Ron Paul | August 22, 2007

Not all the media are biased. A local newspaper in New Hampshire reported on an annual GOP bbq in the town of Hollis. It could be called “the Ron Paul show,” they said, since the far bigger crowd that usual consisted mostly of our supporters. One volunteer even rented an airplane and flew a wonderful sign around the sky. What great, creative, self-starting people I’m meeting, at every stop, all of them united by a love of America and American freedom.

Politics is usually about division. But this campaign is just the opposite. Not only are our volunteers a bunch of happy warriors, but they also practice the virtues of tolerance and peace, just as they want the nation to do.

The other day, the state chairman of an opposing campaign (not in New Hampshire!), angrily tore a sign out of one of our supporter’s hands and trashed it. Different people with different beliefs might have responded differently.
But our people, though they’d been standing in the rain all day, applied the Golden Rule. It’s because of quiet heroes that I know we can change this country.

A reporter in New Hampshire told me this story about Florida: she had seen the same three supporters working every day passing out our literature, and so decided to interview them. She was startled to discover that one was a Republican, one was a Democrat, and one was an Independent. But I wasn’t.

Freedom brings us all together. We can all agree on leaving people alone to plan and live their own lives, rather than trying to force them to obey at the point of a gun, as runaway government does. Instead of clawing at each other via the warfare-welfare state, people under liberty can cooperate in a unity of diversity.

There is no need to use government to threaten others who have different standards, or to be threatened by them. Looking to our Founders, our traditions, and the Constitution, we can build, in peaceful cooperation, a free and prosperous society.

At a talk show in Nashua, New Hampshire, the host asked me about the fair tax. Well, I agree on getting rid of the IRS, I told her, but I want to replace it with nothing, not another tax. But let’s not forget the inflation tax, I said.

This was something she had never considered, but after I talked about the depreciation of our dollar by the Federal Reserve, its creation of artificial booms and busts, and its bailouts of the big banks and Wall Street firms, to the
detriment of the average person, she loved it. That is another tax, she agreed, a hidden and particularly vicious tax.

They try to tell us that the money issue is boring or irrelevant. In fact, it is the very pith of our social lives, and morally, Constitutionally, and economically, the central bank is a disaster. Thanks to the work of this movement, Americans are starting to understand what has been hidden from them for so long: that we have a right to sound and honest money, not to a dollar debauched for the special interests.

Unconstitutional government has created a war crisis, a financial crisis, a dollar crisis, and a freedom crisis. But we don’t have to take it. We don’t have to passively accept more dead soldiers, a lower standard of living, rising
prices, a national ID, eavesdropping on our emails and phone calls, and all the rest.

We can return to first principles, and build the brightest, most brilliant future any people on earth has ever aspired to. Help me teach this lesson. Help me campaign all over this country, in cooperation with our huge and growing
volunteer army. Help me show that change is not only possible, but also essential. Please, make your most generous contribution (https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate/) to this campaign for a Constitutional presidency worthy of our people. Invest in freedom: for yourself, for your family, for your future.

Sincerely,

Ron

Associated Press | August 21, 2007

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) – Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city’s sewer plant.

The test wouldn’t be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

“It’s a community urinalysis,” said Caleb Banta-Green, a University of Washington drug abuse researcher who was part of the Oregon State team. The scientists presented their results Tuesday at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Two federal agencies have taken samples from U.S. waterways to see if drug testing a whole city is doable, but they haven’t gotten as far as the Oregon researchers.

One of the early results of the new study showed big differences in methamphetamine use city to city. One urban area with a gambling industry had meth levels more than five times higher than other cities. Yet methamphetamine levels were virtually nonexistent in some smaller Midwestern locales, said Jennifer Field, the lead researcher and a professor of environmental toxicology at Oregon State.

The ingredient Americans consume and excrete the most was caffeine, Field said.

Cities in the experiment ranged from 17,000 to 600,000 in population, but Field declined to identify them, saying that could harm her relationship with the sewage plant operators.

She plans to start a survey for drugs in the wastewater of at least 40 Oregon communities.

The science behind the testing is simple. Nearly every drug – legal and illicit – that people take leaves the body. That waste goes into toilets and then into wastewater treatment plants.

“Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete,” Field said.

In the study presented Tuesday, one teaspoon of untreated sewage water from each of the cities was tested for 15 different drugs. Field said researchers can’t calculate how many people in a town are using drugs.

She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.

Field said her study suggests that a key tool currently used by drug abuse researchers – self-reported drug questionnaires – underestimates drug use.

“We have so few indicators of current use,” said Jane Maxwell of the Addiction Research Institute at the University of Texas, who wasn’t part of the study. “This could be a very interesting new indicator.”

David Murray, chief scientist for U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the idea interests his agency.

Murray said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is testing federal wastewater samples just to see if that’s a good method for monitoring drug use. But he didn’t know how many tests were conducted or where.

The EPA will “flush out the details” on testing, Benjamin Grumbles joked. The EPA assistant administrator said the agency is already looking at the problem of potential harm to rivers and lakes from legal pharmaceuticals.

The idea of testing on a citywide basis for drugs makes sense, as long as it doesn’t violate people’s privacy, said Tom Angell of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a Washington-based group that wants looser drug laws.

“This seems to be less offensive than individualized testing,” he said.

CanWest News Service | August 23, 2007

QUEBEC — The Quebec provincial police acknowledged in a statement Thursday that their agents had infiltrated protesters demonstrating during the recent North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que. but denied that they acted as “agent provocateurs” to instigate violence.

“They had the mandate to spot and identify violent demonstrators to avoid the situation from getting out of hand,” the Surete du Quebec said in a statement. “The police officers were identified by demonstrators when they refused to throw projectiles.”

“At no time did the Surete du Quebec police officers act as agents provocateurs or committed criminal acts,” the statement adds.

A spokesperson for the police force refused to further comment on the statement.

Protesters have accused police of planting agents outside the Chateau Montebello to instigate violence during Monday’s demonstration.

A prominent labour official pointed Wednesday to video made available on Youtube and photographs of three burly men, dressed as “Black Bloc” anarchists, standing out in the midst an otherwise peaceful sit-in adjacent to Surete du Quebec and RCMP riot squads.

The video shows the three black-clad bandana-wearing men being singled out by union organizers and the crowd. Other protesters started pointing at them and crying “police.”

One of the three men is seen shoving and swearing at Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada, who is angrily confronting the trio, demanding they put down the rocks, remove their bandanas, and identify themselves.

After being backed into a corner against a line of provincial police officers in riot gear, they try to force themselves through the police line and are arrested while the crowd cheers.

“People have the right to peacefully protest something they don’t like,” said Coles this week, demanding answers from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

“They think that they have the right to infiltrate us as they’ve done before. But to be packing large boulders, they were going to do something with those rocks and it wasn’t peaceful.”

Related: The Big Picture behind North American Integration and Globalist think tank strategizes on “North American Consciousness”

CNSNews | August 21, 2007

By Nathan Burchfiel

Ottawa, Ontario (CNSNews.com) – President Bush is meeting with other world leaders in Canada this week to establish, in part, a “New World Order” that subverts national sovereignty, according to some leading American conservatives who have taken a hard stance against the president over the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

President Bush is meeting in Quebec Monday and Tuesday with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon to discuss the SPP, which the U.S. government’s Web site describes as a cooperative effort among Canada, the United States, and Mexico to “increase security and enhance prosperity … through greater cooperation and information sharing.”

Yet Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, said at a news conference in Ottawa Monday that Bush is trying to develop a “New World Order” of centralized world government controlled by super-national bureaucracies. Phillips said some of the bureaucracies already exist, including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United Nations.

“George Bush and his daddy [former President George H. W. Bush] have both used the term ‘New World Order.’ It was used by Woodrow Wilson. It was used by Adolf Hitler. It was used by a number of people, and the New World Order relates to the desire of many people in the world to submerge national sovereignties to international institution.” (See Video)

Other conservatives who joined Phillips at the news conference included author and columnist Jerome Corsi; John McManus, president of the John Birch Society; Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center; and Bob Park, founder of Veterans for Secure Borders.

The SPP meetings (the fourth since 2005) have afforded little access to the media and no access to the general public except for leaders of some large corporations taking part in the concurrent North American Competitiveness Council. The secrecy has led activists on both sides of the political aisle to develop ideas about what might be happening behind closed doors.

Responding to protests stated in Ottawa Sunday by leftist, anti-government, anti-corporate activists, Phillips acknowledged a difference of approach. But, he said, “if we’re all firing in the same direction, let’s work together.”

Conservative author Jerome Corsi criticized supporters of the SPP for labeling opponents “conspiracy theorists.” (See Video)

“We’re the Internet black helicopter conspiracy theorists?” asked Corsi. “What’s going on over in Montebello behind closed doors? Is that not the real conspiracy?”

“Only to call us names does not answer the arguments we’re making,” he said. “We’re called names because those supporting the Security and Prosperity Partnership wish to keep their secret agenda being advanced in secret, and we’ve ruined the party by exposing it.”

Most recently, U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins called the opposition to the SPP “conspiracy theories.” In an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen Monday, Wilkins said that “while conspiracy theories abound, you can take it to the bank that no one involved in these discussions is interested in, or has ever proposed, a ‘North American Union,’ a ‘North American super highway’ or a ‘North American currency.’”

Wilkins further wrote that “security with prosperity remains the defining vision of the leaders’ meeting” and that “each [nation] will continue to protect its own interests, but it makes sense, as friends and neighbors, to sit down together and see what we might accomplish better together.”

Phillips responded by noting that Wilkins was appointed by Bush and represents an administration that “does not have a reputation for straight talking or accuracy … .” And it’s high time for the SPP organizers to “tear down the wall of silence and let the people see what you are scheming to do,” he said.

Harper Index | August 21, 2007

By David Edwards and Muriel Kane

The agreement’s title is classic framing: “Security and Prosperity Partnership” (SPP) conjures up comfortable images. Michael Byers says the agreement under discussion this week by Canadian, US and Mexican leaders Harper, Bush and Calderon should more properly be framed as a secret agreement to give sweeping military, immigration and border control of all three countries over to the US. On Sunday, Byers, the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia told a standing-room-only forum in Ottawa about the politics and persuasion connected with the agreement under discussion behind the barricades this week at Montebello, Quebec.

I want to begin by welcoming the civil servants who been sent to keep track of what’s going on here. Like you, we love our country, unlike the people who are gathering in Montebello this week, we have nothing to hide.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership did not begin as a phenomenon after September 11, 2001. It was part of a trend that predates that time. But the proponents of North American integration seized upon 9/11 as an opportunity to advance their cause. And some of those proponents in Canada were very overt about their aspirations in the weeks and months after the terrorist atrocities in New York City and Washington, DC.

David O’Brien, the CEO of Canadian Pacific and now Chairman of the Board of Royal Bank of Canada argued Canada would have to adopt US-style immigration policies to keep the border open. He said that we have to make North Americans secure from the outside. ‘We’re going to lose increasingly our sovereignty but it’s necessarily so.’ Mr. O’Brien is an influential man. Within months, the Canadian government had signed the Safe Third Country agreement with the United States whereby Canadian refugee policy was essentially assimilated into the refugee policy of the United States. The rights of human beings to asylum when they’re being persecuted for their religious or political opinions or ethnic identities is one of the most fundamental rights of all.

Then there was Nancy Hughes Anthony, the President of the Canadian Chambers of Commerce who said that we’re not going to get anywhere with our American friends unless we can show we have good strong anti- terrorist legislation and we intend to enforce it. The result was the 2001 Anti- terrorism Act, which, of course was modelled on the [US] Patriot Act.

And then there was Patrick E. Daniels, the President of Enbridge, the big energy company based in Calgary, who complained that Canada pushed its sovereignty ‘a little too far.’ He said it would be realistic for Canada to either get onside with US foreign policy or ‘accept some change in our relationship.’

I was asked to speak about one aspect of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, namely security, or more specifically, the military. In the immediate aftermath of September 2001, plans were devised within the American and Canadian governments to put the entire Canadian Forces under the umbrella of the US Northern Command. To put all our soldiers, sailors and pilots and all their equipment under the operational control of the United States, in a much- expanded version of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD). Fortunately some sunshine was let in upon that thinking before it could be taken too far. Some serious credit needs to be given here to a former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, who took advantage of being out of Cabinet to let the rest of us know what his former colleagues were up to.

So those who wanted to pursue the efforts of further integration of the Canadian and US military decided to take their efforts underground in arrangements that bear striking similarity to the SPP. And the SPP is part of a larger process. The Bi-National Planning Group was the military sister or brother of the SPP. Essentially it was a transborder committee of unelected bureaucrats, military officers and consultants who were given task of studying and then reporting on the options for improving the efficacy of the North American defensive system. The goal was simply to allow us to respond faster and better to the various kinds of threats that might arise.

The military officers worked away quietly in Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters of NORAD, as well as the US space command…. Canadian military leaders quite liked playing with the big boys and using the best military equipment in the world…

The proponents of closer military integration could not believe their luck when Stephen Harper was elected. And very shortly after Mr. Harper came to power, they released their final report… which sets out four different options for the closer integration of the Canadian and US military. Most of the report is concerned with public relations, noting that Canadians are particularly attached to sovereignty.

Imagine how you might actually explain that closer military cooperation enhances sovereignty because giving up sovereignty is an exercise in sovereignty! You actually affirm your sovereignty by giving some of it away..

The report was very very clear that its preferred option was full integration, the option that had been floated internally in 2002, the assignment of Canadian Forces to what looked like an expanded NORAD, to an umbrella command where operational control would ultimately rest with the US military.

Some steps have been taken in that direction, including, last year, the NORAD agreement to expand the sharing of maritime surveillance including within the Northwest Passage. It wasn’t much noticed at the time. Only one party opposed it in Parliament, the New Democratic Party of Canada.

When the report actually came out and was put up on the website of the Bi- National Planning Group, some smart people, including possibly the Prime Minister of Canada, decided that you were not yet ready for this. That somehow it wasn’t the time to make the public case for the full integration of Canadian and US forces because Mr. Harper didn’t get that majority he so desperately desired. And so it was shuffled away once again, it disappeared off the website, and the Bi-National Planning Group was shut down, and who knows what they’re talking about in Montebello.

But something did happen, and I’m talking about Afghanistan…. We are seeing the implementation in theatre of precisely the kind of planning that was going into the Bi-National Planning Group. We are seeing the Canadian Forces being given more and more equipment. We’re even buying new tanks. We’re seeing the integration of attitudes and rules of engagement with respect to issues like the treatment of detainees. Why did we not adopt the Western European approach to detainee transfer rights, following models that were provided to us by the British, the Dutch and the Danish? Because Washington wanted to do it another way. And why should we volunteer for the most dangerous mission in Afghanistan, a forward-leaning, war- fighting search and kill mission supported by US airstrikes and working in tandem with a US-led and -commanded mission that is not part of the NATO command?

Why have 67 Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan? Why did Private Simon Longtin die today? The simple explanation, and it’s only a partial explanation, is that there are people who want to transform the Canadian Forces into a miniature version of the US Marine Corps and want Canada to only choose missions that involve fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States; that want us to acquire equipment that integrates seamlessly with the US military, including in the relatively near future new F35 fighters. The same people who will tell you that peace-keeping is dead, that we really don’t need new search-and-rescue aircraft in the second largest country on Earth, and who will tell you that those who stand up for the rights of detainees are expressing disrespect and a lack of support for the brave young Canadian men and women who serve this country in whatever mission they’re given because they love this country just as much as you and I.

The integration of the Canadian and US military is not officially part of the SPP, but the SPP and the integration of the Canadian and US military are part of a larger project, and we need to address that larger project, and understand that what we’re up against here does not involve the existence of an independent Canada. But as we saw with the Bi-National Planning Group, a little bit of sunshine can chase these plans away. When I look at this room I see a whole lot of sunshine.

Related individuals, organizations and significant events
Deep integration – TILMA and SPP to bring in rules to let corporations challenge our laws

Harper Conservative vs. Public Values Frame
Security / Secrecy, American control
Sovereignty / American control, smokescreen

Links and sources
Bi-National Planning Group
Continental Integration of Military Command Structures: A Threat to Canada’s Sovereignty, by Michel Chossudovsky

Documentary set up bias straw man arguments, ignored key evidence, afforded debunkers overwhelming majority of time – so-called “experts” Popular Mechanics are on the same corporate payroll as the History Channel itself, which is owned by Disney, GE and Hearst Publishing

Prisonplanet | August 21, 2007

By Paul Joseph Watson

Initial reaction to last night’s two hour History Channel Special on the 9/11 truth movement was vehement and conclusive – the show was nothing more than another biased hit piece that manufactured straw man arguments, ignored key evidence, and afforded debunkers to talk at length while ridiculing any other viewpoints.

According to viewers who were unfortunate to have to sit through 120 minutes of yellow journalism, the program was very similar to a previous BBC hit piece – an outright smear attempt that abandoned any pretense of neutrality early on and sought to vigorously attack so-called conspiracy theories.

Though producers of the show promised Alex Jones directly that the documentary was not going to be a hit piece, according to viewers it was replete with distortion and deception, all delivered in the kind of condescending tone we have become used to from the establishment media.

- According to 9/11 researcher James Gourley, the debunkers attempted to wriggle out of Secretary Norman Mineta’s bombshell testimony about Cheney’s actions in the Emergency Operations Center, by claiming that Mineta was talking about Flight 93 and not the plane that hit the Pentagon. In reality, Mineta makes it clear in his testimony that he is talking about Flight 77, “the airplane coming in to the Pentagon,” and this is then confirmed by Commissioner Lee Hamilton.

- The debunkers admitted that temperatures inside the twin towers were not hot enough to melt steel, but claimed that they were hot enough to weaken steel and cause the collapse. The debunkers uniformly failed to address the fact that firefighters and first responders described witnessing molten steel beneath the rubble of the towers and they also ignored Professor Steven Jones’ scientific analysis of the iron-rich microspheres found in the rubble. In a website posting last night, Professor Jones stated that he emphatically pushed the dust analysis during his interview with the producers, but the topic was completely overlooked. The New York Times reported that the molten steel was “perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered” but the History Channel, mirroring NIST, failed to address the issue.

- The debunkers mentioned WTC 7 only in passing and completely failed to address why the building, which wasn’t hit by a plane, collapsed in 7 seconds into its own footprint after suffering only limited fire damage from falling debris. They also failed to mention why news outlets were reporting the collapse of Building 7 over an hour before it actually fell.

- The wargames that dovetailed 9/11 and deliberately confused NORAD personnel so as to slow response to the real attack were completely excluded.

- The Able Danger program and how the hijackers were discovered before 9/11 was completely excluded.

- The fact that the money man behind the hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials before and on the morning of 9/11, was completely excluded.

- William Rodriguez’ first-hand testimony of explosions prior to the impact of the planes was completely excluded, as was the testimony of numerous firefighters who attested to bombs and explosions.

- NBC reporter Pat Dawson claimed that FDNY Chief of Safety Albert Turi had only described explosions, not bombs, going off, contradicting Dawson’s own report at the time which stated, “Reports of a secondary device, that is another ‘bomb’ going off.”

According to another blogger, the whole tone of the program was crafted to be antagonistic towards those questioning the official version.

Conspiracy theorists were derided throughout the program as being ignorant, mean and kooky with no personal lives. On the other hand, the Popular Mechanics editors were given the last word on each and every subject along with the undeserving title of “expert”. To the best of my knowledge, not one of the pencil pushing staff members have any credentials that are relevant to any aspect of 9/11 truth. Of course it was the conspiracy theorists that were accused of not having any of the valid expertise necessary for stating their assertions logically. They do this by completely ignoring the very existence and works of groups like Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Pilots for 9/11 Truth. Also just as expected, the History Channel failed to disclose the Chertoff connection and other major conflicts of interests that have clearly drastically compromised the research and conclusions of their so-called “experts”. It was disingenuous and deceptive from the very start. It only got worse.

As we reported previously, the makers of the hit piece first advertised the show as a response to “outrageous” theories about 9/11, but then immediately back-pedaled and altered the program description on their website after we highlighted the blatant biased agenda of the piece and its multiple corporate conflicts of interest.

Hearst Publishing’s Popular Mechanics, the premiere name in yellow journalism, were featured on the show as the most prominent debunkers, shilling for their corporate bosses in a brazen display of cronyism.

The History Channel is part of the A&E Television Network which is jointly owned by The Walt Disney Company (37.5%), The Hearst Corporation (37.5%), and NBC Universal (25%).

The owners of Popular Mechanics are also the joint owners of the History Channel!

Once again it is not a good starting point for a neutral investigation when the people you choose to represent one side of a factual debate are actually on the payroll.

It makes Fox News appear fair and balanced in comparison!

Furthermore, the other joint owner of The History Channel, NBC Universal, is run by General Electric, the world’s second largest corporation and one of the major players within the military industrial complex.

GE is a major supplier of arms and the “war on terrorism” has seen GE’s government and military contracts rise substantially to over $2.2 billion.

In short, GE really has very little to gain and a great deal to lose from probing into questions concerning the possibility of 9/11 being a military intelligence operation to seed the “war on terror” and to justify a huge increase in military activity around the globe.

Despite the fact that this charade was seemingly another crude smear job, we should thank the History Channel for attacking us because it only ensures that more people will check out the evidence for themselves and discover what was deliberately buried by the debunkers.

As we head towards the sixth anniversary of 9/11, our numbers are larger than ever and our credibility is growing, while lying corporate media whores like the History Channel lose respectability at a rate rivaled only by their hemoraging of viewers.

Raw Story | August 18, 2007

In an unprecedented order, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered the Bush Administration to respond to a request it received last week by the American Civil Liberties Union for orders and legal papers discussing the scope of the government’s authority to engage in the secret wiretapping of Americans, according to an ACLU press release late Friday.

The release follows:

According to the FISC’s order, the ACLU’s request “warrants further briefing,” and the government must respond to it by August 31. The court has said that any reply by the ACLU must be filed by September 14.

“Disclosure of these court orders and legal papers is essential to the ongoing debate about government surveillance,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “We desperately need greater transparency and public scrutiny. We’re extremely encouraged by today’s development because it means that, at long last, the government will be required to defend its contention that the orders should not be released.”

The ACLU filed the request with the FISC following Congress’ recent passage of the so-called “Protect America Act,” a law that vastly expands the Bush administration’s authority to conduct warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails. In their aggressive push to justify passing this ill-advised legislation, the administration and members of Congress made repeated and veiled references to orders issued by the FISC earlier this year. The legislation is set to expire in six months unless it is renewed.

“These court orders relate to the circumstances in which the government should be permitted to use its profoundly intrusive surveillance powers to intercept the communications of U.S. citizens and residents,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The debate about this issue should not take place in a vacuum. It’s imperative that the public have access to basic information about what the administration has proposed and what the intelligence court has authorized.”

FISC orders have played a critical role in the evolution of the government’s surveillance activities over the past six years. After September 11, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to inaugurate a program of warrantless wiretapping inside the United States. In January 2007, however, just days before an appeals court was to hear the government’s appeal from a judicial ruling that had found the NSA program to be illegal in a case brought by the ACLU, Attorney General Gonzales announced that the NSA program would be discontinued. Gonzales explained that the change was made possible by FISC orders issued on January 10, 2007, which he characterized as “complex” and “innovative.” Those orders are among the documents requested by the ACLU.

Since January 2007, government officials have spoken publicly about the January 10 orders in congressional testimony, to the media and in legal papers – the orders remaining secret all the while. They have also indicated that the FISC issued other orders in the spring that restricted the administration’s surveillance activities. House Minority Leader John Boehner stated that the FISC had issued a ruling prohibiting intelligence agents from intercepting foreign-to-foreign calls passing through the United States. To a large extent, it was the perception that the FISC had issued an order limiting the administration’s surveillance authority that led Congress to pass the new legislation expanding the government’s surveillance powers. Yet the order itself, like the January 2007 order, has remained secret.

The ACLU’s request to the FISC acknowledges that the FISC’s docket includes a significant amount of material that is properly classified. The ACLU argues, however, that the release of court orders and opinions would not raise any security concern to the extent that these records address purely legal issues about the scope of the government’s wiretap authority, and points out that the FISC has released such orders and opinions before. The ACLU is seeking release of all information in those judicial orders and legal papers the court determines, after independent review, to be unclassified or improperly classified.

A copy of the FISA court order, the ACLU’s motion to the FISC, as well as information about the ACLU’s lawsuit against the NSA and other related materials are available online at: www.aclu.org/spying.

In addition to Jaffer, lawyers on the case are Steven R. Shapiro, Melissa Goodman, and Alexa Kolbi-Molinas of the ACLU and Art Spitzer of the ACLU of the National Capital Area.

The Observer | August 19, 2007

By Simon Caulkin, management editor

Some radical friends didn’t share the enthusiastic reception for Lives of Others, the haunting recent film about life under the Stasi, the East German secret police. It wasn’t the acting or even the Big-Brother type plot of hidden manipulation and control that they objected to: what got up their noses was the complacent implicit assumption that the West wasn’t an equally enthusiastic user of similar surveillance techniques, even if mostly (so far as we know) for commercial rather than political ends.

They have a point. ‘We live in a surveillance society,’ was the bald assessment of a report for the information commissioner last year that catalogued in detail the technologies and processes by which we are all logged, profiled and digitised daily at work and at play – credit, loyalty, Oyster and swipe cards, mobile phones, congestion charges, work log-ins and activity monitors, interactions with public and private-sector call centres, not to mention the ubiquitous CCTV cameras.

One striking measure of the burgeoning of surveillance is the growth of the industry that provides it: in the three years to 2006 the top 100 US surveillance companies had doubled in value to $400bn. Surveillance is big business.

Even individual surveillance uses are hard to track and regulate, as technology runs ahead of the ability to foresee its implications. But in combination with ‘function creep’ (where a mechanism set up for one purpose, like a travel card, is then used for another, such as tracking movement), increasingly complex networks of information-sharing across private and public sectors, from credit-rating to benefits agencies and hospitals, make it almost impossible for people to assert their right to know the information held about them.

It’s like a ‘first life’ version of the virtual-reality website Second Life: whether we like it or not we all have shadowy ‘avatars’, digital doubles of ourselves, assembled by computer from dozens of different database components, that are logged and managed in ways of which we are only dimly aware. Although untethered from the office by mobiles and laptops, some remote workers find their digital selves more controlled and monitored than before. For consumers and citizens, racial and postcode profiling and credit rating are just the beginning. When you contact some call centres you are categorised by level of spending and served accordingly; Amazon can price goods differently for different customers.

Not all surveillance is bad – accurate records can protect the innocent as well as identify wrongdoers – and some of it, as the information commissioner notes, is an inescapable part of being modern. The technology itself is neutral, as Lives of Others demonstrates, however the use made of it can be anything but. The report warns that it is naïve and dangerous to sleepwalk into a world where gathering, processing and sorting personal data is no longer just an overlay, like CCTV cameras, but a part of life’s basic infrastructure, without debate or understanding what it means.

Part of the danger is cock-up rather than conspiracy: at a very basic level so much of the information gathered is just wrong. One study found that 22 per cent of a sample of entries into a police computer contained errors, even when double-checked. Names are misspelt and addresses wrongly coded. The impact of such errors is compounded by sharing; what’s more, they are not remedied by the enthusiastic addition of more technology – as the IC report points out, a managerialist solution that often makes the original problem still harder to unravel, as well as locking us in to technology and expertise beyond democratic control.

At the same time, to a computer your digital identity is more real than the physical one; indeed, if you don’t have a computer identity you don’t exist at all. Hence the phenomenon of the invisible consumer and the unreachable company, separated by the impenetrable barrier of the computer. When, as is the way of technological advance, the monitoring of information is taken away from humans in the name of rationality and given over to algorithms, the wrongness can become surreal. If computers decide who gets passports or is employed, we really are rattling the bars of sociologist Max Weber’s bureaucratic ‘iron cage’.

Surveillance is a substitute for trust. At work or as citizens, some people break trust, so surveillance is necessary. The dilemma is that by fostering suspicion and making people feel mistrusted, it increases the chances that they act in ways that seem to justify the surveillance. Lives of Others plays out this tension, before ending on a note of wry individual redemption. A small victory for humanity. Yet in real life the nightmare prospect of surveillance managing us rather than the opposite is apparent, and it will take more than fiction to reverse it.

· simon.caulkin@observer.co.uk

New York Daily News | August 16, 2007

BY NICK REISMAN and ALISON GENDAR

A Brooklyn traffic agent became a YouTube star when she was caught on camera parking her patrol car in front of a fire hydrant – and then flipping the bird to the cameraman.

Edythe Anderson, an NYPD summons enforcement supervisor, apparently thought nothing of pulling in front of a hydrant to run into a Brooklyn restaurant to grab some lunch.

But the sight of it infuriated video vigilante “Jimmy Justice,” 36-year-old musician and the amateur cameraman.

“They are pretty vicious giving out tickets but when they do something wrong. It’s a double standard,” he said.

Justice said he carries a video camera with him to his various musical gigs just so he can catch civil servants taking advantage of the system.

“Basically, I asked her, ‘How come you can park in front of a hydrant? Isn’t that illegal. You’d give someone else a summons,’” Justice said.

As he filmed Anderson climbing back into her car, he noticed the sticker inside reminding agents to buckle up before driving.

“She didn’t buckle up either. She just started her car,” Justice said.

As he filmed, another woman walked up, told him she was retired NYPD, and ordered him to stop filming the traffic agent because of terrorism.

“What a crock,” Justice said. He used coarser terms on his video as she walked away. Justice turned his attention back to Anderson, who by now had rolled up her window.

“You ought to be ashamed,” Justice can be heard telling her on the video.

Anderson, who hadn’t said a word, gave him the finger as she pulled out.

“So much for ‘Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect,’” he said, mocking the NYPD’s customer service slogan on the side of Anderson’s car.

After he filmed Anderson, Justice said he filed a complaint with the city’s 311 system, and then posted the video on YouTube, a popular video-sharing Web site.

That was in June. Anderson, 53, is still on the job. She declined to comment. An NYPD spokesman said the 311 complaint was never forwarded to them, so they have not investigated his complaint.

Elites plan for regional rule under one-world government

Old-thinker news | August 14, 2007

By Daniel Taylor

Is there a plan to divide the world into economic and political regions under a world government? Is the North American Union part of this plan?

In 1954, the Bilderberg group held its first meeting at the Hotel de Bilderberg in the Netherlands. It was during this meeting that the first discussions of European integration were held. Thanks to BBC radio 4, documents were discovered which detailed what went on inside the extremely secretive conference. The host of the BBC radio program reads from the 1954 document, which states, “Some sort of European Union has long been a utopian dream, but the conference has agreed that it is now a necessity of our time.”

Since 1954, the European Union has become a reality. Will the global elite continue to divide the world?

Today, the creation of an African Union is underway. As with the European Union, the African Union is to have a common currency, along with a unified military. As Jerome Corsi reports,

“Advancing the movement toward economic and political globalism, the African Union is moving down the path of regional economic integration, with the expected end result of continental economic and political integration.”

“And while the AU is still in a formative state, it’s already officially designated by an emblem, a flag, an anthem, a central bank, and unified continental military force.”

“The goal of the African Central Bank is to create an African Single Currency. African Union planners are currently calling the African continental currency the “Gold Mandela.”"

The creation of regional currencies, and the removal of “unwanted currencies” is necessary, according to Benn Steil. Writing in the Council on Foreign Relations publication, Foreign Affairs, Steil states that, “The world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn.” “Countries should abandon monetary nationalism,” says Steil.

Members of the Council on Foreign Relations have made statements regarding the goals of the Council, which mirror current agendas of the group.

“The Council on Foreign Relations is the American Branch of a society which originated in England… (and) …believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established.”
- Carroll Quigley, member of Council on Foreign Relations, mentor to Bill Clinton

“The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence and submergence into an all powerful, one world government.”
- Admiral Chester Ward, former CFR member and Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy

In 1999, the Bilderberg group met in Sintra, Portugal, where they discussed plans for a new economic world order. Thanks to Jim Tucker’s infiltration of the secretive group, we are able to get an idea of what was talked about inside the meeting. Writing in his book, Bilderberg Diary, Tucker says,

“Kenneth Clarke, a member of the British Parliament and former chancellor for the exchequer , had called for a new “international financial architecture” at the 1999 meeting of Bilderberg. The world should have three major regional currencies, Clarke told his Bilderberg colleagues. The first is already on the world scene: The European euro. And Britain will join in the European common currency, he said. Clarke said he would like to see the pound grow weaker to facilitate Britain’s entry into the common currency… The next step is toward a second great regional currency in the Western Hemisphere, Clarke said. The “amerijo” will come about by the “dollarization” of Latin America.”

Tucker continues,

“Bilderberg colleagues agreed that the emerging regional currencies, which will be identified with no specific country, will do much to eliminate “nationalism” and the “antiquated notions of sovereignty.”

The elite’s plans have changed slightly over the years, but at their core they remain the same. The “amerijo” discussed by Bilderberg in 1999 appears to have transformed into the common currency for North America called the “amero,” as coined by Herbert Grubel, and supported by Robert Pastor.

Steve Previs spoke of the amero and its far reaching implications for Canada, Mexico and the United States on CNBC. Watch the clip below:

The proposed North American Union has not been popular among informed Americans and Canadians. This has not gone un-noticed to the elite. As reported here last week, a conference was held in 2002 during which recommendations were given by CFR members on how to best propagandize Americans into a “North American Consciousness.”

The ultimate goal?

In 1973 the Club of Rome issued a report titled the “Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System.” In this report a map is shown which divides the world into 10 political/economic regions.

Will the North American Union fall in line with the elite’s ultimate goal? Only time will tell. Until then, there is still time to resist.