As a WASHINGTON — Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.
While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.
A key terror suspect who allegedly helped to plan last year’s attacks in Mumbai and plotted to strike Europe was an American secret agent who went rogue, Indian officials believe.
David Headley, 49, who was born in Washington to a Pakistan diplomat father and an American mother, was arrested in Chicago in October. He is accused of reconnoitring targets in India and Europe for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based terror group behind the Mumbai attacks and of having links to al-Qaeda. He has denied the charges.
He came to the attention of the US security services in 1997 when he was arrested in New York for heroin smuggling. He earned a reduced sentence by working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) infiltrating Pakistan-linked narcotics gangs.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ran at least two secret detention facilties in the Baltic nation of Lithuania, a parliamentary inquiry has found.
The sites were set up by Lithuanian intelligence services for the CIA, according to the report published on Tuesday.
But the head of the inquiry said he was not able to confirm whether al-Qaeda suspects had ever been interrogated at either location.
“The sites existed … and planes landed,” Arvydas Anusauskas, the head of parliament’s national security and defence committee, told reporters.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding an untold number of people in secretively maintained detention facilities all over the United States, according to a report set to be published next year in The Nation.
Many of the sites are unmarked and unlisted, going unnoticed in office parks and commercial zones, according to reporter Jacqueline Stevens. The so-called ICE “subfield offices” are mainly used to house prisoners in transfer and are not subject to the basic standards applied to ICE and even military prisoners.
At a subfield office known as B-18, located near a Los Angeles federal building, ICE keeps immigrant prisoners in “a barely converted storage facility.”
The following is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reply from the U.S.Armed Forces Institute of Pathology regarding a request for records that confirm the collection and identification of terrorists accused of hijacking American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 on September 11, 2001. Such records are reportedly exempt from disclosure under exemption (b)(7)(a) which prohibits disclosure of information which would interfere with an on-going law enforcement investigation and exemption (b)7(c), which also provides protection for law enforcement information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of individuals in being associated with criminal activities, including investigators.
Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, “You know we don’t do body counts.”[i] Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.
In a January 2008 report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in hemes/advanced/langs/en.js” type=”text/javascript”> 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000.”[ii]
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is one of the most important organization of the 9/11 truth movement. They will soon reach 1,000 architects and engineers supporting a new and independent 9/11 investigation. In many ways, they are at the forefront of the 9/11 truth battle. This amazing team works hard everyday and it is our time to give it back to them so they can be even stronger for the year to come
Target: $25,000 to support AE911Truth’s upcoming projects
Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001, an officer at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, DC, was notified that the Secret Service wanted fighter jets launched over the nation’s capital. It was now obvious the U.S. was under terrorist attack, and Washington would have been an obvious potential target. And yet the Secret Service’s request came to nothing.
No fighters had taken off from Andrews by 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit. Nor had any launched by the time Flight 93 apparently crashed in Pennsylvania, shortly after 10:00 a.m., while flying toward Washington. In fact, fighters did not launch from Andrews until over 90 minutes after the second attack in New York. The first fully armed fighters did not launch from there until more than two hours after that attack. So why was the Secret Service’s early request for help not acted upon? Why did fighter jets only take off from this massive Air Force base to defend the capital well after the morning’s attacks had ended?
What is the justification for waging war on a country of 28 million people?
What justifies Obama’s military surge?
Both the media and the US government, in chorus, continue to point to the 9/11 attacks and the role of Al Qaeda led by “terrorist mastermind” Osama bin Laden.
The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan is described as a “campaign” against Islamic terrorists, rather than a war.
To this date, however, there is no proof that Al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks.
Neither is there evidence that Afghanistan as a Nation State was behind or any way complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
If I was to report all of the instances of police abuse it would require an entire new blog, and a lot more time. There are instances everyday of police abuse. This year was no different; from EMT’s being choked by Highway Patrol (here and here) to a 72 year old grandmother being tazed(here) to a Louisiana man being choked to death(here) by officers and an innocent mother being tazed in front of her children(here).
The following report is from CNN, however the CNN report has a much different video on their site. The video available on you tube clearly has the officer admitting he drew his gun, and another clip shows him holding what appears to be his weapon. Why did I make a post for this? I don’t know, just to share the stories I suppose.
Washington police were investigating on Sunday whether an off-duty officer drew his gun in the midst of a snowball fight involving a couple hundred people.
The Metropolitan Police Department said video from a local media outlet at the scene Saturday did not show the officer with his weapon drawn. However, authorities have since received “additional images and statements that would seem to support the allegation that the off-duty member did pull a gun,” a police statement said.
Many recent announcements have been made signaling a long and drawn out occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as escalating conflicts and wars in Pakistan, Palestine, and soon enough Iran.
Obama has announced an escalation of 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, bringing the number to 100,000 US children fighting in Afghanistan alone. This number does not reflect the gross number of private contractors in Afghanistan either, which totals over 150,000 now. Over 250,000 U.S. personnel will be occupying Afghan land before too long.
The British have announced recently that they will be making adjustments to their camouflage uniforms. In fact it will be the first change the British Army has made to its uniforms since 1968. The fact that it has taken 8 years of war in Afghanistan to make a radical change like that, unlike a withdrawal, signals a readiness to stay in Afghanistan longer.
A major U.S. Military spending bill was sent to Obama on Saturday, the bill includes $636 billion to continue the war, and escalate it. $80 billion of that package is going to acquire new unmanned drones to continue the shadow war in Pakistan.
We are fighting illegal preemptive wars against three countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The resulting wars have caused well over 1,000,000 casualties. Preemptive war is illegal according to the Nuremberg Charter, and the United Nations charter. These wars are destabilizing the entire Middle East, and causing anti-American sentiment throughout the world.
In America, the Constitution is being forgotten with the passage of bills like the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act. Americans are forced to wonder if their conversations are being monitored through the use of illegal wiretapping. The freedom of the press, and the right to peacefully assemble is being discarded.
Executive Power within the United States is being expanded to the point of near-dictatorship, and accountability for the actions of the Executive, and other members of Government is non-existent.
A constant state of fear is the norm.
Billions upon billions are being spent on the previously mentioned wars, and things that are needed for the people are being forgotten about.
Soldiers are dying, are being subjected to multiple tours of duty, are being exposed to depleted uranium and chemical weapons, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, are committing suicide at an astounding rate, are being fed propaganda in order to murder innocents, and are having their families destroyed.
Posted by Brian 
