Activist Post

Despite Irrefutable Evidence of Toxicity and Death, Monsanto’s Friends at the EPA Raise Allowable Glysophate Levels

2013-06-19T09:45:00.003-07:00

Daisy Luther

Activist Post

Great news! You no longer have to worry about excessive levels of glyphosate, the toxic chemical found in Monsanto’s Round-up pesticide, in your food or in the feed that livestock consumes. Why not? Well, the Environmental Deception Protection Agency has looked over the situation, and in their infinite wisdom, raised the safety threshold of glyphosate that is allowed to be in consumable goods.

The EPA’s change of heart means that the the allowed glyphosate level in animal feed will rise to 100 parts per million (ppm) and 40 ppm in oilseed crops. Thankfully, there’s no need for us to worry because they’ve assured us that the new allowable levels are only “minimally toxic” to humans.

The EPA is the agency that is charged with protecting the air we breathe, the soil in which we grow our food and the water that we drink. Unfortunately the only responsibility they seem to take seriously is their commitment to furthering the agendas of big business. This decision to allow more Roundup to drench the food supply comes immediately after two major, peer reviewed studies have proven that glyphosate is deadly.

The first study found that glyphosate increases the breast cancer cell proliferation in the parts-per-trillion range.

An alarming new study, accepted for publication in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology last month, indicates that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide due to its widespread use in genetically engineered agriculture, is capable of driving estrogen receptor mediated breast cancer cell proliferation within the infinitesimal parts per trillion concentration range.

The study, titled, “Glyphosate induces human breast cancer cells growth via estrogen receptors,” compared the effect of glyphosate on hormone-dependent and hormone-independent breast cancer cell lines, finding that glyphosate stimulates hormone-dependent cancer cell lines in what the study authors describe as “low and environmentally relevant concentrations.”

Another study found that consumption of glyphosate causes intestinal and gut damage, which opens the door to numerous human diseases, such as diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, heart disease, obesity, autism, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s

However, another classification of allergy-type food is emerging and getting recognized for adverse effects on the human intestinal tract and gut. Those foods are genetically modified organisms known as GMOs or GEs. There is scientific research indicating intestinal damage from GMO food and the article “Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Disease” discusses how the inordinate amount of pesticides sprayed on GMOs leaves residues in GMO crops that, in turn, are being traced to modern diseases. (source)

The Organic Consumers Association is very concerned. They are behind a petition to lobby the EPA to lower the allowable glyphosate levels instead of raising them. (Find it HERE) The OCA cites numerous reasons why the EPA’s current move is a deadly mistake:

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. According to the EPA, at least 208 million tons of Roundup were sprayed on GE crops, lawns and roadsides in the years 2006 and 2007. In 2007, as much as 185 million pounds of glyphosate was used by U.S. farmers, double the amount used just six years ago.

A 2009 study found that Americans use about 100 million pounds of glyphosate annually on their lawns and gardens. It’s safe to assume all these number are much higher now. Why? Because GE crops are now being invaded by new strains of herbicide-resistant “superweeds” requiring higher and higher doses of poison.

Beyond Pesticides has assembled extensive documentation of past research linking glyphosate to increased cancer risk, neurotoxicity and birth defects, as well as eye, skin, respiratory irritation, lung congestion, increased breathing rate, damage to the pancreas, kidney and testes.

Glyphosate also endangers the environment, destroys soil and plants, and is linked to a host of health hazards. The EPA’s decision to increase the allowed residue limits of glyphosate is out of date, dangerous to the health of people and the environment and scientifically unsupportable. (source)

So why would the EPA make this ruling?

Because instead of being an unbiased agency looking out for public interest, they are merely puppets for the biotech industry. They spread disinformation from beneath a cloak of benevolence and authority. They use the trust that people have put in them to deceive and manipulate the public in favor of big business.

Here are some examples of their incestuous partnerships:

The EPA has been accused of covering up crimes committed by public health enemy #1, Monsanto, as well as Dow Chemicals. The EPA’s investigation proved that Monsanto knowingly tainted Lysol (used by moms everywhere to sanitize babies’ toys) with dioxin. However, no criminal charges have been forthcoming as of this publication.

The EPA also quietly closed an investigation of Monsanto’s twisted cover-up in the Nitro, West Virginia herbicide plant accident that exposed hundreds of workers to deadly carcinogen dioxin, which can still be found in nearby streams and lakes. Despite the fact that this investigation simply disappeared, Monsanto agreed in February to pay $93 million dollars to residents of Nitro in order to settle a class action lawsuit.

The EPA has refused to ban a pesticide made by Dow Chemicals, the controversial 2,4-D, the same substance used in Agent Orange. This pesticide will be used on corn crops that have been genetically engineered to be resistant to the toxin. Agent Orange causes cancer, hormone disruption, genetic mutations and neurotoxicity and will be soon be coming to a corn field near you.

The EPA has refused a petition to ban BPA in industry, citing a lack of scientific evidence of the negative effects of the chemical. BPA is commonly found tainting canned goods, especially soup, and bottled water that has been exposed to heat. (Author’s note: It would probably be very expensive for industry to have to replace all those containers with BPA-free cans and bottles.) (source)

The EPA pulled an identical sleight of hand when radiation from the Fukushima disaster began to reach the United States in 2011. They raised the acceptable levels of radiation, stopped measuring it, and even tried to convince us that a little radiation was actually good for us:

The EPA is right on top of things with their response, of course. First, they promptly closed down 8 of 18 radiation measuring stations in the hardest hit area, California. Then, to further calm the good people of the nation, the EPA magically changed the numbers. They’ve raised the amount of radiation that we can safely absorb and ingest. It wouldn’t do for the large factory farms to be unable to sell their tainted produce or for the huge dairies to be stuck with all that radioactive milk.

The radiation in our food supply is of so little concern to the EPA that they’ve actually begun to tell us that a little bit of radiation is good for us. According to a report citing the EPA, a bit of radiation can prevent cancer, instead of causing it.

Since our minds can be at ease now, the EPA has decided that they are no longer planning to monitor the radiation levels in our food supply. They will return to their previous practice of only monitoring random samples every three months. Yep. Really. The Environmental Protection Agency of the United States is no longer monitoring radiation levels in our food and water supplies as of April 14th. That will definitely keep them from getting those inconveniently high readings that might affect Big Agri’s prosperity. (source)

The government’s consumer protection agencies are hopelessly corrupted. The FDA, the EPA, and the USDA are all servants of Big Food, Big Pharma and Big Agri. We are on our own. The public outcry will be muffled in the mainstream media because, well, Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Agri own them too – you need only look at the advertisers to see this.

Therefore, we have to resort to other means to spread the word. We have to be so loud and so adamant that even the sleepiest individual will have no option but to see what is going on. So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to “out” the EPA for this disastrous decision.

Share information via social media
Protest publicly
Sign the petition mentioned above and persuade everyone you know to sign it too
Contact the EPA directly and let them know your thoughts on this matter (please be civil)
Here’s the phone number for the office of the EPA’s administrator – give him a call: (202) 564-4711
Write letters to the editor of all of your local publications
Make comments on message boards for the mainstream media (they’ll get deleted but a few people might read them first)
Don’t purchase processed foods or any foods that may contain GMOs, including factory farmed meats. The animals are given GMO feed throughout the course of their entire lives

Please understand, the system is irrevocably corrupted. Only by shedding light on this corruption can we make a change. People are being lulled into compliance, all the while, feeling that there are measures in place to ensure that what they consume from the grocery store is not poison.

Food safety should not be in the hands of the highest bidder.

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, where this article first appeared, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

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Foreign Death Squad Network in Syria Larger Than Stated by West

2013-06-19T08:07:00.001-07:00

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

Although evidence supporting the claims that the overwhelming majority of the Syrian “rebels” are made up of foreign fighters is not surprising to anyone who has investigated the unfolding crisis in Syria at any length, it might indeed come as a shock to those whose only source of information are mainstream Western media organizations like CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and other similar corporate outlets.

Yet the extent to which foreign mercenaries and religious fanatics make up the majority of the “rebel” (more aptly named “death squad”) ranks might surprise even those who would otherwise be considered well-informed regarding the Syrian situation.

Western governments and media outlets have attempted to downplay both the role and the number of foreign fighters in Syria. This is, of course, understandable, considering the agenda of the NATO forces in regards to the country.

However, it should be noted that although mainstream corporate media outlets are now forced to admit that there is, at least, a contingent of foreign fighters making up the ranks of the death squads they choose to call “rebels,” these same media outlets attempted to silence, ignore, and even deny this fact for a significant amount of time. Now, unfortunately, the atrocities of the death squads have become so great that they can scarcely be kept secret any longer.

Nevertheless, while such outlets have been forced to admit the presence of foreign fighters, these same outlets attempt to keep the reported numbers artificially low. For instance, consider the article by Mike Brunker, Investigations Editor of NBC News, entitled “Study uses ‘martyr’ posts to analyze ‘foreign fighters’ aiding Syrian rebels.”

Brunker’s article deals with a “study” released by the security firm Flashpoint Partners and the Neo-Con think tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) entitled, “Convoy of Martyrs in the Levant: A Joint Study Charting the Evolving Role of Sunni Foreign Fighters in the Armed Uprising Against the Assad Regime in Syria.”

This report, “broke down 280 ‘martyr’ postings on jihadist websites, Facebook and Twittter marking the deaths of the foreign recruits” in order to estimate the amount of foreign fighters operating inside Syria.

Brunker writes, “The report notes that social media have ‘provided a critical online bedrock for foreign fighters in Syria . . . Each day on Facebook, new names of deceased foreign fighters are posted by rebel supporters who hope that their willingness to sacrifice will inspire others to follow in their footsteps.”

The Flashpoint/WINEP study incredibly attempts to claim that the majority of “rebels” are, in fact, Syrian and that the foreign contingent of the death squads make up, at most, 10% of the ranks of the “rebellion.”

Going beyond the realm of absurdity, the study even goes so far as to suggest that foreign fighters engaging in atrocities all over Syria are mostly those fighting in the service of Assad. While Assad has cooperated, to his own intellectual credit, with Hezbollah and PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), the suggestion that Assad is taking advantage of the use of mercenaries as a substitute army is ludicrous.

Brunker’s article states the following regarding the findings of the Flashpoint/WINEP study:

The numbers from the admittedly small sample of foreign fighters show that even within the radical elements, there is a broad range of participants.

“A wide variety of international terrorist organizations have become deeply involved in Syria,” Kohlmann said. “In fact, based on our data, Sunni foreign fighters in Syria include former Hamas militants from Gaza, relatives of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq) and leaders of Fatah al-Islam (a Lebanon-based radical Sunni group).

"What should be particularly worrying for Western governments is the fact that at least a third of the fighters in our sample were affiliated with the most extreme rebel faction, al Qaeda's Jabhat al-Nusra -- and that at least seven of the 280 dead fighters we analyzed were from Western countries, including France, Denmark, Australia, the U.K., and the United States."

The Flashpoint/WINEP study thus puts the number of foreign fighters dead inside Syria as follows (totaling 280):

Libya 59
Kuwait 3
Algeria 1
Tunisia 44
United Arab Emirates 3
Ireland 1
Saudi Arabia 44
Australia 2
Kabardino-Balkaria 1
Jordan 32
Morocco 2
Uzbekistan 1
Egypt 27
Bahrain 2
France 1
Palestine 8
Azerbaijan 1
United Kingdom 1
Russia 7
Bulgaria 1
United States 1
Chechnya 5
Denmark 1
Other 12
Dagestan 4
Turkey 1
Iraq 3
Kosovo 1

However, it should be noted that, while few involved in the Syrian conflict will be able to provide a perfect picture of just how many foreign fighters there are, their identity, or whether or not these fanatics are still alive, a study which attempts to do so by using Facebook posts as the source of its data must not be taken as an authoritative account.

Much more authoritative reports would, obviously, come from individuals and organizations that are on the ground in Syria. In addition, it would stand to reason that organizations who are dedicated to the weakening and/or destruction of a nation should not be considered an unbiased or reliable source of information, particularly when that organization’s information would go some distance in shaping the opinion of the American and Western public with regard to the target nation.

Thus, it is important to understand that WINEP is nothing more than a Neo-Con/Israeli/Zionist think-tank which has long held Syria as one of its main targets. Indeed, WINEP is attached at the hip to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and is largely considered to be merely another wing of the Israeli lobbying organization.

As the Institute for Policy Studies describes WINEP,

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a spin-off the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is an influential beltway think tank whose members have advocated a host of hawkish, “pro-Israel” policies over the years. It is considered a core member of the “Israel lobby,” a constellation of policy shops and advocacy groups devoted to pushing an Israel-centric U.S. agenda in the Middle East. Many of WINEP’s current and former scholars have been closely associated with neoconservatism, and the organization has generally been supportive of the “war on terror” policies pushed by representatives of groups like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Iran and Syria have long been at the center of WINEP’s work, with the group’s scholars promoting a host of aggressive U.S. policies towards these countries, which often dovetail with the goals of other hawkish “pro-Israel” campaigns.

Although one could successfully argue that think tanks such as WINEP are “close to the ground” in Syria by virtue of their connections (direct and indirect) to those individuals and organizations who have organized, trained, and set loose upon secular Syria, it is also true that Middle Eastern news organizations such as Almanar of Lebanon are not only literally “close to the ground,” but that they are largely free of a blinding anti-Syria pro-death squad psychosis.

That being said, Almanar, banned in the United States (because free speech is respected in the U.S.A.), is not to be construed as an unbiased observer either. The network is owned by Hezbollah and is an avowed supporter of the Assad regime.

Nevertheless, Almanar has reported that 6,113 foreign fighters have been killed in Syria so far. The numbers and ethnic breakdown according to Almanar are as follows:

729 Saudi Arabians
640 Kurds from the Mujaahedeen Khalq (recently declassified as a terrorist organization by the U.S.)
489 Egyptians
439 Libyans
439 Chechens
301 Afghans
263 Libyans
261 Pakistanis
208 Iraqis
188 Russians
167 Turks
129 Jordanians
117 Somalis
129 Jordanians
109 Kuwaitis
90 French
67 Germans
66 British
50 Tunisians
55 Indonesians
53 Algerians
52 Yemenis
19 Qataris
45 Belgians
40 Uzbekis
35 Americans
31 Kosovars
21 Azerbaijanis
31 Maltese (Of Lebanese descent)
7 Mauritanians
6 Sierra Leone
6 Surinam

It should be noted that individuals at the Syrian Perspective website, have stated qualms with the breakdown provided by Almanar. Syrian Perspective suggests that Libyans have made up the majority of foreign fighters.

While the evidence does point toward Libyan fighters making up a larger contingent of foreigners as a whole in the death squad network, it should also be noted that the number produced by Almanar and Flashpoint/WINEP only represented the death squad members that have been found or reported dead, not necessarily the number of members currently in action.

Also note that many other nationalities have been included by a variety of other sources, almost all with different numbers. For instance, other sources have also reported the following nationalities:

Belgium; Afghanistan; Albania; Algeria; Bosnia; Sweden; Tajikistan;China; Kyrgystan; Sudan; Chad; Spain;

As I mentioned earlier, it is extraordinarily difficult to obtain accurate numbers regarding simply the number and nationality of dead foreign fighters. Even then, the number of dead foreign fighters does not provide us with an accurate number of living foreign fighters. Thus, we are unable to compile a list of the total number of foreign fighters as a whole.

Bill Van Auken of the World Socialist Website, however, recently wrote an article in which he stated that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 2,219 foreign fighters have been killed so far, thus suggesting that the number of foreign fighters still active inside the country “must be in the tens of thousands.”

Interestingly enough, this is the same figure which Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah cited when he stated "Tens of thousands of (rebel foreign) fighters did not bother the so-called Friends of Syria countries whose representatives met in Amman a couple of days ago. . . . . . But the interference of a small group from Lebanese Hezbollah was considered a foreign intervention.”

Yet one of the most obvious examples of foreign involvement in the Syrian death squad movement is the fact that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) has made up a large portion of the allegedly “Syrian” death squad fighters. Indeed, the LIFG, a contingent of terrorists, mercenaries, madmen, and religious fanatics that led the destabilization effort against Colonel Ghaddaffi in Libya and the subsequent genocide of black Africans after the murder of the aging leader, have thus been exported to Syria to wreak the same level of havoc and brutality upon the Syrian people as they did to their own country.

The LIFG, however, has not simply shipped a few fighters here and there for tactical support. The organization has actually commanded entire brigades of death squads, themselves made up of a diverse number of nationalities as evidenced by the above body counts.

In fact, it was known as far back as November 2011 that around 600 LIFG terrorists had traveled to Syria in order to engage in combat against the secular government and the civilian population. This provision of actual military support and “boots on the ground” on the part of the new Libyan regime (itself made up of nothing but Western-backed death squads) was only thinly veiled if at all.

Remember, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the LIFG death squad leader in his own country actually traveled to the Turkey-Syria border and promised weapons, funding, and manpower to “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) killers only days before the promised material arrived.

Although claims that Syrian death squads were made up mainly of foreigners were denied then and continue to be denied now by Western governments and their media mouthpieces, these same media outlets have been forced to admit that, at the very least, these death squads contained foreigners. As Ivan Watson and Raja Razek of CNN reported,

Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade's ranks.

A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a "platoon" of Libyan fighters to armed movement.

. . . . .

On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.

The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.

The admission of the presence of al-Qaeda among the death squads has been yet another aspect of the so-called “civil war” that the Western mainstream media has attempted to avoid until avoidance was no longer possible. Unfortunately for the propagandists, the fact that the death squads are indeed al-Qaeda either officially or in ideological sympathy is no longer hidden nor debatable.

Consider the fact that the Council on Foreign Relations itself has not only admitted the presence of al-Qaeda amongst the death squads but also their necessity to the tactical success. The CFR report, entitled, “Al-Qaeda’s Specter In Syria,” states,

The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime's superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.

Tony Cartalucci of Land Destroyer expounds the subject even further by writing,

Also, to be clear, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) is in fact an affiliate of Al Qaeda with its commanders having occupied the highest echelons of Al Qaeda's command structure and having participated in every combat engagement Al Qaeda has conducted since its inception via US-Saudi cash and arms in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 1980's. This was documented meticulously in the US Army's West Point Combating Terrorism Center report, "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq."

LIFG is also listed by both the US State Department and theUK Home Office (page 5, .pdf) as a foreign terrorist organization and a proscribed terrorist organization respectively.

Foreign Policy's admission of al-Harati's role in organizing and leading the FSA in Syria, and the inclusion of Libyan terrorists in his brigade are by no means the only role LIFG is playing in the Syrian violence. LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj had visited the Turkish-Syrian border in late 2011 pledging Libyan arms, cash, and fighters to the FSA - with the nation of Libya itself having already become a NATO-created terrorist safe-haven.

It is clear that LIFG, and by implication Al Qaeda, is playing a significant role in the violence in Syria, not only undermining the narrative of the unrest being an "indigenous" "pro-democracy uprising," but also implicating foreign nations who are funding and arming militants as state sponsors of terrorism.

Included amongst these state sponsors of international terrorism are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Hariri faction in northern Lebanon, as well as the NATO-installed government of Libya. This also includes both the United States, who is admittedly providing cash and equipment for the FSA as well as coordinating efforts to arm militants, and now the UK once again with their latest announcement.

A similar scenario unfolded in Libya, where LIFG terrorists were likewise carrying out a campaign of nationwide genocide with NATO providing air support. Similarly, by funding, arming, and coordinating acts of violence with LIFG fighters, NATO, and in particular, France, England, and the United States, were guilty of violating both their own respective anti-terrorism legislation, as well as international provisions against terrorism.

In continuing to address the foreign nature of the death squads, it is also worthwhile to consider the claims made by Abou Zayd Attounssi, a former fighter with the death squads who became disillusioned with the movement.

As reported by Salma Bouzid of Tusnisia Live, the Tunisian television show, Attasiaa Massaa, featured a clip of a young Tunisian man named Abou Zayd Attounssi who claims that he recently returned to Tunisia after fighting for eight months alongside the inappropriately named “Syrian rebels.”

Further supporting the fundamentalist nature of the majority of the members of the NATO death squads (aka rebels) operating in Syria, Attounssi stated that his initial reason for traveling to Syria to engage in murder, plunder, and torture against innocent people was because “he felt his religion required him to engage in jihad against ‘the enemy.’”

Although it was apparently not the killing that turned Attounssi off from the death squad movement, he nevertheless became disillusioned with it because, “most of the fighters within the Free Syrian army are fighting for the spoils of war and the foreign aid they supposedly get.”

Also featured on the show was the father of Hamza Rjeb, another former death squad member who is now disabled. Rjeb’s father claimed that “the Tunisian government should take full responsibility for his son’s situation and for allowing groups in the country to ‘brainwash’ his son.”

In an interview with Tunisia Live, Ahmed Youssef, a journalist described by Bouzid as “pro-Assad,” stated, “For every Tunisian fighter brought to Syria, Qatar pays 3,000 dollars to the Syrian rebels.” He also claimed that, “most of the Tunisians come from disadvantaged regions in Tunisia with low unemployment,” and stated that the Tunisians fighting in Syria are “considered mercenaries.” Youssef estimated that the number of Tunisian fighters wreaking havoc in Syria is more than 3,500.

Although the exact number of foreign fighters making up the ranks of the death squads is unknown and will likely never be made public, the fact that the majority of the militants are drawn from outside of Syria’s borders. Even while the mainstream Western media will continue to do its best to obfuscate and pretend that the “rebellion” is organic in nature, only tainted with a few bad apples, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite.

However, as the Syrian government begins to gain the upper hand on the death squads operating inside Syria’s borders and mop up the hordes of mercenaries, religious fanatics, and mental midgets, the danger to Syria only becomes greater. This is because the death squads have functioned as the last hope of the Anglo-Americans wishing to overthrow Assad and install a regime that is both more amenable to the Western Empire and less capable of resistance to it. These fighters are thus the last push against Assad before direct military intervention takes place.

Although the death squads are being crushed by the Syrian government and such achievements should be seen as a victory, it is an unfortunate reality that, for the Syrian people, this battle is only the beginning.

As for the West, the assault on Syria will likely prove successful should it be launched. However, a military attack on Syria only reveals the next step in a plan that has lain under cover for many years. Such a plan is likely to ensure the mutual destruction of the entire world.

It would be wise for Americans and all other Western nations to get off of the Path to Persia. Total world war is the only thing left at the end of the road.

Read other articles by Brandon Turbeville here.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor's Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of three books, Codex Alimentarius -- The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, and Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident. Turbeville has published over 200 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville's podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

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Impeach or Not to Impeach: That IS the Question

2013-06-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

Catherine J. Frompovich
Activist Post

Hopefully, in this article I can speak intelligently to political issues, as my normal bailiwick is consumer health issues, vaccine safety advocacy in particular.

There comes a time when I feel everyone must take a stand for what he or she believes in and in what truly makes substantial difference to their sense of morality, ethics, governance, and community. For me, at least, the saturation point has arrived! I’m up to my eyeballs in overload from the lack of transparency in an administration that originally campaigned on changing the former administration’s very lack of transparency that thrust the USA, the beloved country I was born and raised in, into illegitimate wars, plus an untenable disregard for the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and usurpation of all the basic freedoms Americans cherished for as long as our history remembers. The time has come for me to speak up, and that I will do now while I feel I still can under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[1]

Anyone who knows me will agree that I’m a person who tells it like it is; I don’t spit polish dings into perfection, nor do I appreciate human dingbat frailties no matter where they occur, especially in elected officials. In my unflattering opinion, it seems we have an infestation of dingbats within the U.S. Congress and, particularly, in the Obama administration, starting at the very top. Strong words? Yes, but strongly impeachable actions definitively deserve strong words, in my opinion.

Let’s go back to the last time the word impeachment was seriously bandied around Washington, DC, in the media, and the press. Do you remember how incensed members of Congress were about some stains on Monica Lewinsky’s little blue dress?[2] Those stains came about, supposedly, because of a non-discretionary sexual liaison with then President Clinton and a White House intern. OMG!

Seemingly, everyone became incensed about President Clinton’s testimony about the word “is”. Remember how pundits scathed and just about everyone’s eyebrows almost levitated about, "It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is." Well, quite frankly, that kind of legal horseplay was nothing compared with the double talk, lies, and apparent back-room deals to give away U.S. sovereignty and rights to the United Nations. Instead of my writing about it, maybe you would like to hear from none other than Alex Jones of InfoWars here. I know many folks may consider Mr. Jones a “conspiracy theorist” but, he’s got the evidence goods to back up what he says.

Regarding transparency, which was a major plank in Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign platform, Huff Post Politics does a great job in the article “NSA Surveillance Revelations Shine Spotlight on Obama Administration.”

In that article, Calvin Woodward points out,

Since becoming president, Obama has churned out an impressive stream of directives flowing from his promise to deliver "the most transparent administration in history."

And Woodward cites a few things Obama did, but—and here’s the BIG but—he also says

Then there's the other government.

It prosecutes leakers like no administration before it. It exercises state-secrets privileges to quash court cases against it. It hides a vast array of directives and legal opinions underpinning government actions – not just intelligence and not all of it about national security.

Now it's known to conduct sweeping phone-records and Internet surveillance of ordinary people in programs kept on the lowdown until an employee of a National Security Agency contractor revealed them.

Then there happens to be a litany of 12 impeachable offenses that, perhaps, readers would like to consider. The offenses are drafted by Michael Connelley, JD, a retired Constitutional attorney, and enumerated here. Of the ‘dirty dozen’, the one that stands out as the most egregious, in my opinion, is Attorney Connelley’s Number

11. The President of the United States is not authorized by the Constitution to take our nation to war without the consent of the Congress of the United States. The only exception to this is the authority granted to the President by Congress under the War Powers Act. This law allows the President to take immediate action without the consent of Congress if there is an imminent threat to the security of the United States, or its citizens. Although there was clearly no such imminent threat caused by the Civil War in Libya, the President committed members of the United States military to combat missions in a foreign country without the consent of Congress. He based his authority on a United Nations resolution, and a resolution by the Arab League. [CJF emphasis]

Updates are needed. Benghazi and the killing of four Americans need to be added to Mr. Connelley’s list, I think, as only one person could be held responsible for giving the order to stand down, and that person is the president. Somehow, the president’s going to bed and not worrying about what was going on or happening in Benghazi ought to be considered an abandonment of the U.S. Ambassador and Navy Seals, and an impeachable criminal act, in my opinion. The USA does not abandon its people, especially its Ambassador!

According to Slate, “…he [the president] and his team made up a fake story about a ‘spontaneous uprising’ in Benghazi and downplayed intelligence that it could have been a premeditated attack by known terrorist organizations.”[3] Are we learning about lies?

Then there’s the current NSA can of worms opened by whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance, which, in essence, became an executive agent for a presidential dragnet and the resultant surveillance state, in my opinion. Furthermore, PRISM (a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program)[4] violates two federal laws and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. See that discussed here.

Don’t you think all the above is definitely more serious than stains on a dress? Why can’t Congress or U.S. citizens get that? Why aren’t there demands for impeachment like we heard for Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush? Perhaps the answer may be found in color, as in the color of Mr. Obama’s skin. Perhaps, everyone is afraid of being labeled a racist if they don’t agree with him. Therefore, are all presidential transgressions being shoved under the Oval Office carpet because of political correctness? Well, let’s discuss the race issue as it applies to President Obama.

In my opinion, race was made an issue by Mr. Obama himself. He was the very person to play the race card first. Why do I say that? Well, factually, Mr. Obama is a mulatto, “A person having one white and one Black parent.”[5] Mr. Obama chose to be identified as the first Black president, and not as the first biracial or mulatto president, which in fact is what he truly is. So, there you have it. In essence, Mr. Obama threw the white race part of himself and his heritage under the bus, as they would say, and chose to be known as a Black president, thereby accurately choosing a term that possibly would place the fear of God into a lot of critics if they were to oppose him. Personally, I think Mr. Obama needs to disassociate himself from everything erroneous but the facts, even to the political correctness of his race. I wonder how he listed himself on the U.S. Census form. If he checked off Black or African, he’s not told the truth!

Now what’s to be done about issues that are spiraling out of control? Well, I think concerned citizens are obliged to ask that Articles of Impeachment against President Obama be introduced by Congress. I did just that and wrote to both my Senators and Member of the House in the U.S. Congress. Below is the email letter I received from Senator Toomey of Pennsylvania, which I think explains what we need to do.

June 18, 2013

Dear Ms. Frompovich,

Thank you for contacting me about the recent scandals in the Obama administration. I appreciate hearing from you.

As you know, the Obama administration recently has been involved in several scandals and controversies. For instance, it misled the public about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya; and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been subjecting conservative non-profits to inappropriate, ideologically based scrutiny. These scandals and controversies are deeply disturbing, and they must be fully investigated. Those responsible for wrong-doing must be held accountable for their actions.

Some are now calling for the impeachment of the President. The U.S. Constitution requires impeachment proceedings to originate in the House of Representatives. A majority of the House Judiciary Committee members must vote to verify that there is enough evidence to warrant impeachment. Then, the full House of Representatives must vote to approve the decision to proceed to an impeachment hearing. If that occurs, then the House Judiciary Committee will try the President on the Senate floor, with the Senate acting as the jury and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding over the trial.

As a Senator, I therefore am unable to begin impeachment proceedings. However, as I continue working with my Senate colleagues to investigate these scandals and controversies and make sure that those involved are held accountable to the American people, please be assured that I value your input and will keep your thoughts in mind.

Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

Pat ToomeyU.S. Senator, Pennsylvania

What Senator Toomey does not know is that I know how the process works. However, I don’t think my member of the House of Representatives, who is a staunch Obama supporter, would have the courage to introduce Articles of Impeachment. I have to depend upon others to ask their members of the U.S. House of Representatives to do that, and that’s why I wrote this article.

Notes:

[1] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/monica-lewinsky-discusses-the-blue-dress-19170409
[3]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/05/barack_obama_benghazi_cover_up_white_house_emails_don_t_reveal_evidence.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
[5] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mullato

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies.

Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.

Catherine’s latest book, A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.

Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008).

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Obesity Officially Declared a ‘Disease’ Requiring ‘Treatment’

2013-06-19T07:34:00.001-07:00

If you are an American, being obese doesn’t just mean you are overweight anymore.

Melissa Melton
Activist Post

The American Medical Association voted Tuesday that obesity is now officially a ‘disease that requires treatment’. The LA Times reported:

In the end, members of the AMA’s House of Delegates rejected cautionary advice from their own experts and extended the new status to a condition that affects more than one-third of adults and 17% of children in the United States.

‘Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately 1 in 3 Americans,’ said Dr. Patrice Harris, an AMA board member.

You heard the good doctor — one in three Americans requires treatment! What kind of treatment? Why, pharmaceuticals of course! We certainly can’t allow 78 million U.S. adults and 12 million U.S. children to walk around with an ‘untreated’ disease, now can we?

So get ready for your commercial-filled television broadcasts to fill up with even more commercials asking if you are one of the one in three Americans that has this brand new official disease obesity and if *insert Big Pharma company name here*’s new drug is right for you!

And don’t worry, it’s not like the approval process for new drugs even takes that long in this country, considering the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t even do any actual testing and just leaves all that up to the drug companies. In fact, according to the FDA’s F.A.Q. on the drug approval process on that very question:

It is the responsibility of the company seeking approval to market a drug to conduct laboratory and animal tests on the safety and effectiveness of a proposed new drug and then to submit that information to FDA for review…

This new disease classification can be thrown on the pile with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recently released report claiming that a fifth of American children officially have a mental disorder and the newfound fact that one in ten Americans is on some sort of antidepressant medication. (Fun fact: the first antidepressant hit the U.S. market in 1988, and since then, antidepressant use in this country has skyrocketed 400 percent.)

Sadly, all of this makes sense considering the fifth and latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has now classified that every human emotion is some sort of disorder.

Prescription drugs are a big, booming business in this country. In fact, Americans spent $325.7 billion on prescriptions just last year. Pharmaceutical use is continually on the rise here, with nearly half of all Americans on at least one drug, while a third are taking two or more. Case in point: overdoses on prescription medications now kill more people in this country than car crashes.

America spends more overall on healthcare than any other country in the world, even though we’re consistently ranked dead last when it comes to life expectancy and infant mortality rates as compared to other developed nations.

Yet we are number one at something, because a 2010 U.K. Department of Health study found that, of the top 14 countries of the Westernized world, the U.S. takes the most prescription medications by volume per capita. The report also found,“Clinical culture and attitudes towards treatment remain important determinants in levels of uptake.”

Attitudes towards treatment? Makes sense. It certainly is tough to imagine a nation of people who are constantly being sold how sick they are every time they turn on a television or open a magazine more than Americans are.

Got a problem sleeping? Concentrating? Smiling enough? Patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time? Surely there’s a drug out there (with a pretty little price tag) that can treat your condition and keep Big Pharma execs skipping all the way to the bank.

You would think with all these wonderful new medications that everyone is on, Americans would be a whole lot healthier if prescriptions actually made people healthy, right?

Wrong. The market for so-called “specialty drugs” — drugs that treat hardcore health problems like cancer and inflammatory diseases — increased 20 percent last year and is projected to increase by a whopping 67 percent by 2015. Pretty horrifying, actually. Kinda makes you wonder why so many more people than ever before are being diagnosed with cancer and having so many more auto-immune issues, doesn’t it?

Answer from the American medical community: “Eh…dunno.”

Because no one’s really answering that question. Why? We don’t race for the cause in this country, only the cure.

And the cure is, apparently, more prescriptions. Now that obesity is officially a disease, even more people will end up on even more medications. Pretty soon there won’t be anything left that can’t be “cured” with a pill.

MELISSA MELTON is a co-founder of TruthstreamMedia.com, where this article first appeared. She is an experienced researcher, graphic artist and investigative journalist with a passion for liberty and a dedication to truth. Her aim is to expose the New World Order for what it is — a prison for the human soul from which we must break free.

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The Cascadia Fault Line: Locked, Loaded And Ready To Fire

2013-06-19T07:19:00.002-07:00

Chris Carrington
Activist Post

On a dark winter's night in January 1700 a tsunami struck Japan. It flooded fields, swept away villages for miles inland and cost many lives. Even as far back as 1700 the Japanese had made the connection between earthquakes and Tsunami, but this time there was no earthquake, no warning to allow the people time to evacuate to higher ground. The tsunami was called the ‘orphan tsunami’ because it had no ‘parent’ earthquake. For more than 300 years the origin of the orphan tsunami remained a mystery.

In the 1980s Hiroo Kanamori and Tom Heaton published a paper that said the 1700 tsunami was caused by a massive rupture of the Cascadia fault line that runs off the west coast of the United States from California to Vancouver. In 1987 Brian Atwater studied soil samples far inland across the length of the fault and discovered that the United States had also suffered a tsunami at the same time as the Japanese. He concluded that Kanamori and Heaton were correct, a massive earthquake had sent a tsunami out from the source of the quake inundating the coasts on both sides of the Pacific.

Recent studies by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has concurred on the findings of previous studies.

The Cascadia Fault is a subduction zone, an area where one of the tectonic plates is forced underneath the plate it collides into. In the case of Cascadia the Juan de Fuca Plate is moving under the North American Plate. These plates have been locked together since 1700, 313 years. A particular feature of the Cascadia Fault is that it doesn’t produce small quakes, it remains still and silent until the pressure gets too much and one of the plates slips...giving rise to a mega-thrust earthquake of massive force. These quakes can be compared to the Indonesian quake of 2004 and the Japanese quake of 2011.

The Cascadia fault is long, very long, just over 800 miles (1300km) in length. Based on the findings of the scientists the tsunami caused by the 1700 event moved inland for more than 60 miles, wiping out everything in its path. Of course in 1700 Seattle wasn’t there, neither was Vancouver, San Francisco, Portland or any of the other cities and metropolitan areas currently occupied by millions of people.

The Cascadia, courtesy of its length will give rise to a long quake if the whole fault ‘unzips’ at the same time, as it’s believed to have done in 1700. The first P waves will travel the length of the fracture in a minute or two; the S waves that follow, the ones that cause the real damage are slower and will cause shaking and movement for about five minutes though their speed can vary depending on the rock they are traveling through.

Any buildings not built to withstand earthquakes will collapse. Depending on the duration and magnitude of the quake it cannot be assumed that even ‘hardened’ buildings will remain standing. Many areas have sedimentary basins under urban sprawl and this amplifies the waves and the damage they cause.

Within approximately 20-30 minutes the tsunami will roll in. Unlike normal waves which have a few yards between them the tsunami waves can have hundreds of miles between them. The entire wall of water displaced when the plates slip hurtles outwards in all directions from the epicentre of the quake. As the waves approach the continental shelf the water at the back of the wave starts to catch up with the water at the front of the wave, which has slowed down as it moves up the incline that marks the start of the continental land mass. Its this that allows the water to build up and give the tsunami its characteristic ‘wall of water’ appearance.

The water will just keep on coming, flowing forward taking almost everything in its path with it. It may or may not be followed by more waves, there is no way to know if it will be a solo wave or a series until it happens. There is also no way to know in advance how deep the water will be. The tsunami caused by an earthquake in Lituya Bay Alaska in 1958 reached 1720 feet.

Lituya Bay is an extreme example, an un-survivable example unless you happen to be Howard G Ulrich or his son. The Indonesia earthquake on boxing day 2004 has been estimated to have had a wave height of between 30-50 feet.

So what do you do with your 20-30 minute warning? Obviously you want to get as high as possible. This is often easier said than done. In a city littered with debris, the dead and dying and glass falling from skyscrapers without warning getting out is going to pose many problems. Highways will be buckled and impassable and there is a great danger from gas main explosions and fires.

Some countries are investing in vertical evacuation centres. High platforms/shelters on stilts that allow the water to pass through the base of the structure without putting extra stresses on masonry that maybe already damaged from the earthquake. FEMA have issued a community guide detailing where such structures will be built / are being built along the West Coast of the United States.

If you don’t have access to a vertical evacuation shelter, or you prefer not to be at the mercy of FEMA, multi-story parking lots with open sides can offer some possibility of escape. The water is able to flow through the building and out the other side, reducing the chances of collapse due to the weight of the water pressing against it. Be prepared to stay in such a place for a considerable time, help and/or escape is not going to be coming fast. Carry as much food, water and emergency equipment as you can without the weight slowing you down. Think Katrina multiplied by 1000.

It can take anything from a few hours to many days for the floodwaters to subside and even when it does the emergency is far from over. Disease and death with be rife and you should head out of the area as soon as is humanly possible to give yourself the best chance of survival.

Cascadia is locked, loaded and ready to fire; it’s not a case of if, but a case of when. Sadly with so many variables, an earthquake tsunami combination is almost impossible to prepare for adequately. The only sure-fire way to survive is not to be in the area in the first place.

Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple, where this article first appeared. Wake the flock up!

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Obama Bankrupts Coal, Boosts Fracking

2013-06-19T06:56:00.001-07:00

Shutting Down Coal-Powered Plants Is Making Energy More Expensive, and Hydraulic Fracturing More Common

Aaron Dykes
Activist Post

All over America, coal power plants which provide stable, cheap energy are being shut down under Obama-led regulations and the C02 control agenda. Although coal is dirty, regulations have helped clean it up, and natural gas from fracking is worse … but hydraulic fracturing is exactly what Obama is using to replace coal – at great cost to the environment.

Based on what we already known about fracking, it is contributing to groundwater contamination, adding radioactive material into water supplies, creating at least minor earthquakes and tremors and otherwise creating massive pollution and contamination.

Yet, President Obama’s new Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz, is closely tied to the burgeoning industry, having helped promote the ‘fracking revolution.’ There is little wonder how he will play out his energy policy.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and other big oil players are boosting production in shale-based natural gas obtained through fracking, it is becoming a major share of their business, approaching oil production.

Wind, solar and hydro forms of power may have potential on the individual, regional or theoretic level, but their viability on the mass scale has proven limited, and as such are mainly tools of propaganda and rhetoric, not energy independence.

While Wall Street-based carbon trading schemes and the fracking industry are busy raking in the profits, this new era of energy is only greener because it costs your family more $$ to supply it. Austerity and artificial supply limits will be used to charge more for less, as the rates for your household skyrocket in the coming years.

Don’t catch my drift? Just take a look at what Enron admittedly did with energy prices in California after it artificially shut down the electricity supply and jacked up rates many times over just to suck profits off of hard-working ordinary people.

AARON DYKES is a co-founder of TruthstreamMedia.com, where this article first appeared. As a writer, researcher and video producer who has worked on numerous documentaries and investigative reports, he uses history as a guide to decode current events, uncover obscure agendas and contrast them with the dignity afforded individuals as recognized in documents like the Bill of Rights.

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High Level Opposition to Escalating Syria's Conflict

2013-06-19T06:48:00.001-07:00

Stephen Lendman
Activist Post

Dozens of responsible world leaders oppose Washington's war on Syria. They do so for good reason. They want peaceful conflict resolution. They're against greater escalation. Few say so publicly.

On May 15, the UN General Assembly adopted an anti-Assad resolution. It's non-binding. It was Arab League-led. Washington co-sponsored it. It followed four others since 2011.

It passed 107 - 12. Over 70 nations refused support. They endorse peace, not war. They oppose greater foreign intervention. Russia called the measure "counterproductive and irresponsible."

Assad expressed views many other leaders share. Few air them publicly. He warned about long-term regional destabilization, saying:

If the unrest in Syria leads to the partitioning of the country, or if the terrorist forces take control the situation will inevitably spill over into neighboring countries and create a domino effect throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Most Americans oppose greater intervention. Most polls consistently say so. Pew Research shows overwhelming Arab street unease. At issue is Syrian violence spreading cross-borders.

High-level Pentagon officials express concerns. Greater Syrian intervention's much more daunting than Libya. Last March, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey said "We can do anything" if asked.

At the same time, he repeatedly opposed greater US involvement. He's against escalated conflict. Endgame consequences worry him most. Before acting, "we have to be prepared for what comes next," he warns.

Attacking Syria won't be easy, he added. Russian-supplied air defenses are formidable. They're located close to major population centers.

Syrian opposition is splintered. Many insurgents are known terrorists. Hezbollah supports Syria. So does Iran. Russia may intervene supportively.

"Whether the military effect would produce the kind of outcome I think that not only members of Congress but all of us would desire - which is an end to the violence, some kind of political reconciliation among the parties, and a stable Syria - that's the reason I've been cautious about the application of the military instrument of power.... It's not clear to me that it would produce that outcome," he said.

On June 17, Al Manar headlined "Russia: We Won't Allow Imposing a no-Fly Zone in Syria," saying:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Ocahevch said:

We will not permit such scenarios, and these maneuvers on a fly-zone and humanitarian passages in Syria are caused by the lack of respect for the International Law.

We have seen how they imposed no-fly zones in Libya, so we will not allow repeating the same scenarios in Syria.

The Syrian crisis cannot be settled by double stances - refusing the military track on one hand and arming the militants on the other.

A same day Al Manar article headlined "Putin: Russia Arming Legitimate Gov't in Syria, West Arming Organ-Eaters," saying:

You will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras.

Are these the people you want to support? Is it them who you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to humanitarian values that have been preached in Europe for hundreds of years.

He unequivocal on Russian policy. He wants conflict ended. He wants it diplomatically resolved. He wants Syrians alone to decide who'll govern them. Let them defeat foreign "extremists," he stresses.

On June 17, Lebanon's Daily Star quoted Assad saying:

If the Europeans deliver weapons, the backyard of Europe will become terrorist and Europe will pay the price for it.

At issue is exporting "terrorism" to Europe. "Terrorists will gain experience in combat and return with extremist ideologies," he warned.

On June 16, London's Telegraph headlined "Boris Johnson: Don't arm the Syria maniacs," saying:

London's mayor warned David Cameron. Don't use Syria for "political point-scoring or muscle-flexing." Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg echoed similar sentiments.

So did former army head Lord Dannatt and Archbishop of York John Sentamu. Johnson urged "total ceasefire.This is the moment (to) end the madness."

Cameron faces growing internal opposition. Associates warn he faces a no-confidence defeat.

Clegg insists Britain won't arm insurgents. "We’ve taken no decision to provide lethal assistance, so we clearly don't think it is the right thing to do now, otherwise we would have decided to do it," he said.

Tory MP Julian Lewis spoke for others saying arming insurgents would be "suicidal." Cameron will "struggle" to get parliamentary approval.

Shadow foreign minister Douglas Alexander said MPs from all parties express unease.

For months Labour has called on the government to answer basic questions about their approach, such as how the prime minister would ensure that weapons supplied did not fall into the wrong hands, and how this step would help to de-escalate the conflict rather than prolong it.

Unnamed US defense officials warn that creating safe or protected areas inside Syria involve enormous complexities.

Thousands of US ground forces may be needed to enforce them. Deploying them involves invasion and occupation. A protracted quagmire may follow.

No-fly zone imposition is just as daunting. Justifiable Syrian responses will follow.

On June 14, Foreign Policy's Gordon Lubold headlined "Why the Pentagon really, really doesn't want to get involved in Syria," saying:

Top Pentagon brass have been ambivalent in the extreme about getting involved in the Syrian crisis since it began more than two years ago.

And now, even as the Obama administration signals its intention to provide direct military aid to opponents of the Syrian regime, there remains deep skepticism across the military that it will work.

Escalating conflict entails enormous risks. Success is unlikely. "(T)op brass is extremely reluctant to commit assets."

According to an unnamed senior Pentagon commander:

"There is no way to ensure" that arming insurgents won't make matters worse. Supplying heavier weapons, no-fly zone protection and safe areas sound good on paper.

Reality suggests otherwise. Failure's more likely than success. Former head of US European Operation Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe General Philip Breedlove sees "no military value in no-fly zone imposition inside northern Syria."

Northern and Southern Watch over Iraq was operationally exhausting and expensive.

Military intervention entails unintended consequences. Afghanistan and Iraq are protracted quagmires. Libya's a cauldron of violence.

Syria could be worse. Cross-border fallout could be disastrous. Escalated conflict affects Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and perhaps other regional countries.

On June 14, Politico headlined "DOD brass has long urged caution on Syria," saying:

Obama's planned greater involvement reflects what Pentagon brass warned against for months. At issue is another protracted quagmire.

In hearings, speeches and interviews, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have been deeply skeptical every time they've been asked about potential US involvement in Syria.

Unintended consequences worry planners most. They've seen it all before. They're loathe to repeat past mistakes. National security/military strategist Micah Zenko said:

I’ve never spoken to anyone at the (military) O-5 level or above who thinks intervening in Syria is a good idea."

Hagel warned that military intervention "could embroil the United States in a significant, lengthy, and uncertain military commitment."

It could have "the unintended consequence of bringing the United States into a broader regional conflict or proxy war."

You better be damn sure, as sure as you can be, before you get into something, because once you're into it, there isn’t any backing out, whether it's a no-fly zone, safe zone, protect these - whatever it is.

Once you’re in, you can't unwind it. You can't just say, 'Well, it's not going as well as I thought it would go, so we're going to get out.'

Dempsey said supplying insurgents heavier weapons won't make a difference. "Not in my military judgment," he stressed. Don't expect Syria to take escalation lightly, he added.

I have to assume, as the military member with responsibility for these kind of activities, that the potential adversary isn't just going to sit back and allow us to impose our will on them, that they could in fact take exception and act outside of their borders with long-range rockets and missiles and artillery and even asymmetrical threats.

In other words, be careful what you wish for. Best laid plans often fail. US military history reflects failure. Quagmires more than victories result.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

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We Are Way Past an Orwellian Police State and It's Only Going to Get Worse

2013-06-18T20:05:00.002-07:00

Youtube

Subscribe to Charlie McGrath's Channel
WideAwakeNews.com

BOOM! Talk About Dropping a Truth Bomb on Live TV

2013-06-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

Youtube

This is an older video, but it's worth watching. Former U.S. Marine Ken O'Keefe goes off on a truther rant like no other. You won't ever see this on CNN.

Farewell Bernanke – Thanks For Inflating The Biggest Bond Bubble The World Has Ever Seen

2013-06-18T18:42:00.003-07:00

Michael Snyder
Activist Post

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is on the way out the door, but the consequences of the bond bubble that he has helped to create will stay with us for a very, very long time. During Bernanke's tenure, interest rates on U.S. Treasuries have fallen to record lows. This has enabled the U.S. government to pile up an extraordinary amount of debt. During his tenure we have also seen mortgage rates fall to record lows. All of this has helped to spur economic activity in the short-term, but what happens when interest rates start going back to normal?

If the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt rises to just 6 percent, the U.S. government will suddenly be paying out a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt. And remember, there have been times in the past when the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt has been much higher than that. In addition, when the U.S. government starts having to pay more to borrow money so will everyone else. What will that do to home sales and car sales?

And of course we all remember what happened to adjustable rate mortgages when interest rates started to rise just prior to the last recession. We have gotten ourselves into a position where the U.S. economy simply cannot afford for interest rates to go up. We have become addicted to the cheap money made available by a grossly distorted financial system, and we have Ben Bernanke to thank for that. The Federal Reserve is at the very heart of the economic problems that we are facing in America, and this time is certainly no exception.

This week Barack Obama publicly praised Ben Bernanke and stated that Bernanke has "already stayed a lot longer than he wanted" as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke's term ends on January 31st, but many observers believe that he could leave even sooner than that. Bernanke appears to be tired of the job and eager to move on.

So who would replace him? Well, the mainstream media is making it sound like the appointment of Janet Yellen is already a forgone conclusion. She would be the first woman ever to chair the Federal Reserve, and her philosophy is that a little bit of inflation is good for an economy. It seems likely that she would continue to take us down the path that Bernanke has taken us.

But is it a fundamentally sound path? Keeping interest rates pressed to the floor and wildly printing money may be producing some positive results in the short-term, but the crazy bubble that this is creating will burst at some point. In fact, the director of financial stability for the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, recently admitted that the central bankers have "intentionally blown the biggest government bond bubble in history" and he warned about what might happen once it ends...

"If I were to single out what for me would be biggest risk to global financial stability right now it would be a disorderly reversion in the yields of government bonds globally." he said. There had been "shades of that" in recent weeks as government bond yields have edged higher amid talk that central banks, particularly the US Federal Reserve, will start to reduce its stimulus.

"Let's be clear. We've intentionally blown the biggest government bond bubble in history," Haldane said. "We need to be vigilant to the consequences of that bubble deflating more quickly than [we] might otherwise have wanted."

Posted below is a chart that demonstrates how interest rates on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds have fallen over the last several decades. This has helped to fuel the false prosperity that we have been enjoying, but there is no way that the U.S. government should have been able to borrow money so cheaply. This bubble that we are living in now is setting the stage for a very, very painful adjustment...

So what will that "adjustment" look like?

The following analysis is from a recent article by Wolf Richter...

Ten-year Treasury notes have been kicked down from their historic pedestal last July when some poor souls, blinded by the Fed’s halo of omnipotence and benevolence, bought them at a minuscule yield of 1.3%. For them, it’s been an ice-cold shower ever since. As Treasuries dropped, yields meandered upward in fits and starts. After a five-week jump from 1.88% in early May, they hit 2.29% on Tuesday last week – they’ve retreated to 2.19% since then. Now investors are wondering out loud what would happen if ten-year Treasury yields were to return to more normal levels of 4% or even 5%, dragging other long-term interest rates with them. They know what would happen: carnage!

And according to Richter, there are already signs that the bond bubble is beginning to burst...

Wholesale dumping of Treasuries by exasperated foreigners has already commenced. Private foreigners dumped $30.8 billion in Treasuries in April, an all-time record. Official holders got rid of $23.7 billion in long-term Treasury debt, the highest since November 2008, and $30.1 billion in short-term debt. Sell, sell, sell!

Bond fund redemptions spoke of fear and loathing: in the week ended June 12, investors yanked $14.5 billion out of Treasury bond funds, the second highest ever, beating the prior second-highest-ever outflow of $12.5 billion of the week before. They were inferior only to the October 2008 massacre as chaos descended upon financial markets. $27 billion in two weeks!

In lockstep, average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates jumped from 3.59% in early May to 4.15% last week. The mortgage refinancing bubble, by which banks have creamed off billions in fees, is imploding – the index has plunged 36% since early May.

If interest rates start to climb significantly, that will have a dramatic affect on economic activity in the United States.

And we have seen this pattern before.

As Robert Wenzel noted in a recent article on the Economic Policy Journal, we saw interest rates rise suddenly just prior to the October 1987 stock market crash, and we also saw them rise substantially prior to the financial crisis of 2008...

As Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker left the Fed chairmanship in August 1987, the interest rate on the 10 year note climbed from 8.2% to 9.2% between June 1987 and September 1987. This was followed, of course by the October 1987 stock market crash.

As Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan left the Fed chairmanship at the end of January 2006, the interest rate on the 10 year note climbed from 4.35% to 4.65%. It then climbed above 5%.

So keep a close eye on interest rates in the months ahead. If they start to rise significantly, that will be a red flag.

And it makes perfect sense why Bernanke is looking to hand over the reins of the Fed at this point. He can probably sense the carnage that is coming and he wants to get out of Dodge while he still can.

This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.

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Third Week of Bradley Manning Trial Highlights Circumstantial Evidence

2013-06-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

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Activist Post

We have spoken to Nathan Fuller at Bradleymanning.org who has given us gracious permission to reprint his daily firsthand reports, which you can find below with additional updates, commentary, and video.

Summary

Days 7 and 8 of Bradley Manning's trial have highlighted the government's reliance on circumstantial evidence such as third-party websites in order to support their contention that Manning deliberately released confidential information to WikiLeaks, and that he knew that information (if he even did release it) would wind up in the hands of America's enemies. The government is claiming "hearsay exceptions" to make their case stick, while the defense asserts that cached WikiLeaks Tweets amount to "double hearsay" and raise the question of proper authentication.

The court will be in recess while the issues of admissibility and 17 "stipulations" are discussed before the trial can move forward. Nathan Fuller's full coverage below helps tie together the tenuous strands upon which the U.S. government's arguments seem to rest. The government will likely not call anymore witnesses until July 8.

Circumstantial evidence against Manning might lack authentication: trial report, day 8

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. June 18, 2013

The eighth day of Bradley Manning’s court martial lasted just an hour and a half, and we’re now in recess until Tuesday morning, June 25, so the defense and government can continue to hammer out 17 stipulations of expected testimony over the long weekend. Today the parties litigated the admissibility of three pieces of the government’s proffered evidence: the use of the Wayback Machine, an Internet archive tool that investigators used to retrieve a 2009 version of WikiLeaks’ ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ list, and two WikiLeaks tweets from 2010, which were recovered using Google Cache.

In one tweet, WikiLeaks announces possession of an encrypted video, which the government says is the Garani/Farah airstrike video and which it claims Bradley provided them:

Have encrypted videos of US bomb strikes on civilians http://bit.ly/wlafghan2 we need super computer time http://ljsf.org/
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 8, 2010

The defense points to Bradley’s chats saying merely that WikiLeaks has an encrypted video, not that he gave it to them. The only video proven to match hash-values with the U.S. Central Command’s version can be found on Jason Katz’s computer, and no connection has been found between Katz and Manning.

In the other tweet, WikiLeaks requests “.mil email addresses,” and which the government cites when claiming Bradley worked at WikiLeaks’ behest, following their direction:

We would like a list of as many .mil email addresses as possible. Please contact editor@wikileaks.org or submit
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 7, 2010

But the defense says Bradley never saw that tweet, and what he’s said to have downloaded to his computer doesn’t quite match the request: defense lawyers imply he downloaded the U.S. Forces-Iraq address list, not all military email addresses.

Investigators could not find the Most Wanted Leaks list via WikiLeaks’ website – they only found versions of it by searching with Google.

The defense objected to the use of these items on hearsay, relevance, and authentication grounds.

The defense said the Google Cache-retrieved tweets are ‘double hearsay’ evidence and therefore unreliable: essentially, it claims, Google is “saying” what another website “said” at a certain point in time. Defense lawyer Capt. Tooman said that the judge would need to hear directly from someone from WikiLeaks itself to be able to hear personal knowledge of when those tweets were sent and what they say.

The government claimed the evidence meets a hearsay exception that allows for evidence that has an effect on the listener for an element – they say the evidence goes to Bradley’s knowledge of what WikiLeaks would do with information that he gave them. But the defense countered that there’s no proof Bradley even looked at these tweets, and it has to be established that he did for the evidence to qualify for that exception.

That same argument was made for the government’s attempt to admit a Wayback Machine-retrieved version of WikiLeaks’ 2009 Most Wanted Leaks list. The defense contests the government’s production of that list because it can’t be proven that the Wayback Machine didn’t rely on a third-party web-crawler to obtain it, and if a third-party crawler did, we’d need to see personal knowledge from that crawler that the information wasn’t manipulated.

The defense has already admitted a different version of that list; one that calls for journalists, lawyers, police, and human rights activists to contribute to the list to ask for documents that would aid their work. But, the defense says, the government only provided one version because it better supports their case theory. The government only offered one version and they only use the Wayback Machine to authenticate it. There are versions of the list here, here, and here.

The government wants to prove that he viewed these tweets and lists before disclosing documents for the Article 104 Aiding the Enemy charge, so in the absence of less-circumstantial evidence, the admissibility of these documents could go a long way to supporting or eroding their contention.

Court is in recess and will resume for a status conference on Tuesday, briefly updating the court on the 17 stipulations of testimony in progress. In addition to those 17, the government intends to call 12 more sentences in its merits case. On Wednesday, court is scheduled to resume with those stipulations and more government witnesses.

Guantanamo detainee briefs and the global address list: trial report, day 7

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. June 17, 2013

The third week of Bradley Manning’s court martial began with testimony about Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs (DABs) that WikiLeaks released as the GITMO Files, and the Global Address List (GAL) that the government claims Bradley stole. The GAL is a collection of military email addresses. In February, Bradley pled not guilty to illegally obtaining that list.

This morning, after a long recess during which the parties continued to confer privately, we heard only stipulations of agreed-upon expected testimony.

Guantanamo detainee briefs

Prosecutors read testimony from Jeffrey Motes, a senior counterterror analyst at Guantanamo Bay, who led the team that created the DABs and spoke to why they were classified. The DABs include detainees’ background information, details of their capture, their affiliation with terrorist groups, indicators of their threat level, and Motes’ team’s analysis of that threat level. While Motes says that the detainees and their affiliates likely already knew all of that information, they didn’t know the U.S.’s assessment and the extent of its knowledge.

The five briefs that Motes reviewed for the investigation into Bradley’s release, he said, included or mentioned Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures (TTPs) of enemy movements, enemy recruitment activities, and engagements with enemy forces – the disclosure of which, he said, could alter enemy practices.

The government also read stipulation of expected testimony for Rear Admiral David Woods, an Original Classification Authority who reviewed the Guantanamo DABs and, following Executive Order guidelines, determined they were properly classified at the Secret level. Woods also said that when reviewing the DABs, he did not consider “open-source material” in the public realm.

We also heard stipulations for Navy Vice Admiral Robert Harward, who reviewed CENTCOM documents, and former Army NCO Louis Travieso, a Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence analyst at CENTCOM. Travieso conducted a line-by-line review of the charged documents in the Iraq and Afghan war logs, as well as documents from the Farah incident and investigation.

All of this testimony likely goes to whether Bradley had reason to believe he was releasing “closely held” information “relating to the national defense,” a threshold not met by mere classification level alone.

Global Address List background

The government says Bradley Manning did “steal, purloin, or knowingly convert” the GAL in violation of 18 U.S.C. 641, a ten-year offense. It contends Bradley had a list of some 74,000 military email addresses on his unclassified NIPRNet computer, which he used in the supply annex.

The government has pointed to WikiLeaks’ tweet requesting ‘.mil email addresses’ as evidence that Bradley was acting under Julian Assange’s direction. Forensic expert Mark Johnson testified last week that on the unallocated (deleted) portion of one of Bradley’s computers, he found evidence of a ‘tasker’ in which someone allegedly requested Bradley “exfiltrate” or extract the global address list, and evidence that the list was on his computer and had been deleted, but no specific request for it to be sent to WikiLeaks. He found no evidence on that computer that the list was extracted or transferred.

Afternoon update – GAL Testimony

CWO4 Nixon testified about access to the Global Address List, which he described as a function of the ‘active directory.’ He distinguished between ‘access’ and ‘visibility’ – those with user accounts could search for a name within the Iraq GAL and have access to it, but the list of addresses and names wasn’t visible in full (though it was to those with administrative accounts). Someone logged on to a user account couldn’t simply download the list of addresses for their brigade, s/he would have to manually copy and paste each one individually. He didn’t confirm the government’s earlier number of 74,000 addresses – when he was handed a CD and asked how many addresses were on it, he said about 24,000.

The government read testimony for Special Agent Alfred Williamson, from the Army Criminal Investigations Unit, who forensically examined the supply-annex computer that Bradley used but which belonged to Staff Sergeant Peter Bigelow, supply-room supervisor. Williamson said user account ‘Bradley.Manning’ searched Google News for ‘WikiLeaks’ and ‘nonjudicial punishment,’ and he found encrypted emails between Bradley and Adrian Lamo. He also said it appeared that Bradley, or someone on his account, was using the ‘Peter.Bigelow’ account, as he viewed Bradley’s gmail account and other personal documents. Williamson found five files related to the GAL, and several ‘blah-named files’ (Bradley said he compressed two documents into a file named Blah.zip), created and deleted on May 13, 2010.

Prosecutors read testimony from Peter Bigelow, confirming that Bigelow allowed Bradley to use his personal computer after he noticed Bradley was checking his Gmail on a NIPRNet (non-Secret, military) computer, and that he didn’t conduct searches for WikiLeaks and didn’t create the ‘Blah’ folder.

GAL value and access

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Armond Rouillard testified about the GAL’s value, which he divided into monetary and cyber-threat categories, the latter of which the Army focuses on. With the GAL email addresses, an adversary could target ‘spearphishing’ campaigns against specific users and gain access to their military computers.

But the defense objected to the government offering Rouillard as an expert on GAL’s monetary value, because Specification 16 of Charge 2 specifically alleges Bradley stole or converted the list “of a value of more than $1,000, in violation of 18 U.S. Code Section 641.”

When pressed, the government withdrew its presentation of Rouillard as an expert on the GAL’s value, and he was instead accepted only as an expert on the GAL itself and cyber-security more generally.

The defense established on cross-examination that there was no directive prohibiting the downloading of the address list.

More stipulations and recesses

The parties are continuing to agree to more and more stipulations of expected testimony, currently working on 17 more behind the scenes. This brings another long recess. Tomorrow at 9:30 AM, they’ll present oral arguments on the admissibility of certain prosecution exhibits. After that, the court will be in recess until Tuesday, when we’ll hear an update on the stipulations, and on Wednesday the government’s case will resume. The parties also agreed that the government will not call any sentencing witnesses earlier than July 8.
____________________________________________________________________________
PREVIOUS UPDATE:

Bradley Manning’s chats and emails; authorized access: trial report, day 6

Several more government witnesses testified today about Bradley Manning’s online activity, access to various programs, and what the Apache video revealed. Court is in recess until Monday, June 17.

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. June 12, 2013.

Another long, witness-packed Wednesday made room for another long weekend in Bradley Manning’s trial: after today’s session, court is in recess again until Monday morning.

Army CCIU special agent Mark Johnson testified for the entire morning session at Ft. Meade, discussing his forensic examination of Bradley Manning’s personal MacBook Pro and his search for connections to WikiLeaks.

On the unallocated (deleted) portion of the laptop, he discovered chats between an account associated with Bradley Manning and an account with the handle ‘pressassociation,’ which the government contends is connected to Julian Assange (along with the alias Nathaniel Frank), ranging from March 5, 2010, and March 18, 2010.

The two discussed government information, and prosecutors focused on ‘pressassociation’s comment about the United States’ Open Source Center, “that’s something we want to mine entirely.”

But on cross-examination, Johnson confirmed that ‘pressassociation’ never actually asked Manning for anything, and never asked him about his direct access to any information.

Johnson also found emails, encrypted and un-, between Bradley and Eric Schmiedel, discussing State Department cables, the Iraq War Logs, the Collateral Murder video, and on the unallocated portion, WikiLeaks. The defense established that Bradley never looked at websites associated with terrorism or anti-American beliefs – more testimony going against the government’s claim that Bradley had knowledge that WikiLeaks releases would end up in the hands of the enemy.

Defense lawyers also gleaned that the only evidence of a connection between Bradley and WikiLeaks’ submission page can be found for April 10-12, 2010. They also confirmed that files referencing Farah (see yesterday’s revelation on that video) on his MacBook Pro would have to have arrived after January 31, 2010, because that’s when Bradley wiped his computer, including its free space, and everything predating that would be gone. This lends itself further to the defense claim that Bradley sent the Farah video to WikiLeaks in April 2010, not November 2009.

Collateral Murder reveals Apache techniques

The government read stipulated testimony from Jon LaRue, a former Apache helicopter pilot who reviewed the infamous ‘Collateral Murder’ Apache video after its release. He said the release of the video, which is unclassified, revealed TTPs, or Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures. TTPs, he said, are “pieces of a puzzle,” so with other pieces, a potential adversary could put together that puzzle and be able to learn about how U.S. Apaches operate.

Manning and password decryption

The government recalled its forensic expert David Shaver to talk about Bradley’s ability to access the administrative privileges on his computer, which are more broad than his user rights and which he’d need a password to access. That password is broken up, for security’s sake, into a SAM file and a system file. While the government spent significant time proving Bradley’s installation of a Linux operating system, which allowed him to access the SAM file, the defense quickly showed on cross-examination that he never accessed the system file and therefore couldn’t have accessed any passwords.

Wget and Bradley’s “authorized access”

More and more testimony on Wget didn’t provide the final word on whether Bradley “exceeded authorized access” by adding programs to his SIPRNet computer. He added software called Wget to rapidly increase downloading of files from the network, and Wget wasn’t on a list of pre-authorized programs that soldiers could have on their work computers. However, soldiers frequently added movies, music, and (more importantly, since they’re similar to Wget in file type) video games to the shared drive. Captain Thomas Cherepko, who managed Information Assurance for Bradley’s unit, testified that even after he deleted those unauthorized files from the shared drive, soldiers would re-add them, due to a “command laxity” about enforcing those rules.

Court resumes Monday, June 17, at 9:30 AM.
____________________________________________________________________________
PREVIOUS UPDATE:

With the newest media storm over Edward Snowden, it is becoming clear that whistleblowers will increasingly be taking center stage as the war continues between the forces of tyranny and forces of truth. This war, like all wars, is filled with the full range of tactics from both sides, which will command our discernment like never before. The great news is that a new type of open dialogue has been established.

Day 4 of the Bradley Manning trial started the week with a focus on the programs that Manning had access to, and those he might have used as a tool with which to supply data to the enemy. So far, nothing but refutation has been forthcoming. Forensic experts and analysts highlighted that the programs Manning used were not expressly prohibited.

It was also stated by Army CID Special Agent Mark Mander that the investigation of Manning was “probably one of the largest and most complicated investigations we’ve ever had.” This should say something about much of the corporate media that would make this case out to be a cut-and-dried example of a scheming traitor against America. Many more questions have been posed as week two begins, as recounted below:

No connection between Manning and Jason Katz, CENTCOM video: trial report, day 5

Today’s afternoon session revealed more substantive and consequential testimony, so it precedes the morning session here. The defense, via forensic expert David Shaver, established that there was no evidence of a connection between Manning and Jason Katz, and that there is no evidence Manning downloaded a video from the CENTCOM database.

By Nathan Fuller. June 11, 2013.

No connection between Jason Katz and Bradley Manning

The live witnesses – as opposed to read-aloud stipulations – in this afternoon’s session discussed the investigation of Jason Katz’s computer, where a Farah video was found that the government believed to be connected to Bradley Manning. The Farah incident was a horrifying massacre on May 4, 2009, in Afghanistan, in which a U.S. airstrike killed scores of innocent Afghan women and children. Katz was fired from the Department of Energy for having password-evading programs.

The video, a version distinct from the one found on Bradley’s computer but matching the one hosted on the U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) website, was encrypted, and investigators found decryption software on Katz’s computer. Adrian Lamo learned about Katz’s possession of the video and also turned him into the authorities. [See Lamo’s and Shaver’s December 2011 testimonyon Katz and the video.]

The government wanted to connect Katz and Manning, but today forensic expert David Shaver confirmed that he found no connection whatsoever – no email, chats, or any other connection – between the two.

No proof that Manning downloaded Farah video from CENTCOM

Prosecutors were also unable to establish what they promised they’d prove in their opening statement (pg. 46, lines 11-15),

The evidence will also show that on this work computer was a forensic match of the video charged in specification 11 of charge two, the BE 22 PAX dot zip video was on this computer. And forensic examiners will testify that that video was on the computer on 15 December 2009.

The video file found on Bradley’s computer, under a folder titled ‘Farah,’ was titled TGT1.wmv, and it couldn’t be matched to the charged video, because it was corrupted and couldn’t be viewed.

The TGT1.WMV doesn’t match the name of a file found on CENTCOM’s server, which is the charged video, BE22PAX.zip. That file matches the one found on Jason Katz’s computer, and was encrypted. Katz was known to have decryption software, and the government has tried to tie WikiLeaks’s January 8, 2010, tweet about an encrypted video to Bradley and the Farah incident.

That tweet also predates the only time Bradley is known to have downloaded a Farah video. The defense established that Bradley downloaded the TGT1.wmv video from the T drive – a shared drive among intelligence analysts in his unit, to which he was authorized access – in April 2010. There’s no proof that Bradley downloaded the zip file from CENTCOM, and no proof that he downloaded a Farah video in November 2009 as the government has charged.

This lines up with Bradley’s proposed substitution to the government’s charges and his subsequent plea and statement.

The government has long contended there were two disclosures of a Farah video, in November 2009 (Spec 11 of Charge 2 says between 11/09 and 1/8/10) and April 2010, but it chose to charge him with the earlier disclosure. The defense has contended that there was only one transmission, in April. (See Alexa O’Brien’s transcript of that claim here.)

The prosecution said it had the forensic evidence to prove that contention, but Shaver’s testimony does not support it. He said that data transmission logs show no transfer of the CENTCOM zip file to Bradley’s computer – there was only the transfer from the T drive in April.

Since the prosecution refused to accept Bradley’s plea on that charge with changed dates, he pled not guilty to Specification 11 as charged. Now it can’t go back and charge for the April offense, and thus far they can’t prove the November offense. Perhaps it should’ve charged Jason Katz for that video instead.

Original post, morning session

Yesterday at Ft. Meade, we learned that the government and defense have agreed to 19 new stipulations of expected testimony, but didn’t hear them in court. We heard several of those stipulations today, of Army criminal investigators who collected the charged documents, classification specialists who reviewed whether the documents were properly marked and classified, and from a U.S. Central Command officer who reviewed the classification of the Farah investigation.

The first live witness was Staff Sergeant Matthew Hosburgh, who monitored military networks and evaluated their potential threats and vulnerabilities. He testified largely about his report from a November 2009 conference in Berlin, called Here Be Dragons and hosted by the Chaos Communication Congress. The conference included presentations on net neutrality, hacking, security, and WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange gave the WikiLeaks presentation, attempting to elicit support for and raise awareness about the site’s launch and goals. SSG Hosburgh confirmed that WikiLeaks requested anonymous submissions of classified and sensitive documents withheld by governments and corporations, but that Assange never mentioned or indicated support for terrorists.

In his report, SSG Hosburgh’s noted terrorists’ use of the internet in his summary of the net neutrality presentation but not in the WikiLeaks portion. WikiLeaks, he confirmed, was focused on keeping the public informed, and wasn’t focused on the United States in particular.

Did Manning see Hosburgh’s report?

The prosecution contends Bradley accessed that report (along with the 2008 Counterintelligence special report) but has yet to prove that in court. The government again called Army Special Agent Mark Mander, who reviewed Intelink (the military’s Google) logs to view searches made on Bradley’s computers. He found results for Stf. Sgt. Hosburgh’s report, but as the defense established on cross-examination, he can’t determine if Bradley saved the report, printed it, or even was the one using his computer to view it.

If he did, the report would be relevant to Bradley’s knowledge of WikiLeaks at the time of his release, and therefore whether he “knowingly [gave] intelligence to the enemy.” But that he was the one on that computer, viewing that report, has not been definitively established.

As was established yesterday, there’s similar ambiguity about Bradley’s knowledge of the 2008 Counterintelligence report on WikiLeaks.

Stipulations on Farah investigation testimony

Prosecution lawyer Maj. Ashden Fein read expected testimony from Lt. Commander Thomas Hoskins and retired Lt. Colonel Martin Nehring, who both reviewed war documents, and spoke about the investigation of a massacre in Farah province. Lt. Com. Hoskins determined the war logs were properly classified at the time, while Lt. Col. Nehring explained more about what made them sensitive.

The Significant Activities (SigActs) reported on IED attacks, tactics and procedures for responding to those attacks, casualties, small arms fire, and “sources and methods of intelligence collection.”

Programs that Bradley Manning used weren’t prohibited: trial report, day 4

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. June 10, 2013.

The second week of Bradley Manning’s court martial began with forensics experts returning, testimony from someone who shared Bradley’s computer, and updates on stipulations of expected testimony, but that all came after more questions about media access.

Stenographers deserve trial access

Judge Denise Lind received a motion from a third-party to allow for the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s crowd-funded stenographers to be credentialed for the media center at Ft. Meade, to provide an unofficial transcript of the proceedings. Judge Lind wouldn’t rule on the motion since it didn’t come from the defense or government, but defense lawyer David Coombs stood briefly to support it. He said the motion assists Bradley’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial and the First Amendment right to a free press.

Forensic expert: Wget not explicitly prohibited

David Shaver, head of forensic investigations for the Army Criminal Investigations Unit, has been called a few times and will likely be called back frequently to discuss the investigation of Bradley’s computer. He testified today about his review of Bradley’s searches on Intelink, the military’s secure version of Google.

Shaver testified about Bradley’s searches for ‘WikiLeaks,’ which started on December 1, 2009, and for ‘Julian Assange’ and ‘Iceland.’ A few times, his searches for WikiLeaks brought him to the Army’s 2008 Counterintelligence Special Report, but Shaver could only confirm that he successfully reached that report once.

He also talked about the program Wget, which automates downloading from the internet. Shaver said the program wasn’t specifically authorized with a Certificate of Net Worthiness (CON), but that it wasn’t prohibited either, and not having a CON didn’t mean it wasn’t allowed.

Fellow analyst: mIRC chat, other programs not prohibited

Chad Madaras was in the 2nd Brigrade 10th Mountain division along with Bradley Manning, so they were together in Ft. Drum before deploying and then together in FOB Hammer in Iraq. In Baghdad, they worked in the same unit and used the same computer but on opposite shifts: Bradley worked at night, Chad during the day.

Their shared computer was frequently slow and required ‘reimaging’ – wiping the computer fully and starting over new – multiple times. Therefore, analysts were expected to save files to CDs or to a shared drive to prevent losing any data.

Madaras testified that everyone else in their Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) used mIRC, a chat program Bradley said he used. Madaras also confirmed that music, movies, and video games were on the shared drive that all analysts could access. They weren’t explicitly allowed, but they weren’t banned either. This lends itself to the question of whether Bradley “exceeded authorized access” – the government contends he added programs that he wasn’t allowed to have.

He also confirmed that it wasn’t prohibited to explore the SIPRNet, the Secret-level, military-wide internet, for other regions of the world beyond mission scope. Bradley perused the State Department diplomatic database, and while others may not have done so, it hasn’t been established that this was a violation.

Stipulations continue

We also heard the stipulations of expected testimony of Steve Buchanan, an NSA contractor who confirmed some basic facts about Intelink, which Shaver delved into further.

The defense and government took a two-hour lunch break to continue working on more stipulations. The military’s subject matter expert tells us that twelve stipulations have been agreed to, eight more are under negotiation, and several more may be on the way.

Afternoon session

Update: 7:00

Tweets on trial

After nearly a three-and-a-half hour lunch break, Army CID Special Agent Mark Mander testified about his contribution in the investigation of Bradley Manning, which he called “probably one of the largest and most complicated investigations we’ve ever had.”

Mander said he used Archive.org to find a 2009 version of WikiLeaks.org that allegedly shows a ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ list of desired documents, and used Google Cache to retrieve WikiLeaks’ 2010 tweets asking for ‘.mil addresses’ and for ‘super computer time’ upon receipt of an encrypted video. The prosecution wants to authenticate these documents as relevant to Bradley’s mindset at the time of the 2010 disclosures.

But the defense established that Mander has no personal knowledge of how Archive.org or Google Cache works, whether either had been hacked, whether tweets can be deleted, or whether Bradley had viewed those pages and tweets at that time.

The defense also presented an alternate version of the ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ page, which was similar but which introduced the list as the concealed documents most sought after by journalists, lawyers, police, and human rights investigators. Judge Lind accepted both versions as evidentiary exhibits.

Sheila Glenn: Army Counterintel couldn’t confirm that enemies used WikiLeaks

Ft. Meade’s Sheila Glenn works on Army cyber counterintelligence, and she testified about the 2008 Army Counterintelligence Special Report, which she reviewed and which speculated whether foreign intelligence services or terrorist groups used or could use WikiLeaks.org to gather U.S. defense information.

She mostly confirmed important elements of the report. She read aloud,

some argue, Wikileaks.org is knowingly encouraging criminal activities such as the theft of data, documents, proprietary information, and intellectual property, possible violation of national security laws regarding sedition and espionage, and possible violation of civil laws. Within the United States and foreign countries the alleged ―whistleblowers are, in effect, wittingly violating laws and conditions of employment and thus may not qualify as ―whistleblowers protected from disciplinary action or retaliation for reporting wrongdoing in countries that have such laws.

She confirmed,

Wikileaks.org supports the US Supreme Court ruling regarding the unauthorized release of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, which stated that ―only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

A primary point of contention regarded ‘intelligence gaps,’ a subsection of the report under which it’s asked,

Will the Wikileaks.org Web site be used by FISS, foreign military services, foreign insurgents, or terrorist groups to collect sensitive or classified US Army information posted to the Wikileaks.org Web site?

Glenn testified that intelligence gaps could fall within a range of certainty, from points of knowledge that the Army wanted to confirm, to subjects about which it knows very little. At the time, she said, Army Counterintelligence could not confirm that foreign intelligence services, adversaries, or terrorist groups did collect information from WikiLeaks.org.

This week

Remaining on the list of upcoming witnesses is Matthew Hosburgh, an intelligence analyst, who’ll testify about a ‘computer chaos club’ document; Ken Moser from CENTCOM who’ll testify about the Farah investigation; and Chief Warrant Officer 5 Jon Larue.

______________________________________________________________________________
PREVIOUS UPDATE:

At the heart of Day 3 was the inability of Bradley Manning's supervisor, Captain Casey Fulton, to issue the same statement of authority as the U.S. government that WikiLeaks = Al Qaeda. In fact, she couldn't mention WikiLeaks as a specific source at all, but only that social media was a known general hangout of America's enemies. As Amy Davidson at The New Yorker, illustrates: social media, Google, Google Maps and other news outlets could easily be "aiding the enemy" in much the same way.

“The prosecution has specified Al Qaeda and one of its affiliates, as well as a third organization whose identity, also disturbingly, it classified. (Overclassification is one of the scandals of this story.) At what point could “enemy” mean anyone who doesn’t like us? Can it mean us ourselves, at moments when we think that something has gone wrong, and has to be exposed?”

The prosecutors intend to bring in a witness from the Navy Seals to testify that he found a published document from the WikiLeaks website in Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad. But just how can one news agency, or public online forum control who their readers are and how can they avoid the government’s harassment if their readers are considered the “enemy” ? (Source)

Furthermore, it appears that some of what Manning was collating and preparing for distribution were specific assignments from his superiors and not a premeditated plot. This is fundamental in the government's central "aiding the enemy" argument. Rather, it seems that Bradley Manning had been cited often by other intelligence analysts for his extraordinary natural abilities. As Fuller states below, that means it is likely that Manning "was simply doing his job" -- and excelling at it. In short, he was working for the Army, not for WikiLeaks.

Many more essential details are provided by Nathan Fuller's excellent coverage of this trial, as it enters Day 3, and will recess until the 10th. This trial will determine whether telling the truth should be punishable by life in prison. It is a determination that is guaranteed to affect us all.

Manning supervisor undercuts aspect of aiding the enemy charge: trial report, day 3

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. June 5, 2013.

On day 3 of Bradley Manning’s court martial, one of his supervisors didn’t mention WikiLeaks when asked about specific websites the military warned that the enemy might visit. Bradley’s fellow soldiers relayed that Iraq War Log documents didn’t reveal source names and that an Excel spreadsheet he created was done for intelligence work, not for WikiLeaks. Read reports from day 1 and day 2.

Captain Casey Fulton testified at the end of today’s Bradley Manning trial proceedings that there were no specific websites, other than social media sites, that intelligence analysts knew that America’s enemies visited. Capt. Fulton deployed to Iraq with Bradley in November 2009 and was in charge of Bradley’s intelligence section.

The government’s aiding the enemy charge relies on the claim that Bradley knew that giving intelligence to WikiLeaks meant giving it to Al Qaeda. Prosecutors have cited several times this Army Counterintelligence Special Report, which asks,

Will the Wikileaks.org Web site be used by FISS, foreign military services, foreign insurgents, or terrorist groups to collect sensitive or classified US Army information posted to the Wikileaks.org Web site?

But when defense lawyer David Coombs asked Capt. Fulton what websites the enemy was known to visit gathering intelligence, she merely said that it was general knowledge that the enemy goes to “all sorts” of websites. Pressed to name something specific, Capt. Fulton said that they were briefed on social media sites like Facebook, where people generally post lots of personal information, and Google and Google Maps. Once more Coombs asked if there were any specific websites that she and her fellow analysts had “actual knowledge” that the enemy visited, and Capt. Fulton said no.

Intelligence work for Army, not WikiLeaks

She also provided more information on an Excel spreadsheet that Bradley created as an analyst in Baghdad, which included all of the Significant Activities (SigActs) later released in the Iraq War Logs. The government has referred to this spreadsheet as an indication that Bradley was culling information and preparing it to be sent to WikiLeaks. But Capt. Fulton said that the spreadsheet was used for an intelligence analyst assignment: she had asked him to compile all SigActs from the entire Iraq War to discern any patterns and increases or decreases in violence throughout the war. Bradley was simply doing his job.

That testimony corroborates what we heard from other witnesses today. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Hondo Hack and Warrant Officer Kyle Balonek testified to Bradley’s exceptional organizational abilities and impressive work for such an inexperienced analyst.

CW3 Hack rarely saw Bradley since they had opposite work shifts, so he looked into the shared drive where analysts posted reports and files they were researching. He called Bradley’s folder perhaps the most organized he’d ever seen, providing far more detail than more experienced analysts.

That revelation came after government questioning that attempted to paint Bradley as neglectful of his duties, presenting an email from him to CW3 Hack providing the name of a high-value target several months after he started his work. Prosecutors admitted when prompted by Judge Denise Lind that they were trying to show a dereliction of duty, and Coombs recalled their effort to characterize him as working for WikiLeaks when he should have been doing his job.

But CW3 Hack told the defense that he was frustrated with the entire intelligence analyst squad, and didn’t expect Bradley, as a junior analyst, to provide “actionable” information and in fact expected more from his more senior colleagues.

War Log reports didn’t reveal source names

CW Balonek was one of those more experienced analysts, who worked in Bradley’s division. He testified about keeping classified information secret, since he witnessed Bradley’s signing of the Non-Disclosure Agreement vowing to protect sensitive documents. He told government lawyers that it wasn’t common practice for those in Iraq to look at Afghanistan SigActs or other files, but he told the defense that there wasn’t any provision that he knew of prohibiting it.

He gave more insight into what those SigActs or HUMINT (Human Intelligence) files contained. The SigActs typically provided the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where, and why an incident occurred, documenting basic information about incidents like IED attacks. Both types of files didn’t name U.S. sources by name—HUMINT reports cited sources by number, and SigActs would protect the source from identification as well. SigActs have some names, but those are witnesses, for example, to violent incidents, and not reliable sources with exact information.

Supervisor Showman’s conversations with Bradley

Specialist Jihrleah Showman was Bradley’s team leader at Ft. Drum before he deployed to Iraq, interacting with him daily. She testified with slight but visible disdain about their personal conversations, which she said typically involved “his topic of choosing,” and that he talked about social interests including “martini parties” in the D.C. area, having friends with influence in the Pentagon, and his interest in shopping.

She also said he liked to talk about politics, and that he would often debate with others about broad U.S. policy and that she found him “very political” and on the “extreme Democratic side,” responding affirmatively to Coombs’s phrasing.

When she oversaw him at Ft. Drum, most soldiers uploaded video games, movies, and music to their computers, which weren’t explicitly authorized but which she believed her superiors knew about. Bradley was so “fluent” with computers, she said, that she asked him to install the military chat client mIRC to her computer, and that he once mentioned that military portals’ passwords “weren’t complicated” and that he could always get through them.

Because the government moved through its witnesses so quickly, court is recessed for the week and will return on Monday, June 10.

You can donate to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund Here.
______________________________________________________________________________
PREVIOUS UPDATE:

As a part of today's update, we are also including this new trailer released that includes various celebrities and well-respected media such as Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi. "I am Bradley Manning."

Nathan Fuller's new report, as well as our previous update, are available below...

Bradley Manning’s InfoSec write-up never mentioned WikiLeaks: trial report, day 2

by Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. June 4, 2013.

Day 2 of Bradley Manning’s court martial covered his training in information security, his chats with Adrian Lamo, and the forensic investigation of his digital media. Day 1 report here.

Witnesses in Bradley Manning’s trial today testified about the hardware retrieved from Manning’s workstation and housing unit in Iraq, the process for examining forensics of that hardware, his training on classified information, and his online chats with hacker and informant Adrian Lamo.

The proceedings moved quickly – the military’s subject matter expert told us that the government is two days ahead of schedule – because the defense continues to stipulate to expected testimony, which allows the government to simply read what a witness would have testified to without the need for cross-examination. Bradley took responsibility for releasing documents to WikiLeaks in late February 2013, so the defense doesn’t contest much of the basic forensic information for those releases.

Manning’s PowerPoint on Information Security doesn’t mention WikiLeaks

In the first pretrial hearing in December 2011, when the government claimed that Bradley Manning knew that giving documents to WikiLeaks meant giving them to Al Qaeda, it often referred to a PowerPoint presentation that Bradley created while in Army training, implying if not stating outright that in the presentation Bradley mentioned WikiLeaks specifically as a site America’s enemies use to collect information.

But today we saw that PowerPoint, while the parties questioned Troy Moul, the instructor from Bradley’s intelligence analyst training, and nowhere did it mention WikiLeaks – it merely claims that adversaries use the Internet generally to harvest information about U.S. operations.

In fact, Moul admitted, “I had never even heard of the term WikiLeaks until I was informed [Bradley] had been arrested.”

Moul testified at greater length about the instruction Bradley received at Advanced Individual Training (AIT) before he became an intelligence analyst, including the potential damage releasing Secret information could cause and the Non-Disclosure Agreement he signed, vowing to keep classified information secret. But the government has to show that he knew that passing information to WikiLeaks meant he was indirectly passing documents to Al Qaeda. This PowerPoint clearly doesn’t make that connection. In yesterday’s opening arguments, the government discussed an Army Counterintelligence Special Report, which delves into whether WikiLeaks.org is used by adversarial organizations – but as Marcy Wheeler writes,

The report itself is actually ambiguous about whether or not our adversaries were using WikiLeaked data. It both presents it as a possibility that we didn’t currently have intelligence on, then presumes it.

Adrian Lamo confirms chat log comments, Manning’s humanist values

Computer hacker and government informant Adrian Lamo testified about his instant messages with Bradley Manning from late May 2010, which he turned over to the authorities, WIRED magazine, and the Washington Post, leading to Bradley’s arrest.

Both lines of questioning tracked opening arguments. Responding to prosecutor questions, Lamo said his chats with Manning were encrypted, that no one tampered with or manipulated them before he handed them over to Army CID, and that Manning discussed disclosing classified information and communicating with Julian Assange. Lamo frequently gave maximalist and formal responses to government questions – explaining for example that Facebook is a ‘very popular social media website where lots of people connect.’

In cross-examination, defense lawyer David Coombs reviewed several lines of chats that Lamo then confirmed. He recalled that Bradley was a humanist, someone who wanted to investigate the truth, and someone who wanted to disclose information for the public good. He acknowledged that Bradley never indicated an intention to help America’s enemies or intimated any anti-American sentiment.

Lamo was then permanently excused from testifying.

Evidentiary and intelligence analyst witnesses

Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit Special Agents David Shaver and Mark Johnson testified briefly about their expertise with forensically investigating and handling digital media. They were established as experts and then temporarily excused, and I expect they’ll be called back multiple times. The government read more stipulations of expected testimony from those who stored Bradley’s hard drives and computers, and from a fellow student in the AIT.

The government is working its way through the chain of command and through Bradley’s time in the Army, in an apparent effort to show a history of disregard for classified information. But one such example turned up rather fruitless: in Moul’s testimony, prosecutors asked about his need to counsel Bradley for posting a video to YouTube in which he referenced “buzzwords” like “Top Secret,” and “SCIF” (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility). But when asked by the defense whether Bradley divulged (or even knew of any) classified information in the video, Moul said no.

Tomorrow, Warrant Officer 1 Kyle Balonek (whom Alexa O’Brien profiled here), Specialist Jihrleah Showman (O’Brien’s profile) and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Hondo Hack (O’Brien’s profile) will testify, and then we’ll be recessed until Monday – likely because the proceedings moved too quickly to schedule witnesses any sooner.

You can donate to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund Here.
______________________________________________________________________________
PREVIOUS UPDATE:

The extremely disturbing video below started it all. The video was made public through WikiLeaks, and was retitled to be now commonly known as "Collateral Murder." Since then, former Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has given new voice to the issue of how far the government is willing to go to silence whistleblowers and make an example out of them through relentless hounding and prosecution.

Bradley Manning's case and treatment is at the heart of a new U.S. government mission that equates the revealing of truth as aiding and abetting the enemy. It is a tactic which might end up backfiring.

His trial, which could conclude with Manning spending the rest of his life in prison, started today with opening statements by the prosecution and defense.

The defense asserts that Manning sought to expose the horrific collateral damage of the war in which he was enlisted, and that he did so on humanitarian grounds. For this, he has been charged with transmitting over 700,000 classified documents, logs, and videos to the Internet via WikiLeaks and putting the troops and the nation in grave danger.

Manning was arrested at forward operating base Hammer outside Baghdad on 27 May 2010 on suspicion of being the source of the biggest leak of confidential state documents in US history. He faces 22 charges . . .

Under the US military rule book, a soldier must be arraigned and his trial officially started within 120 days of him being put into captivity. (Source)

Manning has now been held for well over 1,000 days. The slow trial was called by Manning's lawyer "an absolute mockery" of his rights. His treatment while in custody led 250 legal scholars to sign a letter to the Obama administration that what Manning was being subjected to was tantamount to torture.

Under the terms of his detention, he is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes under a so-called "prevention of injury order" and stripped naked at night apart from a smock. (Source)

The Army has essentially been treating Manning as an enemy combatant. Statements by the Army's prosecuting attorney clarify the military's view of the seriousness of Manning's alleged crimes, and presumably have justified his harsh treatment.

“This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of classified documents and dumped them onto the Internet, into the hands of the enemy—material he knew, based on his training, would put the lives of fellow soldiers at risk,” said Army Capt. Joe Morrow, who is prosecuting the case. (Source)

Manning already has pleaded guilty to 10 charges of espionage, computer fraud, and violation of additional laws for which he could receive up to 20 years in prison.

The current trial will determine the far greater crime of deliberately aiding the enemy, for which he could face life in prison without the possibility of parole. The prosecution emphasized that Osama bin Laden obtained some of the information that Manning released, demonstrating aid to the enemy.

The government's hardline in pursuing Manning as an enemy of the state might show more about the level of embarrassment the Obama administration has endured, as opposed to a sincere effort to assure Americans that Manning indeed put the nation at great risk. Especially since, as noted by the Washington Post, this military trial will be the biggest since the My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War in which 504 unarmed men, women, and children were killed by American soldiers after many were raped and tortured.

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said he was shocked the government proceeded after the plea offer. “It is like hitting Manning with a sledgehammer,” he said. “They have him for 20 years, and then they go for life. Twenty years is enough for a pound of Manning’s flesh.” (Source)

There will be no public oversight of this trial due to its classified nature, which should only enhance the secrecy for which the government has been criticized throughout Manning's captivity. Unless there is a plea arrangement, the trial is expected to last for 3 to 4 months. Interestingly, Manning today reasserted his wish to a trial by Judge Denise Lind, and not a jury.

We will update this post as more information about Manning's trial becomes available.

Please leave your thoughts below if you believe Manning was presenting a threat to America, or if you agree with Manning that he wanted only to “spark a domestic debate over the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has hired a court room stenographer to record transcripts of the proceedings.

Week 1

June 3. Day 1. Morning session. 06-03-13 AM session

June 3. Day 1. Afternoon session. 06-03-13-PM-session

June 4. Day 2. Morning session. 06-04-13-AM-session

June 4. Day 2. Afternoon session. 06-04-13-PM-session

June 5. Day 3. Morning session. 06-05-13-AM-session

June 5. Day 3. Morning session. 06-05-13-PM-session

Relevant videos:

Other sources:
http://rt.com/usa/bradley-manning-live-updates-163/
http://iam.bradleymanning.org/

Updated June 18th, 2013

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Farmers' Market Sues City over 'Pave or Vacate' Mandate

2013-06-18T14:56:00.001-07:00

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post

A farmers' market in Mount Jackson, Virginia is causing an uproar by saying, "Yes, we're suing the town."

This little market bought an unoccupied former business building in Mount Jackson in an effort to improve the town and provide a fun place for all kinds of vendors. The market performs every year at a financial and emotional loss because they believe it's so important and rewarding to provide a market and a place for local fare. Otherwise, people have to go to the next town over for organic and the town remains more abandoned. They wanted downtown Mount Jackson to be like it was historically - where it's at!

For years, a gravel lot was effectively used for parking and by the owners for activities in and around the building. Plans were made by the market to improve the lot and building but extensions were needed to finish in order to continue the summer market - and because of economic hardship on the facilitators, namely, Gerald Forsburg. See a short news vid here.

Town council required them to have a paved asphalt or concrete lot at great expense - $15,000 - $20,000 - to the market, but the owners asked for an extension and to be able to continue the pending summer market. Council shot that down because of "ordinance" which apparently stems from "aesthetics." So, it was pave or get out.

Oh, where have we heard that gem before? Look up our articles on front yard garden shut-downs.

The market had to cancel summer events and the produce orders because of the requirements, cancel vendor agreements, and are at a loss for a whole year. So how can they ever get ahead at this point to even think about paving? Who runs this town - Mr. Potter of Bedford Falls? I mean just kick them down so they can't ever operate again! Suffocating people with permits, requirements, codes and ordinances is one way to kill fresh food access - and kill your town. The leaders of Mt Jackson are paid to run the town into a barren ground.

And how can this claim be made with any conscience? It gets even crazier...

Mt Jackson city council was caught cherry-picking which businesses to hold to this ordinance for paving and which businesses they'd look away from with unpaved lots. Mt Jackson Farmers' Market reports:

Furthermore, there are businesses in the community that have NOT been required to pave their lots. The Council would likely state that those businesses have "on street" parking. Well, SO DO WE!

The market saw a bigger drop in funds when the council banned them from using sandwich board signs in 2011 to advertise the times and place even though other businesses were allowed.

There's more - this is about the councilman who voted them down:

Yet, earlier this year, Mr. Holtzman demanded a bench decision from the very same Town Council to permit him to operate a newly purchased single family home as two units stating that "after purchasing the property, he found it not feasible to rent out to a single family. The Council was smart enough to send the request to the Planning Commission, who then was able to find a way "legally" to permit Mr. Holtzman's request. The new code implemented an "Overlay District" whereby the Town Council can permit, by special use, the conversion of a single family dwelling into a multi-unit occupancy. Of course, such a request is reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Thus, exempting businesses is not permissible, nor is permitting extensions of time to meet requirements, but re-writing codes to benefit select businesses is?

So like Orwell's Animal Farm, some are more equal than others... Clearly, there's a bias here.

Why don't they just pave?

There are those in the community who say "Just pave the parking lot - we had to." To be sure, many have been required to pave their lots. However, many of those businesses were either in operation at the time the code was enforced, or given ample time to get their doors open and make a profit before being required to do so.

Check out the declaratory judgment and permanent injunction filed against the town and acting manager Charles Moore. It's not a suit for monetary means, it's to stop the town from prohibiting the market when there's a perfectly good hard surface that's been in use for years. Also read their Letter to the Editor. But the suit also calls for legal fees and this year's losses if the town continues to keep them out over freaking asphalt.

Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com. Like at Facebook.

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Whenever Margin Debt Goes Over 2.25% Of GDP The Stock Market Always Crashes

2013-06-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

image source

Michael Snyder
Activist Post

What do 1929, 2000 and 2007 all have in common? Those were all years in which we saw a dramatic spike in margin debt. In all three instances, investors became highly leveraged in order to "take advantage" of a soaring stock market. But of course we all know what happened each time. The spike in margin debt was rapidly followed by a horrifying stock market crash. Well guess what? It is happening again.

In April (the last month we have a number for), margin debt rose to an all-time high of more than 384 billion dollars. The previous high was 381 billion dollars which occurred back in July 2007. Margin debt is about 29 percent higher than it was a year ago, and the S&P 500 has risen by more than 20 percent since last fall. The stock market just continues to rise even though the underlying economic fundamentals continue to get worse. So should we be alarmed? Is the stock market bubble going to burst at some point?

Well, if history is any indication we are in big trouble. In the past, whenever margin debt has gone over 2.25% of GDP the stock market has crashed. That certainly does not mean that the market is going to crash this week, but it is a major red flag.

The funny thing is that the fact that investors are so highly leveraged is being seen as a positive thing by many in the financial world. Some believe that a high level of margin debt is a sign that "investor confidence" is high and that the rally will continue. The following is from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal...

The rising level of debt is seen as a measure of investor confidence, as investors are more willing to take out debt against investments when shares are rising and they have more value in their portfolios to borrow against. The latest rise has been fueled by low interest rates and a 15% year-to-date stock-market rally.

Others, however, consider the spike in margin debt to be a very ominous sign. Margin debt has now risen to about 2.4 percent of GDP, and as the New York Times recently pointed out, whenever we have gotten this high before a market crash has always followed...

The first time in recent decades that total margin debt exceeded 2.25 percent of G.D.P. came at the end of 1999, amid the technology stock bubble. Margin debt fell after that bubble burst, but began to rise again during the housing boom — when anecdotal evidence said some investors were using their investments to secure loans that went for down payments on homes. That boom in margin loans also ended badly.

Posted below is a chart of the performance of the S&P 500 over the last several decades. After looking at this chart, compare it to the margin debt charts that the New York Times recently published that you can find right here. There is a very strong correlation between these charts. You can find some more charts that directly compare the level of margin debt and the performance of the S&P 500 right here. Every time margin debt has soared to a dramatic new high in the past, a stock market crash and a recession have always followed. Will we escape a similar fate this time?

What makes all of this even more alarming is the fact that a number of things that we have not seen happen in the U.S. economy since 2009 are starting to happen again. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled "12 Clear Signals That The U.S. Economy Is About To Really Slow Down".

At some point the stock market will catch up with the economy. When that happens, it will probably happen very rapidly and a lot of people will lose a lot of money.

And there are certainly a lot of prominent voices out there that are warning about what is coming. For example, the following is what renowned investor Alan M. Newman had to say about the current state of the market earlier this year...

If anything has changed yet in 2013, we certainly do not see it. Despite the early post-fiscal cliff rally, this is the same beast we rode to the 2007 highs for the Dow Industrials. The U.S. stock market is over leveraged, overpriced and has been commandeered by mechanical forces to such an extent that all holding periods are now affected by more risk than at any time in history.

Unfortunately, most Americans never get to hear such voices. Instead, most Americans rely on the mainstream media to do much of their thinking for them. And right now the mainstream media is insisting that we are not in a stock market bubble...

Forbes: "Why Stocks Are On Solid Footing And This Is No Bubble"

ABC News: "AP Survey: Economists See No Stock Market Bubble"

Businessweek: "Prognostications: It's Not a Stock Bubble"

Yahoo: "This Is NOT a Stock Bubble! Says Ben Stein"

MarketWatch: "Is a stock bubble coming? No, say economists"

So what do you think?

Do you believe that we are in a stock market bubble that is about to burst, or do you believe that everything is going to be just fine?

Please feel free to express your opinion by posting a comment below...

This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.

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The Chinese Version of Agenda 21 and Why the US Should Care

2013-06-18T14:55:00.001-07:00

Dave Hodges
Activist Post

As most aware people already know, England often provides us with a forward-looking view of where our police state surveillance grid will be in three or four years. The US has another canary in the mine from which to predict its future, and it has to do with how China is implementing Agenda 21.

China has long led the world in repressive and inhuman enforcement of its one child policies, mandatory sterilization and forced abortions. We also know that China permits corporate slave labor (e.g. Walmart) within its boundaries by globalist corporations. China is indeed a model for the implementation of Agenda 21; and this implementation phase is taking a new and dramatic twist. We in the US, should watch this Agenda 21 canary in the mine because it represents our future.

Agenda 21 Comes to China by Stealth

Agenda 21 is being implemented in China at breakneck speed and the latest phase and is coming in under stealth and deception.

The Chinese government is in the process of relocating 250,000 people per week from rural farmlands to densely populated urban areas into what has been dubbed as the Chinese ghost towns. Many of us have heard about these Chinese ghost cities. However, until this year we didn’t really know the true purpose of why these ghost cities were being built. However, the veil is being lifted and now it is becoming very obvious as to what the Chinese are up to.

China Is Now an Urban Country

China’s urban population has passed the 50% mark, according to China’s Bureau of Statistics. America reached this milestone in 1920, almost a full century before the Chinese and our urbanization was fueled by the demand for cheap labor to fill the new factory jobs. The Communist Chinese regime touts urbanization as the engine behind China’s future economic development. The Chinese propagandists are telling the masses that they must accept relocation from rural to urban because it will fuel the Chinese economy of the future. What the Chinese propagandists are telling the people is a lie and, as with many things in politics, there is the reason and there is the real reason.

Lies and Damn Lies

Although the Chinese government and a select few globalist corporations claim that the Chinese urban population migration is fueled by the need for workers, other Chinese experts tell a different story.

In a Nov. 23, 2011 report, the Beijing Times, one of the most liberal of the Chinese newspapers, quoted the deputy inspector at China’s National Land Bureau, Gan Zangchun, said that the government land acquisition has created “fake urbanization.” In other words, the Chinese urbanization, based upon economic reasons, is a fraud. Then why is there an urgency on the part of the Chinese government to move its population to urban areas at such a rapid pace and with such inhumanity?

The Real Reasons

For the past few years, people in the West were baffled as to why the Chinese were building massive ghost cities that can house over 1 million people each and, yet, these ghost cities were dormant until just recently. The Chinese have over 65 million micro-apartments which are vacant in these ghost cities.

The urbanization of America took place in proportion to the number of factory jobs which were available well into the industrial period of our history. The American factory jobs enticed future workers to leave the farm and relocate to cities. However, China is taking a “build it and they will come” approach. In other words, the more naive among us are supposed to believe that if the people move into the cities, factory jobs will follow. Stalin tried it, as did Pol Pot; it did not work and what we are really looking at here is a cover story.

More Chinese Experts Debunk the State Propaganda

Chinese political refugee and Princeton University professor, Cheng Xiaonong, stated in that in lots of places in China, farmers are being forcibly relocated at gun point and forced to relocate to urban areas. Cheng said, “[Party chief] Bo Xilai has been promoting a policy of moving farmers into towns, building apartments and moving forcibly relocated farmers into these stack and pack apartments and treating this as urbanization.”

Cheng said urbanization isn’t about calculating how many farmers are relocated into cities, but about farmers being able to move into the city and gaining some measure of sustainable employment and adequate living conditions. These relocated farmers, without the prospect of jobs is a recipe for economic and social disaster. Soon, there will be tens of millions of Chinese totally dependent on government handouts to survive. This is the power that governments strive to obtain because it gives them total control. This Chinese scene is reminiscent of the Agenda 21-inspired movie, Hunger Games.

Cheng makes the same observations as many other Chinese experts as he added that “urbanization is generally accompanied by economic growth as was the case in the US. In other countries, urbanization happens naturally, but in mainland China, urbanization is the result of the Chinese regime forcefully pushing farmers off of their land.”

Since the Chinese are not industrialized to the point which would justify the mass movement of 1 million people per month into its ghost towns. Any reasonable person would be asking the question, why?

Who Is Behind Chinese Urbanization?

The Chinese government have held many conferences in which they have received consultation from some very disturbing sources, known to most of us as the global elite....

Who could forget Hank Paulson, the former Secretary of the Treasury and the former CEO of Goldman Sachs? Paulson is championing the strategy of forced relocation. In relation to Paulson’s observation and encouragement of Chinese urbanization, he states, “The country’s economy is heading in the right direction. This is more important than achieving short-term growth.” Paulson went on to say that the economic growth in China has made urbanization a necessary and proper development. Are you kidding me? We have heard from Chinese experts, both inside and outside the country, who claim that economics is not fueling urban growth. Chinese urban growth is being fueled by bayonets and bullets. Hank Paulson is such a gem.

I'm sure you remember Mr. too-big-to-fail, Hank Paulson, when he told Congress that if we, the American taxpayer, did not bail out Wall Street, there would be an economic collapse and we would have martial law . . . the rest as they say, is history. Bailout after bailout has come and gone, and the net effect is that the American economy is in a tailspin. And the Chinese are taking advice from him? That’s like taking advice from Dr. Kevorkian on how to preserve life.

Another key globalist, Dominic Barton, the global managing director of McKinsey & CO, and he too sounds like a Paulson clone as recently stated, “The good news is that there is an underlying force of growth and that’s urbanization. What we’re basically seeing is more we than 250,000 people moving from rural areas to cities every week.”

Maurice strong and George Soros are also players in this mass migration movement. If job demand is not fueling urbanization, then what is?

Getting Down to the Truth

It would seem that key globalists are trying to disguise the real reasons for why the Chinese government is forcibly relocating one million farmers per month to their ghost cities. Ask yourself America, where have we seen the philosophical belief that rural areas should be uninhabited and the population should be herded into densely populated stack-and-pack cities?

Make no mistake about it, the Chinese with the backing of globalist corporations like Goldman Sachs, are engaged in full-blown Agenda 21 relocation of its civilian population from rural areas to the stack-and-pack of their mega-cities. From the outside looking in, it looks like a beta test. And there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the same is preparing to happen in the United States.

The Chinese Are Behind a Barrel and They Have Pointed That Barrel On Their People

Why would the Japanese be taking marching orders from Paulson, Strong, Soros and company? The answer is simple, the Chinese government hopes to survive the coming bond collapse in the US which could happen in mere days, weeks or months. The Chinese hold much of our debt in bonds. The Chinese have undoubtedly come to the full realization that their economy will massively implode when American bonds crash.

By moving one million people per month to the ghost cities, the Chinese will find that subjugating their country will be much easier when a martial law crackdown is instituted as necessitated by the coming economic catastrophe. It is also not difficult to speculate that the Chinese have made an under-the-table deal with the global elite to be the beta test for Agenda 21-style population forced relocation to stave off absolute financial ruin.

Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, the San Francisco City Council, the concept of transition towns, inner city developmental tax breaks for construction and much more, America is following suit with the Chinese style Agenda 21 policies on many fronts, which will be the topic of Part two of this series. I will give the reader one hint on where this is going: the first area of the US to be relocated will be the Gulf and you can take that to the bank.

Help EXPOSE Agenda 21 by entering the new Activist Post writing contest. $750 in cash prizes will be given. For guidelines, please visit the Contest page here:
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/05/writing-contest-expose-agenda-21.html

Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Views and The Arizona Republic. The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty.

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Writing Contest: EXPOSE Agenda 21

2013-06-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

Contest is open for submissions until August 1, 2013

1st place receives a $500 cash prize
2nd place receives a $250 cash prize

Activist Post

Agenda 21 wears a green cloak of caring and happiness to hide its much darker trappings. By utilizing universal concerns such as the environment and the economy, this United Nations program has co-opted legitimate activism to create a many-tentacled beast that aims to get it hooks into local communities across the globe . . . by stealth.

At its heart, Agenda 21 is a communitarian system -- essentially collectivism -- where the very nature of the human desire to connect and cooperate with one another is distorted to become a system of regulations, control mechanisms, dependence and servitude, and a revamp of the global economy, based on natural, human, and social capital. Humanity itself becomes the source of all problems instead of the source of all solutions and progress.

This writing contest seeks to address the many facets of Agenda 21. A lot of people are still confused about what it is and what its true purpose is. It is time to fully expose it with crowd-powered journalism.

Please use the following bullet points as a guideline to help expose the full reach of Agenda 21 and how it affects us. Agenda 21 is not a "conspiracy theory", it is an Action Plan. This is your chance to take back the conversation and stop this plan.

Balancing all 3 ‘E’s of Agenda 21- environment, economy, equity.
Redistributing our wealth – financing economic expansion into the ‘developing world’.
Measuring Gross Global Happiness; the 9 domains; survey questions; happiness action groups.
Smart phones / self-reporting; the future of telehealth – electronic records, neural profiling, AI doctors, telemedicine, genetic profiling, phone sensing, quantified self, Biostamps, transhumanism, sensing well-being.
The history and theories of the ‘beyond GDP’ movement, and who is involved.
The rise of the New Economists – who profits?
‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) and how it can be ‘leveraged’ by consumers for justice.
Global Happiness (i.e. the correct standard of physical and mental health) and identity profiling; Identity Providers, and other trust facilitators/reputation systems, such as Ripple, for the global virtual economy.
Mobile finance and tracking, including programs rolled out across the developing world, such as M-PESA, and the ‘Better Than Cash Alliance’. Can we use our P2P Power to set up truly grassroots local currencies which commit to enabling truly anonymous transactions, without measuring ‘giving’ or ‘having’? (Community currencies tend to be based on measures of qualities such as ‘social value’ and ‘reputation capital’, which exclude those who are unable to give, or do not have.)
Local activism and solutions; is your community beginning to feel or discuss specific Agenda 21 programs such as Wildlands, ICLEI, and others? Has your community successfully resisted? How?
Recognizing true solutions like self-sufficiency, which is the real definition of "sustainable".

Feel free to write about any specific aspect of Agenda 21 like a local zoning regulation or write about the broader agenda behind it.

Please see the specific guidelines for submissions below:

Length: 1,500 words maximum. Footnotes do not count as part of the total.
Originals Only: The article must be original content for our exclusive use as the first website to publish it on the Internet.
Deadline: The contest officially begins on June 1st, 2013 and will run through August 1st, 2013. Articles will be reviewed and published in the order they are received.
Winner: The winner will be determined by total page views, the earlier you submit your article the better chance you have to win. The winner will be announced on September 15th, 2013.

Important Submission Guidelines:

Please submit completed articles via email to contest@activistpost.com.
Submissions can be cut-and-pasted into an e-mail, or you may attach a Word file.
We can only make minor edits, so submissions that have poor formatting, or need heavy editing will be disqualified.
We are not able to attend to follow-up edits once a submission is posted, so please take time to be sure that you are submitting a final version you are happy with.
Multiple submissions are permitted, but will not count toward a cumulative page view total; each entry will stand on its own.
We cannot accept images, due to the length of time it takes to post them, but you may provide 1 video that is relevant to your article.
Submissions that contain links to products for sale by the author will be edited or disqualified. A link may be included in a short bio, which will be posted at the end.
Please provide a title.

Best of luck to all, we look forward to hearing and sharing your research and activism.

“This Is A Glock Block” – Frustrated Homeowners All Over America Are Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands

2013-06-18T14:54:00.000-07:00

Michael Snyder
Activist Post

All over the United States, frustrated homeowners are banding together, arming themselves and patrolling their own streets. One of the primary reasons this is happening is because police budgets all over the nation are being slashed at a time when violent crime rates in the United States are increasing and many our our largest cities are being transformed into crime-infested war zones. So instead of waiting for government to come up with a solution, many Americans are taking matters into their own hands.

For example, one community group in Milwaukie, Oregon has started posting flyers with an ominous message for potential criminals: "This is a Glock block. We don’t call 911." You can see a photo of this flyer right here. One of the founders of the "Glock Block" is a breast cancer survivor named Coy Tolonen. She decided to arm herself after a thief stole one of her favorite statues out of her front yard while she was watching...

It’s mostly petty crime that neighbors are sick and tired of: stolen lawn ornaments, vandalism. But for neighbors like Tolonen, a breast-cancer survivor, that’s enough: “I will defend myself — and my home,” she told KOIN 6 News.

Tolonen recently had a beloved statue she calls “Lilly Rose” stolen off her front porch. She said she even saw the man who stole it and tried to chase him down — but he got away.

This was the last straw for Tolonen, who decided to take a class to get her concealed carry permit.

We are seeing similar things happen in other areas of the nation. As I wrote about yesterday, the size of the police force has been cut in half in the city of Detroit over the past ten years. Meanwhile, crime rates have skyrocketed. So frustrated citizens are now teaming up with the police to patrol their own neighborhoods...

Volunteers given radios and matching T-shirts help officers protect neighborhoods where burglaries, thefts and thugs drive away people who can’t rely on a police force that lost a quarter of its strength since 2009. With 25 patrols on the streets, the city hopes to add three each year. Meanwhile, the homicide rate continues rising.

In some wealthier neighborhoods around the country, citizens are pooling their resources and are hiring private security firms to ward off criminals. Just check out what is happening in Oakland...

After people in Oakland’s wealthy enclaves like Oakmore or Piedmont Pines head to work, security companies take over, cruising the quiet streets to ward off burglars looking to take advantage of unattended homes.

“With less law enforcement on the streets and more home crime or perception of home crime, people are wanting something to replace that need,” says Chris de Guzman, chief operating officer of First Alarm, a company that provides security to about 100 homes in Oakland. “That’s why they’re calling us and bringing companies like us aboard to provide that deterrent.”

According to Steve Amitay, the executive director of the National Association of Security Companies, this is also happening in other high crime cities such as Atlanta and Detroit. In fact, it is being projected that the "private cop" business is going to absolutely boom in the years ahead.

But not everyone can afford to hire private cops. Those with more limited resources are trying to cope with rising crime any way that they can.

In Chicago, firefighters are actually being enlisted to provide security for public school students walking to and from school...

The city of Chicago has ordered its firefighters to provide security for public school students walking to and from class through the city’s gang turf, according to an official memo from the Chicago Fire Department that WND obtained.

The memo, signed by Chicago Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago, states that the fire department will have “a strong physical presence” along student walking routes for three weeks at the beginning of the school year in the fall.

Sadly, this is just the beginning. As the U.S. economy continues to get even worse, so will crime, gang activity and social decay.

But that doesn't mean that everyone will be bad.

The truth is that there are still some decent people out there.

Today, someone sent me a story about human decency that made me smile. In Laguna Niguel, California a man accidentally sold a wooden watch box for $10 that contained his wife's $23,000 wedding ring. When his wife found out about it, she was absolutely crushed...

Racquel Cloutier was distraught after her husband, Eric, told her he had sold the wooden watch box in which she had hidden the ring before going to hospital to have their fifth child. “I immediately started crying,” said Mrs. Cloutier, 31, of Laguna Niguel, California. “I just wanted the ring to be in a safe place and out of reach from my two-year-old twins.”

Fortunately, the box had ended up with a very honest couple...

A dozen kilometres away, in Mission Viejo, Alyssa and Andrew Lossau were frantically searching for a set of keys. They looked inside a box that Mrs. Lossau’s mother, Chaundel Holladay, had bought at a garage sale and given them as a gift.

Inside, they discovered the three-carat diamond ring. Mrs. Lossau found an email address for Mrs Cloutier and contacted her. “It is giving me faith in people again,” said Mr. Cloutier, 38. “By the grace of God it ended up with the most honest people,” said his wife.

So that story had a very happy ending.

There are still people out there that are ready and willing to do the right thing.

But not everyone is that way. It has been said that desperate people do desperate things, and when the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes there are going to be millions of very desperate people out there on the streets of America.

Now is the time to get prepared for that.

This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.

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