligence activities,” he added.

given the obsession with stonewalling, secrecy, and lawlessness in the bush administration, the almost complete abdication of congressional oversight responsibility during the republican-led years, and the lack of spine being shown by the dems today, i think "vigorous oversight" is nothing but a line of crap... you can be sure, if larisa has managed to uncover this much, there's a ton more going on we know nothing about... you only need to read something like the following to feel the certainty of that assumption...

Intelligence sources interviewed for this article all expressed concern over the lack of attention to the Pentagon’s covert activities. Some believe illegal activities like those of the Iran-Contra days are now being hidden under the loophole of “traditional military activities” to avoid Congressional oversight.

so, even if there was "vigorous oversight" being conducted - which there isn't - the blackest of the "black" ops are exempt anyway... someday, maybe it'll be all out on the table and we can collectively gasp at the brazen and illegal deeds of our government...

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