New research in the journal American Behavioral Scientist (Sage publications, February 2010) addresses the concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCAD). Professor Lance deHaven-Smith from Florida State University writes that SCADs involve highlevel government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism (fabrication of evidence of a communist infiltration), Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (President Johnson and Robert McNamara falsely claimed North Vietnam attacked a US ship), burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on WMDs to justify the Iraq War.1
Other suspected SCADs include the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooting of George Wallace, the October Surprise near the end of the Carter presidency, military grade anthrax mailed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11, 2001. The proven SCADs have a long trail of congressional hearings, public records, and academic research establishing the truth of the activities. The suspected SCADs listed above have substantial evidence of covert actions with countervailing deniability that tend to leave the facts in dispute.2
The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans.
Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C. says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes in 2008.
For a rough comparison, according to Wikipedia data, the total budget for defense in fiscal year 2010 will be at least $880 billion and could possibly top $1 trillion. That’s more than all the state governments collect.
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. — Patrick Henry
As stated by Patrick Henry with conviction and passion, a democratic government will not last if its operations and policies are not visible to its public. The foundation of our democratic republic is supposed to be based on an open and accountable government. Transparency is what enables accountability.
For several decades post 1945, under the guise of the Cold War, with the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and an aggressive foreign policy based on overt and covert intervention abroad, the seeds of excessive secrecy were planted, aggressively nurtured, and taken to heights not imaginable in our founding fathers’ vision of transparent and accountable government. Although the Watergate Scandal brought a short-lived wave of awakening, and to a certain degree defiance, by getting Americans to question the extent of and the real need for governmental secrecy, the subsequent political movements were eventually halted with no real action ever taken, thanks to a Congress unwilling to truly exercise its oversight authority over the intelligence community. Read the rest of this entry »
I want to revisit a topic which happens to be extremely important to me, both personally and politically, and even more important to our civil liberties.
Some of you have already read my brief piece on Richard Horn & the CIA dishing out $3 million to buy silence in this narco scandal. Those of you who have not read it click here and read it – because this story also goes to the heart of a very significant and ongoing issue: The State Secrets Privilege. Read the rest of this entry »
Political observers like The Atlantic‘s Andrew Sullivan have argued that one of the most dangerous elements of the Bush administration’s torture policies was the risk that a “torture mentality” would take hold in American society.
Those who seek evidence for that theory need look no further than Great Falls, Montana, where two teacher’s aides have been charged with using water torture on a middle school student.
Julie Ann Parrish and Kristina Marie Kallies face one count each of felony abuse after allegations that they forced a 13-year-old autistic boy’s head under water after he fell asleep in class. They also stand accused of “forcing him to sit in his soiled pants for hours and making him eat his own vomit when he got sick,” reports KTLA in Los Angeles.
Of course, in a post 9/11 world your personal medical information that was obtained without your permission is used to screen you for things you have not done. It will be done in the name of security that we shall give up our freedoms. And in order to acheive peace, we will wage war…. I swear, ever since 2001 we have gotten closer and closer to 1984.-ed
BOSTON, Massachusetts — The days of being able to walk through airport security checkpoints while wearing shoes and a jacket could return if an experimental program proves successful, some Department of Homeland Security officials say.
The Homeland Security-funded project isFuture Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST. Instead of focusing on whether you have hidden explosives or whether you’re carrying a weapon, sensors and cameras located at security checkpoints would measure the natural signals coming from your body — your heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature and fidgeting.
Having lived in the Washington, D.C. area for the better part of the last 10 years, I’ve attended my share of protests, though, again as a resident of the Beltway, I’ve spent far more time trying to avoid them and the traffic nightmares they spawn. Among the various classes of protesters—pro-lifers, environmentalists, anti-war activists, and now Tea Partiers—the most destructive are easily the anti-globalization/anarchist protesters. So when police clashed with anti-globalization protesters last weekend in Pittsburgh, one could assume that most altercations represented justified police responses to overzealous protesters.
But a number of disturbing images, videos, and witness accounts have come out of Pittsburgh, as well as from similar high-stakes political events in recent years, that reveal the disquieting ease with which authorities are willing to crush dissent—and at the very sorts of events where the right to dissent is the entire purpose of protecting free speech. That is, events where influential policymakers meet to make high-level decisions with far-reaching consequences.
The Empire State building was lit up in NYC to celebrate China’s Total Control Syndrome. We’ll call it TCS from here on…The police in America recently showed a display of force to its citizens in Pittsburgh, which hosted the G-20 summit. The article below mentions people miles away from China’s big parade being told to “go home, watch it from your television.” If you have not yet seen videos from the G-20summit in Pittsburgh, please do. -ed
BEIJING (Reuters) – China celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing on Thursday, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism.
Tiananmen Square in central Beijing became a high-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with the Communist Party leadership and guests watching a meticulously disciplined show of national confidence.
Celebrations began in the morning with troops firing cannons and raising the red national flag while President Hu Jintao, wearing a slate grey “Mao” suit, looked on from the Gate of Heavenly Peace over the Square.
The two-hour parade of 8,000 soldiers, tanks and missiles, 60 elaborate floats and 100,000 well-drilled civilians was a proud moment for many Chinese citizens, watching the spectacle across the country on television. Later in the evening, Tiananmen Square will be lit up with a huge fireworks display.
Please consider donating to the Legal Defense Fund here.
While reporting from the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this 24-25th of September, We Are Change were specifically targeted during their efforts to report accurately while observing the wrong doings of both police and provocateurs whose actions were not only highly illegal but immoral and cancerous to a free society.
No longer the stuff of disturbing futuristic fantasies, an arsenal of “crowd control munitions,” including one that reportedly made its debut in the U.S., was deployed with a massive, overpowering police presence in Pittsburgh during last week’s G-20 protests.
Nearly 200 arrests were made and civil liberties groups charged the many thousands of police (most transported on Port Authority buses displaying “PITTSBURGH WELCOMES THE WORLD”), from as far away as Arizona and Florida with overreacting…and they had plenty of weaponry with which to do it.
Bean bags fired from shotguns, CS (tear) gas, OC (Oleoresin Capsicum) spray, flash-bang grenades, batons and, according to local news reports, for the first time on the streets of America, the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD).
Mounted in the turret of an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), I saw the LRAD in action twice in the area of 25th, Penn and Liberty Streets of Lawrenceville, an old Pittsburgh neighborhood. Blasting a shrill, piercing noise like a high-pitched police siren on steroids, it quickly swept streets and sidewalks of pedestrians, merchants and journalists and drove residents into their homes, but in neither case were any demonstrators present. The APC, oversized and sinister for a city street, together with lines of police in full riot gear looking like darkly threatening Michelin Men, made for a scene out of a movie you didn’t want to be in.
The G20 in Pittsburgh showed us how pitifully fearful our leaders have become.
What no terrorist could do to us, our own leaders did.
Out of fear of the possibility of a terrorist attack, authorities militarize our towns, scare our people away, stop daily life and quash our constitutional rights.
For days, downtown Pittsburgh, home to the G20, was a turned into a militarized, people-free ghost town. Sirens screamed day and night.
Helicopters crisscrossed the skies. Gunboats sat in the rivers. The skies were defended by Air Force jets. Streets were barricaded by huge cement blocks and fencing. Bridges were closed with National Guard across the entrances. Public transportation was stopped downtown. Amtrak train service was suspended for days.
Please see our collection of videos from independent sources who were at the G-20 in Pittsburgh. (Post 9/11 Police State Aggression Grows by Leaps Each Year)-ed
Activists with the Thomas Merton Center and other groups today blasted the police response to a Friday night protest in Oakland following the G-20 summit, calling it a “military-style occupation” that resulted in the gassing and arrest of dozens of bystanders, including students and journalists.
During a press conference at the center’s Garfield headquarters, some activists threatened lawsuits against the city and placed responsibility for the confrontation with Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and top public safety officials.
“I’ll say it very bluntly: The mayor should be fired. The city council should hold his feet to the fire,” said David Meieran, an organizer with Three Rivers Climate Convergence.
Here in the United States cameras have been introduced to us slower than in the UK. We have too many patriots, or , people who don’t like to Big Brothers breath following on each step. Cameras in the States have been introduced as red-light-runner catcher’s. The cameras are installed at intersections in order to “catch” a photo of someone who speeds through a red light. This seems innocent and well meaning, but what is the long run of this? Blimps in the air monitoring our movements, illegal wiretapping, complete surveillance? Oh yeah, we pretty much have all that forming right now…. -ed
A senior Scotland Yard officer, Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, warned police must do more to head off a crisis in public confidence over the use of surveillance cameras.
DCI Neville said officers need to improve their results to make captured images count against criminals.
He said there are more than a million CCTV cameras in London and the Government has spent £500 million on the crime-fighting equipment.
But he admitted just 1,000 crimes were solved in 2008 using CCTV images as officers fail to make the most of potentially vital evidence.
Posted by Brian 
