TBR News September 19, 2010

Sep 20 2010

The Voice of the White House

 

             Washington, D.C., September 18, 2010: “From all confidential reports, based on CIA, DIA and NSA intercepts, the far-right government of Israel is in a foaming rage because Obama will not unilaterally bomb the hell out of Tehran and somehow by this, prevent Iran from possibly nuking Tel Aviv. In the past, Israel’s very slightest wish was Washington’s immediate and imperative command and never more so during the sycophantic days of the evil George W. Now, however, in spite of alternating pleas and demands, it has slowly, ever so slowly, become evident to Bibi’s lunatic people that Obama will not be persuaded. Rahm E., once thought to be a thoroughly dependable tool of Israeli ambitions, is, in a petulant fit, determined to leave the White House. This annoying oaf somehow thinks he is going to become the mayor of Chicago. Well, many dream and few are satisfied. The obedient press and some blogs, keep bleating about pending attacks on Iran with paper darts, submarines, secret missiles and so on but these are only pure propaganda, designed to somehow convince Obama to obey the now-failed masters of American policies.”

 

Poll: Vast majority opposes attack on Iran

September 17th, 2010

by Daniel Tencer
RawStory

 

Two-thirds want US to be neutral in Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Fewer than one in five Americans would support a US military strike on Iran if the Middle Eastern country continued to pursue its nuclear program in the face of international sanctions, a new poll indicates.

The poll, carried out in June for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, finds 18 percent would support a strike on Iran if the country failed to stop its enrichment of uranium. Forty-one percent would urge further economic sanctions against the country, and 33 percent would support further diplomatic engagement.

When asked what the UN should do, the answers were similar: 21 percent support military action, while 45 percent want more sanctions and 26 percent want negotiations.

“Americans are gravely con­cerned about Iran’s nuclear program. Yet they are also quite concerned about the possible negative impact of a military strike to try and stop it,” the survey’s authors state. “Only a small minority favors the use of military force now, and if all efforts to stop Iran from develop­ing nuclear weapons fail, Americans are essentially evenly divided over whether to conduct a strike.”

The survey (PDF) also finds an electorate that is far less certain of its support of Israel than US political leaders would suggest. By a narrow margin — 50 percent to 47 percent — Americans would oppose the US militarily defending Israel if it were the victim of an unprovoked attack.

If the attack against Israel were retaliation for Israeli military action, even more — 56 percent — would oppose US military intervention, while 38 percent would support it.

Americans “show a rather restrained attitude toward being involved” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the survey states. Fully two-thirds — 66 percent — of those polled want the US to maintain a neutral stance in the conflict, while 28 percent want to see the US take the Israeli side. However, that’s up from 17 percent in 2004.

The desire for neutrality in the conflict comes despite the fact that the poll shows the Palestinian Authority to be almost as unpopular with Americans as Iran or North Korea.

What Your Cell Phone Could Be Telling the Government

September. 15, 2010

by Adam Cohen

TIME

            Smart phones do many things these days: surf the Internet, send e-mail, take photos and video (and — oh, yes — send and receive calls). But one thing they can do that phone companies don’t advertise is spy on you. As long as you don’t leave home without your phone, that handy gadget keeps a record of everywhere you go — a record the government can then get from your telephone company.

The law is unclear about how easy it should be for the government to get its hands on this locational data — which can reveal whether you’ve been going to church, attending a Tea Party rally, spending the night at a date’s house or visiting a cancer-treatment center. A federal appeals court ruled last week that in some cases the government may need a search warrant. And while that’s a step forward, it’s not good enough. The rule should be that the government always needs a warrant to access your cell-phone records and obtain data about where you have been.

When you carry a cell phone, it is constantly sending signals about where you are. It “pings” nearby cell-phone towers about every seven seconds so it can be ready to make and receive calls. When it does, the phone is also telling the company that owns the towers where you are at that moment — data the company then stores away indefinitely. There is also a second kind of locational data that phone companies have, thanks to a GPS chip that is embedded in most smart phones now. This is even more accurate — unlike the towers, which can only pinpoint a general area where you may be, GPS can often reveal exactly where you are at any given moment within a matter of meters.

There are some good reasons for this, which is why the government is actually forcing the phone companies to do a better job of knowing where you are. In the name of improving emergency services, the Federal Communications Commission will require phone companies to meet benchmarks in 2012 for how closely they can pinpoint a caller’s location. “About 90% of Americans are walking around with a portable tracking device all the time, and they have no idea,” says Christopher Calabrese, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office.

Not surprisingly, law enforcement has found this sort of data extremely handy. Prosecutors are increasingly using cell-phone records to show that a suspect was near the scene of a crime — or not where he claimed to be. The federal government’s position is that it should be able to get most of this data if it decides it is relevant to an investigation, with no need for a search warrant. If the government needs a warrant, it would have to show a judge evidence that there was probable cause to believe that the cell-phone user committed a crime — an important level of protection. Without this requirement, the government can get locational data pretty much anytime it wants.

It is not hard to imagine that the government could also one day use cell-phone data to stifle dissent. Cell-phone records could tell them who attended an antigovernment rally. It could also tell them who is going into the opposition party’s headquarters or into the home of someone they have questions about. Cell-phone data may be the most efficient way ever invented for a government to spy on its people — since people are planting the devices on themselves and even paying the monthly bills. The KGB never had anything like it.

And, indeed, the U.S. government already appears to be sweeping up a lot of data from completely innocent people. The ACLU recently told Congress of a case in which, while looking for data on a suspect, the FBI apparently used a dragnet approach and took data on another 180 people. The FBI has said that if it does happen to gather data on innocent people in the course of conducting an investigation, it keeps that information for as long as 20 years.

Last week, the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit pushed back. A federal magistrate judge, in a good and strong decision, had ruled that the government must always get a warrant if it wants cell-phone data. The appeals court scaled that back a bit, ruling that magistrate judges have the power to require the government to get a warrant, depending on the facts of the particular case.

The fight over cell-phone tracking is similar to one now going on in the courts over GPS devices — specifically, whether the government needs a warrant to place a GPS device on someone’s car. (The courts are sharply divided on the question.) Cell-phone tracking is of far bigger consequence, however, because there is a limit to how many GPS devices police are going to put on cars. Nine out of 10 of us have cell phones that will do the tracking for the government.

The House of Representatives has been holding hearings on this issue and related ones, and a Senate hearing next week is likely to consider it further. It is time for Congress to act. It should amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to make clear that information from our cell phones about where we are and where we have been is deeply private — and that without a search warrant, the government cannot have it.

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board. Case Study, his legal column for TIME.com, appears every Wednesday.

 

Comment: If you want privacy, don’t use a cell phone. However, as the average American is a brainless twit who babbles like a drunken baboon throughout the day on their cell phone, such advise is relatively pointless. Ed

 

Roma, Latinos and Muslims: In France and America, Bigotry Knows No Borders

September 15, 2010

by Michelle Chen

by ColorLines

            All the media stories of rabid attacks on Muslims and Latino immigrants in recent weeks might have you convinced that America’s racism is unique among nations. But across the Atlantic, another republic is making headlines with its blatant bigotry. The French may not think much of Americans, but both countries’ governments share a singular antipathy for “outsiders.”

France has launched a widely condemned program to expel members of the Roma ethnic minority and send them to Romania and Bulgaria.

            While such assaults are nothing new to marginalized Roma migrants, who trace their deep lineage to a nomadic people of Punjab, India, the state’s determination to decimate their settlements has drawn criticism from the United Nations and European Parliament, perhaps because it evokes the stench of ethnic cleansing in a Europe still grappling with its new identity and past genocides.

            The New York Times reported in August on the purge:

France flew some 100 Roma home to Romania — people who France insists agreed to leave voluntarily for a flight and a resettlement sum of about $385 instead of facing the chance of forcible expulsion in a month. … Mass expulsions based on ethnicity violate European Union law, [said Robert A. Kushen, executive director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre] and the failure of France to do individual assessments of each case — as opposed to cursory examinations of papers by the police — also violates European Union rules.

             Speaking of skirting the law. Meanwhile in Arizona, the Border Patrol’s strategy to “deter” border crossings, known as Operation Streamline, has effectively turned the federal court system into a mechanized deportation mill. At a Tucson courthouse, NPR reports, immigrants are packed into groups of as many as 200 and shuttled through fast-track hearings (at enormous taxpayer expense) before getting punted back over the border (in all likelihood, only to try returning later in desperation).

             France’s crackdown on local Roma communities might seem more severe, baldly discriminatory and conducted with minimal due process. But in both expulsion campaigns, the government’s motive is to project toughness by demonizing an utterly defenseless “illegitimate” group. Another common feature is that both are carried out under ostensibly liberal-democratic regimes, with a tradition of absorbing migrants and refugees (both led by statesmen who are children of immigrants, no less).

             Paralleling America’s Mosque Mania, French politicians are also capitalizing on an anti-foreigner atmosphere by banning the full veil worn by Muslim women. The Senate just overwhelmingly approved the “burqa ban“—a move that’s sure to further alienate the Muslim minority. Since French society reflexively avoids openly discussing racism, the policy has been justified as “a question of dignity and equality” and a measure of “respect for our republican principles.”

            Back on this side of the pond, it’s sometimes called “American values.” That powerful rhetoric is readily exploited in any society where economic and political unrest goads a dominant group to target “them” in order to save what belongs to “us.” You can brand it as a fight for national character, but really, bigotry sounds the same in any language.

Comment: A different, but completely predictable, slant on things. Ed.

 

Cartoonist in Hiding After Death Threats

 

September 16, 2010

by Brian Stelter

New York Times

A cartoonist in Seattle who promoted an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” last spring is now in hiding after her life was threatened by Islamic extremists.

The cartoonist, Molly Norris, has changed her name and has stopped producing work for a local alternative newspaper, Seattle Weekly, according to the newspaper’s editor, Mark D. Fefer.

Mr. Fefer declined an interview request Thursday, citing “the sensitivity of the situation.” But in a letter to readers about Ms. Norris on Wednesday, he said that “on the insistence of top security specialists at the F.B.I., she is, as they put it, ‘going ghost’: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity.”

The F.B.I. declined to comment on the case.

Ms. Norris attracted attention after she published a poster on the Internet in April satirically proposing that people draw figures of the Prophet Muhammad on May 20.

She indicated that the proposal was a protest of censorship by Comedy Central, which edited out references to Muhammad from an episode of “South Park” that month. That episode also triggered threats from extremists. Islam forbids depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

In 2005, a Danish cartoonist named Kurt Westergaard published a depiction of Muhammad that led to multiple death threats and alleged assassination attempts. He was presented an award this month for freedom of speech by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

The poster by Ms. Norris spread on the Internet and spawned Facebook groups both for and against the idea. She quickly tried to tamp down the controversy, apologizing to Muslims and at one point joking that the event should be renamed “Everybody Draw Al Gore Day.” The protest movement continued in the spring largely without her involvement.

In July, Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Yemeni-American cleric who is accused of ties to Al Qaeda, said in a document published on the Internet that Ms. Norris “should be taken as a prime target of assassination,” according to the NEFA Foundation, a private group that monitors extremist Web sites, which translated the document.

Mr. Awlaki stated that Ms. Norris and other unnamed people in the United States and Europe “are expressing their hatred of the Messenger of Islam through ridicule.” In a controversial step, the Obama administration this year authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Mr. Awlaki, who is in hiding.

Seattle Weekly started to publish cartoons by Ms. Norris about two months ago. Her last cartoon appeared in the Sept. 8 issue.

Ms. Norris did not respond to e-mail messages on Thursday. Her personal Web site has been taken offline.

Michael Cavna, a writer for Comic Riffs, a Washington Post blog about comics, said that he contacted her on Thursday and that she verified Mr. Fefer’s version of events.

Mr. Fefer wrote that Ms. Norris had likened her situation “to cancer — it might basically be nothing, it might be urgent and serious, it might go away and never return, or it might pop up again when she least expects it.”

 

Runaway colonel seen as spy for Israel

September . 16, 2010

UPI

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 16 (UPI) — As tension mounts between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, Lebanese authorities have launched a global manhunt through Interpol for a retired army colonel suspected of spying for Israel.

That’s the latest twist in an espionage scandal that has sent political shock waves throughout a nation gripped by festering sectarian rivalries and led to the arrest of some 150 suspects. Five have already been sentenced to death by military tribunals.

The fugitive, Ghassan al-Jidd, was first publicly fingered by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in August when he unveiled a list of alleged Israeli agents who hadn’t figured in any disclosures by Lebanese authorities.

But al-Jidd, whom Nasrallah also suggested may have played a role in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s leading statesman, is believed to have fled to Israel.

A half-dozen other suspects, including a serving army colonel, have also escaped to the Jewish state since the crackdown began in November 2008.

With Israel and Hezbollah ratcheting up their bellicose rhetoric, there are deepening fears that a new war is looming in the not-too-distant future.

That could account for the apparently massive effort Israeli intelligence has clearly mounted, particularly since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah ended in a battlefield stalemate.

Hezbollah has been rearming heavily since that 34-day conflict and building elaborate defense lines that run from south Lebanon, cockpit of the conflict, to the Bekaa Valley in the northeast, Hezbollah’s heartland.

Israeli leaders claim the powerful Shiite movement has more than 45,000 missiles and rockets, supplied by Iran and Syria — nearly four times the number it had when the 2006 war erupted. These are believed to include several hundred weapons capable of hammering Tel Aviv and other strategic targets across all of Israel.

For Israel’s Military Intelligence and the Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, their highest priority is locating the launching sites and underground bunkers where these weapons are stored so the air force and army commandos can knock them out quickly if war erupts.

The crackdown was apparently initiated by Hezbollah’s security apparatus following the February 2008 assassination of the movement’s iconic military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus, Syria.

Hezbollah accused Israel. But although Mughniyeh had been a prime Mossad target for nearly three decades, he had many enemies and who was behind his assassination remains a mystery.

The continuing roundup of the spy suspects has been one of the biggest counterintelligence operations mounted anywhere in the world over the last six decades.

It has surpassed, in numbers at least, any espionage scandal that occurred during the Cold War.

One of the first to be arrested in this extraordinary counterintelligence coup was Adib al-Alam, a retired brigadier general of Lebanon’s principal security agency, the General Security Service, locally known as the Surete Generale.

After he was apprehended April 10, 2009, with his wife and nephew, Alam confessed that he had been recruited by the Mossad as far back as 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The most prominent catch was Fayez Karam, 62, a highly respected former army general who headed the military’s counter-terrorism and counterintelligence unit during the 1980s.

Karam, arrested Aug. 2, was also a prominent member of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Maronite Catholic party that is a key Hezbollah ally.

Although he didn’t have an official position in FPM, he was close to its leader, former army commander and Prime Minister Gen. Michel Aoun.

Even after nearly two years of one arrest after another, Karam’s capture stunned the nation and left Lebanese wondering which of their leaders would be next.

Yet it had been clear for some time that the sheer scale of the network underlined just how deeply the Israelis had been able to penetrate all levels and branches of Lebanese society.

The Israeli network covered the entire spectrum of sects and political doctrines, Muslims and Christians, the high and the low, security officials and businessmen, politicians and humble artisans.

The security services have been a particular target. The suspects include two former generals and at least four serving army colonels.

Nasrallah echoed the alarm of many Lebanese when he asked in a recent speech, “How many more spies do we have in this country?”

Pennsylvania’s Homeland Security Chief Goes Into Hiding
September 17, 2010

Bureau Chief Tom Barnes: tbarnes@post-gazette.com. Jonathan D. Silver contributed to this report.

             HARRISBURG — The former Special Forces colonel who has headed the state Office of  Homeland Security for four years and who now finds himself at the center of a firestorm over an anti-terrorism contract is missing in action.

            James F. Powers Jr. has basically gone underground since Tuesday, when Gov. Ed Rendell denounced a $103,000 no-bid contract that Mr. Powers had given to the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, which has offices in Philadelphia and Israel.

            Mr. Powers, who makes $106,602 a year, hasn’t been returning phone calls from the news media this week and was said to be out of his office when a reporter stopped in on Wednesday. He did not return a call to his home and his office turned down a request to interview him.

            Mr. Powers, who lives in Carlisle, served in the Army from 1971 to 2001 in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Korea and Washington.

            The Rendell administration chose him in June 2006 to direct the state Office of Homeland Security, part of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

            Before joining the state Mr. Powers had several jobs, including a “special operations” consultant for KWG Consulting in Virginia, an adjunct instructor for the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle and a senior fellow with the U.S. Special Operations Command in Hurlburt, Fla.

            Mr. Powers also teaches guitar and banjo and lists Jim Powers Music as a financial interest in his Statement of Financial Interests filed with the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission.

            “All I know is Jimmy’s a pretty careful guy and he’s a pretty smart guy,” said KWG’s president, Kenneth W. Getty Jr., who has known Mr. Powers for 20 years and served with him in the military.

            The state news release in June 2006 said Mr. Powers’ job would include coordinating the state’s homeland security efforts with state agencies, counties, nine regional counter-terrorism forces and local municipalities.

            As homeland security director, Mr. Powers “is an office of one with PEMA,” said Maria Finn, a spokeswoman for PEMA. “He reports directly to PEMA director and homeland security adviser Robert French.”

             Although Mr. Powers hasn’t been available to reporters this week, he was interviewed by the Harrisburg Patriot-News on Monday, the day before the firestorm broke over the anti-terrorism contract.

            Mr. Powers told the newspaper he entered into the deal with the Terrorism Institute because “my concern is public safety.” He said there had been about “five or 10” incidents related to Pennsylvania’s growing natural gas industry, including one where someone supposedly fired a shotgun at a tank of natural gas in Venango County.

            Mr. Rendell said Tuesday that he wasn’t aware of specifics about any other such violent incidents related to the gas industry. He said he was “appalled” and “terribly embarrassed” by the monitoring of lawful protests that the Terrorism Institute had done for the state.

            Mr. Rendell and numerous environmental and other citizens groups were angry because it seemed the monitoring was aimed at constitutional gatherings and expressions of free speech that didn’t hurt public safety or promote terrorism.

            State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Lawrenceville, on Thursday said that Mr. Powers should resign or be fired from his job.

            “It’s clear from his statements regarding the Marcellus Shale industry that the Institute of Terrorism Research and Resources was hired to track people engaged in the democratic process, and not to quell terroristic threats. He went too far, and to restore public confidence that citizens are not being illegally tracked we must take swift action and guarantee reform,” he said.

            Word of the Terrorism Institute’s work first surfaced in July, in a Philadelphia Inquirer column by Daniel Rubin, who got hold of several intelligence bulletins issued by Mr. Powers’ office.

            Mr. Rubin said the bulletins listed “such potential trouble spots as pro-education rallies, anti-gun demonstrations and the coming of the circus,” which was mentioned because animal-rights demonstrators might show up.

            Mr. Rendell said the idea behind the contract was to learn ahead of time about “credible threats to critical infrastructure,” such as road, bridges, airports and power plants, so state and local police could protect them.

            Mr. Powers told the Inquirer, “The things I tried to blow up for 30 years, now I have to defend.”

            Some legislators have criticized the lack of competing bidders for the six-figure anti-terrorism contract. But Ms. Finn said Homeland Security couldn’t find any other private firm with the Terrorism Institute’s unique skills. The contract was signed in October 2009 and was to run for a year (until it was terminated this week).

             “Director Powers believed at the time that it is the only U.S. private-sector, multi-lingual company specializing in collection and analysis of human intelligence that (Homeland Security) needed to carry out certain duties,” she said in an e-mail.

 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10260/1088164-454.stm

20 Signs That The Economic Collapse Has Already Begun For One Out Of Every Seven Americans

The Economic Collapse
September 18, 2010

For most Americans, the economic collapse is something that is happening to someone else.  Most of us have become so isolated from each other and so self-involved that unless something is directly affecting us or a close family member than we really don’t feel it.  But even though most of us enjoy a much closer relationship with our television sets than we do with our neighbors at this point, it is quickly becoming undeniable that a fundamental shift is taking place in society.  Perhaps you noticed it when two or three foreclosure signs went up on your street.  Or perhaps it got your attention when that nice fellow down the street lost his job, and he and his family seemingly just disappeared from the neighborhood one day.  The Census Bureau made front page headlines all over the nation this week when they announced that one out of every seven Americans was living in poverty in 2009.  Every single day more Americans are getting sucked out of the middle class and into soul-crushing poverty.   

Unfortunately, most Americans don’t really care because it has not affected them yet.

But this year, millions more Americans will discover that the music has stopped playing and they are left without a seat at the table.

Meanwhile, neither political party has a workable solution.  They just like to point fingers and blame each other.

The Democrats blame Bush for all the poverty and advocate expanding programs for the poor.  Not that there is anything wrong with a safety net.  But the “safety net” was never meant to hold 50 million people on Medicaid and 40 million people on food stamps.  The number of Americans on food stamps has more than doubled since 2007.  So do we just double it again as things get even worse?

The truth is that welfare programs are only short-term solutions.  Unfortunately, the Democrats do not understand this.  What Americans really need are good jobs.

The Republicans are so boneheaded that they don’t even like to talk about poverty because they think it is a “liberal issue”.  Some conservative commentators have even been so brutally cold as to mock the “99ers” (those who have been unemployed so long that even their extended federal benefits have run out).

Instead of showing some compassion and being the party of the American worker (as they should be), the Republicans are often very uncompassionate and they allow the Democrats to be “the party of the poor” by default.

Both political parties need a big wakeup call.  There is a tsunami of poverty sweeping the United States, and somebody better wake up and do something about it.  More handouts will help people get by in the short-term, but there is no way that the federal government can financially support tens of millions more poor Americans.

How long is it going to be before the “safety net” simply collapses under the weight of all this poverty?

The path we are on is not sustainable.

The economy is falling apart, and somebody better wake up and do something before even more Americans find themselves drowning in poverty.

 

The following are 20 signs that the economic collapse has already begun for one out of every seven Americans…..

 

#1 The Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in 51 years of record-keeping.

 

 

#2 In the year 2000, 11.3 percent of Americans were living in poverty.  In 2008, 13.2 percent of Americans were living in poverty.  In 2009, 14.3 percent of Americans were living in poverty.  Needless to say the trend is moving in the wrong direction. 

 

#3 In 2009 alone, approximately 4 million more Americans joined the ranks of the poor.

 

#4 According to the Associated Press, experts believe that 2009 saw the largest single year increase in the U.S. poverty rate since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.

 

#5 The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

 

#6 Today the United States has approximately 4 million fewer wage earners than it did in 2007.

 

#7 Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.

 

#8 U.S. banks repossessed 25 percent more homes in August 2010 than they did in August 2009.

 

#9 One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.

 

#10 There are now 50.7 million Americans who do not have health insurance.  One trip to the emergency room would be all it would take to bankrupt a significant percentage of them.

 

#11 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid, the U.S. government health care program designed principally to help the poor.

 

#12 There are now over 41 million Americans on food stamps.

 

#13 The number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program increased a whopping 55 percent from December 2007 to June 2010.

 

#14 One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.

 

#15 California’s poverty rate soared to 15.3 percent in 2009, which was the highest in 11 years.

 

#16 According to an analysis by Isabel Sawhill and Emily Monea of the Brookings Institution, 10 million more Americans (including 6 million more children) will slip into poverty over the next decade.

 

#17 According to a recently released Federal Reserve report, Americans experienced a $1.5 trillion loss in combined household net worth in the second quarter of 2010.

 

#18 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

 

#19 Median U.S. household income is down 5 percent from its peak of more than $52,000 in 1999.

 

#20 A study recently released by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College University found that Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need for retirement.

How anyone can look at those numbers and think that things are about to “get better” absolutely boggles the mind.

It is time to wake up.

Things are not going to get better.

Things are only going to get worse.

The United States is rapidly becoming a nation where poverty is absolutely rampant.

As poverty continues to spread, crime will not be far behind.

Meanwhile, the international community wants to impose a global tax on us so that they can “redistribute” even more of our wealth around the world.

The following was just reported by CNSNews.com….

 

A group of 60 nations will meet next week at the United Nations to push for a tax on foreign currency transactions as a way to generate revenue to meet global poverty-reduction goals, including “climate change” mitigation.

Well isn’t that great?  As American descends into poverty, the rest of the world is pushing for a global tax that will drain us of wealth even more.

It is just a tax on foreign currency transactions, but history has taught us that once taxers get their foot in the door they always go for more eventually.

Sadly, it is not just the United Nations that is discussing a global tax.  In fact, the IMF and the World Health Organization have both been very open about the fact that they want to impose global taxes of their own.

Not that we aren’t taxed enough already.  We already pay dozens of different kinds of taxes each year, and 2011 is already being dubbed as “the year of the tax increase“.

But most Americans don’t have any more to give.  Most Americans can barely make it from month to month.  More Americans than ever are slipping into poverty. 

What a mess we have on our hands.

Do any of you have any suggestions for how we should go about fixing all of this?

Secrets in Plain Sight in Censored Book’s Reprint

September 17, 2010
by Scott Shane
New York Times

 

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency, headquarters for the government’s eavesdroppers and code breakers, has been located at Fort Meade, Md., for half a century. Its nickname, the Fort, has been familiar for decades to neighbors and government workers alike.

Yet that nickname is one of hundreds of supposed secrets Pentagon reviewers blacked out in the new, censored edition of an intelligence officer’s Afghan war memoir. The Defense Department is buying and destroying the entire uncensored first printing of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony Shaffer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, in the name of protecting national security.

Another supposed secret removed from the second printing: the location of the Central Intelligence Agency’s training facility — Camp Peary, Va., a fact discoverable from Wikipedia. And the name and abbreviation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, routinely mentioned in news articles. And the fact that Sigint means “signals intelligence.”

Not only did the Pentagon black out Colonel Shaffer’s cover name in Afghanistan, Chris Stryker, it deleted the source of his pseudonym: the name of John Wayne’s character in the 1949 movie “The Sands of Iwo Jima.”

The redactions offer a rare glimpse behind the bureaucratic veil that cloaks information the government considers too important for public airing.

Several recent books by former spies and soldiers show the government’s editing with blacked-out passages, a gimmick that publishers use to give a book an insider’s feel. The reader can only guess at what is concealed.

But in the case of Colonel Shaffer’s book, uncensored advance copies — possibly as many as 100 — were distributed by St. Martin’s Press before military officials found what they thought were security lapses. The New York Times bought an uncensored copy online this month, and on Friday got the redacted version from the publisher.

The list of “key characters” in the initial printing is gone, as is the blurb on the original cover from a former Defense Intelligence Agency director, Lt. Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, who had called it “one terrific book.”

Black ink obscures Colonel Shaffer’s descriptions of intelligence operations in Afghanistan, including vague references to N.S.A. communications intercepts. One deleted passage, for instance, describes a plan by N.S.A. technicians to retrofit an ordinary-looking household electronic device and place it in an apartment near a suspected militant hideout in Pakistan. “The collection device would function like a sponge, soaking up any low-level signals too faint to be detected by N.S.A.’s more-distant devices,” Colonel Shaffer wrote.

The Pentagon’s intervention has greatly increased interest in the book: one uncensored copy sold for more than $2,000 this week on eBay, and when the story broke last week, preorders for the new edition pushed the book as high as No. 4 among best sellers on Amazon.

The Defense Department’s handling of Colonel Shaffer’s account of his experiences in Afghanistan in 2003 appears to have been bungled from the beginning. The Army reviewed the manuscript, negotiated modest changes and approved it for publication in January.

Then, in July, the Defense Intelligence Agency saw a copy, showed it to the N.S.A. and other agencies, and decided that some 250 passages contained classified information. But advance copies were already out to potential reviewers and the Military Book Club, and the first 10,000 copies were in a warehouse. Those are the copies the Pentagon is arranging to buy and pulp.

Colonel Shaffer, his publisher and Pentagon classification enforcers have been negotiating over what could remain in the new printing, scheduled to go on sale Sept. 24.

“There’s smart secrecy and stupid secrecy, and this whole episode sounds like stupid secrecy,” said Gabriel Schoenfeld of the Hudson Institute, a conservative scholar whose book “Necessary Secrets” defends protecting classified information.

Mr. Schoenfeld said military officials might have felt compelled to block Colonel Shaffer’s discussions of jobs and operations they believed to be classified for fear that doing nothing would set a perilous precedent.

But Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, said the fact that censored and uncensored copies of the book were public would only call attention to the alleged secrets. “They’re flagging the supposedly dangerous stuff,” Mr. Blanton said. And, he said, labeling facts that are common knowledge undermines the classification system.

A Pentagon spokesman, Colonel David Lapan, said he could not discuss specific redactions “because the information in question is considered classified.” Colonel Shaffer said Friday that his Army bosses asked him not to discuss his book for now. In a statement released by St. Martin’s Press, he suggested that the changes inadvertently offered some insight.

“While I do not agree with the edits in many ways,” Colonel Shaffer wrote, “the Defense Department redactions enhance the reader’s understanding by drawing attention to the flawed results created by a disorganized and heavy handed military intelligence bureaucracy.”

Giggles from the Back Wards: Another loony Republican princess heard from

 

The Christine O’Donnell Digest: Everything You Wanted To Know About Her (And Some Things You Didn’t)

 

from ThinkProgress

ON SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

  • O’Donnell led a campaign against masturbation, claiming it is a form of adultery. In a 90s era discussion on MTV, O’Donnell said, “The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust.” [Huffington Post, 9/2/10]
  • O’Donnell warned coed dorm rooms will lead to ‘orgy rooms.’ Quoted in a Washington Times article which noted, “Dorm life has evolved into a blending of the sexes, from coed buildings to coed floors, coed bathrooms and now even coed rooms,” O’Donnell commented, “What’s next? Orgy rooms? Menage a trois rooms?” [Washington Times, 9/18/03]
  • O’Donnell wants to stop the ‘whole country from having sex.’ Asked by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, “You’re going to stop the whole country from having sex?” O’Donnell replied, “Yes.” [Scarborough Country, 11/13/03]
  • O’Donnell warned there’s ‘a connection’ between ‘freak dancing’ and ‘date rape.’ “What freak dancing is isn’t just like the safety of mosh pitting. This is sexually explicit activity for minors. We do limit the expression of minors. There are drinking laws. There are — you have to be 18 to smoke. You can’t go to school in a bikini. On one hand you have people saying this is squelching their freedom. And then you scratch your head and say, ‘Look over here. Date rape is such an epidemic.’ There’s a connection. And if people realize there’s a connection, then they’ll realize that these limitations and restrictions exist for a very valid reason.” [O’Reilly Factor, 9/22/06]
  • O’Donnell believes that spouses who have been cheated on possess compromised ‘purity.’ O’Donnell wrote in an article published in Cultural Dissident, “When a married person uses pornography, or is unfaithful, it compromises not just his (or her) purity, but also compromises the spouse’s purity.” [TPM, 9/7/10]
  • O’Donnell believes that handing out condoms at schools is like legalizing drunk driving. Arguing that abstinence is the only acceptable option, O’Donnell if said of condoms at school, “go ahead and have a condom. That’s like saying, don’t drive drunk but if you do, make sure you wear your seat belt. It’s going to kill.” [Hannity & Colmes, 6/6/00]
  • O’Donnell argued that distributing condoms is ‘just going to further the spread of AIDS.’ “About President Bush’s stand against condoms, condoms will not protect you from AIDS. So to just throw a bunch of condoms over to Africa and say, here, we’re helping you with AIDS, is just going to further the spread of AIDS over there.” [Donahue, 8/27/02]
  • O’Donnell thinks condoms ‘will not protect you from sexually transmitted diseases.’ “Even not from a moral perspective, if you take it just purely from a health perspective, condoms will not protect you from sexually transmitted diseases. There’s a 20 percent failure rate that it will protect from pregnancy.” [Hannity & Colmes, 12/17/99]
  • O’Donnell’s explanation of the need for chastity until marriage: ‘we’re not a slave to our sexuality.’  “We’re not a slave to our sexuality. Our sexuality is a gift for us to be used in the context of marriage, and we need to support young people in that, and teach them the facts that 12,000 teenagers a day contract sexually transmitted diseases. And the only way to protect yourself from this is to save sex for marriage, and then to remain in a monogamous, committed marriage.” [CNN, 7/10/97]
  • O’Donnell claimed abstinence-only education has been an ‘incredible success.’ “Overwhelmingly, programs that teach abstinence only have an incredible success rate because you’re not giving them a confused message.” [Hannity & Colmes, 6/6/00]
  • O’Donnell wants her children to ’see Christ’ in her future husband. Explaining what she is looking for an ideal husband, O’Donnell said, “I want my children to see Christ in him.” [Wilmington News-Journal, 11/12/06]
  • O’Donnell believes the proper role of a woman is to ’submit’ to her husband. ”This is not about merely a Baptist doctrine. This is a biblical doctrine. And the passage from the Bible the Baptist article is taken from talks about a submissive family. And yet, what the media seems to be reacting to is the word “submit” in the wives. But yet, even in, Mary, your introduction, you ignored or you left out where it says they graciously submit to a servant leader. And that is God’s design for the family. It is not about dominating and it is not about being a slave to your husband.” [CNN, 6/11/98]
  • O’Donnell believes women do not enjoy sex, using it only as a means to love. “Women play sex to get love. Men play love to get sex.” [Fox News, 8/2/03]
  • O’Donnell warned that allowing women to attend military academies ‘cripples the readiness of our defense.’ “By integrating women into particularly military institutes, it cripples the readiness of our defense,” O’Donnell has said. She also argued that West Point “has had to lower their standards … in order for men and women to compete” [Politico, 9/16/10]
  • O’Donnell believes Sarah Palin is the ‘epitome of a modern woman.’ “She is the epitome of a modern woman. She’s strong, independent and utterly feminine. She makes me so proud to be an American female candidate.” [Gannett News Service, 9/5/08]
  • O’Donnell believes Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned. “We need to turn the power back to the state. And Roe v. Wade, if it’s overturned, will not make abortion illegal. It will simply return the power back to the state.” [Donahue, 8/27/02]
  • O’Donnell doesn’t understand why gays get ‘upset’ when called ‘deviant.’ Asked if she could “understand why gays might be upset?” by someone calling homosexuality a “deviant sexual orientation,” O’Donnell replied, “Absolutely not. I cannot understand.” [Hannity & Colmes, 6/26/00]
  • O’Donnell believes gays are ‘attacking the very center of what is America.’ “This same group that is — is fighting against Paramount are the ones who claim to be devoted guardians of the First Amendment. Yet they are fighting for government-sponsored censorship of anybody who disagrees with them. They’re — they’re attacking the very center of what is America, freedom to have different views.” [Hannity & Colmes, 6/26/00]
  • O’Donnell believes gays ‘can get away with so much more,’ such as ‘nudity.’ “But let me tell you something! They — homosexuals’ special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can!” she said. Asked for examples, she replied, “They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion! They’re getting away with blasphemy!” [Hannity & Colmes, 6/26/00]
  • O’Donnell excused gay bashing as ‘kids being kids.’ Asked about disparaging comments children had made about a gay peer, O’Donnell dismissed it, saying, “It’s kids being kids, that’s it.” [Hannity & Colmes, 7/19/00]
  • O’Donnell believes AIDS victims should not be called ‘victims,’ and that too much money goes to fighting the disease. Appearing on C-SPAN in 1997, O’Donnell said calling them “AIDS victims” is “the kind of spinning with words and manipulating words that empowers the bias when it comes to AIDS.” O’Donnell also complained that “there is a gross disproportionate allocation of funds” going to AIDS treatment and prevention in comparison to resources designated to combat heart disease. O’Donnell suggested people change the “lifestyle” (i.e. homosexuality) that she said leads to AIDS.” [TPM, 9/15/10]
  • O’Donnell warned about mice with ‘fully functioning human brains.’ “Now we’re using this to start cloning humans. … They are — they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.’ [O’Reilly Factor, 10/16/07]
  • O’Donnell believes there is ‘just as much, if not more, evidence’ supporting creationism than evolution. “Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it’s merely a theory. … Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.” [New York Magazine, 9/15/10]
  • O’donnell compared psychics to a ‘pimp.’ “Psychics exploit the human beings natural desire that longs for something higher,” O’Donnell told Bill Maher’s in October 2001. “The same way a pimp exploits the natural desire to be with the opposite sex…psychics put people in spiritual harm, the same way pimps put people in physical harm. [YouTube, 10/14/07]
  • O’Donnell is so fervently pro-truth that she wouldn’t lie to Nazis looking for Jews in her home. Appearing on Political Incorrect with Bill Maher, O’Donnell explained the
    importance of truth-telling, refusing to even entertain the notion of lying when a gust asked if she would tell the truth Nazis looking for Jews hiding in her home. “I believe if I were in that situation, God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously. I believe that! … You never have to practice deception” [ThinkProgress, 9/15/10]
  • O’Donnell doesn’t believe in shades of gray. “There’s only truth and not truth. You’re either very good or evil. I went back to my dorm and asked myself what I was. If your principles aren’t grounded in absolute truth, you don’t know what to think.” [Wilmington News-Journal, 11/12/06]
  • In a lawsuit, O’Donnell falsely implied she was getting a masters at Princeton. In her suit, O’Donnell had considered not taking a job because “she had applied for admission to a Masters Degree program at Princeton University, to start in the fall of 2003, and was concerned that the ISI position would not fit with her plans.” However, as the Weekly Standard reported, “in fact, O’Donnell had not yet received her bachelor’s degree at that time and had not been accepted to a master’s program at Princeton.” [Weekly Standard, 9/12/10]
  • O’Donnell says she “dabbled into witchcraft.” On Politically Incorrect in 1999, O’Donnell said, “I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. … I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.” [Politically Incorrect, 10/29/99]
  • O’Donnell believes God speaks to her personally and guided her campaign. “During the primary, I heard the audible voice of God. He said, ‘Credibility.’ It wasn’t a thought in my head. I thought it meant I was going to win. But after the primary, I got credibility.” [Wilmington News-Journal, 11/12/06]
  • O’Donnell blamed school shootings on the lack of prayer in schools. “We took the bible and prayer out of public schools, and now we’re having weekly shootings practically.” [New Statesman, 9/15/10]
  • O’Donnell believes that Obama’s liberalism makes him ‘anti-American.’ Asked about the Democratic field during the 2008 presidential campaign, O’Donnell said of Obama, “He’s soooo liberal. He’s anti-American. He’s beating the ‘change’ drum. But let’s look at the change. He did not vote for English as the official language. What does that say?” [Fox News, 1/7/08]
  • O’Donnell warned that the ACLU is trying to ‘institute a communist country.’ “In the guise of so-called freedom of separation of church and state, they’re trying to institute a communist country and that sounds radical but that’s the truth. I mean why aren’t they trying to take out, you know, thou shall not kill? That’s a religious concept. That’s a commandment. Why are they not taking that our of our legal system.” [Savage Nation, 5/24/03]
  • O’Donnell believes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a false Christian. “Nancy Pelosi has — can benefit from making Christians look bad because she touts her Christianity when it’s politically expedient for her, yet, she doesn’t follow any of the Christian moral principles.” [O’Reilly Factor, 1/25/07]
  • O’Donnell warned that former President Clinton hosting a TV show would be a ‘threat to our national security.’ Responding to a rumor that Clinton might host a daytime TV talk show, O’Donnell said it would be “so undignified” but “also a threat to our national security” because the network could reveal “classified information” to which he had access. So do you really think the networks are going to sacrifice ratings for the sake of not revealing information that he has?” [Huffington Post,
    9/15/10
    ]
  • O’Donnell compared herself to Ronald Reagan. Responding to critics who think O’Donnell is unelectable, she noted, “They also said that Ronald Reagan wasn’t electable.” [Good Morning America, 9/15/10]
  • O’Donnell feared her political opponents are ‘following’ her and ‘hiding in the bushes.’ “They’re following me. … They knock on the door at all hours of the night. They’re hiding in the bushes when I’m at candidate forums. In 2008 they broke into my home. They vandalized my home. They wrote nasty notes on my front door, on my front porch. They jeopardized my safety. They did the same thing to our campaign office. They broke into our campaign office. They vandalized our campaign office. They stole files. … I would be a fool to be pressured into disclosing where I live.” [Weekly Standard, 9/2/10]
  • O’Donnell warned then Sen. Joe Biden had pushed a U.N. ‘global tax.’ “[Biden]’s refusing to allow the people of Delaware to hold him accountable for things such as the global tax that he pushed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee without a public hearing, something as serious as the United Nations taxing America’s GNP should certainly have a public hearing.” [Larry King Live, 8/27/08]
  • O’Donnell wanted to investigate President Clinton for murder. The
    1996 suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster promoted right-wing conspiracy theories that Clinton was somehow culpable. O’Donnell bought the theories, saying on C-SPAN, “we’re not giving the case of Vincent Foster a fair trial — when there is a lot more empirical evidence that Clinton is involved in wrongdoing.” [TPM, 9/16/10]
  • O’Donnell called the Supreme Court a ‘constitutional monarchy.’ “It’s kind of like we have the nine people sitting there in Washington who have a constitutional monarchy and that is an abuse of the system but that’s the way that they push their agenda. And, if you’ll also notice, with all of these cases it’s a few people, a few people who oppose the masses.” [Savage Nation, 5/24/03]
  • O’Donnell believes Bush did a great job saving the economy after 9/11. “Look at what Bush has done. The economy took an incredible hit after September 11. That was a huge shock to the economy. And we’ve recovered a lot quicker than we thought, thanks to Bush and his economic policy.” [Donahue, 11/22/02]
  • O’Donnell found the Middle East’s censorship ‘refreshing.’ “I’ll tell you, I just came back from the Middle East, and it was refreshing. With all that is going on, it was refreshing not to be constantly bombarded with smut all the time.” [MSNBC, 3/23/04]
  • O’Donnell believes Britney Spears is ‘dangerous.’ “Not only is she [Britney Spears] sending a dangerous message about sexuality to girls, but I think she’s setting the feminist movement back a bit, too, because she’s saying that sexuality is the core of our identity.” [Fox News, 11/15/03]
  • O’Donnell believes ‘Sex and the city’ is ‘very dangerous.’ “I think that this show is very dangerous, especially to the women’s movement. It’s no wonder people call it ‘Sluts in the City’ because it teaches young women to be whores, basically, to be used by men, to bed hop. And it ignores the fact that you know when you are treating sex like this that there’s shame, there’s loneliness that follows. And I think that the characters on this show are very revealing in that they long for a true relationship. They long for something meaningful in their lives.” [CNN, 6/1/01]
  • ‘Sex and the City’ ‘angers’ O’Donnell because it’s ‘offensive’ to women and is ‘pornography.’ “As a young woman, seeing these women behave like that and acting like that’s normal or that’s even fashionable angers me. These shows are really soft core pornography. … It’s offensive to anyone who really understands what it’s like to be a woman.” [MSNBC’s Hardball, 6/20/03]
  • O’Donnell insists the TV show ‘Friends’ is doing a ‘disservice to society.’ “It makes the treadmill go faster, but it is doing a disservice to society at large. It makes casual sex look fun. It makes the consequences of casual sex look glamorous. And they’re ignoring sexually transmitted diseases. They’re ignoring the broken hearts from pregnancy” [O’Reilly Factor, 5/10/02]
  • O’Donnell thinks ‘The Sopranos’ are a model family. “The thing that attracts people to “The Sopranos” is the family element. It shows that America still has a longing for that traditional upbringing.” [Hardball, 6/20/03]
  • O’Donnell feared that bloggers are ‘dangerous.’ “What makes bloggers good makes them dangerous. They don’t have to answer to anybody. They can give a local story attention, but they also can publish rumors with no accountability.” [Wilmington News-Journal, 1/7/07]
  • O’Donnell fretted that Generation X revived ‘Satanism.’ “Satanism has re-emerged among Generation X with an arrogance that mocks its members as it blatantly destroys them.” [Washington Post, 6/15/97]
  • O’Donnell advocated military action against Iran. The AP reported, “Ms. O’Donnell was the only candidate, however, to assert that the U.S. should consider military action against Iran. ‘You can’t negotiate with the devil,’ said. [AP, 9/6/06]
  • O’Donnell warned China wants to ‘take over America.’ China has a “carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over America. [AP, 9/6/06]
  • O’Donnell explained why there were never WMD found in Iraq by comparing the war to raiding a ‘crack house.’ “One of the biggest lies that’s going on is that we had no reason to go in. … If we were going to invade a crack house, and we said, ‘We’re going to invade this crack house. We’re going to raid this crack house.’ For six months, we gave them warning. And then you walk in and you go, ‘Hey, there’s no crack. There’s only these little pipes. Now, there’s no crack with the little pipes, so we can’t assume that these pipes are used for crack.’” [Hardball, 6/20/03]

ON WOMEN

ON HOMOSEXUALITY

ON SCIENCE

ON TRUTH

ON GOD AND RELIGION

ON PROGRESSIVES

ON HER CAMPAIGN

ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES

ON THE ECONOMY

ON MODERN CULTURE

ON FOREIGN POLICY

 

http://thinkprogress.org/christine-odonnell-record/

 

The Conversations with the Crow

 

            When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert  T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.

             Crowley did not listen to them (no one else ever does, either) and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.

            Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:

http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm🙂

 

Here is the thirtieth chapter

 

Conversation No. 30

Date:  Tuesday, August 6, 1996

Commenced: 11:10 AM CST

Concluded: 11:47 AM CST

GD: Ah, good morning to you, Robert. How is life treating you today?

RTC: Good morning, Gregory. There are good days and bad days. I’m not sure about today.

GD: Certainty is illusion, Robert. I was talking to an old friend of mine last night. He’s down at Norfolk. Was Navy but retired. I went to school with him. King’s Point and then the NSG.

RTC: King’s Point is Merchant Marine.

GD: I know. They have a reserve commission and they can activate it if they want to. He did. Nuclear vessels surface and then the NSG. He was the Naval Attaché in the Dominican Republic. Worked on the Trujillo assassination. But that’s not the issue now. We got to talking about AIDS and since he had quite a bit of sherry, he told me quite a story about how that originated. I thought you might have some input on that. Want me to go on?

RTC: Why not?

GD: Well, according to him, the Navy had an experimental medical station down in Haiti. They were down there because there was a huge pool of very poor locals they could use as subjects in tests. He said that they were developing something that would lower a person’s resistance to the point where a common cold would put them out of action for weeks.

RTC: Go on. What then?

GD: Well, they hit on a virus that does this, experimented with the locals and when they were sure it actually worked, somehow they got this into local whores whom the Cuban government then shipped over to Angola to service their volunteers fighting there.

RTC: I’ve heard stories about that.

GD: But somehow, the virus mutated into something far more serious. The HIV thing. And they didn’t care if all the Cubans died, or the whores either, but it seems that some the younger Haitians got this and when American gays made excursions down there for some cheap black cock, they got it, too, and you can see where that went. Then, my friend said, after they found out what had gone wrong, the Navy shut down its facility, disposed of their volunteer locals by taking them out on boats and dumping them into the water. Anyway, that’s what he said, and I believe him. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.

RTC: There is something to that. Your friend had best be very quiet or he’ll end up taking a one-way boat trip. And I would be careful not to put any of that into one of your books. If you take my drift.

GD: No, it wouldn’t fit in with the Mueller material. It is true, then?

RTC: Basically it is. Take note that it didn’t start out to kill off all the homos, although the Christians thought it was a wonderful thing, but your friend was right when he said it mutated. I was never in that part of the agency but one hears things or talks to colleagues. I mean there was only the intention to interfere with the combat capabilities of enemy troops, not liquidate social outcasts. When we learned about this, the burn bags were used overtime at Langley.

GD: Were your people part of it?

RTC: In a sense. The Navy supplied the tactical, and we supplied the strategic. They produced the weapon and we, the targets. We were planning to use this on the Russians.

GD: Well, I know something about that aspect. You know about General Ishi? [1]

RTC: Oh yes, I do indeed.

GD: His Japanese military units had a BW lab up in Manchuria and they used to develop the plague and God knows what else. Poisoned thousands of Chinese, wanted to loose the plague against their Russian neighbors and used Allied POW’s as lab specimens. Most of them died of plague and other nasty things.

RTC: Ah, the redoubtable Dr. Ishi. After we took over Japan, he was caught along with his staff and they were planning to try him for very ugly war crimes but MacArthur, acting on specific orders from the Pentagon, rescued him, set him with a big lab in Tokyo and back they went to developing the bubonic plague. I guess they were going to use it on the Russians if all else failed.

GD: That I know all about. Not the Japanese but using the plague against the Russians. There was a German Army doctor, a Dr. Walter Schreiber, who was a specialist in communicable diseases. He developed a form of the plague and the military used it to clean out the overcrowded Russian POW cages. Cost too much to feed and guard them. The rationale was that they never used them in the West. Roosevelt, as you might know, was planning to use mustard gas against the Germans in Russia until the Bari raid blew up a boat-full of mustard gas, and when Hitler learned of this, he threatened to let nerve gas loose on London and Washington. Amazing how quickly FDR backed off.

RTC: You do your homework, don’t you?

GD: Oh yes. Schreiber came over to us in Berlin after the war and we vetted him and sent him to San Antonio to set up a lab there to cultivate the plague. Again, we planned to use it against the Russians. I don’t what the Russians did to infuriate our sacred leaders, but I don’t think they would have deserved that. Schreiber got outed and had to be shipped back to Germany.

RTC: Drew Pearson was the man who did that.

GD: Whatever. Well, the Brits practiced BW when they gave the Indians smallpox-laced blankets back in the eighteenth century, but Mueller and I were discussing Schreiber’s project. Mueller was very angry when he heard this and rounded Schreiber up. Had to let him go. Orders from on high. Mueller said that there were no Customs agents at the borders to stop the spread of such filthiness right back from whence it came. But he told me about a CIA plan to ruin the Asian rice crop. That failed but only barely. It would have spread and ruined everyone’s rice crop. He said that creatures that dabbled in such things should be shot out of hand or they would destroy everyone, good or bad. I suppose the definition of good or bad depends on your politics, but the whole thing should be forbidden by law.

RTC: I believe it is, but only in theory.

GD: But they put the story out that AIDS came from monkeys in Africa and other funny stories.

RTC: Well, now it’s raging in Africa and they estimate that in ten years, everyone there will be infected. Of course, there is something to be said about depopulating Africa. They’re a bunch of incompetents who are sitting on very valuable natural resources, such as gold and uranium and when they all die, the treasures are there for the finding.

GD: That’s a bit cynical but true. But what about the American homosexuals?

RTC: The Christians and the far right would be in favor of exterminating them all. However, that having been said, we would lose so many really valuable public servants, not to mention all the florists and interior decorators.

GD: Thank God I’m not a Christian. They’re such filthy bigots. If they ever get into power here, I’ll move to some cleaner place.

RTC: I don’t see that happening, Gregory.

GD: I have no problems with the mainline faiths but the extremists are flat-out nuts and we don’t need that rampant and fanatical bigotry.

RTC: But it could be useful.

GD: But you can’t really control it. I’ve known a few Jesus freaks and, believe me, they are as nutty as they come. Most of them try to hide it from us sane ones but once in a while, it leaks out. It would be entertaining if the head of the Navy’s medical branch caught AIDS from his cousin or how about the DCI?

RTC: Now, now, Gregory, you must realize that accidents happen. Try not to be too judgmental about such things.

GD: It’s bloody difficult not to.

RTC: Look, Africa is full of people who are only a generation or two out of the jungle. They ran out the white people, who set up the business structure, and now they are running around with spears, eating each other. Why be concerned if they pass away and give the civilized part of the world access to their unused natural resources? After all, that’s why we killed off the head of the UN. He was interfering with the uranium business in the Congo so we had a little aircraft accident. We basically shot him out of the air. And that put an end to his meddling in important matters. Uranium, I don’t need to remind you, is vital for our weapons programs. Balance that against one meddling Swede and I don’t think there’s much of a problem.

GD: Well, for him…

RTC: Against the common good? You need to consider the practical priorities, Gregory. Believe me, we had no intention of causing AIDS. Our goal was to render a battlefield enemy incapable of combat, that’s all. These things sometimes happen and there is no reason at all to dwell on unexpected and certainly not planned consequences.

GD: Ah, remember that Lenin once said you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Of course, it didn’t originate with him and I know it won’t end there but you take the point because you articulate it. But I have to agree with Mueller when he tore into such projects. And if you know the Bible, remember that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword. Wars once were conducted by gentlemen with a certain amount of civility but those days are gone. Democracy, not kings, now rules and civility is dead.

RTC: You sound like a monarchist, Gregory.

GD: In many ways I am, Robert. I recall my German grandfather saying that democracy was government of the mentally misfit by the mentally mediocre and tempered by the saving grace of snobbery. Grandfather was usually right I remember once at one of his formal family dinners when one of my idiot aunts was going on about her constant attendance at the local Methodist church and her choir practices. My grandfather turned to me and told me, so the whole table could hear, that I ought to take a lesson in piety from my aunt. I recall saying, and I am not being funny here, that it seemed to me that there was considerable madness in aunt’s Methodism.

RTC: Did you actually say that, Gregory?

GD: Yes, and I was only ten, Robert.

RTC: Your family must have loved you.

GD: I don’t actually think so. When Grandfather said at some other occasion that my aunt and uncle were going to Lower Asbury Avenue, I said that they certainly would if they lived there long enough.

RTC: (Laughter) You must have been a most unpleasant child, Gregory.

GD: I do not suffer fools gladly, Robert. Lincoln has been misquoted. He said, or is supposed to have said, that God must love the common people because he made so many of them. What he actually said was that God must love fools because he had made so many of them.

RTC: Now you can see why our organization is so necessary. Imagine leaving state policy in the hands of idiots.

GD: Point of view here, Robert. Whose ox is gored? Destroying the Asian rice crop? Thousands or millions dead of starvation?

GTC: But consider the common good. These are Communists, Gregory, and they want to destroy our system.

GD: Another point of view once more, Robert. Yes, abstract Communism is utopian nonsense, just like abstract Christianity is. No one wants to work to help others, but they will help themselves. But that still does not justify slaughtering millions, does it?

RTC: But that is a very extreme and certainly tainted view, Gregory.

GD: Again, it’s the gored ox. But civilized people can disagree with each other and still remain civilized, Robert. Right?

RTC: I assume so but let’s try to be a bit more objective. You need to view the larger picture.

GD: Mueller said it so well to me once, just before one of my nice French dinners. He said that morals and ethics were excellent norms but hardly effective techniques.

RTC: Those sentiments I can agree with.

GD: A difference without much a distinction. Well, enough moralizing here. I’m glad to see that my naval friend was not just engaging in drunken babble.

RTC: I would strongly urge you not to take this issue any further. I would be concerned about your safety if you did.

GD: A point well taken. As a cross between a social Darwinist and a monarchist, even I can see the perils of contemplating moral issues from a neutral point of view.

RTC: And if you felt like giving me your talkative friend’s name and address, it might be appreciated. He ought to be spoken to.

GD: I doubt that I would want to do that, Robert. After all, I have never discussed our conversations with anyone else.

RTC: Point taken.

(Concluded 11:47 AM CST)

Dramatis personae:

 

James Jesus Angleton: Once head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, later fired because of his obsessive and illegal behavior, tapping the phones of many important government officials in search of elusive Soviet spies. A good friend of Robert Crowley and a co-conspirator with him in the assassination of President Kennedy

 

James P. Atwood: (April 16, 1930-April 20, 1997) A CIA employee, located in Berlin, Atwood had a most interesting career. He worked for any other intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that would pay him, was involved in selling surplus Russian atomic artillery shells to the Pakistan government and was also most successful in the manufacturing of counterfeit German dress daggers. Too talkative, Atwood eventually had a sudden, and fatal, “seizure” while lunching with CIA associates.

 

William Corson: A Marine Corps Colonel and President Carter’s representative to the CIA. A friend of Crowley and Kimmel, Corson was an intelligent man whose main failing was a frantic desire to be seen as an important person. This led to his making fictional or highly exaggerated claims.

 

John Costello: A British historian who was popular with revisionist circles. Died of AIDS on a trans-Atlantic flight to the United States.

 

James Critchfield: Former U.S. Army Colonel who worked for the CIA and organizaed the Cehlen Org. at Pullach, Germany. This organization was filled to the Plimsoll line with former Gestapo and SD personnel, many of whom were wanted for various purported crimes. He hired Heinrich Müller in 1948 and went on to represent the CIA in the Persian Gulf.

 

Robert T. Crowley: Once the deputy director of Clandestine Operations and head of the group that interacted with corporate America. A former West Point football player who was one of the founders of the original CIA. Crowley was involved at a very high level with many of the machinations of the CIA.

 

Gregory Douglas: A retired newspaperman, onetime friend of Heinrich Müller and latterly, of Robert Crowley. Inherited stacks of files from the former (along with many interesting works of art acquired during the war and even more papers from Robert Crowley.) Lives comfortably in a nice house overlooking the Mediterranean.

 

Reinhard Gehlen: A retired German general who had once been in charge of the intelligence for the German high command on Russian military activities. Fired by Hitler for incompetence, he was therefore naturally hired by first, the U.S. Army and then, as his level of incompetence rose, with the CIA. His Nazi-stuffed organizaion eventually became the current German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst.

 

Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr: A grandson of Admiral Husband Kimmel, Naval commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated after the Japanese attack. Kimmel was a senior FBI official who knew both Gregory Douglas and Robert Crowley and made a number of attempts to discourage Crowley from talking with Douglas. He was singularly unsuccessful. Kimmel subsequently retired and lives in retirement in Florida

 

Willi Krichbaum: A Senior Colonel (Oberführer) in the SS, head of the wartime Secret Field Police of the German Army and Heinrich Müller’s standing deputy in the Gestapo. After the war, Krichbaum went to work for the Critchfield organization and was their chief recruiter and hired many of his former SS friends. Krichbaum put Critchfield in touch with Müller in 1948.

 

Heinrich Müller: A former military pilot in the Bavarian Army in WWI, Müller  became a political police officer in Munich and was later made the head of the Secret State Police or Gestapo. After the war, Müller escaped to Switzerland where he worked for Swiss intelligence as a specialist on Communist espionage and was hired by James Critchfield, head of the Gehlen Organization, in 1948. Müller subsequently was moved to Washington where he worked for the CIA until he retired.

 

Joseph Trento: A writer on intelligence subjects, Trento and his wife “assisted” both Crowley and Corson in writing a book on the Russian KGB. Trento believed that he would inherit all of Crowley’s extensive files but after Crowley’s death, he discovered that the files had been gutted and the most important, and sensitive, ones given to Gregory Douglas. Trento was not happy about this. Neither were his employers.

 

Frank Wisner: A Founding Father of the CIA who promised much to the Hungarian and then failed them. First, a raging lunatic who was removed from Langley, screaming, in a strait jacket and later, blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun.

 

Robert Wolfe: A retired librarian from the National Archives who worked closely with the CIA on covering up embarrassing historical material in the files of the Archives. A strong supporter of holocaust writers.

Note: We understand that a large collection of documents, assembled by Robert T. Crowley, will be offered to the public in the near future. Here is a listing of some of the documents which will be included:

DOCUMENT CATALOG

 

Catalog Number                       Description of Contents                                             __________________________________________________________________________________

1000 BH Extensive file (1,205 pages) of reports on Operation PHOENIX. Final paper dated January, 1971, first document dated  October, 1967. Covers the setting up of Regional Interrogation Centers, staffing, torture techniques including electric shock, beatings, chemical injections. CIA agents involved and includes a listing of U.S. military units to include Military Police, CIC and Special Forces groups involved. After-action reports from various military units to include 9th Infantry, showing the deliberate killing of all unarmed civilians located in areas suspected of harboring or supplying Viet Cong units. *

1002 BH Medium file (223 pages)  concerning the fomenting of civil disobedience in Chile as the result of the Allende election in 1970. Included are pay vouchers for CIA bribery efforts with Chilean labor organization and student activist groups, U.S. military units involved in the final revolt, letter from  T. Karamessines, CIA Operations Director to Chile CIA Station Chief Paul Wimert, passing along a specific order from Nixon via Kissinger to kill Allende when the coup was successful. Communications to Pinochet with Nixon instructions to root out by force any remaining left wing leaders.

1003 BH Medium file (187 pages) of reports of CIA assets containing photographs of Soviet missile sites, airfields and other strategic sites taken from commercial aircraft. Detailed descriptions of targets attached to each picture or pictures.

1004 BH Large file (1560 pages) of CIA reports on Canadian radio intelligence intercepts from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa (1958) and a list of suspected and identified Soviet agents or sympathizers in Canada, to include members of the Canadian Parliament and military.

1005 BH Medium file (219 pages) of members of the German Bundeswehr in the employ of the CIA. The report covers the Innere Führung group plus members of the signals intelligence service. Another report, attached, covers CIA assets in German Foreign Office positions, in Germany and in diplomatic missions abroad.

1006:BH Long file (1,287 pages) of events leading up to the killing of Josef Stalin in 1953 to include reports on contacts with L.P. Beria who planned to kill Stalin, believing himself to be the target for removal. Names of cut outs, CIA personnel in Finland and Denmark are noted as are original communications from Beria and agreements as to his standing down in the DDR and a list of MVD/KGB files on American informants from 1933 to present. A report on a blood-thinning agent to be made available to Beria to put into Stalin’s food plus twenty two reports from Soviet doctors on Stalin’s health, high blood pressure etc. A report on areas of cooperation between Beria’s people and CIA controllers in the event of a successful coup. *

1007 BH Short list (125 pages) of CIA contacts with members of the American media to include press and television and book publishers. Names of contacts with bios are included as are a list of payments made and specific leaked material supplied. Also appended is a shorter list of foreign publications. Under date of August, 1989 with updates to 1992. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Bradlee of the same paper, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson and others are included.

1008 BH A file of eighteen reports (total of 899 pages) documenting illegal activities on the part of members of the U.S. Congress. First report dated July 29, 1950 and final one September 15, 1992. Of especial note is a long file on Senator McCarthy dealing with homosexuality and alcoholism. Also an attached note concerning the Truman Administration’s use of McCarthy to remove targeted Communists. These reports contain copies of FBI surveillance reports, to include photographs and reference to tape recordings, dealing with sexual events with male and female prostitutes, drug use, bribery, and other matters.

1009 BH A long multiple file (1,564 pages) dealing with the CIA part (Kermit Roosevelt) in overthrowing the populist Persian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Report from Dulles (John Foster) concerning a replacement, by force if necessary and to include a full copy of AJAX operation. Letters from AIOC on million dollar bribe paid directly to J.Angleton, head of SOG. Support of Shah requires exclusive contracts with specified western oil companies. Reports dated from May 1951 through August, 1953.

1010 BH Medium file (419 pages) of telephone intercepts made by order of J.J. Angleton of the telephone conversations between RFK and one G.N. Bolshakov. Phone calls between 1962-1963 inclusive. Also copies of intercepted and inspected mail from RFK containing classified U.S. documents and sent to a cut-out identified as one used by Bolshakov, a Russian press (TASS) employee. Report on Bolshakov’s GRU connections.

1011 BH Large file (988 pages) on 1961 Korean revolt of Kwangju revolt led by General Park Chung-hee and General Kin-Jong-pil. Reports on contacts maintained by CIA station in Japan to include payments made to both men, plans for the coup, lists of “undesirables” to be liquidated  Additional material on CIA connections with KCIA personnel and an agreement with them  to assassinate South Korean chief of state, Park, in 1979.

1012 BH Small file (12 pages) of homosexual activities between FBI Director Hoover and his aide, Tolson. Surveillance pictures taken in San Francisco hotel and report by CIA agents involved. Report analyzed in 1962.

1013 BH  Long file (1,699 pages) on General Edward Lansdale. First report a study signed by DCI Dulles in  September of 1954 concerning a growing situation in former French Indo-China. There are reports by and about Lansdale starting with his attachment to the OPC in 1949-50 where he and Frank Wisner coordinated policy in neutralizing Communist influence in the Philippines.. Landsale was then sent to Saigon under diplomatic cover and many copies of his period reports are copied here. Very interesting background material including strong connections with the Catholic Church concerning Catholic Vietnamese and exchanges of intelligence information between the two entities.

1014 BH Short file (78 pages) concerning  a Dr. Frank Olson. Olson was at the U.S. Army chemical warfare base at Ft. Detrick in Maryland and was involved with a Dr. Gottleib. Gottleib was working on a plan to introduce psychotic-inducing drugs into the water supply of the Soviet Embassy. Apparently he tested the drugs on CIA personnel first. Reports of psychotic behavior by Olson and more police and official reports on his defenstration by Gottleib’s associates. A cover-up was instituted and a number of in-house CIA memoranda attest to this. Also a discussion by Gottleib on various poisons and drugs he was experimenting with and another report of people who had died as a result of Gottleib’s various experiments and CIA efforts to neutralize any public knowledge of these. *

1015 BH Medium file (457 pages) on CIA connections with the Columbian-based Medellín drug ring. Eight CIA internal reports, three DoS reports, one FBI report on CIA operative Milan Rodríguez and his connections with this drug ring. Receipts for CIA payments to Rodríguez of over $3 million in CIA funds,showing the routings of the money, cut-outs and payments. CIA reports on sabotaging  DEA investigations. A three-part study of the Nicaraguan Contras, also a CIA-organized and paid for organization.

1016 BH A small file (159 pages) containing lists of known Nazi intelligence and scientific people recruited in Germany from 1946 onwards, initially by the U.S. Army and later by the CIA. A detailed list of the original names and positions of the persons involved plus their relocation information. Has three U.S. Army and one FBI report on the subject.

1017 BH A small list (54 pages) of American business entities with “significant” connections to the CIA. Each business is listed along with relevant information on its owners/operators, previous and on going contacts with the CIA’s Robert Crowley, also a list of national advertising agencies with similar information. Much information about suppressed news stories and planted stories. *


[1]  Shirō Ishii June 25, 1892 – October 9, 1959 was a Japanese microbiologist and the lieutenant general of Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and accused War Criminal. Ishii experimented on Allied prisoners of war, killing large numbers of them, in an attempt to perfect a form of bubonic plague to be used on the Russians. After the war, Ishii was employed by General MacArthur, who held stock in Ishii’s Tokyo laboratory, operating the same program he had for the Kempei Tai (or Secret Police) but the U.S. decided against using the plague against either the Communist Chinese or Russians. Ishiii, however, lectured American officials at one point in time and died a rich, and never prosecuted, man.

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