Bend over, grab your ankles, turn your head and cough, and pee in the cup or we cannot let you on the bus… this is going to get frigging ridiculous, and real quickly.
Counter-terrorism experts have renewed calls to tighten security on America’s mass transit lines following two would-be terrorists’ foiled plot to blow up a Toronto passenger train.
The alleged plan to attack Canada’s transit system has shed light on the vulnerabilities that still exist in America’s commuter system and the challenges involved in keeping it safe for travelers.
“The millions of Americans who take public transportation need to be assured that everything possible is being done to ensure their security and safety,” American Public Transportation Association President and CEO Michael Melaniphy told FoxNews.com on Monday, adding that federal funding should be increased.
… “This country has to change its outlook on day-to-day life,” he said. “We can’t let out guard down.”
“A pretty shameful day for Washington,” President Obama called it, with “pretty” being the only remnant of his famous cool. In the Rose Garden, Obama blamed the failure of gun control in the Senate Wednesday on three causes:
“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.“
The Senators who voted against it are cowardly and had “…no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics...”
And finally”…a minority was able to block it from moving forward…” through “…this continuing distortion of Senate rules.”
The media are amplifying Mr. Obama’s themes with less subtlety, amid a collective aneurysm in Washington and New York. Yet this combination of animus and overreach explains why the post-Newtown gun debate has been such a lost opportunity. Read more…
A unique public-private partnership that joined gut-level police acumen with advanced computer algorithms is proceeding toward two goals that rarely coincide: The policing system is making New York safer and it will also make money for the city, which is marketing it to other jurisdictions.
In the six months since the Domain Awareness System was unveiled, officials of Microsoft, which designed the system with the New York Police Department, said they have been surprised by the response and are actively negotiating with a number of prospective buyers, whom Microsoft declined to identify… Buyers would pay to access the software (at least several million dollars and more depending on the size of the jurisdiction and whether specifications have to be customized). New York City will receive 30 percent of the gross revenues from the sale of the system and access to any innovations developed for new customers. The revenue will be directed to counterterrorism and crime prevention programs.
The new system incorporates more than 3,500 cameras in public places, license-plate readers at every major Manhattan entry point, fixed and portable radiation detectors, real-time alerts transmitted from the 911 emergency system and a trove of Police Department data, including arrests and parking summonses.
State Assemblyman Ray Walter says when he saw the news coverage of David Lewis’ case, he knew immediately something was “seriously wrong.” Walter wants some answers, when he meets face-to-face with the State Police Superintendent in Albany next Tuesday.
…Lewis was forced to turn in his seven handguns and stripped of his pistol permit. After State Police in Albany identified him – instead of a different David Lewis in another county – as being too mentally ill to own them…
“What’s supposed to happen, according to the NY SAFE Act, is this: When a mental health professional deems someone a threat to himself or others, she reports that to her supervisor.
Definition of ‘mental health professional’ ?
Definition of ‘threat’ ?
The supervisor notifies the county health commissioner, who sends only non-clinical information – such as the person’s name, date of birth, and Social Security number – to State Police and the Division of Criminal Justice Services.
They are supposed to check that information against their records. If the person has a gun permit, police get back in touch with the county.
Walter said, “The County Clerk then has no discretion, and must either revoke or suspend the pistol permit for the individual that been notified of. There’s no gray area... via Lawmaker to investigate gun seizure | WIVB.com.
Continuing on this disturbing story, this was posted at Pakalert Press (click here for full post there) Read more…
Legislators in Connecticut voted for a ban so-called “assault” weapons, a ban on private party sales of used guns, creates a new “ammunition eligibility certificate,” and mandates a ban on the manufacture or sale and a registry for high capacity magazines. Do these buffoons have any concept of how many millions of magazines larger that 10 round capacity exist, or that virtually none of them carry a serial number?, says James Rawles in this article, Connecticut Gun Owners Betrayed by Their State Legislature, at Survival Blog.
I hope that Connecticut gun owners as well as gun, ammo and magazine makers vote with their feet. There are a lot of gun-related companies there: Colt, Winchester, Marlin (which recently shut down after 141 years of operation in Connecticut), Mossberg, Sturm-Ruger, H&R, Stag Arms, A.H. Fox, US Fire Arms, Wildey, Shelton Ammunition, Okay Industries, Ronan/NHMTG, C-Products, Mec-Gar, G.T.B., and many more. James Rawles at survivalblog.com
Emily Miller at the Washington Times summarizes the incredible details of Connecticut’s new gun law. Warning – it’s extreme, bordering on insanity from the insanity side of the border.
Remus says - An AP article tells us “House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, who helped craft the bill, said he realizes the gun owners are unhappy with the bill, but he stressed that no one will lose their legally owned guns or magazines under the legislation.” Note two things. First, we truly have a two party one-party system. Republicans revealed their craven ways again, they were fully on board with this. When the vote was taken, gun owners had no representation, the collectivists knew this, consequently there were no concessions, not even to reality.
In Connecticut, we’ve broken the mold. Democrats and Republicans were able to come to an agreement on a strong, comprehensive bill. That is a message that should resound in 49 other states and in Washington, D.C.
Senate President Williams Jr., via Susan Haigh, AP at news.yahoo.com
Second, note the legaleese “no one will lose their legally owned guns or magazines.” The banning of this or that is not the point. Laws create criminals where none were before, that is the intent of law. Connecticut now has a whole new criminal class: gun owners. Background checks? How long before even wanting a gun is evidence of dangerous mental instability?
It takes a twisted sense of humor for Connecticut to call itself the Constitution State. Somewhere, Nathan Hale is puking.
I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged, that my only regret is, that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service. Nathan Hale, via Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser, May 17, 1781
Do you hate paying taxes? Are you fighting foreclosure? Do you feel like no one should be allowed to commit violence against you and don’t always blindly follow the commands of the authorities? Do you film encounters with police or believe gold makes better currency than Federal Reserve Notes? Well you might be part of a domestic terrorism movement and not even know it.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Times posted an article attempting to define a domestic terrorist movement consisting of as many as 300,000 Americans. Some are even labeled as non-violent “paper terrorists”.
Is there a more Orwellian term than “non-violent terrorist”? If you can think of one please share it in the comments below. They refer to this so-called terror group as “sovereigns, zealots who refuse to recognize government authority in virtually any form.”
When attempting to further define and identify individuals in this movement, some very broad and dangerous stereotypes appear. “Sovereigns believe U.S. currency has no value but recognize precious metals as valid currency,” wrote the LA Times, much like the US Constitution does.
“A central tenet of the sovereigns movement is that its adherents believe they owe no income taxes,” also much like the Constitution forbids. What’s more, federal and state law enforcement are being trained that anyone who disobeys their commands falls into this terrorist movement and may pose a violent threat to them.
“Sovereign citizens are more likely not to obey their commands and more likely to commit violence during a traffic stop,” said Detective Rob Finch who’s made a cottage industry of anti-sovereigns police training. “They refuse to recognize your authority, and that creates a dangerous situation,” Finch emphasized.
The LA Times piece points to a handful of colorful examples of people who defended themselves against police aggression, or who were plain crazy, as to why the movement should be considered violent. But they don’t stop there. The FBI has even invented a new form of terrorism committed by nonviolent sovereigns called “paper terrorism“.
Even nonviolent sovereigns can cause headaches through what Finch calls “paper terrorism.” Some squat in foreclosed homes and file phony deeds claiming ownership, “paying” with photos of silver dollars.
Who knew fighting foreclosure was a form of terrorism? Paying taxes and mortgages with hand-written notes and photos is just funny, not really a threat to anyone.
However, self-described “sovereign citizen” James Turner faces ”a potential maximum prison term of 164 years, a maximum potential fine of $2,350,000, and mandatory restitution” to the state for the nonviolent act of paper terrorism.
A blog for law officers, PoliceOne.com, also tries to help cops identify sovereign citizens, saying they’ll “...likely to be argumentative with police authorities…may attempt to videotape your encounter…may refuse to give you their name or documents…”
To his credit, the article’s author states that the “…Sovereign Citizen movement is not an organized civil or criminal enterprise. It’s a fractured series of loosely affiliated individuals who adhere to anti-government ideologies.”
It should be noted that the Feds and local law enforcement all received these characteristics and tactics from one original source: The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC has been on a publicly-funded partisan crusade to demonize so-called right-wing or patriotic extremists.
In 2010, SPLC put together a short documentary about “sovereign citizens” and the threat they supposedly pose. To help identify potential sovereigns, they warn about certain bumper stickers and challenges to authority in a professionally produced propaganda video. Significantly, the video below has three times as many down-votes on YouTube as up-votes. Watch it below:
…In trying to clear up the ‘misconceptions’ about the conduct of fusion centers, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis simply confirmed Americans’ fears: the center does in fact spy on Americans – but only on those who are suspected to be ‘anti-government’…” via RT USA…
Why the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program is unconstitutional
The first time David Floyd was stopped and frisked, on a Friday afternoon in April 2007, he was walking down Beach Avenue a few doors from his house in the Bronx when two police officers confronted him, demanding to know who he was, where he was going, what he was doing, and whether he was carrying any weapons. Floyd, at the time a freelance film editor and now a medical student, presented his driver’s license and explained that he was walking home.
Unsatisfied, one of the officers searched Floyd, feeling under his shirt and inside his pants pockets. He found nothing illegal. Testifying last week in federal court, Floyd said the incident left him feeling “frustrated [and] humiliated, because it was on my block where I live, and I wasn’t doing anything.”
Floyd’s experience seems to be typical of the 5 million or so street stops recorded by the New York Police Department in the last decade. Police almost never discover guns, and nearly nine times out of 10 they do not make an arrest or even issue a summons. The class action lawsuit that bears Floyd’s name persuasively argues that such unjustified harassment of innocent people violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Read more…
“There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat,” warns an unusually strident house editorial by the Los Angeles Times. “They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal…”
Published on Oct 25, 2012. LEAP co-founder, Peter Christ, appears on WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, NY and takes on all aspects of our disastrous War on Drugs. Captain Christ is vice-chair of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition-
…Still, it seems like an insane amount of pressure to apply, given the other types of crimes (of, say, the HSBC variety) where stiff sentences haven’t even been threatened, much less imposed…..
But in all of these cases, the government pursued maximum punishments and generally took zero-tolerance approaches to plea negotiations. These prosecutions reflected an obvious institutional terror of letting the public see the sausage-factory locked behind the closed doors not only of the state, but of banks and universities and other such institutional pillars of society. As Gibney pointed out in his movie, this is a Wizard of Oz moment, where we are being warned not to look behind the curtain….
When you step back and look at the big picture, it really makes one wonder—how big of a piano needs to be dropped on people’s heads before they notice what’s happening? Simon Black at sovereignman.com
Stars shine for billions of years, fusing one element into another, hydrogen into helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, until one day fusion into iron begins. There, quietly, at the heart of the star, it’s doom is sealed. Fusion into iron generates no net heat, in fact, it’s a heat sink. There comes those last few seconds when equilibrium is lost, the star can’t support its own weight, the outer shells collapse inward at nearly the speed of light and the star is torn apart in a spectacular cataclysm. When gravity wins, it wins all at once. So it shall be with us.
There are those among us who want what they don’t need and need what they don’t want. Tolerance for this has metamorphosized into entitlement, which for the beneficiary mimics success, and so the core of career consumers has grown large enough to make its own weather and exert its own gravity. Debt on this scale would eventually overwhelm any economy, no matter how robust. Enough is never enough, even if it were a wide-open spigot plumbed to any conceivable source of supply. Fantasies about debt can keep it going for a while, but in the real world no debt has ever gone unpaid, if not by the borrower then by the lender. In the end, historic debt has historic consequences.
The hard road ahead will likely be comparable in its scope and impacts to the harrowing times brought by America’s first three rounds of anacyclosis. To live through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or the Great Depression was not an easy thing; those of my readers who are curious about what might be ahead could probably do worse than to read a good history of one or more of those. John Greer at resilience.org
Encryption may end up being the biggest trend in 2013, as the concept, usage and term itself move from the realm of computer geeks and hackers into mainstream consciousness. The reason why such a moment must occur relates to the fact that governments and intelligence agencies the world over are rapidly moving in the direction of spying on their citizenry twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Those of us that don’t like this privacy invasion will have to move toward encrypting as much of our daily lives as possible. Read more…
DC has always been distant from the people. Apart from the IRS and the draft, they were “the other” we read about in the papers, running gangsters and spies to ground, getting the interstate built, fighting wars and generally looking out for the Little Guy. We believed they were the Big Picture People doing things on the largest scale on behalf of all who worked hard, lived responsibly and stayed right with the law. DC was the captain and crew of our mighty ship, alert and sure, cutting cleanly through heavy seas and turgid morass alike, while their grateful passengers shuddered at the hardship and horrors beyond the delights of the endless buffet on the promenade deck. Read more…
If President Obama, John McCain (R., AZ), Lindsey Graham (R., SC), Marco Rubio (R., FL), Lindsey Graham (R., SC.), Charles Schumer (D., NY.), Jeff Flake (R., AZ.), Michael Bennet (D., CO.), and implicated child molester Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), get their way, it will soon be law that if you want to board an airplane, to vote, to purchase a firearm, hold a job and basically buy and sell anything, then you will be required to submit to a National ID Card which will soon become part of a global ID system.
In effect, the proposed national and soon-to-be global ID card will serve as a permission slip to do all of the ordinary things that you presently have the right to do as an ordinary American citizen. Of course, if you are the president, or one of these senatorial traitors and your intention is to eliminate U.S. sovereignty by requiring American citizens to become a part of a global identification system, then this is a requisite step in this treasonous give away of our country. Of course, the good senators are not calling this a national ID because that has been tried, opposed and rejected back in 2008. These senators are cloaking their treason under the guise that the implementation of this universal ID system is an immigration issue.
The Immigration Trojan Horse. The National ID and soon to be Global ID system is being sold to the rank and file of Congress as a means to control terrorism and to further prevent illegal immigration. Showing ID’s to board a plane on 9/11 did not prevent the destruction of the Twin Towers now did it? And we have drones and satellites which can read the inscription on a dime from the upper reaches of the atmosphere and we can’t identify and stop foreign nationals from crossing our borders? Our government does want to stop illegal immigration. And now we are being asked to swallow the myth that only an ID can prevent illegal immigration. Only a member of Congress who is more focused on becoming enriched at their insider-trading potential would be distracted enough to fall for this ridiculous excuse. And when one considers that a bi-partisan group of congressman are trying to simultaneously create a path to citizenship for all illegal alien residents, this justification of requiring a national ID to solve the immigration issues of this country is based wholly on deception. Read more…
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions regarding police powers were mixed, thus offering a reminder to civil libertarians that they cannot depend upon the high court to protect the public from unwarranted government intrusions.
“The U.S. Supreme Court handed police one victory and one loss on Tuesday,” reported National Public Radio. “In one decision, the justices limited the power of police to detain people who are away from their homes when police conduct a search. And in a second case, the justices ruled that drug-sniffing dogs don’t have to get every sniff right in order for a search to be valid.” Read more…
What’s the simplest way to evade a $4.5 million armed, flying robot? Get some grass mats. Or smear your car with mud.
After hundreds of strikes over four drone-intensive years, al-Qaida is starting to pass around notes on cheap countermeasures militants can take to evade detection by the robots’ sensors. The longer the militants can delay the CIA or the U.S. military from obtaining a positive identification, the thinking goes, the less likely a strike becomes. Step one: Disguise your car. Read more…
So if you had any doubt that NDAA, CISPA, DHS, drones, warrant-less searches, TSA, the Newtown-circus and citizen disarmament etc. were a prelude to your preemptive criminalization, consider yourself disabused of that comforting notion.
Make no mistake about it you tinfoil hat wearing, gun toting, Bible clinging, knuckle dragging anachronisms: YOU ARE the the threat. YOU are the enemy. YOU must be handled, managed, silenced, marginalized and entrapped.
The state fears nothing so much as an awakened, empowered and angry citizenry and so you sheep are not allowed off the farm. Punishment will be severe.
So, what are you going to do? I think that the time for calls and letters to Congressmen, candlelight vigils, writing op-eds and cordial, thought provoking discourse to the uninformed has long been over: That stuff is pointless. The time is here to get ready for the long pull, the dark struggle, the end game.
I say it is time to disappear, opt out and go Galt. I say the ‘laws’ and Government are now so illegal, so immoral that the only ethical course of action is to withdraw from that context. In other words, I quit. I am forming and fostering a new society of the like minded. If that makes me a “sovereign man” to you Mr. FBI person, so be it. And fuck you. I’ll be out here working for the good, and working against you if needed.
Good luck on getting me back in the corral.
G.E.
With almost no media coverage, the White House last week announced its new Interagency Working Group to Counter Online Radicalization to Violence that will target not only Islamic terrorists but so-called violent “sovereign citizens.” Read more…
…The real threat is that Google, or perhaps just a few people within the leadership of Google, may be quietly operating as a private intelligence agency for the left…
…According to Wired, “the Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security...”
“… He asked me would I mind if he searched my vehicle, and I said, ‘Well, yes, I would mind if you searched my vehicle.’ ”
But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, the deputy did not have to take no for an answer. In the 2005 case Illinois v. Caballes, the Court declared that “the use of a well-trained narcotics-detection dog…during a lawful traffic stop generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests.” So the deputy was free to walk his dog around Burns’ truck. “He got out with this dog and went around the car, two or three times,” Burns says. “He came back and said the dog had ‘passively alerted’ on my vehicle.” via This Dog Can Send You to Jail – Reason.com.
The crux of avoiding a consensual encounter is noncooperation—refusal to answer questions and to consent to police requests. As noted above, this requires a fair degree of self-confidence and a willingness to flout the conventions of common discourse which, of course, this is not. Nevertheless, it is the sine qua non of consensual encounter avoidance. “Can we see your driver’s license?” “No!” “What are you doing here?” “I am not answering,” or less politely, “None of your business.”
Saying “no” once may not be enough. Some courts have held that continued badgering after a first refusal causes the encounter to cross the line to a seizure, but others have permitted repeated questioning and requests for consent to search without concluding that a seizure had taken place. A reasonable person would thus be well-advised to say “no” repeatedly, and to reject any attempt by the officer to accompany her if she tries to leave. Some courts have found it significant that the refusals were delivered in a shout or scream, or that the individual ran from police in an attempt to get away. The cases thus not only encourage flatly rebuffing the officer’s inquiries, but also encourage doing so in the rudest, most confrontational, and most obnoxious manner.
And they seriously expect you to give up your gun rights under this social contract? I.e.:
If you want a recipe for disaster, take police officers hyped up on their own authority and the power of the badge, throw in a few court rulings suggesting that security takes precedence over individual rights, set it against a backdrop of endless wars and militarized law enforcement, and then add to the mix a populace distracted by entertainment, out of touch with the workings of their government, and more inclined to let a few sorry souls suffer injustice than to challenge the status quo… Read more…
…Our nation has entered into the last stages of fascism. Both parties have supported this path since Hoover and FDR of the 1930s, both parties are guilty. The only way to avoid a repeat of Germany 1933-45 is to go all out to defeat fascism here in America by any means necessary.
That means renouncing the programs that transfer power to the federal government such as social security, Medicare, education, transportation, and banking regulations, everything that allows centralized planning needs to be opposed. This means conservatives have to stop giving capitalism lip service and embrace the free enterprise system.
We need to understand government produces nothing; they can only create poverty, death, and destruction…. Read more…
The editors of the Gannett Newspaper site LOHUD.com seem to cherish public disclosure of all sorts of information so much, that we are proud to stand with them by publishing the reported home address of their intrepid, fearless and disclosure-devoted Editor and Vice President – Mrs. Cynthia”CynDee” R. Lambert (nee Royle.) 17 Mcbride Ave., White Plains, NY 10603.
Her home telephone number is given as (914) 948-9388, work is given as (914) 694-5001
Email here at: croyle@lohud.com
Mrs. Lambert, readers of this site will recall, was kind enough to publish the names and home addresses of many handgun permittees in Rockland and Westchester Counties in New York. Here’s looking at you sir!!
Here is her nifty little red convertible:
Here is an oblique aerial of her neighborhood. I am unsure if there are any guns there or nearby, but I might check the LOHUD.com database….
This is reportedly a photo of CynDee and some other people. I am unsure if any of these people have firearms permits. Perhaps CynDee knows.
…There are 331 million cellphone subscriptions—about 20 million more than there are residents—in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of adult Americans carry at least one phone. The phones communicate via a nationwide network of nearly 300,000 cell towers and 600,000 micro sites, which perform the same function as towers. When they are turned on, they ping these nodes once every seven seconds or so, registering their locations, usually within a radius of 150 feet. By 2018 new Federal Communications Commission regulations will require that cellphone location information be even more precise: within 50 feet. Newer cellphones also are equipped with GPS technology, which uses satellites to locate the user more precisely than tower signals can. Cellphone companies retain location data for at least a year. AT&T has information going all the way back to 2008. Read more…
We lost the republic long ago. Within Remus’s lifetime, loyal constitutionalist patriots have gone from the majority to a tolerated minority to a designated hate group and now, presumed terrorists. Meanwhile, the collectivists—the Democrat Republican Progressive establishment—are openly consolidating their power, strutting on the national stage like Mussolini in front of a mirror, their witless minions shouting down deviations from DC’s two party one-party line.
DC has taken on the classic structure of totalitarianism: feuding official fiefdoms with fuzzy and overlapping authorities, all burrowing into the formerly private lives of the populace, legal cover provided by a Byzantine tangle of laws and impenetrable codes, a form of lawlessness in itself, as it’s meant to be. In this pervasive fog and fear they needn’t be lawful other than by their own calculations. Read more…
Meanwhile, back at the Constitutionally-protected Land of the Free and Home of the Brave…
…The following activities can indicate efforts to acquire expertise for potentially illicit purposes. Depending upon the context of the situation–reason for seeking the information, personal behaviors, and other indicators–suspicious inquiries should be reported to the appropriate authorities.
- (U//FOUO) Inquiries by individuals with no apparent need for technical or scientific knowledge that may lead to exploitation of vulnerabilities.
- (U//FOUO) Possession of blue prints, architectural diagrams, and facility information by individuals with no demonstrated need for the information
- (U//FOUO) Extensive research on a subject, such as explosive-making methodologies and guidance, which would arouse suspicion in a reasonable person.
- (U//FOUO) Seeking weapons training and conducting paramilitary exercises, particularly by individuals who are unwilling to provide an explanation for acquiring combat skills… via Public Intelligence.
Talk to someone who has never dealt with the cops about police behaving badly, and he or she will inevitably say, “But they can’t do that! Can they?” The question of what the cops can or can’t do is natural enough for someone who never deals with cops, especially if their inexperience is due to class and/or race privilege. But a public defender would describe that question as naïve. In short, the cops can do almost anything they want, and often the most maddening tactics are actually completely legal. Read more…
Until you’re accused of a crime, you may be blissfully ignorant of the fact that “innocent until proven guilty” is a myth. In reality, it’s the opposite. Michelle Gesse, whose husband lived the nightmare of being falsely accused of a firearms related felony, explains what all Americans need to know now about the criminal justice system.
The scary part of this story is how easily it could happen to any one of us. Steven and Michelle Gesse thought that the small dinner party they hosted on the night of April 5, 2009, would be just that: an informal, pleasant gathering of neighbors over good food and good wine…
“…State and local law enforcement groups want wireless providers to store detailed information about your SMS messages for at least two years — in case they’re needed for future criminal investigations... “
…the US Constitution was essentially a coup; the delegates to what we now call the Constitutional Convention were not empowered to replace the existing government – only to improve upon the Articles of Confederation between the then-independent states. The framers of the Constitution drafted it with the notion of a national government already in place, but calmed fears of loss of state sovereignty by calling the new government the “United States of America” – a verbal sleight of hand that worked for over half a century. Then the southern states decided to exercise what these words imply, their right to leave the union… and as the government becomes more powerful, it’s completely predictable that everything – including the justice system – will become ever more politicized… As great as a US citizen’s risk is in the marketplace these days, the greatest single risk to their wealth and health is the government... via ZeroHedge
The Department of Homeland Security’s production of domestic intelligence has increased substantially over the last few years according to a brochure of “intelligence products” published last month by Cryptome. The 2012 DHS Intelligence Enterprise Product Line Brochure is “a standardized catalogue of intelligence reports and products that represent the full breadth” of the agency’s analytical capabilities. It provides descriptions of each type of product created by the DHS Intelligence Enterprise as well as the classification level and instructions on how DHS “customers” can obtain the products. Read more…
In an apparent effort to cover up a potential scandal, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has for months refused to provide congressional leaders with records related to a failed program that was quietly nixed after the agency blew $1 billion on it.
The faulty “life-saving” technology, known as BioWatch, was supposed to detect biological attacks. However, it’s never come close to meeting its goal of accurately detecting pathogens that cause anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, plague and other deadly diseases. Instead it is well known for false alarms and other glitches. In short, it’s turned out to be a worthless money pit for U.S. taxpayers… via Judicial Watch.
Police are allowed in some circumstances to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant, a federal judge said yesterday.
CNET has learned that U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled that it was reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission — and without a warrant — to install multiple “covert digital surveillance cameras” in hopes of uncovering evidence that 30 to 40 marijuana plants were being grown.
This is the latest case to highlight how advances in technology are causing the legal system to rethink how Americans’ privacy rights are protected by law. In January, the Supreme Court rejected warrantless GPS tracking after previously rejecting warrantless thermal imaging, but it has not yet ruled on warrantless cell phone tracking or warrantless use of surveillance cameras placed on private property without permission. Read more…
Last Wednesday, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi national, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, was arrested and accused of traveling to the U.S. to establish an al Qaeda cell and bomb the Federal Reserve Bank in Lower Manhattan.Buried beneath the headlines and opening paragraphs of the major news outlet reports, however, is the fact that Nafis would have been unable to execute his plot without substantial assistance from the F.B.I.. Authorities assured several news agencies that “the public was never in danger.”
This case is yet another instance, among hundreds, of federal agencies creating terrorist plots so they can take credit for stopping them, instill fear in Americans and justify the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on wars and “homeland security.” This practice earned the number four rank on the list of the 2012 Project Censored most underreported stories in the U.S. media…
Project censored: The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories under-reported by the mainstream media, By Yael Chanoff – Thursday, October 11,2012
People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.
We’ll never know how this year’s election would be different if the corporate media adequately covered the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and many other recent attacks on civil liberties. What we can do is spread the word and support independent media sources that do cover these stories. That’s where Project Censored comes in. Read more…
"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves."
You are being watched. The control freaks that hold power in the United States have become absolutely obsessed with surveillance. They are constantly attempting to convince the American people that we are all “safer” when virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and recorded. Our country is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid far more comprehensive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of… via American Dream